Free The House of Tudor by Alison Plowden Page B

under Doña Elvira’s disapproving eye. As Catherine spoke no English and Henry no Spanish, communication was effectively limited to smiles and bows, but when the King withdrew to change out of his muddy riding clothes he had seen all he wanted to see - a sturdy, well-grown, well-formed girl, with clear grey eyes, a fresh complexion and a quantity of auburn hair; a girl who, God willing, would be able to give him healthy grandchildren.
    As soon as Arthur had ridden in, father and son paid the princess another visit. This time the occasion was more formal. The bridal couple were, of course, already legally contracted by proxy. Now they joined hands and went through a solemn betrothal ceremony in person before an impressive audience of bishops, both English and Spanish.
    What the two young people thought of one another is not recorded, but when Catherine first set eyes on the Prince of Wales her spirits must surely have risen. The short November afternoon was drawing to a close and in the torchlight she saw a slender youth with a thatch of blond hair and skin as delicately pink and white as a girl’s.
    Next day the princess resumed her journey, going by way of Chertsey, Kingston and Croydon, while Henry and Arthur went back to Richmond to be ready to row-down the river in state with the Queen. By the time Catherine had reached the archbishop’s palace at Lambeth, the Court was installed at Baynard’s Castle and London was packed to the rafters. All the world and his wife and his servants had come to town for the wedding; all the great nobles were keeping open house and every stable, every lodging, every spare room in the capital was full. The streets resounded with hammering as crush barriers were put up and carpenters added the finishing touches to triumphal arches and built stages for the elaborate tableaux and pageants which were to greet the bride’s procession to St. Paul’s. Inside the cathedral a sort of cat-walk, the height of a man’s head, had been erected, stretching the length of the nave from the west door to the choir and ending in a raised platform large enough to accommodate the King and the royal family on one side and the Lord Mayor and the city dignitaries on the other, with a space in the middle where the marriage ceremony would be performed - the whole complicated structure being lavishly draped in fine red worsted cloth. Henry was really splashing out on his son’s wedding, and while it was no doubt in large part a gesture of calculated extravagance designed to proclaim to the outside world that the new English royal house must now be regarded as standing on fully equal terms with the other ruling families of Europe, perhaps Henry was also allowing himself a certain flourish of personal triumph and of pride in the handsome boy who was his heir.
    On 12 November Catherine and her retinue left their quarters at Lambeth Palace and were met on the adjacent St. George’s Field by a glittering escort of English lords, both spiritual and temporal, with their attendant knights and squires. The procession formed up and moved off along the south bank of the river to Southwark. Here, at the entrance to London Bridge, the princess was welcomed to the city by St. Katherine and St. Ursula, who were surrounded with ‘a great multitude of virgins right goodly dressed and arrayed’ and seated in a two-storey ‘tabernacle’ surmounted by a picture of the Trinity and draped with red and blue curtains.
    Across the bridge, in the widest part of Gracious Street, stood a most realistic-looking castle, but actually constructed, the chronicler is careful to explain, of timber covered with painted canvas. Its battlements were decorated with red and white roses, with gold fleur de lys, peacocks, greyhounds, white harts and other heraldic devices. Over the entrance hung a large portcullis ‘and in every joint of the portcullis a red rose’. This was topped by the royal arms painted on a shield of mock stone, and ‘on