Виктория Холт - The King’s Secret Matter

And, when he had assessed the full measure of that power, who would be safe? A Queen? A Cardinal?

IN HER APARTMENTS AT GREENWICH PALACE THE PRINCESS Mary was being prepared by her women for a ceremonial occasion. They were all very excited and kept telling the little girl that she would be the target of all eyes on this occasion.

She wriggled beneath her headdress which seemed too tight.

“Be careful, my precious one,” said her governess. “Remember, you must walk very slowly and as I have taught you.”

“Yes,” said Mary, “I will remember.”

The women looked at her fondly. She was such a good child, rather too serious perhaps, but always eager to learn her lessons and please those about her.

Six-year-old Mary felt uncomfortable in the stiff gown, but she liked the dazzling jewels which decorated it; she pulled at the gold chain about her neck because it seemed so heavy.

“Careful, my lady. Hands down. That’s right. Let me see the sort of curtsey you will make to your bridegroom when you meet him.”

Mary obediently made a deep curtsey, which was not easy in the heavy gown, and several of the women clapped their hands.

“Does she not look beautiful!” asked one of another.

“She’s the most beautiful and the luckiest Princess in all the world.”

Mary did not believe them, and knew that they were bribing her to behave in such a way that she would be a credit to them.

“What is the Emperor Charles like?” she asked.

“What is he like! He is tall and handsome and the greatest ruler in the world—save only your royal father, of course. And he loves you dearly.”

“How is it possible to love people whom one does not know?”

The child was too clever for them.

“Do you not love the saints?” her governess asked. “And do you know them? Have you seen them and talked with them? Thus it is with the Emperor Charles. He has come all across the seas to hold your hand and promise to marry you.”

The little girl was silent, but there was nothing to fear, because her mother had told her that she was not to go away from her. Being affianced to the Emperor would make no difference at all; they would be together as before, she and her beloved mother.

Mary wished they could be together now, the two of them alone, in the royal nursery, bent over the books while she learned her Latin, and perhaps if her progress pleased her mother, to shut up the books and be allowed to sit at her feet while she told stories of those days when she was a little girl herself in far away Spain. There she had learned lessons in her nursery, but she had had sisters and a brother. How Mary wished that she had sisters and a brother. Perhaps only a brother would suffice. Then her father would not frown so when he remembered she was his only child and a girl.

No, there was no need to feel anxious about this coming ceremony. She had been affianced before. Strangely enough, although last time it had been to a French Prince, the ceremony had taken place in this very Palace; and she was not sure whether she remembered the occasion or her mother had told her about it and she thought she remembered; in any case it was vivid in her mind: Herself a little girl of two in a dress made of cloth of gold, and a cap of black velvet which was covered in dazzling jewels. There had been a man who had taken the place of her bridegroom-to-be because her bridegroom could not be present. He had only just been born, but he was very important because he was the son of the King of France, and her father had wanted to show his friendship for the King of France at that time. A diamond ring had been put on her finger; she was sure she remembered the difficulty she had had in trying to keep it on.

But that was four years ago, and now her father was no longer the friend of the King of France. She often wondered about that baby and whether he had been told that while he was in his cradle he was affianced to her; she wondered what he thought about it.

Now, of course, it might never have taken place; it was of no importance whatsoever.

What she did remember though, was her mother coming into her apartment and taking her in her arms and laughing with her, and weeping a little. “Only because I am so happy, my darling daughter,” she had said.

The reason for the Queen’s happiness was that there would be no French marriage. Instead there was to be a Spanish one. “And this makes me happy,” said the Queen, “because Spain is my country; and you will go there one day and rule that country as the wife of the Emperor. My mother, your grandmother, was once the Queen of Spain.”

So Mary had been happy because her mother was happy; and she shivered with horror to think that she might have been married to the little French boy; then she smiled with pleasure because instead she was to marry the Emperor who was also the King of Spain.

A page came into the apartment with the message for which Mary had been waiting.

“The Queen is ready to receive the Princess.”

Mary was eager, as always, to go to her mother.

The Queen was waiting for her in her own private apartments and when the little girl came in she dismissed everyone so that they could be alone; and this was how Mary longed for it to be. She wished though that she was not wearing these ceremonial clothes, so that she could cling to her mother; she wished that she could sit in her lap and ask for stories of Spain.

The Queen knelt so that her face was on a level with her daughter’s. “Why, you are a little woman today,” she said tenderly.

“And does it not please Your Grace?”

“Call me Mother, sweeting, when we are alone.”

Mary put her hands about her mother’s neck and looked gravely into her eyes. “I wish we could stay together for hours and hours—the two of us and none other.”

“Well, that will be so later.”

“Then I shall think of later all the time the ceremony goes on.”

“Oh no, my darling, you must not do that. This is a great occasion. Soon I shall take you by the hand and lead you down to the hall, and there will be your father and with him the Emperor.”

“But I shall not go away with him yet,” said Mary earnestly.

“Not yet, my darling, not for six long years.”

Mary smiled. Six years was as long as her life had been and therefore seemed for ever.

“You love the Emperor, Mother, do you not?”

“There is no one I would rather see the husband of my dearest daughter than the Emperor.”

“Yet you have seen him but little, Mother. How can you love someone whom you do not know?”

“Well, my darling, I love his mother dearly. She is my own sister; and when we were little she and I were brought up together in the same nursery. She married and went into Flanders, and I came to England and married. But once she came to England with her husband to see me…”

Mary wanted to ask why, if her mother loved her sister so much, she always seemed so sad when she spoke of her; but she was afraid of the answer, for she did not want any sadness on this occasion.

But into the Queen’s eyes there had come a glazed look, and at that moment she did not see the room in Greenwich Palace and her little daughter, but another room in the Alcazar in Madrid in which children played: herself the youngest and the gravest and Juana, in a tantrum, kicking their governess because she had attempted to curb her. In those days Juana had been the wild one; her sister had not known then that later she would be Juana the Mad. Only their mother, watching and brooding, had suffered cruel doubts because she remembered the madness of her own mother and feared that the taint had been passed on to Juana.

But what thoughts were these? Juana was safe in her asylum at Tordesillas, living like an animal, some said, in tattered rags, eating her food from the floor, refusing to have women round her because she was still jealous of them although her husband, on whose account she had been so jealous, was long since dead. And because Juana was mad, her eldest son Charles was the Emperor of Austria and King of Spain and, since the discoveries of Columbus, ruler of new rich lands across the ocean. He was the most powerful monarch in the world—and to this young man Mary was to be affianced.

“I wasn’t here when Charles’s mother came.”

“Oh no, my darling, that was long, long ago, before you were born, before I was married to your father.”

“Yet you had left your mother.”

Katharine took the little face in her hands and kissed it. She hesitated, wondering whether to put aside the question; but, she reasoned, she has to know my history some day, and it is better that she should learn it from me than any other.

“I left my mother to come here and marry your uncle Arthur. He was the King’s elder brother and, had he lived, he would have been the King, and your father the Archbishop of Canterbury. So I married Arthur, and when Arthur died I married your father.”

“What was my uncle Arthur like, Mother?”

“He was kind and gentle and rather delicate.”

“Not like my father,” said the girl. “Did he want sons?”

Those words made the Queen feel that she could have wept. She took her daughter in her arms, not only because she was overcome by tenderness for her, but because she did not want her to see the tears in her eyes.

“He was too young,” she said in a muffled voice. “He was but a boy and he died before he grew to manhood.”

“How old is Charles, Mother?”

“He is twenty-two years old.”

“So old?”

“It is not really very old, Mary.”