The Autobiography of Henry 8

by Margaret George

There was William Fitzwilliam, the Lord Privy Seal, of an age with myself, standing with the two Dukes. He disliked Anne (not that he had ever said so directly, but he conveyed it in every disdainful gesture. I would have enjoyed seeing him take the Oath, as he undoubtedly did it with a mockery that belied the words), and his weathered face was set like an obstinate donkey’s as he rocked on his heels and waited for the latest manifestation of her foolishness. By his right elbow was good, solid John Poyntz, of Gloucestershire, with a face like those I had seen lining the roads whenever I went out on progress, and his friend Thomas, Lord Vaux, made a Knight of the Bath at Anne’s Coronation. Vaux bore a remarkable resemblance to Thomas Wyatt, but he had no literary ability whatsoever, even though he attempted to write poetry. Beside all these stood Cranmer, primly and eagerly, as though he really enjoyed this and awaited the “entertainment.”

  In another self-contained circle were Edward Neville, Nicholas Carew, and Henry Courtenay, a sort of old snowbank of privileges and ideas. Left over from an earlier time without ever having achieved or striven for anything then, they were melting in the new times and felt themselves trickling away. Chapuys was with them, his swift movements and nervous energy always a pleass surprised to see that Satan was handsome. His face was even familiar, but, in the flickering footlights, appeared altogether new. It shone with supernatural beauty.

  “I am he, the light-bringer, Lucifer, the morning star,” he said, and indeed he was all these things.

  Evil was not always ugly; it was at its strongest when disguised as an angel of light, and who knew that better than I?

  “Fight with me!” he exhorted us all. “Together we shall defeat the angels and reign forever in heaven!”

  A battle ensued, and only the Archangel Michael and his hosts of extra angels routed Lucifer and his black legions. All about the Great Hall, braziers were lit, and clouds of smoke poured out, enveloping everyone. The fight on the stage extended to us as well; suddenly both angels and devils were amongst us, shrieking and struggling. A great heavy wing smashed against my chair, scattering feathers; and three demons scurried after its owner and crawled between the rungs of my chair. I recognized one: Francis Bryan, with his eyepatch. Then a familiar gesture, the way he tossed his hair, betrayed another, and my heart froze: Henry Norris was decked out as a demon in Anne’s masque. The fight turned real; swords were drawn. The onlookers joined in the pandemonium, and yet I cared not. A drowsy lethargy had sunk over me, paralyzing my limbs and dazzling my mind. The smoke ...

  “Opium.” Anne, once again, read my thoughts. “Purchased at great expense and trouble from the East. It is the Great Lethargy, Sloth in a powder. ... But watch now, it will prevent any harm.”

  The swords slowed their momentum, dropped by their owners’ sides. Motion turned to heaviness. Only the demons retained their quick movements, as if immune. They shrieked and raised their arms, and from beneath the black-draped platform swarmed a horde of evil beings: werewolves, phantoms, mummies, banshees, ghosts, grave-worms, corpses, witches, warlocks, decay, regret, remorse....

  Anne rose beside me, crying out with them, her red mouth open and curved, and I knew her for a vampire, eager for blood, as she had sucked mine and turned me, too, into a creature of the night, a creature who had changed into something alien, and lived by others’ blood, even the blood of his friends.

  She took my hand, and I rose with her. I had become as she was: just as evil, just as bloodthirsty, just as tainted. Her lips had infected me, corrupted my being. Yet I would not be that way, I would be redeemed.... In vain I looked for an angel. I saw only a dismembered wing lying on the floor, torn from its shoulder harness and with its wax frame sagging and trampled.

  My head spun; my senses were suspended. I felt myself following Anne, letting myself be pulled along a dark, muffled, secret passage leading away from the Hall. Westminster was full of such secret ways and connections, fashioned as it was in ancient times. Anne was taking me away, away from the safety of the others, and this moment was one I could no longer avoid or postpone.

  Her fingers were slender and cool as the jewels upon them. Her face was seen only in brief licks of light from the guttering torches in their iron sockets. Behind her, her costume streamed out—great, billowing, smokelike puffs. I was drugged; the opium smoke had stunned me, like the smoke from Jane Seymour’s torch putting the bees to sleep.

  We were in a chamber. It was a small chamber, hung with filmy draperies. There was a strange odour within. I had never smelled it before, and it bore no lto any other; therefore I cannot describe it, save that it was sweet and caressing.

  “The end of the fête,” I said slowly. It seemed my lips were numb.

  She drew back her hood, which shrouded her face. The coverings fell and her face, unique and entrancing, was revealed. To see it was to remember, and to relive, and then to enter once more into the past, when it had commanded supreme obedience and longing in my heart.

  I knew better, and yet I loved her once again. Almost all of me did. The conquest was not complete, for there were parts of me new-formed since first I had loved her, and those were not in her power to reclaim; those stood apart in clucking denunciation. But for the rest, they rose up like the dead at the Day of Judgment. And once again there was that rush of feeling, of transport, of excitement.

  But not quite. It was not quite the same. I knew more now, it had all been spoilt somewhere along the way, and that lodged itself like a stone in a shoe; we may run, and leap, and bound, yet the landing is sharp, and so we do not bound quite so high or exuberantly ever again.

  I loved her with all my might and heart; but soul and mind did not enter in. This time they demurred.

  She came to me and kissed me.

  How many months, how many years ago had I longed for her to do exactly that? There had been a time when I felt near death because she did not. Yet here it came to me, unbidden and unsought, with her body pressed up against mine, and all the gestures I had once so coveted, and while it was exciting, it was not soul-satisfying. I had grown beyond whatever hunger she once could have satisfied.

  Yet my body—my Judas-body, ever the betrayer—responded and for an hour or so helped me believe that I had not changed, that all was as it once was.

  “My Lord, my love, my dearest—” Her words poured, molten, in my ears. There was, of course, a bed, all bedecked in the sheerest linen, laid with furs and pillows of swan’s down. Anne had arranged all this, had had servitors set it all up, much as I had once done in heated anticipation in my own chambers.

  Her words, her hands, her voice, all reached out to me and sought to claim me. Because I was stronger now, and essentially free of her, the appeal was all the more poignant. I could appreciate, as I never had before, the exquisite little things about her: the way she drew aside her clothes, even folding them without actually folding them; her dramatic ability to turn a little storage room into a chamber of carnality; the sensuality behind her desire to watch the light playing on the opalescent surface of the draperies, so that they seemed to pulsate and throb from within. I saw all this, and appreciated it; but the appreciation itself was somehow an enemy to, and acknowledgment of, lust sapped by time.

  Was it all gone? Of course that is always the question. If I wade out into a pond, it may seem, on the surface, calm and empty. How safe to shrug and clamber ashore again, never venturing to plunge below the cold, demanding, slimy surface. If I lay with Anne upon the bed, what would happen? Could I predict how I would feel? Did I dare to find out?

  She pulled me, and I followed. Yes, I would do it, because if only I could feel those feelings once again, it would words pouened and was larger than ever. Ugly black streaks spread out on all sides of it. Dr. Butts was still with Mary, and I did not wish to separate them, so I was forced to treat my affliction myself. None of Dr. Butts’s associates was knowledgeable enough—or discreet enough —to involve himself with my illness.

  Meanwhile, the reports were that Mary did not improve. Neith
er did Fitzroy, who was wasting away before Henry Howard’s devoted eyes. I could not bring Mary here, for security’s sake (unless, of course, she took the Oath), but I could bring Fitzroy.

  Then came word that Katherine had fallen ill—“obviously,” said the report, “of poison.” Thus, in spite of Katherine’s precautions and suspicions, Anne had prevailed. Whether by natural methods (bribed cooks, powders) or supernatural, no longer mattered. What mattered was that Anne had prevailed. And she was now pregnant, carrying a child, with the Act of Succession vested in that child, and we had all become dispensable, I most of all. As the pain shot through my leg, I had a constant reminder of that.

  Chapuys was frantic with worry about both Katherine and Mary, and betrayed his very real personal affinity for them, apart from political maneuverings. He begged for permission to visit Katherine, but I withheld it for a time. I knew that any attention from Chapuys, with its representation of outside concerns, might stir Anne to injure Katherine further, until she was beyond help from any quarter. To flatter me, Chapuys pestered me for a tennis match, something I had long ago urged upon him.

  “In the enclosed court at Hampton, we can play during the nasty weather,” he said.

  “Perhaps. Perhaps.” I could not run about on this infected leg, but I hoped it would diminish by Christmas. “At the holiday time, when we move there.”

  Would I even be walking by then? What would Anne’s hand have done to me by then? I must consult with Cromwell, my totally unscrupulous and utterly discreet Cromwell.

  “I must be rid of her!” I cried.

  “We have already determined that as long as Katherine lives—” he began.

  “Aha!” Therein her own hatred and jealousy was her undoing! For, out of spite, she was causing Katherine to languish and fail. “If Katherine should die, then Anne can be set aside,” I finished.

  “In a special limbo designed for ex-wives,” suggested Cromwell.

  “By God, you sound as if you expect it to be a permanent position, created by me!” I barked.

  “No, no, Your Majesty,” he assured me. “Nothing of the sort. It would be an unnecessary expense to the Exchequer—on a permanent basis.”

  I settled myself more comfortably on my chair, and rested my leg upon a padded footstool. I wished I could mention my leg to Crum, but I dared not. I realized with a start that I trusted no one now; there was no one I knew to whom I could reveal any intimate thing about myself without fear of betrayal. So that was what Father had meant. It was loathsome, this aloneness. He claimed it was the price of kingship. Was it? At present, the answer was yes. Was it worth it? The answer to that was also yes. One can get used to anything.

  A wad of pain worked its way up my leg, and it was all I could do to keep from crying out. “So that the moment the child is born ... she may be sent away.” My belly contracted with the pain, but my will kept the cry of pain from escaping. Crum never heard it.

  “There are rumours,” he said. “Rumours that the conspirators stand at the ready in Northumberland and along the West Marches to spirit Katherine away.

  Would he never be gone? I could not mask this pain much longer. “So the dream has come about, and the Papal forces are ready to move,” I said. “It was inevitable. Yet”—another spasm of pain—“if Katherine is ill enough, it all comes to nothing.” Yes, the Devil was stupid to wound Katherine.

  “Out of England, she might rally.”

  True. Beyond our shores, treated as her vanity dictated, hearing words of flattery and submission, she would mend quickly enough.

  “Out of England she shall never go,” I said. “And as for her misguided knights-errant, we shall disempower them, subtly, so that when and if the time ever comes when they might try to move ... they shall find themselves stuck fast.”

  Poor Katherine. She would never know of her would-be rescuers.

  “I would send the Princess Dowager a token of encouragement in her illness,” I told Crum. “Not Chapuys. But a box of delicacies, and one of my musicians.... See to the land arrangements.”

  There, that should occupy him. Else I might scream if he did not immediately quit my presence and allow me to massage my leg.

  Anne’s pregnancy fared well; the most healthy being in all England was that one which lay within her womb. While her magic blighted all of her enemies, her child and her salvation waxed strong.

  The year slipped further toward the dark bottom of its wheel. My leg did not mend, but at least it did not worsen. Fitzroy, whom I had brought to court under the pretext of inviting him to keep Christmas with us, remained pale and wracked with a cough (it sounded the very same as Father’s), but likewise did not worsen. Mary hung in the limbo of not-truly-ill/not-truly-well, and I was given the painful task of refusing Katherine’s natural pleas to help her. She had written Chapuys:

  I beg you to speak to the King, and desire him from me to be so charitable as to send his daughter and mine where I am, because if I care for her with my own hands and by the advice of my own and other physicians, and God still pleases to take her from this world, my heart will be at peace, otherwise in great pain. Say to His Highness that there is no need for anyone to nurse her but myself, that I will put her in my own bed in my own chamber and watch with her when needful.

  I have recourse to you, knowing that there is no one else in this kingdom who will dare to say to the King, my lord, that which I am asking you to say. I pray God to reward your imm in a costume from Turkey....

  The wife of my youth. She had been the wife of my youth, and in dying she took that with her. Those lost days gleamed now more brightly than ever.

  I mourned for the Spanish Princess, angry that her life had been, on the whole, so sad. And now there was no hope for anything better, no last-minute changes. She lay beyond all changes.

  What sort of faith did I have, then? Presumably she had passed into another world, where all such considerations were cast aside. She was in glory, clothed in a spiritual body, no longer the Spanish Princess or the crippled, sickly old woman she had changed into, but changed yet again into something glittering and immortal. While her physical body was being cut open and embalmed, the immortal Katherine was long since departed, rewarded beyond anything I could ever have bestowed on her.

  So I believed ... so I believed....

  But if it were not so? If the poor old body was all there was, then what a cruel reward. I wept, alone in my private box in the Chapel Royal, astonished and bewildered at my tears. Did I not believe? Were all my beliefs hollow, worthless? That was what my tears betrayed.

  For if the dead are not raised, neither has Christ been raised. It follows also that those who have died within Christ’s fellowship are utterly lost. If it is for this life only that Christ has given us hope, we of all men are most to be pitied.

  I should not be weeping for Katherine’s bitter life, if I truly believed that each particle of that bitterness was pleasing to God and was now earning her tenfold of glory and reward.

  I was a liar, then, a hypocrite. No, I was a doubter. There was a difference. One was honest and human, the other was not. Even Peter had doubted.

  God, most almighty and everlasting, please remove these doubts that burn and torment me far worse than my leg. Remove them, or I cannot go on.

  Somewhere I heard a stirring. There was someone else in the chapel, down below. I decided to go. I felt more oppressed and troubled than when I had first sought the silence and darkness. Perhaps it would do for another what it had failed to do for me.

  I was halfway down the long gallery when I heard the door open and turned to see a figure stealing away from the chapel. It was Jane Seymour, and she was rubbing her eyes. She walked slowly until she came to a window seat, then sat down. She stared, blinking, at the floor.

  I approached her carefully. She looked up at my approach, and her eyes and the tip of her nose were red. She attempted to smile, as if that would render them invisible.

  “Mistress Seymour,” I said, settling
down—uninvited—beside her. “Can I be of help? Are you troubled?”

  “I am troubled,” she admitted. “But you cannot be of help.” She fumbled for a handkerchief.

  “Only give me the chance,” I offered, glad of the opportunity to take my mind off Katherine.

  “I would leave court,” she blurted out. “As soon as the roads are passable, if Your Majesty would so graciously permit me.”

  “But why?”

  “I am not mtention the Princess Dowager has received for her ‘good end,’ ” said Anne, loudly. “There is talk of little else but her saintly departing. Already people are directing prayers to her, asking for her intercession. Can you afford to have created another saint? First Fisher, then More—now Katherine?”

  I signalled for the musicians to take up their playing again, to drown out this conversation.

  “You push me too far,” I said. I wished to choke her for her taunting words.

  “It is true,” she answered. “The people have canonized Fisher and More, in their hearts—never mind what Rome pronounces—and they are well on their way to doing it with Katherine. You should be dancing with us, to counteract it, not leading them in honouring her! Your own security demands it, regardless of your feelings.”

  “Fie! You dress your own evil gloating in political wrappings. Dance, my love, all you wish. Soon the time for your dancing will cease.”

  I turned and left her in yellow, as I had first beheld her.

  The embalmer at Kimbolton, who performed an autopsy on Katherine, submitted a secret report to me. He had found all the internal organs as healthy and normal as possible, “with the exception of the heart, which was quite black and hideous to look at.” He washed it, but it did not change colour; then he cut it open, and inside it was the same.

  “Poison,” I said softly. I had known it all along. Anne’s poison. It was that triumph she celebrated at her Yellow Ball. I wondered if the particular poison she had chosen was, indeed, yellow. How like her if it were.