Three Sisters, Three Queens

THE BISHOP OF SALISBURY’S HOUSE, LONDON, ENGLAND, JUNE 1503

I don’t know what my grandmother says to her son my father; but he comes out of his mourning, there is an exchange of letters with Spain, and never another word about his courting Katherine. Instead, he pursues the marriage contract that is going to save him so much money with as much enthusiasm as Katherine’s mother in faraway Spain. Together they instruct the Pope to send a dispensation so that a brother- and sister-in-law can marry, and Katherine of Arrogant dresses in virginal white and spreads her bronze hair over her shoulders for yet another grand wedding occasion.

At least this is not in the abbey, and we don’t spend a fortune on it. This is a betrothal, not a wedding—a promise to marry when Harry is fourteen. She walks into the bishop’s chapel as smiling and as queenly as she was just nineteen months ago, and she takes Harry’s hand as if she is glad to promise herself to a boy five years her junior. It is as if Arthur, their wedding, and their bedding never happened. Now she is Harry’s bride and she will be known as the Princess of Wales once again. Her serene dismissal, “Alas, it never happened for us,” seems to be the last word that anyone will ever say about it.

My lady grandmother is there too. She does not smile on the match, but she does not oppose it. For me, it is just another event in this world that means nothing. A mother can die, a brother can die, and a woman can deny her husband and retain her title. The only person who makes any sense to me is Katherine herself. She knows who she was born to be; I wish I had her certainty. When she follows me out of the chapel I know that I am trying to hold my head as she does—as if I were wearing a crown already.