The Autobiography of Henry 8

by Margaret George

  “Oh. That, I said nonchalantly, trying to appear wise.

  He smiled wanly. “At least I can’t ask your help in that,” he attempted to joke—a joke that was to haunt me, literally, for years.

  So it was to happen at last. Arthur was to be married straightway, and the Spanish Princess was already en route to England. The voyage would take two months at least. But she was coming! And there would be a royal wedding and festivities, after years of nothing. Father would be forced to spend money as all the eyes of Europe would be focused on the English Court, watching and judging. There must be great banquets and elaborate allegorical arches and statues and pageants in the streets to celebrate the marriage, and the public conduits would have to run with red and white wine all day. (Already my confessor had pointed out that I had an inordinate fascination for the glitter and pomp of this world, as he put it.) Most important to me, I would have new clothes.

  I hated Father’s miserliness. I hated being in moth-eaten cloaks and wearing shirts whose worn sleeves ended halfway to my wrists. I was now just as tall as Arthur, yet I was put into the clothes of someone many sizes smaller. When I bent, the breeches cut into my backside; when I reached, the shoulders strained.

  “You’re your grandfather all over,” Nurse Luke kept saying. She could not see how I winced at that. “He was outsized, and you will be, too. He was six feet and four inches.”

  “Handsome, too.” I could not resist that.

  “Yes,” she said tartly. “Perhaps too much so, for his own good.”

  “One can never be too handsome for one’s own good,” I teased.

  “No? He was. Anyway, handsomeness is wasted on a priest. If you—a perfect bride for Arthur.

  I heard her voice before I saw her, and it was a low voice, and sweet, not scolding and shrewish. Then she emerged in her dressing gown, her hair still unarranged and free of any headdress; it fell, in thick, golden-brown waves, over her shoulders.

  She was beautiful—like a maiden in the Morte d’Arthur, like the fair Elaine, the lovely Enid. Or Andromeda, chained to a rock, awaiting rescue by Perseus in the myth I had been dutifully translating. All the heroines of literature came to life for me as I stared at Katherine.

  What can I say? I loved her, then and there. Doubtless you will say I was only a boy, a ten-year-old boy, and that I had not even spoken to her, and that it was therefore impossible for me to love her. But I did. I did! I loved her with a sudden burst of devotion that took me quite by surprise. I stood gaping at her, gripped by yet another unknown emotion: intense jealousy of Arthur, who would have her for himself.

  And now the betrothal ceremony must be arranged. I was to represent Arthur and be his proxy in the ceremony promising them to one another, and I thought I could not bear it.

  But I did. Early the next day we stood side by side and recited dull vows in Latin before a priest in her tent. Although Katherine was already fifteen, she was no taller than 1. 1 could turn my eye just a little and meet hers on the same level.

  I found her continually looking at me, and it made me uncomfortable. But then I caught her expression and realized what she was seeing. Misled by my early height and thick chest, she looked at the second son and saw what no one else, thus far, had seen: a man. She saw me as a man, and she was the first to do it. And I loved her for that too.

  But she was Arthur’s. She would be his wife, and he would be King. I accepted it without question—or so I thought. Can secret wishes, so secret they are not admitted even to the self, come true? Even as I ask the question, I do not want to know the answer.

  The wedding was to take place on November fourteenth, and Arthur was expected to produce an heir within a year. The King never said so, but I overheard the jests and jokes among the servants (they always spoke freely in front of me, as if I were already a priest). They all wanted a baby by Christmas of the following year; indeed, they thought it their due.

  For someone charged with such prodigious responsibilities, Arthur was oddly unenthusiastic. As his wedding day approached, he became more and more listless. He shrank; he dwindled; clearly he did not want to be married. One day he came to my chambers, ostensibly to àsk my help in trying on his new clothes, but in reality to cry and confess he didn’t want it—any of it.

  “I don’t want to go through a marriage ceremony before thousands of people,” he said in a tremulous voice, standing before a half-length mirror and looking pensively at his reflection, swathed in his white velvet cape. Three years later, he had finally grown into it.

  “Well, you must, that’s all,” I said, grabbing his plumed hat off his head and plopping it on my own, making faces at myself in the mirror. “Think about afterwards.” I knew something about that business—in a confused sort of way.

  “That’s the part I don’t want to think about,”àr‰2®Š&d, I made my way to a corner where I slumped against the wall. I could feel sweat trickling down my face and back, soaking into my shirt.

  “D‘you want yer fortune?” a voice suddenly whispered into my ear. I turned and saw a well-dressed woman standing beside me. But she had an odd expression in her eye, and she leaned over in a conspiratorial manner. “I ain’t supposed to be here. If they find me, I’m gone. But I come to all the royal weddings. I was at the King’s, now”—she jerked her head to indicate Father—“as well as at poor Richard’s; and Edward’s ... aye, not that one, since he married her secretly—if he married her at all, that witch!”

  She was talking about my other grandmother, Elizabeth Woodville. Still I sat stiffly and did not say anything.

  “So you are not curious?” she said, as if I had wronged her. Slowly she picked herself up and prepared to go elsewhere. As she stood up, one of the King’s guard recognized her.

  “That woman!” he choked, hurriedly coming over. “She’s a Welsh fortune-teller! A sorceress!” He apprehended her, hustled her toward the door, and shoved her out. He shook his head apologetically in my direction. “They cluster around like flies! I cannot keep them all out!”

  That night Arthur took Katherine into his bed. Alone in mine, I thought about what that Welsh woman had said about my grandmother being a witch, to keep myself from thinking what Arthur was—or was not—doing. Strange to think that in years to come that very question was to be debated by scores of learned men.

  V

  The next morning Arthur called for courtiers to attend him in his bedchamber. He demanded cups of wine and was full of boasts about how marriage was thirsty work, and so on. He kept repeating this all day. It was the first thing he said to me as he emerged from his room and saw me. He even attempted a manful chuckle.

  Arthur and Katherine were at court all during the Christmas holidays, and I found I could not bear to be with them. I sulked and tried to avoid the festivities. This was so unlike me that the Queen eventually sought me out in my secret, solitary spot: an empty room high in the eaves of the palace. I had thought no one knew I went there, but clearly she had noticed.

  It was cold there; no fires were ever lit. But I could hear faint music and laughter from the Great Hall below. It was another masque, another dance. I shut my ears against it and looked out the small cobwebbed window, seeing the late-December sun slanting over the Palace grounds, and far beyond. Everything was brown and golden and still. I could see the ships on the Thames, anchored and waiting. Waiting ...

  I wished I could be a sailor and live on one of those ships; spend my life on the water, sailing all over the world. Being a prince—the sort of prince I must be—was dull by comparison. I would ... I would start going down to the docks and learning about ships. I would go secretly! That way, Father could say nothing against it. I would disguise myself... and then, when I had become an expert sailor, I would sail away, forget my life here, disappear, become a vagabond prince—have high adventures! They would never know what had become of me; onnterrupted me.

  I turned, guiltily, and saw the Queen.

  “Henry, what are you doing here all alone?”r />
  “I am planning my future.”

  “Your Father has already done that.”

  Yes. He thought to make a priest of me. Well, they would have to fit the chasubles and albs and cinctures to someone else. I would be sailing the high seas!

  “You must not worry about your place,” she said, thinking to soothe me, “nor hide yourself from the festivities.”

  “The festivities bore me,” I said grandly. “And the costumes for the masque were moth-eaten!” Somehow this one thing had greatly embarrassed me. I knew that the Spanish ambassador had seen, and laughed at us.

  She nodded. “Yes, I know. They are so old—”

  “Why doesn’t he get new ones, then?” I burst out. “Why?”

  She ignored the question and all that lay behind it. “There will be dancing soon. Please come. You are such a talented dancer.”

  “A talented dancer!” I said grumpily. “I must forget dancing—unless Arthur will permit the clergy to dance in their vestments. Do you think His Holiness might give us such a dispensation?” It was hopeless; it must be the sea for me, that was clear.

  Suddenly the Queen bent toward me and touched my face lightly. “Dear Henry,” she said. “I disliked it, too. So much.”

  So she knew, she understood. She had been the eldest, but only a daughter. Unable to be Queen in her own right. Unable. And waiting. Always waiting—to be assigned her secondary role.

  I nodded. And obediently followed her down to the Great Hall.

  The Hall was hot and crowded, with everyone dressed in satins, stiff jewelled brocades, and splendidly coloured velvets. I was only too aware of my plain clothes. I had been allowed only three new outfits for the wedding and Christmas festivities, and I had long since appeared in them.

  Arthur and Katherine sat at one end of the Hall. Arthur was gotten up like a jewelled idol, and he looked frail and doll-like in the overpowering chair. He kept glancing nervously at Katherine. He and his new wife were to leave London as soon as the holidays were over, and go to a cold, horrid castle on the Welsh border to play King and Queen in training. This was entirely Father’s idea; he believed in toughening Arthur, tempering him.

  Arthur clearly did not want to be tempered. Yet he was willing, because it was his duty. Arthur always obeyed his duty. He seemed to feel that was what distinguished a king, or even was the essence of kingship.

  The minstrels took their assigned places in the stone gallery. There were fifteen of them—double the usual number. Their leader announced that they were honoured by the presence of a Venetian lutenist and a shawm player from Flanders. There was a murmur of appreciation. Then he added that a French musician, well versed in French court dances, would play, as well as another artist who had trained at the Spanish court.

  Initially they played only English dances, and almost all the lords ansence of aalmain.

  Arthur would not dance. He just sat, still and solemn, in his great chair, deliberately ignoring Katherine’s restlessness and tapping feet. She was longing to dance—it was evident in every line of her body.

  Suddenly I was determined to satisfy that longing in her and in myself as well. We were both prisoners of our station: she, wed to a husband who refused to dance; I, a future priest. It was decreed that we must spend the remainder of our lifetimes without dancing. Perhaps so, but there was still a little time....

  I made my way over to her and, bowing low before the dais, indicated that I wished her to join me in a Burgundian. She nodded hesitantly; I held out my hand and together we went to the middle of the floor.

  I felt drunk. I had done what I longed to do, and in front of everyone! The exhilaration of it ... it was a taste I was never to lose, was to seek from then on.

  I looked at Katherine. She smiled joyfully at having been rescued. And there was something else in her look ... she found me pleasing, found my person attractive. I felt her acceptance of me, her liking, and it was like the summer sun to me.

  She was a stunning dancer and knew many intricate steps unfamiliar to us in England. I had to struggle to keep up with her. Her timing, her balance, her sense of the music were astounding. Gradually the others fell back and watched us as we progressed through a galliard, a dance du Roy, a quatre bransle, and a Spanish dance of the Alhambra that she showed me. When the musicians stopped, Katherine was breathless and her face flushed. The onlookers were silent for an awkward moment, then they began to cheer us.

  Alone on the dais, Arthur glowered like a pale, angry child.

  VI

  Four months later Arthur was dead—of consumption in that drafty Welsh castle—and Katherine was a widow.

  And I was, suddenly, the heir—the only thing standing between the young Tudor dynasty and oblivion.

  I was alone in my chamber when the news came. One of the pages brought me a brief note from the King, asking me to come to him right away.

  “Immediately?” I asked, puzzled. The King never sent for me, and certainly not in the middle of the day, when I was supposed to be doing my studies.

  “Yes, Your Grace,” he replied, and his voice was different from before. So markedly different that even a ten-year-old boy would take note of it. I looked over at him and found him staring at me.

  All along the passageway it was the same. People gaped at me. I suddenly knew that something terrible was about to happen. Was I to be sent away to some remote monastery, ostensibly to study?

  I reached the King’s Privy Chamber and pulled open the heavy wooden door. Inside it was dark and dismal, as always. Father never lit enough firewood, out of his perverted sense of frugality, unless he expected a high-ranking visitor. He normally kept his quarters so cold that the servants used to store perishable foods behind the screens. Butter kept especially well there, or so I was told.

  He nodded, dully.

  I had entered the King’s chamber a second son and future priest; I left it as heir apparent and future King. To say that everything changed thereafter is to say what any fool could know. By that they would assume I meant the externals: the clothes I wore and my living quarters and my education. Yet the greatest change was immediate, and in fact had already occurred.

  As I left the chamber, one of the yeomen of the guard pulled back the door and bowed. He was a very tall man, and I barely reached his shoulder. As he straightened, I found his eyes riveted on me in a most disturbing fashion. It was only for an instant, but in that instant I perceived curiosity—and fear. He was afraid of me, this great, strong man, afraid of what I might prove to be. For he did not know me, and I was his future King.

  No one at court knew me. I was to meet that selfsame look again and again. It said: Who is he? Shall we fear him? At length I developed the habit of never looking directly into anyone’s eyes lest I again meet that look of wariness coupled with apprehension. It was not a good or restful thing to know that merely by existing I threatened the ordered pattern of others’ lives.

  They knew Father well and had duly observed Arthur for some fifteen years, grown used to him. But Henry was the unknown, the hidden-away one....

  The man smiled, falsely. “Your Grace,” he said.

  The smile was worse than the look in his eyes, although they went hand in hand. I made some stiff little motion with my hand and turned away.

  No one would ever be candid or open with me again. That was the great change in my life.

  There were other changes as well, of course. I must now live at court with the King; I must exchange my priest-tutor for a retired ambassador. There were good changes: I was now allowed to practise dancing and even had a French dance-master to demonstrate the fashions in that court, where everything was elegant and perfect (to hear him tell it). I had my own band of minstrels and a new music teacher who taught me theory and composition, and even imported an Italian organ for me to use. Being constantly at court, I began to meet other boys of my own age, noblemen’s sons, and so I had friends for the first time in my life.

  The bad things: I was not to en
gage in any “dangerous” activities, such as hunting or even jousting, as my person now had to be guarded against the remotest mishap. As a result, I had to stay indoors and watch my friends at play, or join them outside merely to stand about watching, which was worse.

  I had to live in a room that connected to the King‘s, so that I could go nowhere, and no one come to me, without passing through his chamber first. In that way he isolated me as effectively as one of those maidens in the Morte d’Arthur, imprisoned in a turret by her father. The only difference was that as long as my father lived, no one could rescue me or even approach me.

  And how long would my father live? He was only forty-five, and seemed healthy. He might live anota retiredo from young to old, beggar to king. It is simple: for a King, do like a King.”

  He sat down beside me, glancing toward the door. “And now I fear the King will come in and see that we are somewhat behind.” He seemed embarrassed at what he had just said, as if he wished me to forget it as quickly as possible.

  “Have you learned the things I told you?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I replied. I glanced over at the fireplace. I wished I could add another log to the fire, as my fingers were chilled. But there were no more there. Father allowed only six logs per day until after New Year’s, no matter how foul the weather. I blew on my fingers. “First, France. There are sixteen million Frenchmen. They are the most powerful country in Europe. As late as my father’s exile, Brittany was an independent duchy. But when King Charles VIII married Anne of Brittany in 1491, it became part of France. The French are our enemies. Our great King Henry V conquered nearly all of France—”

  “Not all, Your Grace,” admonished Farr.

  “Nearly half, then,” I conceded. “And his son was crowned King of France in Paris! And I shall recapture those lands!”