The Autobiography of Henry 8

by Margaret George

  Clement was a fool. A political fool. That was all.

  The ride back from Crowley seemed drearier than the ride out. Carrying the Papal scroll felt a bit like clasping a dead thing to myself. It was harmless-why, then, did it feel so eerily evil?

  I had forgotten about Anne’s “entertainment,” and so was puzzled for a moment when I heard all the voices and merriment coming from her apartments. I had no desire to go in and dissemble before guests; what I really most wanted was to go alone to my Privy Chamber. I was exhausted, and not from the ride to and from Crowley. But in only three days Anne would be sealed away, and I would not see her until I held our son in my arms. I owed it to her to join her party. Wearily I walked in.

  People had reached that stage at the end of a gathering where they were relaxed and, having fulfilled protocol, could do as they liked. And what they liked, evidently, was to cluster around Anne.

  She reclined back in a padded chair, a courtier on each side of her, one in back, one at her feet, and Mark Smeaton a respectful ten feet away, paying homage on his lute. All I could think of was Mount Olympus, surrounded by cherubs and sighing mortals.

  She smiled languidly as she saw me come in, but did not move or wave any of her admirers away. Perhaps she felt naked without them; in any case, they seemed a natural part of her.

  “I trust your business went well,” she said. “Pray join us. You appear tired.”

  Tired? Yes, to receive one’s excommunication, to read about one’s present and future damnation in explicit terms, was draining. I grunted and took a seat nearby. But I had no heart for the merriment, and soon excused myself.

  When Anne eventually sent them away and came to see me, I was deeply asleep, in a blank, starless world.

  LIII

  Only two days before the chang. As always when great events were scheduled, I attempted to honour them in advance.

  As always, I failed. The truth was that both Anne and I were on edge with the waiting, and had little to say to one another. So it came as a relief when, on August fifteenth, the prescribed ceremony began, and Anne was conducted to the Chapel Royal for Mass, then served her traditional cup, then, her Chamberlain having prayed fervently for God to send her a good hour, her brother George and her uncle the Duke of Norfolk escorted her to her Privy Chamber door. In she went, followed by her women, and the doors slowly closed behind her, sealing her in.

  “We are only lacking a great stone to roll across the door,” observed Norfolk.

  “So that the saviour—the heir, that is-can roll it away?” asked Nicholas Carew.

  In spite of myself, I was shocked at their blasphemy. How dared they speak this flippantly of Christ in front of me, the Defender of the Faith? Remembering the damning Papal parchment, I felt a spot of darkness spreading out over myself, my court, my kingdom.... No, that was nonsense. The secret parchment had nothing to do with it.

  “You will answer to a heresy charge if you voice such things!” I snapped.

  Norfolk looked startled. “I meant no harm, Your Grace. ’Twas but a jest- ”

  “A jest in my son’s name! A poor jest indeed!”

  The two of them shot each other a look that said, “The King is vexed. Stir him not.” They bowed and took leave. It was a look I was to see more and more often: a look that managed to be both condescending and fearful at the same time.

  The end of August was a glorious burst of fulfilment. The harvests were coming in, heavier than any in recent memory. The fruits were so swollen on every tree that their sun-warmed, dusty skins seemed near to oozing. To sink my teeth into a fresh-plucked pear or plum always sent juice spurting all over my mouth. The sun lay warm and golden on my head, and I took it all as an omen, as the hand of God upon me.

  September seventh. The wedding day of Charles Brandon and Katherine Willoughby, if all proceeded as planned. That thought cast a pall over the morning as I proceeded to arise, to say my prayers, to begin the day. I prayed for their happiness, but found that it was words only, words without attachment to my heart. Instead of seeing Katherine in her bridal wreath, I saw Mary in her marble tomb. She had been dead just three months to the day.

  Hoping to shake off this sadness, which was spreading like a stain across the day, I called for a horse and took a solitary ride toward Eltham Palace. It lay some three miles from Greenwich, farther back from the river, and up on a windy hill, through ancient forests.

  How many times had I ridden here as a Prince! Every hundred yards took me back some five or six years, until I was barely ten years old, and still a second son, by the time I stood on Eltham hilltop. How many times had I stood just here, dreaming of the future, watching the Thames shining far away, like a bright ribbon? That boy seemed very close to me now—that lonely, odd little boy-and I longed to reach out and reassure him, say, “It all came right, my lad!”

  “Your from Gnce. God had utterly deserted me, then. I had so displeased Him that He would not even speak to me. He had abandoned me to the Devil.

  Feeling so drained I could hardly stand, I made my way out of the chapel.

  There were people waiting outside. The whole court, indeed, had gathered to see me and study me. I must not reveal my altercation with God just now, must not let anyone know that the Supreme Head of the Church in England had had a falling-out with his Commander.

  I held up my hands. “God be praised!” I shouted. (“God be thrashed,” I meant.) “He has sent us this day as fair a Princess as ever came to England!”

  They cheered halfheartedly, and their bewilderment showed on their faces. Still, they were relieved to follow my lead, and I was pleased to have kept my head and played a part. More and more, I was coming to realize the immense advantage in keeping one’s true thoughts to oneself. There are no windows into one’s mind; this simple truth had failed to serve me before now.

  “Aye!” I grinned. “The Princess Elizabeth will be christened ten days from now-and we trust you will attend the ceremony.”

  Lacking any further reason to stay, and thwarted in their desire to see me weep or rage, they dispersed.

  All except Cromwell, who followed me to my chambers, at a discreet distance. I motioned him in, where he slid in like an obedient snake. And stood watching.

  “ ’Tis bad,” I began. “Very bad.” Crushing, in fact. My heart ached within me, but to Cromwell I would put a mere political colouring on it.

  “It looks bad,” he agreed. He often began his treading by repeating back what you had just said. That was safe ground.

  “I look like a fool!” I burst out, suddenly seeing myself through the common man’s eyes—through Francis’s and Charles’s eyes, as well. “I shall have to—to have ‘ss’ added to all the proclamations: ‘in the deliverance of a fair Prince-ss,’” I barked irrelevantly, thinking of the fair, blemishless parchments selected for those rulers. O, my vanity! How God must have laughed at me, looking down from heaven.

  “Yes. You look ... foolish. At this moment, perhaps. But this time next year you will have a son, and what is a year more, after all the years you have already waited?”

  “Already wasted, you mean!” I knew what he meant, all right. Anyway, all this was mere noise, against the great question: Why had God allowed this to happen? Why, why?

  “Not wasted. Nothing that goes in preparation is ever wasted. You needed the time to prepare England for your Church. Things have proceeded there at great speed. Ten years ago you had scarcely returned from the Field of Cloth of Gold. Think back on what the world was then. Today it is entirely different. Redrawn by your hand, and by your will.”

  “And God’s.”

  “And God’s.” He gave due concession to the Deity, then scrambled along to his true target. “However, these gains must be consolidated in law.”

  “They are,” I grunted. “Parliament has seen to that.”

  “I mean explicit , and comfortable house,” I told Anne, feeling as if I were addressing a statue. “It is here in Hertfordshire, only a day’s ri
de away.”

  She smiled at me, as if doing me a great favour.

  “We want her to thrive, do we not? The court is not healthy for her. She might take sick and die. By Christmas, when everyone gathers and exhales foul contagions, she must be safely away.”

  Anne finally spoke. “Christmas. That is only a few weeks away. I must bestir myself. I must!”

  “It is but a holiday. Whatever time you need to be well, please take.”

  “Christmas is more important. I must be up, and gowned, by Christmas!”

  “That you shall, my love. I pray for it daily.”

  “Elizabeth’s household?” she suddenly said. “It will have a full staff of attendants?” She looked more interested than I had seen her in weeks.

  “Aye. I am just in the process of appointing them. Perhaps you would like to choose them yourself?” That would be a good sign.

  “There is only one I would appoint. The Lady Mary to serve her! To carry her robes and clean up her messes!”

  I was taken aback at the suddenness, and the forcefulness, of her request. Could it be granted? Should it be granted? What would such a thing do to Mary’s spirit?

  “So! You hesitate! On one hand you assure me that I am your true Queen and Elizabeth the only true Princess, yet you balk at this simple request—a natural request, if what you claim is true! What better way to show the people that Mary yields her claim as Princess?”

  “Crum and I have devised an Oath to be administered to the people—”

  “All very well,” she said airily. “But this can serve as Mary’s oath.” She sounded eminently logical, until she added viciously, “It will break Katherine’s heart.”

  “If Mary comes to serve Elizabeth, it must not be aimed at Katherine,” I replied. “Such a thing—”

  “Oh, defend her again! I know you long to take Katherine back, that in your heart you either still love her or fear her—” Anne’s voice was rising in the familiar tirade, the obsession.

  I cut her off. “I will consider appointing Mary. The plan has merits.”

  She lay back on her daybed, draped in deep soft furs against the coming cold. It was where she spent most of her time now, positioned as it was near the great fireplace, and with a view out toward the Thames. I looked at her nestled down there, the rich sables around her face no richer, darker, or thicker than her own hair, and suddenly I was inflamed with desire for her. It came over me with such dazzling swiftness that I marvelled at it even then. What powers did she possess? Trembling, I took my leave. Behind me in her chamber I heard Mark Smeaton’s discreet music start up.

  How long had it been since we had lain together as man and wife? How much longer would the physicians keep me away? Seeking to drive the demon of desire from me, I forced myself to consider the idea of sending for Mary to serve Elizabeth.

  I had not seen Mary for one and a half years, since she had inlently refused even to listen to my side of the story, but had wholeheartedly been Katherine’s partisan in the matter. To be sure, it was natural, as realizing that she was illegitimate must have been painful for her. But perhaps now she would welcome the opportunity to make her peace with me and accept her new position. After all, being an acknowledged and titled royal bastard was no disgrace. Yes, I would write her and tell her that I desired her to come and join the Princess’s household at Hatfield. And I would sweeten it with the hint of Christmas at court....

  A fortnight later, as I sat having my freshly scissored beard combed with a rosemary branch, Norris handed me a thick letter from Mary. It was weighted down with seals, including that of Princess of Wales, which she no longer had the right to use. A bad beginning.

  The letter was blunt. She refused to come and serve at Hatfield House, and as for the “Princess,” she knew of no Princess save herself in England; but if it pleased me, she would acknowledge Elizabeth as “sister” in the same way she did Henry Fitzroy, Bessie’s bastard, as “brother.” My mention of the Queen drew the “puzzled” response that she would welcome the help of Madam Pembroke in reuniting her with her mother, Queen Katherine.

  I flung it down. Stubborn fool! What was I to do with her? I needed her. I needed her to cooperate—

  No. That was not it. The truth was that I needed her; I needed her as a father needs a daughter. I had loved her too long to crush those feelings now, try as I would. I remembered her as a child, as the pretty baby in the jewelled cap, being betrothed to the Dauphin; as the joyful child playing on the virginal for me. How she had laughed, and how we had taken turns on the keyboard ... and then, the changes in her face and form as one day I looked at her and realized, with a jolt, that she was beginning to make the transition into womanhood.

  Proudly she had gone to Ludlow Castle to practise for the court life she would lead, out from under my shadow. And at her leaving, I had felt the same pang of coming loss that any parent does. Not so soon, my little one, not so soon.... But I had Anne by then, and my love-madness to blunt what it meant to be losing Mary. And like every parent, I thought, there’s Christmas, she’ll be back for that.... How was I to know that she would never come back? There was an emptiness there that no Anne, no son, and certainly no Elizabeth could ever fill.

  I picked up the parchment with the harsh, stilted words of my estranged daughter. Had it hurt her as much to write them as it hurt me to read them?

  Anne’s recovery took place overnight. It seemed, even then, unnaturally swift. She informed Cranmer that she was prepared to undergo the ancient ceremony of the “churching of women.”

  “Yes, Thomas,” I answered his unspoken question. “We will retain that ceremony. You may proceed with it.”

  He looked as if there were a stone in his shoe. “I—I have been studying the origins of this ceremony,” he finally said, “and it appears to me to be pagan. Even its common name, ‘purification of women after childbirth,’ sounds heathen. Would not a ‘thanksgiving of women after childbirth’ be more appropriate to these timations at court by now, and none reflected this change better than the Howards themselves.

  The older Howards—Thomas, the Duke of Norfolk, and his mother Agnes, his wife Elizabeth, and all eleven of his siblings—were conservative, stiff, unimaginative Catholics. The men fought and the women served as chatelaines on their great northern estates. That was all they knew, and all they cared to know.

  Their offspring, the network of young cousins—Henry, Earl of Surrey, his sister Mary; the Boleyns, and all eight of Edmund Howard’s children—were at best modern and liberal court-creatures, at worst dissolute. The King was left on his own to discover first-hand which were which.

  HENRY VIII:

  So it was that on the last day of January an odd assortment of pilgrims left Richmond Palace and set out for the shrine of Our Lady of Wrexford.

  We turned east, heading into the rising sun, riding along the same route I had taken to London that first morning I had arisen as King of England so long ago. Then the breezes had been scented and I had felt stronger than any man among the thousands lining the path. It was no longer a slender path now, but a wide, well-trodden road, and I had a special pad on the side of my saddle to ease my troublesome leg. Before leaving, I had smeared the leg with ointment and bound it in luxurious thick layers of gauze, knowing they would be undetectable beneath my bulky winter travelling cloak. How much better it felt to be swathed so protectively. Now if no one jostled me—

  “Magnificent, Your Grace.” Chapuys came perilously near, his sparkling eyes seeking any idiosyncrasy that might betray a person’s weakness. I reined in a little to the right, keeping him well away from my leg, laughing nonchalantly all the while. “I am impressed by your devoutness. To make a pilgrimage in January is highly unusual—and must betoken a need of some sort.”

  I felt anger burst in me like sparks from a dry log. He knew! No, impossible. He merely tried me, probing to see where my weakness lay. “I go to inspect the ‘holy’ site before deciding its fate. I would be loth to condemn anything witho
ut a hearing.”

  “As you did the Queen? Riding away that July morning and never seeing her in person again?”

  I sighed. Our little round-robin concerning “the Queen” was to begin again. It had a number of set lines:

  I: I assure you, I left no Queen behind at Windsor.

  Chapuys: I assure you, you did. A grieving Queen who loves you sore.

  I: I do not understand. Oh—you are referring, perhaps, to the Princess Dowager?

  Chapuys: Nay, to the Queen.

  And so on. The exchange had once been mildly amusing. Now, like so many other things, it had become tedious and irritating to me. Perhaps we should have the lines copied out on two cards such as actors use, so the next time we met we could merely exchange them and be done with it.

  I cut off his amiable baiting. “You will see her dwidth=h in the presence of witnesses. The scroll would not list their reasons, merely their names.

  What would I do with those heaps of scrolls? For I did not delude myself that they would be returned to the palace blank.

  The sky was clear, the sun small and shrunken, like a withered apple. Nothing was alive on the land; there was no movement anywhere. How easy to believe that this reflected the state of the kingdom: silent and suspended. It did; but by May all would be altered.

  Chapuys moved close to me again. “My knee feels a sudden ache,” he said. “There will be a change in the weather, I fear.”

  How womanish southerners were! Coming from a land of pomegranates and soft breezes, they could not endure the shift of a breeze. Or was this a trick, an excuse to gallop ahead to Beaulieu House, to speak with Mary in private? How transparent he was.

  I patted my silver flask, filled with a blood-warming drink from Ireland called uisgebeatha. I handed it to Chapuys. “Drink this. It will stifle your knee.”

  He took a draught and wheezed. “ ’Tis poison!”