The Autobiography of Henry 8

by Margaret George

  “Not to the Irish, so I am told.”

  Chapuys shook his head. “My knee—I beg you, it tells the truth. I suggest we seek shelter—”

  The sky was ringing clear. “What, in broad daylight? We have another five hours of good riding ahead of us,” I assured him.

  On we went, stopping for a brief rest and refreshment, then continuing, to make the most of the short winter day. The sun swung over and behind us, throwing long shadows before us.

  And then the shadows faded, although the sun had not set. Exactly when this happened I know not—only that I suddenly became aware that we had been shadowless for some time, heading into a blue twilight. Then I turned and saw it: a great woolly blanket of clouds swathing the sun, and the wind running before it, stinging cold. And hanging from the cloud like a weighty grey curtain was the snow, moving faster than any horse could gallop. It would catch us in less than an hour.

  My hands shook, and I felt colder inside than the wind on my face. There was nothing around us—no village, no manor house, not even a peasants’ dwelling. I had exulted in the stark open spaces we had passed through since noon, bare fields lying exposed to the sky, but now they were more threatening than any enemy fortress.

  “How far to Thaningsford?” I called, signalling for my men to halt. I kept my voice cheerful.

  “Two hours’ ride,” answered Brereton. “I know; my father had tenants—”

  “Due north there’s a hamlet, called something ‘Grange,’ ” said Carew. “I think it may be closer.”

  “Are you sure of its location?” I shouted. No time now for his bumblings. He had always been slipshod about details.

  “Yes—no—” The wind whipped his cap off, and he snatched it back in midair. “I think—”

  Obviously he did not know. I looked round at the others. Ct size="3">Only now did I look about. The forest was deep and dark, and the terrain rough with fallen logs and rocks. Dangerous ground for horses. Should we lead them but a little way into the gloom, then stop and make our shelter, or take a chance of riding farther in hopes of finding better protection or even, possibly, an abandoned shelter? As soon as the choices had presented themselves, I knew the answer: the one with the greatest risk, but the greatest possible reward. We would ride deeper in.

  When I announced this, the men protested. I silenced them, and they had to obey.

  With the snow still a distance away from the line of trees, I turned my back on it and urged my horse forward into the unknown terrain. Within five minutes the overcast sky and high trees made a murkiness so oppressive it seemed almost to be a living thing. The thick branches overhead moved over us, a writhing roof over an evil, still chamber strewn with traps.

  And all the while there was this otherworldly cold, a cold that seemed a creature in its own right. I looked about. There was plenty of wood, but it would be so cold it would be difficult to light. Brittle old oak leaves carpeted the ground; these would serve as tinder, but now they effectively concealed treacherous holes where a horse could easily break his leg. There was no sign of a ridge or protection of any sort.

  “Your Grace! We must stop!” shouted Will—the only one who would have dared to tell me what to do. “It is about to catch up to us, and we will have no time to construct anything. We must stop now and hold our ground!”

  “No, Will! Farther in! Farther in!” My voice, loud and sure, hung in the air between us. The others were all of Will’s mind, and we were all reduced to animals seeking our own survival.

  Then tradition and habit took command, made them disobey their own animal promptings to obey their crowned and anointed King; and that King, secure in the belief that he obeyed his King, led them on.

  WILL:

  We thought he was quite mad at this point. It was clearly folly to continue into the forest. But he seemed so absolutely certain of himself. Is that the secret of commanding unquestioning obedience?

  HENRY VIII:

  Now the storm caught up to us, hitting us from behind. The trees caught a great deal of it, but there was still enough blinding, swirling snow filtering through to disorient us. There was no north, no south, no east or west, almost no up or down or sideways. We were lost in an enormous cloud of white butterflies, their millions of wings beating frantically, soundlessly, icily. I could almost have stood still amidst their swirling, frigid whiteness, and let them blanket me until death. The temptation was there, the lure of a beautiful, still death....

  Shuddering violently, I dismounted and began to lead my horse. Keep moving, keep the blood warm, do not let the ice-death goddess take hold. ... I could not see more than ten paces before me, and could only hope my men had not become separated. “Stay close! Each man right behind the next!” I cried.

  A ridge ahead: jagg just a glimmer—a slit, a dim opening, a crevice in the cliffilde. Perhaps we could squeeze in there, huddle together? One hand out in front of me, I stumbled toward it, feeling my way along. The rough rocks tore at my hands, which were so numb I felt nothing and was surprised to see bloodstains on the stones. Suddenly my arm plunged into darkness. I thrust the other one after it, all the way to my shoulders. But the space around them was greater still. A cave.

  How far back did it go? Its entrance yawned a little farther to one side, and it was wide—about ten feet. “Cave!” I yelled. “Cave!”

  “Halloooo!” came an answer, and figures emerged out of the whiteness, struggling toward me. I bent down and began to crawl awkwardly along the cave floor, feeling for a back wall. When none appeared, I motioned for the men to follow me.

  “I can stand!” cried Cromwell, shuffling forward, testing the ground at every step. I raised myself up, expecting to bump my head, but did not. Even raising my hand, I encountered no rock overhead. But I felt a series of soft, silken bumps, which rustled and resettled themselves.

  “A chamber with bats as ladies-in-waiting,” I said. “Let us make a fire, and quickly.”

  Within a few minutes the men had brought in a large pile of wood and several armloads of leaves and dead matter. Will struck his flint and steel, showering sparks upon the cold, inert stuff. It took a good quarter-hour before one cooperative leaf began to smoulder, and again as long before its neighbours caught fire. The cold within the cave was even more intense than without. I had the feeling that this cave harboured cold even on Midsummer’s Eve, stored it up from successive years like a miser with his gold.

  Now the larger branches began to catch fire, sending out a mass of evil-smelling smoke. Choking, the men crowded closer. But the warmth was so feeble I could scarce feel anything. I rubbed my hands hard, hoping to bring them to life. They felt like two blocks of wood—wood that dripped blood.

  “Courage!” I said. “It will not be much longer now.”

  “‘Well, comrades. Now that we have suffered in the beginning, fortune promises us better things, God willing,’ ” muttered Neville.

  Those were my own words on the first miserable night at camp in France in 1513. How had he remembered them all these years? I was touched. But looking at him, I saw only sullen discomfort on his face. Perhaps that was all he remembered of the old French campaign—cold discomfort. It hurt me to think that my companions-in-arms did not treasure the experiences we had shared, especially those noble war experiences of our youth. “Ah, that was a glorious night,! I said.

  “In the French mud?” scoffed Carew. “ ’Twas almost as miserable as this cold.”

  “The French campaign was a blessed one,” I insisted. “How I wish you others here had shared it with us.”

  “I was scarcely born,” said George Boleyn. “It was my father who accompanied you.”

  “And mine,” said William Brereton, unwrapping his cloak from about his eyes, which peered out of his pudgy, lamblike face.

  “My father made me the night beinnhink henceforth he should not stir without a supply of these.” He held up the vial of pills.

  Surely he wouldn’t need more! Those ten were all I had with me, and wha
t if I were stricken with the excruciating leg pain? With no way to dampen it, I might betray myself and my weakness. I took them back from Cromwell in what I thought was an offhanded manner. “What is wrong with him?” I asked.

  “A bad heart. He will get these ‘attacks’ from exertion from now on.”

  “Exertion? Blowing on a fire is exertion?” demanded Neville.

  “At his age, yes. After the strain of the journey—”

  “Nonsense!” Neville barked. “Age—exertion—” Carew and he were the same age. “Preposterous!”

  The neglected fire now burst into full flame, like a contrary child. I turned to it with relief, glad to be done with this conversation. Where had Cromwell learned so much about medicine? During his “studies” in Italy? I knew so little about him, really. I wondered if he had detected my leg weakness. And how would I manage to change my bandage amongst all these men? Perhaps it did not need to be changed; perhaps it could stay on overnight.

  Boleyn returned, white as a corpse, dragging several branches inside. He looked relieved to see that there was warmth at last.

  “It was all I could find,” he said, gesturing toward the outside. “Already the snow is so deep it is hard to see where wood lies. And it is getting dark.”

  “Warm yourself,” I said. I detected an edgy defensiveness in his words.

  After allowing them enough time to lose the deepest part of their chill, I asked, “What provisions do we have? Let each man check his saddle-pouch.”

  As it turned out, there were nine flasks of wine, two of the fiery uisgebeatha, twelve loaves of bread, five large cheeses, and several portions of dried, smoked meat. “Enough for a meagre meal for one night,” I said.

  The bats rustled overhead. “We will postpone the inevitable bat stew as long as possible,” I promised. “For now, let us share the bread and cheese.”

  We fell on it like robbers. It helped but little. I have often found it so, and wonder why. When one is greatly hungry, eating only provokes the appetite further.

  .Bellies teased and quickened rather than quieted, we began to stretch ourselves out before the fire. As I leaned back on my elbow and extended my legs, I felt the revoltingly familiar trickle of liquid from my sore. So the thing was festering. When the men settled down, I would attend to it. Later, when we would drift away in the darkness to relieve ourselves, I could have access to my saddle-pouch with the necessary things. I held up my flask of uisgebeatha. In the meantime, this would kill the pain and miraculously make time pass. I took a deep draught, feeling its extraordinary warmth attack the inside of my mouth and then run its hot course to my stomach. Soon it would spread its mysterious balm through all my veins, bringing peace, delight . . . and the hint of special care hovering over me. I took a second draught to keep the first company.

  “Here.” I passed it to Will. “You know what it is, and what it can do.”

  WILL:

  Indeed I did. Ever since Anne’s wild Irish cousin-kinsman, the Earl of Ormonde, had sent Henry three barrels of the stuff, he had been sampling it. I did not like what it did to him; but I must confess that night in the cave I liked very much how it felt inside me. And I could not see how it made me behave.

  HENRY VIII:

  “This is a magic potion, to be sure. Sent to me by the Queen’s Irish cousinage.” I passed it on to the others, and they all took it. Before Brereton, the last of the nine, had finished, the transformation within me had already begun. I felt the delicious, creeping lightness, the divine peace....

  Suddenly I loved all the faces around the fire. Save Chapuys. And that was because he had a Spanish face. I hated Spanish faces—ugly yellow things. Thanks to God, Mary did not have such colouring. Lady Mary ... no longer Princess Mary ...

  “Have another draught, all!” I said, taking a third myself. The men followed suit, and when Brereton handed it back this time I was floating. “Tincture of ecstasy,” I said.

  No more now. I replaced the cap with exaggerated care, as my fingers were hard to manage. “The fire chases the cold from without, and this from within.”

  Outside the wind screamed, but it was no longer frightening; instead it seemed purposeful and part of a greater whole. And these men gathered around the fire with me, my preordained companions. Except Chapuys ...

  Chapuys’s face glowed so yellow it seemed bathed with sulphurous hell-flames.

  “Will you see for yourself how foolish Spanish pride is?” I said. “And how hopeless the Papal cause is in England?” I hectored him.

  “He is an intriguer,” said Cromwell bluntly. “He has a web of would-be rebels ready to betray you. The plan is simple: Mary is to be spirited away from her country-house at Beaulieu and taken to the Continent, whilst the discontented people here overthrow you. Is that not so, Chapuys?”

  “You know no names, Master Cromwell.”

  He laughed. “Indeed I do. In the West, you believe you have Lord Abergavenny, Sir Thomas Arundel, Sir Henry Parker, Sir George Carewe, certain members of the Pole family, and dear old Sir James Griffith ap Howell. In the North, the discontented Lord Hussey and Lord Darcy, Lord Dacre of the North, and the Earl of Derby. In the South—ah!—there’s Lord Edmund Bray, Sir Thomas Burgoyne, Sir Thomas Elyot, and the Earl of Rutland. Did I leave any out? You carry letters from them to the Lady Mary right this moment”.

  Chapuys looked up in alarm, and stirred.

  “Do not bother, good Ambassador. I have already read them—and had copies made before we even departed. A good plan you have. The only weakness is the disorganization and dependence of the conspirators themselves. They are united only through your ceaseless industry on Katherine’s behalf. By themselves they are unwilling and unable to carry out any plan, even the simplest.”

  I listened eagerly. The uisgebeatha had loosened their tonguesyne, the Pope and Emperor,” retorted Chapuys recklessly. “In their hearts they are ashamed of the sham Queen Anne and of the King’s unlawful Acts. In Cardinal Wolsey’s day, England sat on the highest councils of Europe. Now she is a laughingstock, a bastard amongst legitimate nations.”

  I pressed more uisgebeatha on him, and he unwittingly took it.

  “No. England is now respected for shaking off the shackles of servitude, of minionhood,” I corrected him.

  “When my father was ambassador to France and to the Pope, they laughed at us,” put in Boleyn. “They laugh no more. Their day is over, Master Chapuys. The future is not with the Pope or Spain, but with England and Protestantism.”

  “Protestantism?” I snapped. “I’ll have no Protestants in my realm. They are heretics.”

  “So seemed Our Lord’s disciples to the Pharisees.” It was Henry Howard, the youngling. His voice was thin with lack of years.

  Everyone looked at him in surprise. “Fie, Sir Henry,” said Carew. “You, from an ancient and honoured house—you are not one of those ‘new men’ who must needs embrace the latest fad, like Lutheranism and this Zwingli-madness in Zurich.” His voice was soft, as if he were afraid really to use it for fear of bringing on another “attack.” His face still looked drained.

  Henry Howard smiled. He was known even at his age as a fashion-setter. He wore wide-brimmed Italian silk hats, with one sweeping feather; he wrote verse in the new “blank” fashion, which meant that it did not rhyme. (As if poetry should not rhyme!) “The past fascinates me not,” he said. “It is a charnel-house, shut up, encrusted, airless. I want to open wide the doors—”

  As I had at his age, when Father died....

  “French doors?” asked Weston. “Like the ones you have been installing in Kenninghall?” Weston cocked his head.

  I liked Weston not, I admitted freely to myself. He was too pretty. His habit of wearing only blue, to emphasize his pale blue eyes, set off by black spiky eyelashes, seemed to me most effete and un-English.

  “Yes, we have heard about your remodelling,” said Cromwell, his eyes steady. “There are many of us who share your interest in remaking our English homes.”r />
  “I think we all yearn to create ourselves anew,” I said. “With ordinary men, it can express itself in installing French windows. For a King, it must be in refining and reshaping the kingdom itself. England has long been in need of a master gardener—a gardener who will weed her, root out poisonous growth, chase away unhealthsome beasts—wolves, vultures, moles, snakes—and make her bloom.”

  Now they were staring at me, but I went boldly on. “When a garden is thus planted, there is much initial destruction, and seeming chaos. But out of the upheaval comes order, beauty, peace.” I looked at them deliberately. “Do you understand? I must do cruel things in order to bring forth the glory of England, a glory that has long lain choked by weeds.”

  I took another deep, full draught of Irish-water. “The way ueven ground with its treacherous snow cover. We were forced to pick our way along, shaking with exhaustion atop our weakened horses. Beaulieu might as well have been in Scotland, for all the good it would do us. There was no sign of it on the horizon; there was nothing save empty space and a small road, visible only because it was bordered by a stone fence.

  The men were silent, each clinging to his saddle and praying to his God. Chapuys’s silver-festooned saddle seemed the epitome of false security, betraying us no less than him, useless in this white wilderness to do anything but wink mockingly.

  A blast of wind hit me full in the face. My eyes smarted and watered in protest, and the horizon before me shimmered, swam, then cleared. In the blur, though, I had seen something, or thought I had. I blinked and strained to catch it again. Yes, there was something . . . and was that a smudge of smoke above it?

  “There. Ahead,” I grunted. My lips were cracked and bleeding in spite of the grease I had smeared on them.

  Cromwell started, stifled a smile. He knows, I thought. He knows what it is, and is pleased that I have discovered it for myself.

  “What is that before us?” I asked.