VIII

it.”
    We’re almost at the entrance to the Bishop’s Palace. The courtiers stand aside as we approach – to reveal my brother, waiting for us in a blue silk doublet and a matching cloak, slung across one shoulder and fastened with a huge diamond.
    “Most beloved Princess Catherine, you are heartily welcome,” he says. He bows and offers her his hand, taking no notice of me whatsoever. About that, I couldn’t care less. But I think: There’s cold for you, my lady, right there in the blue cloak .

 
♦  ♦  ♦  VI   ♦  ♦  ♦
     
     
    Two days later, in the ancient cathedral of St Paul’s, dressed in matching shimmering white satin, my brother and Princess Catherine of Aragon are married.
    The celebrations last a week.
    On the fourth day, after the dinner boards have been cleared away – along with creations the cooks have laboured over for hours, only for them to be picked at, half-eaten and left – we head outside to the tiltyard.
    I am dressed in cloth of gold, and feeling uncomfortable, as if my clothes don’t fit – except they do; or as if I have an itch – except I don’t. Not on the outside, anyway. Maybe in my head.
    The tiltyard – a vast open arena outside Westminster Hall – is chilly and damp. I draw my outer gown tightly about me as I make my way, with the rest of the royal party, to the canopied grandstand. The remainder of the Court and the City dignitaries sit in separate uncovered stands, while the lower orders are crammed behind barriers at the far end of the yard. Torches flare; it’s only one o’clock, but it seems barely light.
    I’m directed, with my friends, to the edge of the royal enclosure. It suits me fine. In the centre, next to my parents, the bride and groom sit stiffly side by side, Arthur managing to look smug and awkward at the same time. He doesn’t seem to be having much success in thinking of things to say to his wife.
    Then trumpets sound, the great doors of Westminster Hall open and out into the cold air trundles a mountain on wheels. It’s pulled by a red dragon. On top of the mountain sits a (real) maiden with a (not-so-real) unicorn, lying with its head in her lap.
    The mountain performs a tour of the arena, circling the wooden barrier that runs down the middle, to cheering that drowns out the efforts of the trumpeters. At last, it comes to a halt in front of our royal stand. Then a door in one craggy side opens, and out rides a knight on a black horse, his saddlecloth decorated with castle-shaped pieces of solid gold.
    “How do they do that?” Beside me, Harry Guildford’s eyes have narrowed as he stares at the pageant-car. “How do they make the mountain? How do they stop the horse from going crazy and trying to smash its way out? And what on earth’s inside that dragon?”
    “Count the legs,” says Francis Bryan on my other side. “It’s four men. And I bet there’s swearing in there fit to shock a ferryman.”
    Never mind the dragon, my attention’s on the knight, who is busy bowing to my father. It’s the first tournament I’ve seen in ages, and I’m gawping at the armour – in this case a perfectly fitted suit that’s gilded all over and topped with a plume of ostrich feathers sprouting from the helmet.
    “What will Brandon’s pageant-car look like?” I ask the boys around me. Today Charles Brandon will ride in his first public tournament.
    “Can’t remember,” says Bryan. “What’s he being? A hermit in a hill? A pig in a poke?”
    Compton leans towards me. “He’s in a tent made to look like a chapel, sir, accompanied by a wise man and two lions.”
    And just as he says this, the chapel (on wheels) emerges into view through the doors of the hall. We cheer ourselves hoarse. Brandon – whom lots of the Court ladies seem to find very charming, God alone knows why – emerges from the chapel with his helmet under his arm, grinning like a maniac. As he rides past the courtiers’ stand a lady’s handkerchief is thrown, and flutters down onto the sandy floor.
    Brandon sends a page to collect it. When it’s handed up to him in his saddle he makes a great show of kissing it and then tucks it into the band of silk that decorates the top of his helmet. The crowd whoops and whistles.
    More arrivals follow: a knight dressed as a Turk, another in a tent covered with roses, and an unidentified Spaniard, without coat of arms or emblems, whom the heralds haven’t, it seems, been expecting. It must be a member of