VIII
when I stumble over the unfamiliar pronunciation.
All right – pretty, sweet-tempered, but slow-witted… please, slow-witted—
And when I have finished she replies, thanking me elegantly, in fluent French.
Smelly?
It’s my last hope.
An unlikely one, though, going by the clean, shining hair and the beautifully kept clothes, with ruffles of spotless white linen just visible at her neck and wrists.
I give in. I’m disappointed. Even so, I can’t stop watching her, as my father’s heralds organise us, dovetailing the two companies – Spanish and English – into a single long procession. It’s as if I think she’s a mirage, and any moment now she’s going to transform into something else – or disappear altogether.
Catherine and I head the procession, riding together. The drizzle, thankfully, has stopped. Our task now is to make a formal entry into the City of London, so that Catherine can receive its welcome. First we have to cross the river.
We approach London Bridge, where the rotting heads of executed criminals are splayed at crazy angles on pikes above the entrance gate.
Catherine’s hat must be shielding her from the view; she says, “How beautiful your country is! I am so happy to be in England.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” I say, “and England is overjoyed to welcome you.”
The bridge crouches across the river on twenty stone piers, a crush of fine houses and shops on its back. When we’re halfway over, we stop to see a ‘pageant’, which is to say a little show – part of the City’s welcome. The stage is a specially built wooden tower, where City ladies dressed as Saint Catherine and Saint Ursula stand, attended by heavenly maidens, who all seem a bit shivery. The saints make speeches – long ones – in verse, and entirely in English.
Glancing to my left, I see Catherine’s delicate brows drawn together.
I say in French, “Can you follow the sense of it?”
Nodding and smiling for the benefit of the performers, Catherine replies in a low voice, “Nothing after the ‘welcoming, aiding and assisting’ bit. I’m afraid my English isn’t good enough.”
“Saint Catherine’s saying that Christ is your first husband, and Arthur your second. You need to love them both, but in that order.”
Catherine whispers her thanks to me, then calls out a loud “Amen!” and smiles and thanks the performers, raising her hand to acknowledge cheers from the crowds lining the street on both sides.
They’re cheering me too, chanting my name: the common people, packed body to body behind the line of guards on each side. The smell of them, even in the cold November air, is like animals being herded to market.
We press on, over the bridge. In front of us, the City sprawls: a mass of roofs and smoking chimney-stacks, bustling shopping streets, grand houses with their gardens stretching down to the river, landing stages, busy wharves, and a forest of church spires pointing to the sky. I think, with a sudden surge of pride, that no city in Spain could possibly be so glorious.
In Gracechurch Street we stop again, the procession bunched up behind us – the horses stamping and farting. This street is packed even more tightly with people than the bridge. Faces, faces, everywhere you turn – squeezing out of overhanging upper-floor windows, gazing down from rooftops, eyes wide at the sight of costly fabrics, gleaming jewels and royalty in the flesh.
Here, another pageant. This one’s mounted on a mock castle, complete with turrets and covered in my father’s emblems: golden crowns and portcullises, dragons, greyhounds and red and white roses. Two knights look out from upper doorways marked ‘Policy’ and ‘Nobility’. Beside them there’s a bishop labelled ‘Virtue’, at whom someone in the crowd seems to be aiming small missiles that look like bits of bread.
As the speeches begin there’s a loud crack to our right, as a piece of guttering gives way under a man’s weight. For one delicious moment he’s dangling in mid-air, apparently in danger of peeling the entire length of pipe from the wall – but then, after a struggle, his friends bundle him in through a window, to a loud cheer from the crowd.
Catherine and I applaud – and are cheered for that, too. This is marvellous enough; what then must it feel like, I wonder, to be cheered by the people as their king?
And then we’re off again, the procession jingling, winking in the watery sun, as it snakes slowly along the
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