Harry’s heart sank like a stone. “But the Infanta Eleanor cannot be very old.”

  “She is six, but at twelve she will be ready for marriage, and the time will soon pass. Remember, you can mold a younger bride to your will more easily than one who is older. You are but fourteen, and Katherine is nearly twenty. It would be more of a challenge to impose your authority as a husband. She has a strong will.”

  Father had it all wrong. Katherine had never been anything other than submissive and deferential.

  “Eleanor is a far greater matrimonial prize than Katherine,” the King said. “Her mother is Queen of Castile and the heiress to Aragon, and her father is heir to all the Habsburg territories and might one day be Holy Roman Emperor.”

  But Eleanor was not Katherine. And Harry hated the idea of delaying his marriage for six years.

  Father was implacable. “You had best get used to the idea, boy. I intend to pursue this marriage.”

  1506

  As the new year began, Harry watched anxiously as his father turned near-disaster to his advantage. Having learned that Queen Juana and King Philip had been shipwrecked off the English coast on their way from Burgundy to Spain, King Henry moved with almost unseemly haste to assist them and welcome them to Windsor as his guests. And Philip, Father said, was no less eager to meet with him, for he was resolved to conclude the betrothal of his daughter to the Prince of Wales and drive a wedge between King Henry and King Ferdinand. The elements had played right into the hands of both monarchs.

  Despite himself, Harry was impressed by Philip the Handsome, who embodied all the virtues and magnificence he thought a prince ought to have. He was less than enamored of Juana, who held herself aloof from the celebrations, yet seemed to fawn excessively on her husband, who was clearly embarrassed by her overt displays of jealous affection. Ladies should not make such exhibitions of themselves, Harry thought.

  Katherine was hastily summoned to Windsor for a short visit to see her sister. Father didn’t want the sovereigns of Castile to know that he had been treating her with less than the reverence she was due and was falling over himself to give her a prominent role in the festivities. Harry was thrilled when she was seated next to him in a place of honor beneath the King’s canopy of estate, but with Father invariably enthroned next to them, it was impossible to tell her what was in his heart, and he had to content himself with mere pleasantries. But he did his best to convey his sympathy for her and thought he could read in her eyes that she understood.

  Father had bidden Katherine wear Spanish dress and dance with her ladies for Philip’s pleasure. But Philip didn’t look very pleased, and when she tried to persuade him to dance with her, he politely declined and resumed his conversation with King Henry. As they watched ten-year-old Princess Mary taking her place on the floor and sweeping the most elegant curtsey, Harry realized that Philip must not want to see Katherine accorded so prominent a place at court, especially as he was resolved to put his own daughter in her place. But that was probably Father’s intention, to make Philip the more amenable to favorable terms; he was wily like that. Harry noticed that Katherine was not allowed to be alone with Juana for more than half an hour. Of course, the King would not want her airing her grievances, to be reported back to their father.

  Philip made much of Harry, for whose benefit he exercised his famous charm. And Harry was drawn in. Philip was the son of the mighty Maximilian, the Holy Roman Emperor; one day, he would be master of all Spain and the Empire. It was as well to make a friend of such a prince and store up credit for the future. When Philip and Juana finally left England in April, Harry was sorry to say farewell, even as he felt relief that nothing had been decided about his marriage.

  That autumn, the worst news he had received since the death of his mother reached England. Philip was dead. It was horrifying to think that so young and splendid a prince should be gathered to his forefathers at just twenty-eight. At the impressionable age of fifteen, the tragedy brought home to Harry the dread truth that all men were mortal and could be summoned by God at any time. He began to fear every slight ailment or hint of illness.

  The immediate effect of Philip’s passing was the improvement of Katherine’s standing at court, giving Harry cause to hope that Father was not so keen now on a match with the Infanta Eleanor. If only King Ferdinand would pay the balance of Katherine’s dowry, all might yet be well. But he was not bound to do so until the marriage took place, even though Father unjustly expected it. Harry wished Ferdinand would demonstrate that he really did have his daughter’s interests at heart. It seemed all wrong that two old men should be able to interfere in the happiness of two young people!

  Chapter 2

  1507

  Wherever they stayed, the King had taken to joining Harry in his bedchamber for late-night discussions about state affairs, which were effectively homilies on how his son ought to conduct himself as king and how he might best confound his enemies. Harry thought that Father was preaching the obvious, and was bored. He could think of much better things to be doing with his time. Brandon and Compton, bosom companions who shared his passion for war and sport, were often out roistering in the streets, getting drunk or bedding wenches. Heaven forbid that Father ever found out, for his friends provided the few excitements Harry had in life, even if he did enjoy them vicariously. He had never even had the opportunity to kiss a girl. He secretly longed to know what it felt like to be inside a woman, yet did not see how it could ever be accomplished, so heavily supervised was he. That was why he longed to be married. Part of him found his friends’ boasts distasteful; they made it sound so base, so animalistic. It would not be like that with Katherine, he was sure. The act of generation must be different with someone you loved.

  Tonight, Father had a shifty look in his eye. “Harry, you should know that I am considering a marriage with Queen Juana.”

  Harry was speechless. The implications were so vast. “But I want to marry Katherine,” he stammered at length.

  The King smiled. “No, my boy, I mean to marry Juana. I was much struck by her beauty when she visited England, and the match would make me King of Castile. But to accomplish this, I need Ferdinand’s goodwill and consent. It is this that has stopped me from breaking off your betrothal to Katherine.”

  Harry found the prospect of his decrepit father wedding Juana shocking, although he knew that age rarely counted when it came to forging royal marriage alliances. He did not want to imagine Father lusting after the Castilian Queen; it was disgusting and seemed like a betrayal of his mother. And Juana, remote, intense, and strange, did not seem to be fitted to be Queen of England. But he made no protest. At least Father was showing kindness to Katherine, albeit because he wanted her to influence King Ferdinand in his favor. Yet that kindness did not extend to allowing her and Harry to spend time together, which seemed to Harry a great cruelty.

  An exception was made, however, for his sixteenth birthday, when Katherine was permitted to grace the tournaments held in his honor. How he reveled in showing off his knightly prowess in the lists and demonstrating what a skillful horseman and jouster he was. He had grown tall—taller than his father—and strong, with gigantic, heavily muscled limbs, and knew himself to be a model of young manhood. Everyone showered him with praise and compliments, and the Spanish ambassador gushed to his face that there was no finer youth in all the world. He found himself beloved by the common people; whenever he showed himself in public, riding through London or the countryside, usually in his father’s wake, they came rushing to see him. He discovered he could talk with them amiably and heed their concerns. It was a common touch that the King lacked; no one dared approach him so familiarly.

  The age gap between Harry and Katherine seemed to have narrowed as he grew toward adulthood. The time was surely ripe for their marriage, yet still the King delayed coming to a decision—and Harry began to fear that he never would. It grieved him to imagine how distressing the constant delays must be for Katherine, who was now twenty-one and growing no younger. But all his protests had been to no avail.

  He was bursting with eagerness to play his part in the world, to be older and free of his father’s tutelage. He was weary of waiting to be king. He dreamed of war and glory and chivalry, as much as he dreamed of his beloved Katherine. Because of her, his political sympathies lay with Spain; how could they not, when he longed to conquer France, Spain’s great enemy, and England’s? A hundred and seventy years ago, his ancestor, King Edward III, had laid claim to the throne of France and won great victories in the Hundred Years War. Since then, English kings had quartered the royal lilies of France with the lions of England on their coats of arms and, nearly a century ago, King Henry V had vanquished the French at the Battle of Agincourt and made himself King of France. Harry never tired of hearing of these noble deeds of his forefathers, and had read all the histories in the royal library. He was filled with a burning desire to be a second Henry V and recapture the French throne, lost sixty years ago when the long war had come to an ignominious end. He could see himself in the cathedral at Rheims, where French kings were crowned, kneeling in glory to receive the coveted diadem. He would be the King who was remembered for regaining France and forever enhancing England’s fame.

  He could not understand why his father did not share his ambitions, nor why he would not let Harry lead his own army across the English Channel. Instead, during one of their nightly conferences soon after his birthday, the King laughed at the idea.

  “Wars are costly, my boy,” he said, gathering his night robe around his thin frame. “I can think of better and more prudent ways to spend my money. It is far more advantageous to have the friendship of other nations than to be at war with them. Besides, I dare not allow you to risk your life. I have no other sons. What would happen to England if you were to be killed in battle? There would be another civil war.”

  Harry knew he was the living embodiment of the peace brought about by the marriage of his parents. Mother had been the heiress of York, and Father had been the sole male descendant of the House of Lancaster; their union had ended the long conflict between their rival families. Father would never admit to owing his crown to his marriage to Mother, for he had won it by right of conquest, but Harry was sure that the prior claim was hers.

  Some of her relatives, it could be argued, had better claims to the throne than Father did. Her sisters, for example. Aunt Catherine was married to William Courtenay, Earl of Devon, who had been a prisoner in the Tower of London for years for abetting a pretender to the throne. Harry’s childhood had been overshadowed by threats from pretenders—he could recall his mother hastening him to the Tower for safety when an invasion led by Perkin Warbeck, the most dangerous of them, was believed to be imminent—so he understood his father’s concerns, even as he chafed against them.

  Aunt Cecily, who lived with his grandmother, the Lady Margaret, had been banished from court for marrying beneath her; Aunt Anne was married to the Earl of Surrey’s heir, Lord Thomas Howard, and Aunt Bridget was a nun at Dartford. But the aunts were all women, and women were not meant to wield dominion over men. Harry inwardly grinned when he imagined how England would fare under his tempestuous sister Margaret, who was now Queen of Scots and doubtless leading her husband, King James, a merry dance. But it wasn’t really funny because, if Harry died and she became heir in his place, James would seize England—and that could never be allowed to happen. The Scots, like the French, were England’s ancient enemies, and Harry fully intended one day to bring them too under English rule.

  “There would be a bloodbath if I died without an heir,” Father said, interrupting his reverie. “There is no one else with a clear claim to the throne, discounting the women. But some have married and have sons—and ambitious husbands. Why do you think I have kept young Henry Courtenay in your household? It is so that I can keep an eye on him. Likewise, your cousins, the Poles. I have shown them favor to keep them faithful.” He rose and began stoking the fire.

  “Courtenay would not be disloyal,” Harry observed. He liked his eight-year-old cousin, who followed him around like an adoring slave, always game for a prank.

  “Any man might betray you if the prospect of a crown were dangled before him,” Father said severely. “Why do you think I had to execute the Earl of Warwick?”

  “He was a simpleton who was led astray by the pretender Warbeck.”

  “He was also the son of your great-uncle, the Duke of Clarence, who was executed for treason, and there were those who would have made him king after Bosworth. I had no choice but to incarcerate him in the Tower. He grew up not knowing a goose from a capon, yet he remained a danger to me.”

  “But he was the son of an attainted traitor, barred from inheriting the throne,” Harry countered.

  “Acts of Attainder can be reversed,” Father said, grim. “Do you think I wanted to put poor Warwick to death? Sometimes, Harry, kings have to make unpalatable choices. Treason must always be stamped out.”

  “Indeed, it must,” Harry agreed, nodding emphatically. This was one thing on which he and Father were fully in accord. Treason was the most heinous of crimes because it struck at the sacred person of the monarch and subverted the divinely ordained order of the world.

  “Princes,” Father went on, “ought to be obeyed by the commandment of God, and obeyed without question. A king is entitled to expect the same devotion and obedience from his people as he himself renders to God, for the King’s law is God’s law and the royal prerogative is the will of God working through the will of the King. Therefore, the King can do no wrong. This is why treason is the most serious of crimes, and why it has always been punished harshly, for the example and terror of others.”

  Harry nodded again. He was aware of the terrible but just penalty the law meted out to traitors. They were dragged on hurdles from their prison to the place of execution, being deemed unfit to walk upon earth; they were hanged until they were not quite dead, then cut down, castrated, and disemboweled, still living; finally, they were beheaded and their bodies chopped into quarters, the head and quarters being put on public display as a salutary warning to other would-be traitors. For peers of the realm, it was usual for the King to commute the sentence to beheading.

  Harry was resolved that, when his time came, he would deal severely with treason. He had no intention of suffering the insecurities that had bedeviled his father’s reign, or of allowing the extortions of grasping men like Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley, who served the King so ruthlessly and did the Crown’s reputation no service. He would overawe and subjugate his noble subjects so that they never dared to turn against him, and did only his bidding.

  The King was seized with an attack of coughing. Harry had noticed lately that his face had become lined and drawn, while his eyes had a sad and haunted look. It had never occurred to him before that Father might be lonely. There had been talk that he had grown close to Warbeck’s beautiful widow, Lady Catherine Gordon, who had served Mother, and before word had got out that he might marry Queen Juana, rumor had even claimed that he might wed Lady Catherine. But Harry placed little reliance on gossip. It would be the grave rather than the marriage bed that claimed the King, if looks were anything to go by. He almost felt sorry for him.

  1508

  Harry fidgeted as he sat at the council board, barely able to contain his frustration. Nothing further had come of Father’s interest in Juana, but neither was he himself any closer to his own marriage. For the past few months, he had been required to attend these boring meetings so that he could learn how government worked, but the old men droned on interminably. If only they would hurry up and finish, he could be off to the tiltyard. It was too fine a spring day to be cooped up in this hot, stuffy chamber, where the fire had been built up because Father felt the cold. Harry was fighting off sleep.

  Suddenly, his ears pricked up.

  “Regarding the matter of the Prince’s marriage,” the King was saying, “relations with King Ferdinand have deteriorated badly, and I intend to reopen negotiations with the Emperor Maximilian for his Highness to wed Eleanor of Austria. My son is hardly much inclined toward marrying the Princess Katherine. Besides, their union would be of questionable validity anyway.”

  Harry glared at his father. Hardly much inclined? Where had Father gained that impression?

  He said nothing. There was no point, as the King would only overrule him. Instead, as soon as he was at liberty, he vented his anger in the lists, unseating one opponent after another. One day, he would be free to make his own choices.

  * * *

  —

  One fine summer day, Gutier Gómez de Fuensalida, Ferdinand’s new ambassador, sought Harry out as he was playing bowls with his young gentlemen. He broke away when he saw the dignified, portly Spaniard waiting for him, and they walked along the gravel path between the rose beds.

  “Your Highness will be aware that King Henry appears to be in the last stages of consumption,” the ambassador ventured.

  “I am,” Harry replied, although in fact he had not realized quite how ill Father was.

  Fuensalida cleared his throat. “This is a delicate matter, your Highness. My master feels it would not be worthwhile to press for your marriage to the Princess Katherine while the King lives, but I am to assure you of the great love King Ferdinand bears you. He has told me to say that you may command him and his realm in anything.”

  Harry smiled. How very satisfying. If he was to conquer France, he would need the support of Ferdinand. But it was best to remain circumspect. “I thank his Majesty for his friendship,” he said. “I pray it will soon be sealed by my marriage.”