Philippa Gregory's Tudor Court 6-Book Boxed Set (49 page)

There is a little ripple of amusement among my women. They know that I am normally very formal, such an appointment should come through the head of my household after consultation with dozens of people.

Lady Margaret smiles at me. “I knew you would,” she says, speaking in reply as intimate as myself. “I have been counting on it.”

“Without royal invitation?” Lady Elizabeth Boleyn teases. “For shame, Lady Margaret! Thrusting yourself forwards!”

That makes us all laugh at the thought of Lady Margaret, that most dignified of women, as someone craving patronage.

“I know you will care for him as if he were your own son,” I whisper to her.

She takes my hand and helps me to the bed. I am heavy and ungainly. I have this constant pain in my belly that I try to hide.

“God willing,” she says quietly.

Henry comes in to bid me farewell. His face is flushed with emotion and his mouth is working, he looks more like a boy than a king. I take his hands and I kiss him tenderly on the mouth. “My love,” I say. “Pray for me, I am sure everything will go well for us.”

“I shall go to Our Lady of Walsingham to give thanks,” he tells me again. “I have written to the nunnery there and promised them great rewards if they will intercede with Our Lady for you. They are praying for you now, my love. They assure me that they are praying all the time.”

“God is good,” I say. I think briefly of the Moorish doctor who told me that I was not with child and I push his pagan folly from my mind. “This is my destiny and it is my mother’s wish and God’s will,” I say.

“I so wish your mother could be here,” Henry says clumsily. I do not let him see me flinch.

“Of course,” I say quietly. “And I am sure she is watching me from al-Yan—” I cut off the words before I can say them. “From paradise,” I say smoothly. “From heaven.”

“Can I get you anything?” he asks. “Before I leave, can I fetch you anything?”

I do not laugh at the thought of Henry—who never knows where anything is—running errands for me at this late stage. “I have everything I need,” I assure him. “And my women will care for me.”

He straightens up, very kingly, and he looks around at them. “Serve your mistress well,” he says firmly. To Lady Margaret he says, “Please send for me at once if there is any news, at any time, day or night.” Then he kisses me farewell very tenderly, and when he goes out, they close the door behind him and I am alone with my ladies, in the seclusion of my confinement.

I am glad to be confined. The shady, peaceful bedroom will be my haven, I can rest for a while in the familiar company of women. I can stop playacting the part of a fertile and confident queen, and be myself. I put aside all doubts. I will not think and I will not worry. I will wait patiently until my baby comes, and then I will bring him into the world without fear, without screaming. I am determined to be confident that this child, who has survived the loss of his twin, will be a strong baby. And I, who have survived the loss of my first child, will be a brave mother. Perhaps it might be true that we have surmounted grief and loss together: this baby and I.

I wait. All through March I wait, and I ask them to pin back the tapestry that covers the window so I can smell the scent of spring on the air and hear the seagulls as they call over the high tides on the river.

Nothing seems to be happening; not for my baby nor for me. The midwives ask me if I feel any pain, and I do not. Nothing more than the dull ache I have had for a long time. They ask if the baby has quickened, if I feel him kick me, but, to tell truth, I do not understand what they mean. They glance at one another and say overloudly, overemphatically, that it is a very good sign, a quiet baby is a strong baby: he must be resting.

The unease that I have felt right from the start of this second pregnancy, I put right away from me. I will not think of the warning from the Moorish doctor, nor of the compassion in his face. I am determined not to seek out fear, not to run towards disaster. But April comes and I can hear the
patter of rain on the window, and then feel the heat of the sunshine, and still nothing happens.

My gowns that strained so tight across my belly through the winter, feel looser in April, and then looser yet. I send out all the women but María, and I unlace my gown and show her my belly and ask if she thinks I am losing my girth.

“I don’t know,” she says; but I can tell by her aghast face that my belly is smaller, that it is obvious that there is no baby in there, ready to be born.

In another week it is obvious to everyone that my belly is going down, I am growing slim again. The midwives try to tell me that sometimes a woman’s belly diminishes just before her baby is born, as her baby drops down to be born, or some such arcane knowledge. I look at them coldly, and I wish I could send for a decent physician who would tell me the truth.

“My belly is smaller and my course has come this very day,” I say to them flatly. “I am bleeding. As you know, I have bled every month since I lost the girl. How can I be with child?”

They flutter their hands, and cannot say. They don’t know. They tell me that these are questions for my husband’s respected physician. It was he who had said that I was still with child in the first place, not them. They had never said that I was with child; they had merely been called in to assist with a delivery. It was not they who had said that I was carrying a baby.

“But what did you think, when he said there was a twin?” I demand. “Did you not agree when he said that I had lost a child and yet kept one?”

They shake their heads. They did not know.

“You must have thought something,” I say impatiently. “You saw me lose my baby. You saw my belly stay big. What could cause that if not another child?”

“God’s will,” says one of them helplessly.

“Amen,” I say, and it costs me a good deal to say it.

*     *     *

“I want to see that physician again,” Katherine said quietly to María de Salinas.

“Your Grace, it may be that he is not in London. He travels in the household of a French count. It may be that he has gone.”

“Find out if he is still in London, or when they expect him to return,” the queen said. “Don’t tell anyone that it is I who have asked for him.”

María de Salinas looked at her mistress with sympathy. “You want him to advise you how to have a son?” she asked in a low voice.

“There is not a university in England that studies medicine,” Katherine said bitterly. “There is not one that teaches languages. There is not one that teaches astronomy, or mathematics, geometry, geography, cosmography, or even the study of animals, or plants. The universities of England are about as much use as a monastery full of monks coloring in the margins of sacred texts.”

María de Salinas gave a little gasp of shock at Katherine’s bluntness. “The church says . . .”

“The church does not need decent physicians. The church does not need to know how sons are conceived,” Katherine snapped. “The church can continue with the revelations of the saints. It needs nothing more than Scripture. The church is composed of men who are not troubled by the illnesses and difficulties of women. But for those of us on our pilgrimage today, those of us in the world, especially those of us who are women: we need a little more.”

“But you said that you did not want pagan knowledge. You said to the doctor himself. Your said your mother was right to close the universities of the infidel.”

“My mother had half a dozen children,” Katherine replied crossly. “But I tell you, if she could have found a doctor to save my brother she would have had him even if he had been trained in hell itself. She was wrong to turn her back on the learning of the Moors. She was mistaken. I have never thought that she was perfect, but I think the less of her now. She made a great mistake when she drove away their wise scholars along with their heretics.”

“The church itself said that their scholarship is heresy,” María observed. “How could you have one without the other?”

“I am sure that you know nothing about it,” said Isabella’s daughter, driven into a corner. “It is not a fit subject for you to discuss and besides, I have told you what I want you to do.”

*     *     *

The Moor, Yusuf, is away from London but the people at his lodging house say that he has reserved his rooms to return within the week. I shall have to be patient. I shall wait in my confinement and try to be patient.

They know him well, María’s servant tells her. His comings and goings are something of an event in their street. Africans are so rare in England
as to be a spectacle—and he is a handsome man and generous with small coins for little services. They told María’s servant that he insisted on having fresh water for washing in his room and he washes every day, several times a day, and that—wonder of wonders—he bathes three or four times a week, using soap and towels, and throwing water all over the floor to the great inconvenience of the housemaids, and to great danger of his health.

I cannot help but laugh at the thought of the tall, fastidious Moor folding himself up into a washing tub, desperate for a steam, a tepid soak, a massage, a cold shower, and then a long, thoughtful rest while smoking a hookah and sipping a strong, sweet peppermint tea. It reminds me of my horror when I first came to England and discovered that they bathe only infrequently and wash only the tips of their fingers before eating. I think that he has done better than I—he has carried his love of his home with him, he has remade his home wherever he goes. But in my determination to be Queen Katherine of England I have given up being Catalina of Spain.

*     *     *

They brought the Moor to Katherine under cover of darkness, to the chamber where she was confined. She sent the women from the room at the appointed hour and told them that she wanted to be alone. She sat in her chair by the window, where the tapestries were drawn back for air, and the first thing he saw, as she rose when he came in, was her slim, candlelit profile against the darkness of the window. She saw his little grimace of sympathy.

“No child.”

“No,” she said shortly. “I shall come out of my confinement tomorrow.”

“You are in pain?”

“Nothing.”

“Well, I am glad of that. You are bleeding?”

“I had my normal course last week.”

He nodded. “Then you may have had a disease which has passed,” he said. “You may be fit to conceive a child. There is no need to despair.”

“I do not despair,” she said flatly. “I never despair. That is why I have sent for you.”

“You will want to conceive a child as soon as possible,” he guessed.

“Yes.”

He thought for a moment. “Well, Infanta, since you have had one
child, even if you did not bear it to full term, we know that you and your husband are fertile. That is good.”

“Yes,” she said, surprised by the thought. She had been so distressed by the miscarriage she had not thought that her fertility had been proven. “But why do you speak of my husband’s fertility?”

The Moor smiled. “It takes both a man and a woman to conceive a child.”

“Here in England they think that it is only the woman.”

“Yes. But in this, as in so many other things, they are wrong. There are two parts to every baby: the man’s breath of life and the woman’s gift of the flesh.”

“They say that if a baby is lost, then the woman is at fault, perhaps she has committed a great sin.”

He frowned. “It is possible,” he conceded. “But not very likely. Otherwise how would murderesses ever give birth? Why would innocent animals miscarry their young? I think we will learn in time that there are humors and infections which cause miscarriage. I do not blame the woman, it makes no sense to me.”

“They say that if a woman is barren it is because the marriage is not blessed by God.”

“He is your God,” he remarked reasonably. “Would he persecute an unhappy woman in order to make a point?”

Katherine did not reply. “They will blame me if I do not have a live child,” she observed very quietly.

“I know,” he said. “But the truth of the matter is: having had one child and lost it, there is every reason to think that you might have another. And there should be no reason you should not conceive again.”

“I must bear the next child to full term.”

“If I could examine you, I might know more.”

She shook her head. “It is not possible.”

His glance at her was merry. “Oh, you savages,” he said softly.

She gave a little gasp of amused shock. “You forget yourself!”

“Then send me away.”

That stopped her. “You can stay,” she said. “But of course, you cannot examine me.”

“Then let us consider what might help you conceive and carry a child,” he said. “Your body needs to be strong. Do you ride horses?”

“Yes.”

“Ride astride before you conceive and then take a litter thereafter. Walk every day, swim if you can. You will conceive a child about two weeks after the end of your course. Rest at those times, and make sure that you lie with your husband at those times. Try to eat moderately at every meal and drink as little of their accursed small ale as you can.”

Katherine smiled at the reflection of her own prejudices. “Do you know Spain?”

“I was born there. My parents fled from Málaga when your mother brought in the Inquisition and they realized that they would be tormented to death.”

“I am sorry,” she said awkwardly.

“We will go back, it is written,” he said with nonchalant confidence.

“I should warn you that you will not.”

“I know that we will. I have seen the prophecy myself.”

At once they fell silent again.

“Shall I tell you what I advise? Or shall I just leave now?” he asked as if he did not much mind which it was to be.