Catherine of Aragon by Alison Prince

– and she was indeed a widow within a few months.
    4th September 1513
    Catherine’s instincts were right. James has declared war on England. Everyone here is appalled, but Catherine is filled with energy and excitement. Her new troops are arriving by the hour, some of them from as far away as Wales and Cornwall, and she plans to ride with them herself for at least part of the way. I tried to tell her she should not do this. She carries a royal child within her, and strenuous days on the road could have a disastrous result. Both of us know that Isabella had several miscarriages because of taking part in warlike expeditions – but perhaps Catherine feels she can do no less. Michel would shake his head wearily. Madness , madness . I miss him so much.
    8th September 1513
    Catherine has set off for Buckingham at the head of her army. Wolsey’s spies in the north reported that a group of wild Highlanders from the north of Scotland have already launched an attack, not waiting for King James, but they were quickly repulsed. James has gone to Linlithgow to say goodbye to Margaret.
    12th September 1513
    I can hardly bring myself to write about what has happened. I am shaken and sick at the thought of it, and glad in a way that this is almost the last page of my diary. I shall never keep another. Were it not for a kind of loyalty to Catherine, I would like to leave this court and live with Michel and our children as ordinary people do, knowing nothing of the great games of kings.
    The Scottish army is utterly destroyed, and James is dead. Surrey met them in the Cheviot hills, at a place called Flodden. The Scots were tired from long marching, Wolsey’s rider reports, and they had run short of food and ale. James made the mistake of ordering them to move the guns further up the ridge to a better position, but Surrey had plenty of time to deploy his troops, almost surrounding the Scots.
    In three hours of fighting, 10,000 Scottish soldiers were killed. Ten thousand . There can hardly be an able-bodied man left in the country. The officers and nobility, too, were mown down, and at last James himself fell.
    Catherine is still on her way to Buckingham, but her army will not be needed. This war, at least, is finished.
    23rd September 1513
    Catherine’s expedition cost her dearly. On the night after her return, she lost the baby she had been expecting. Poor little future child – such an innocent casualty of war, and so deliberately put at risk, it seems to me. Catherine herself looks white-faced and exhausted, but she gave herself no rest after the miscarriage, and it has not stopped her from the grim business in which she is still taking part.
    When she heard of James’s death she ordered his body to be brought to London. I was with her when the captain of the travel-weary men came to report that this had been done. She went out with him, and bade me follow. I could not look at the wrapped and already stinking burden they carried, but she seemed exultant. The body must be taken to Henry in France, she said, that he might see for himself that the Scots had been vanquished.
    An uneasy glance ran between the men, and their captain begged Catherine to excuse them from such a task. She looked at him with contempt, and turned on her heel.
    Upstairs, she unwrapped the bundle of soiled clothing which the captain had given her, and held up a surcoat, gold-embroidered with the lion of Scotland. It was soaked with blood and slashed almost to ribbons. The captain had explained apologetically that after the battle the English troops had plundered the dead men who lay everywhere, stripping them of clothes and valuables. The body of the Scottish king, too, had been stripped, but the captain had managed to retrieve his coat. And as I watched her, sickened, Catherine smiled. “If I cannot send his dead enemy’s body, Harry shall at least have his coat,” she said. And in the afternoon of that same day, she