These prayers will save her immortal soul-despite her true deserts-for, as it happens, my prayers are especially blessed. Ever since I was a little girl, ever since I was five years old, I have known myself to be a special child in the sight of God. For years I thought this was a unique gift-sometimes I would feel the presence of God near me; sometimes I would sense the blessing of Our Lady.
The Red Queen - Philippa Gregory
Beyond her, his flint-faced mother, Margaret Beaufort, watched the young couple with a glimmer of a smile. This was England's triumph, this was her son's triumph, but far more than that, this was her triumph—to have dragged this base-born bastard family back from disaster, to challenge the power of York, to defeat a reigning king, to capture the very throne of England against all the odds. This was her making. It was her plan to bring her son back from France at the right moment to claim his throne. They were her alliances who gave him the soldiers for the battle. It was her battle plan which left the usurper Richard to despair on the field at Bosworth, and it was her victory that she celebrated every day of her life.
The Constant Princess - Philippa Gregory
1493
They are the four Infantas, the daughters of the valiant King of Aragon and the virtuous Queen of Castile. On the marble floors of the Alhambra, patterned with golden stars and silver flowers, they sprawl like Moorish sultanas. Their hair spills from the ivory combs that hold them in place, beneath the sheath of their lace mantillas - the widowed Isabella's golden-red, beautiful Juana's copper, bird-boned Maria's carrot-coloured curls and little Catalina's auburn.
On a polished tray of black stone, crystal cups hold iced sherbets and chilled juices. It is the hour of the siesta and the time of tales.
"Must we hear of Santa Margarita again?" Juana asked. She rolled her eyes for effect.
"Queen," eleven-year-old Maria corrected her, pedantically. "Queen Margaret. Not saint."
"Not yet at least," eight-year-old Catalina said. "But soon. She is more saint than woman, isn't that what the Holy Father said of her, Isabella?"
Twenty-three-year old Isabella smiled fondly at her youngest sister. "More saint than queen," she said. "More queen than woman."
Thirteen-year-old Juana giggled. "Of a surety there is very little of the woman in the Queen of England," she said, when her sisters turned to stare at her. "When I see her portrait, I am more moved to say of her that she is more gaunt-faced sow than woman!"
"Juana," Catalina cried, shocked. She had already come to revere the woman who was her betrothed's grandmother. Queen Margaret of England was known to all of Christendom as one of the saintliest and purest of women - very like her cousin, Henry, who had been the last of the Lancastrian kings. "You can't-"
"Blaspheme?" Juana sniffed. "She is yet a woman and an ugly woman at that and so I can still what I want about her, thank Heavens."
Isabella looked at her sourly. "Vanity-" she began unctuously.
"-is a virtue," Juana answered, "for those who have a right to be vain." She raised her cup, light sparkling off the crystal and dancing in her dark eyes, and sipped the watermelon juice. "And I am sure I have the greatest right to be vain."
"Your beauty will profit you little," Isabella replied coldly. "It is of earth. It will perish and then what will remain?"
"Beautiful memories, the best of memories," Juana answered. "And beautiful children - they call Prince Philip the Handsome, do they not?" She smiled and leaned back against her bolster. It was white, embroidered with the bleeding pomegranates of Spain, and her copper hair tumbled over it. "Yes, the prince and I will have very beautiful children - indeed how I pity you, Isabella. Widowed without a son."
Isabella's pale eyes flashed.
"Tell us about Queen Margaret," Maria said. "Tell us the story about the army that she blessed."
"Oh yes!" Catalina cried eagerly. "I think it's the best one and you tell it so well, Isabella!"
Isabella smiled, mollified. "Lina-Alina-Catalina," Juana sang. "I suppose my pity ought to extend to you as well. You shall be the sainted sow's little doll. You will sleep in her chambers like a serving maid, like your mother-in-law, the York Princess. You will walk a step behind her and mewl and simper as she requires you to."
"I'd rather be a serving maid under Queen Margaret than the Empress of a godless court!" Catalina snapped. "And I don't care what you say - you'll regret it someday because-"
"Oh yes, Our Lord will punish me for my blasphemies," Juana said. She rose lazily. She stretched, slim and languorous, and yawned. "Better a couch and sweet, sweet dreams than those dreary tales again," she said, strolling off with her characteristic swagger. She rolled her hips as she walked, every step a seduction.
"Temptress," Isabella said, through gritted teeth. "I hope her husband sees fit to whip her night and day - if I was our lady mother-"
"Madre has more important things to do than see to a wayward girl," Maria reminded her. She sighed, disconsolate for a moment - the girls had not seen their mother for over a week. Then she resumed on the topic that sisters loved best - criticizing other sisters. "But I do think that Juana is the most-"
"The story," Catalina said impatiently. She knew from experience that by the time Isabella and Maria were through with Juana - how insolent, how prideful, as though her beauty will do her much good in Heaven! That is if she ever makes it to Heaven - it would be time for her lessons.
"Which one would you like? There are so many of them."
And there were - Queen Margaret, matriarch of the House of Beaufort, was the bards' darling. She was not the type of woman to fire imaginations - neither fair maiden nor vulnerable damsel, but the women loved the songs about her. She might be a saint, she was a queen but she was a woman also - a woman, not beautiful, but strong, fearless. A woman who had won. The victory of virtue over beauty, Queen Isabella called it. She revered the sainted English Queen and had tried to teach her daughters to do the same - with little success in lovely Juana's case, but much success in little Catalina's.
"The one about Bosworth?" Isabella, whose sweet face belied her love of warfare and passion for spilt blood (Moorish blood, of course, never Christian. "About how her son, Prince Henry of Wales, lay the usurpers' crown at her feet after the battle was won and knelt to acknowledge her the rightful queen?"
"It was the only thing he could have done," Maria maintained. "Her claim was stronger than his as the Tudors had no right to the throne at all. It was her allies and her cunning in directing the battle that saved the prince. And then of course she has the weight of years and experience behind her - the prince was scarcely more than a boy then. When he will be king, he will be older and wiser."
"I don't like the ones with wars in them," Catalina said. "I think I've seen enough of war." She was only eight years old, but she had been born in a soldiers' camp and grown up on the campaign trail, besides blood and corpses.
"What about the one where she rode at the head of her army as they marched against the Scots?"
"War again!" Catalina complained. "And you always make it sound so gory."
"There is some gore in war," Isabella admitted. "Does it frighten you, little sister? It should not - you are a soldier's daughter and one day you too must march against the infidels and root them out with sword and fire." Her eyes shone as she spoke - she believed every single word that she said. Her dearest wish was to have been born a son, not so that she could wear her father's crown but so that she could wield a sword, to kill.
"What about the one in which she blessed the army that the Holy Father asked her for?" Maria suggested. "Remember, the one in which she sent but a handful of soldiers but since they had her blessing, they triumphed against the heretics?"
"Oh yes!" Catalina said, her eyes shining.
Isabella leaned back and began. "She was but a woman," she said, "but she was more saint than woman and so..."