ll door of the palace stood Katharine
surrounded by her ladies, and holding her tiny daughter by the hand.
Sinking upon one knee the Emperor craved his aunt's blessing, which was
given, and thenceforward for five weeks the feasting and glorious shows
went on without intermission.

On the second day after the arrival at Greenwich, whilst Henry was arming
for a joust, a courier, all travel-stained and weary, demanded prompt
audience, to hand the King a letter from his ambassador in France. The
King read the despatch with knitted brows, and, turning to his friend Sir
William Compton, said: "Go and tell the Emperor I have news for him." When
Charles came the letter was handed to him, and it must have rejoiced his
heart as he read it. Francis bade defiance to the King of England, and
thenceforward Henry and the Emperor were allies in arms against a common
enemy. Glittering pageants followed in London and Windsor, where Charles
sat as Knight of the Garter under triumphant Henry's presidency; masques
and dances, banquets and hunting, delighted the host and surprised the
guests with the unrestrained lavishness of the welcome;[33] but we may be
certain that what chiefly interested Katharine and her nephew was not this
costly trifling, but the eternal friendship between England and Spain
solemnly sworn upon the sacrament in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, by the
Emperor and Henry, and the binding alliance between them in peace and war,
cemented by the pledge that Charles should marry his cousin Mary Tudor and
no one else in the world. It was Katharine's final and greatest triumph,
and the shadows fell thick and fast thereafter.

Henry promptly took his usual showy and unprofitable part in the war. Only
a few weeks after the Emperor bade his new ally farewell, an English force
invaded Picardy, and the Earl of Surrey's fleet threatened all French
shipping in the Channel. Coerced by the King of England too, Venice
deserted France and joined forces with the allies; the new Pope and the
Italian princes did the same, and the Emperor's arms carried all before
them in Italy. Henry was kept faithful to his ally by the vain hope of a
dismemberment of France, in which he should be the principal gainer; the
Pope Clement VII., the ambitious Medici, who succeeded Adrian in September
1523, hungered for fresh territory which Charles alone could give him; the
rebel De Bourbon, the greatest soldier of France, was fighting against his
own king; and i