Katharine nodded her head slightly. “I remember now,” she said; and there were tears in her eyes which would never have appeared but for her bodily weakness. She wanted her mother now, even more than ever. She knew that, if only she could feel that cool hand on her brow, see those serene eyes looking into hers, commanding her to bear whatever ill fortune God had seen fit to send to her, she could have wept for joy; as it was she could not prevent herself from weeping in sorrow.
“The worst is over,” said Elvira. “You will get well now. I have nursed you with my own hands, and shall do so until you are completely recovered.”
“Thank you, Doña Elvira.”
Elvira took Katharine’s hand in hers and kissed it. “Always I am at your service, my dearest Infanta,” she said. “Do you not understand that?”
“I understand,” said Katharine; and she closed her eyes. But try as she might she could not prevent the tears seeping through.
If I could see her but once…she thought. She turned her head that Doña Elvira might not see the tears.
“Does my mother know of my illness?” she asked.
“She will hear of it and of your recovery in the same message.”
“I am glad of that. Now she will not be grieved. If I had died that would have been her greatest sorrow. She loves me dearly.”
Now the tears were flowing more freely, and it was no use trying to restrain them. These were the tears which had been demanding to be shed for so long, and which in her strength she had withheld. Now she was too weak to fight them and she wept shamelessly.
“For she loves me so,” she whispered, “and we are parted. There will never be another to love me as my mother loved me. All my life there will never be love for me such as she gave me.”
“What nonsense is this?” said Elvira. “You must keep well covered. It may be that you have not sweated enough. There may be more humors to be released. Come, what would your mother say if she saw those foolish tears?”
“She would understand,” cried Katharine. “Did she not always understand?”
Elvira covered her up sharply. The Infanta’s tears shocked her.
She is very weak, she thought. But the worst is over. I have nursed her through this. She is right when she says the Queen dotes on her. I shall have Isabella’s undying gratitude for nursing her daughter through this illness.
THERE WAS A MUFFLED silence throughout the castle. People were speaking in whispers. Griffith ap Rhys sat with his harp at his knees, but the harp was silent.
There was death in the Castle of Ludlow. Disease had struck where it could not be defeated.
In the chamber of the Prince of Wales the candles were lighted by the bed and the watchers kept their vigil. Sir Richard Pole’s courier was on his way to Greenwich, to break the news to the King and Queen.
In the whole of Ludlow Castle Katharine, lying on her sick bed, was the only one who did not know that this day she had become a widow.
Intrigue at Durham House
AS SOON AS QUEEN ELIZABETH RECEIVED THE MESSAGE that she was to go with all haste to the King’s chamber, as soon as she looked into the face of the messenger, she knew that some dire tragedy had befallen her House. And when she learned that the couriers had come from Ludlow she guessed that what she had been dreading so long had at last taken place.
She steeled herself for the ordeal.
Henry was standing in the center of the chamber; his usually pale face was gray and his eyes looked stricken. He did not speak for a moment, and the Queen’s glance went from her husband to the Friar Observant who was the King’s confessor.
“My son?” whispered the Queen.
The Friar bowed his head.
“He is…ill?”
“He has departed to God, Your Grace.”
The Queen did not speak. For so many years she had waited for this news, dreading it. The fear of it had come to her in the days when she had held Arthur in her arms, a weak baby who did not cry but lay placid in his cradle, not because he was contented, but because he was too weak for aught else. It had come at last.
The King said: “Pray leave the Queen and myself. We will share this painful sorrow alone.”
The Friar left them and even when the door shut on them they did not move towards each other; and for some seconds there was silence between them.
It was the King who broke it. “This is a bitter blow.”
She nodded. “He was never strong. I always feared it. Now it has befallen us.”
She lifted her eyes to her husband’s face and she was suddenly aware of a deep pity for him. She looked at the lean face, the lines etched by the sides of his mouth; the eyes which were too alert. She read the thoughts behind that lean and clever face. The heir to the throne was dead, and there was only one male child left to him. There was also a nobility which he would never trust and which was constantly on the alert to shout that the Tudors had no legitimate claim to the throne. All her life Elizabeth had lived close to the struggle to win and keep a crown. It was painful to her now that her husband should not think of Arthur as their dear son, but as the heir.
He would never know what it was to love, to feel acute sorrow such as she was feeling now. Should she feel envious of him because he did not suffer as she did through the loss of their son? No, even in this bitter moment she felt sorry for him because he would never know the joy of loving.
“Why does God do this to us?” demanded Henry harshly. “The Friar has just said that if we receive good at the hands of God, we must patiently sustain the ill He sends us.”
“It is true,” said Elizabeth. She went to the window and looked out on the river as it flowed peacefully past this Palace of Greenwich. “We have much for which to thank God,” she added.
“But this was my eldest son…my heir!”
“You must not grieve. You must remember that you have your duty to do. You have other children.”
“Yet the plague could carry off our children in a few hours.”
“Arthur was not strong enough to withstand the attack. The others are stronger. Why, Henry, your mother had but you, and look to what you have come. You have one healthy Prince and two Princesses.”
“Henry is my heir now,” mused the King.
Elizabeth had left the window and was walking towards him. She had to comfort him.
“Henry,” she said, “we are not old. Perhaps we shall have more children. More sons.”
The King seemed somewhat pacified. He put his arm about her and said with more feeling than he usually displayed: “You have been a good wife to me. But of course we shall get ourselves more sons.”
She closed her eyes and tried to smile. She was thinking of the nights ahead which must be dedicated to the begetting of children. She longed for peace at night. She was growing more and more aware of her need for rest. She thought of the weary months of pregnancy, which must precede a birth.
But it was the duty of Queens to turn their backs on sorrow, to stop grieving for the children who were lost to them, and to think of those as yet unborn.
Henry took her hand and raised it to his cold lips.
He said as he released it: “I see trouble ahead with regard to Katharine’s dowry. If only Arthur had lived another year it should all have been paid over, and perhaps by that time Arthur would have got her with child.”
The Queen did not answer; she fancied that her husband was reproving their delicate son for dying at a time most inconvenient to his father’s schemes.
Poor Henry! she mused. He knows nothing of love. He knows little of anything but statecraft and the best methods of filling the coffers of his treasury.