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By Root 1157 0

have made an excellent gambler. What a pity—and loss for his purse!—that he did not play, on principle.) Spain was an obvious choice, as Father preferred not to importune our ancient enemy, France, for a bride. If Spain would allow its princess to marry into the House of Tudor, this would constitute recognition that we were, indeed, legitimate rulers. It would be another bit of showmanship for Father, like the treasonous dogs. It would say to the world: Look, look, I am a true King. For the old, established royal houses would never sign marriage contracts with a Perkin Warbeck or his like. And once there were sons from that marriage, all unspoken reservations about the worthiness of the Tudor blood would be stilled. Arthur and Katherine’s children would be welcomed in every court in Europe.

I think there persisted a feeling at the time that England was not a country in the civilized sense of the word. We were perceived as backward, remote, and barbarous—the latter because of our horrible dynastic wars, which had been going on since living memory. We were not truly wild, like the Scots or the Irish, but we were not yet an integral part of the rest of Europe.

Everything took so long to reach us. When I was ten, that is, around the year 1500, glass windows in common dwellings were almost unheard of. No bluff, common Englishman would use a fork (or had even seen one), would wear anything but wool, would eat anything but the traditional “three B’s”: beer, bread, and beef. There were no rugs on the stone floors, nothing but dirty rushes where people spit and threw scraps. Even the King dined on a collapsible trestle table, and only women in childbirth could expect to have a pillow. This while Italian princes lived in open, sunlit villas, worked on inlaid marble tables, and sampled a variety of fine dishes.

The Renaissance, the New Learning—those were but foreign terms to us, and anything foreign was suspect. Our great lords still tried to keep their own private armies of retainers, long after the princes of Europe had begun concentrating all military power in their own hands. Music, even at court, consisted of a small band of poor musicians playing outdated tunes on outdated instruments. Parliament was summoned only in order to raise money for the King, and then, often as not, the people refused to pay up. European ambassadors regarded a posting here as going into exile, where they would have to endure privations and exist among a baffling, unruly people. They prayed to endure until they could be rewarded by being sent to a “real” court.

Of course, the common people would come out and gape whenever the English King would go from one palace to another. To them we were grand. They knew no better; but foreigners did. They used to mock the King and all our shabby, awkward, unfashionable grandeurs.

At ten, of course, I did not know all this, but I sensed it. I saw how reluctant the Spanish were actually to send their daughter here, in spite of the signed treaties promising to do so. I saw that the French King or the Holy Roman Emperor never met Father, never came to his court or invited him to theirs. I saw that the ambassadors who were here seemed to be old and badly dressed, and that some countries sent no ambassadors at all.

It would be different in Arthur’s reign, I hoped. I wanted him to be that old Arthur come again—to be a mighty King, so filled with honour and strength and a sort of shining that it would change everything. As I was trying desperately to shape myself for a churchman, I saw his reign as bringing a new Golden Age Katherine had been stalemated once again.

“No. She’s to arrive this autumn. And we’re to be married right after. I know the Spanish prize horsemanship. Katherine’s own mother rode into battle when she was with child! I—well, I—”

“You don’t want to fall off in front of Katherine,” I finished. “But, Arthur, you’ve ridden for years, had innumerable teachers. What can I do that they could not?” You hate horses and have no feel for them, I thought to myself, and no teacher can make up for that.

“I