The Autobiography of Henry 8

by Margaret George

  When they heard this, they were indignant.

  “They say it would be immodest to lay aside their proper headdresses,” Hostoden said. “It is a wickedness to display the hair.”

  “God’s breath! If they cannot conform to English custom and costume, they should return to Cleves!”

  They scowled at this pronouncement, then agreed that they would do so. I was flabbergasted, insulted. To quit England so readily? Yet my indignation lasted but a moment, as I saw that in reality it was to my advantage to send away as many of these foreigners as possible and replace them with Englishwomen. In my youth, the court had been a bright place, as bright with youth and beauty as a summer field spread out with wildflowers and butterflies under the sun. There was still youth and beauty somewhere beneath the English sun, and it must be brought to court.

  Anne looked startled and frightened at the thought of being left alone. But I reached out and touched her stiff, brocaded shoulder.

  “As an English Queen, you should be served by Englishwomen,” I said, and Hostoden conveyed my words. “This is your home now. And I shall employ—I shall send—” I motioned for Cromwell, a slight flicker of my eye and finger, and he was instantly beside me.

  “Your Grace?”

  “You have provided all things for Lady Anne, but no language instruction,” I chided him. “I desire straightway that a tutor be found, a person so skilled in his craft that by Candlemas my wife shall speak to me in perfect English.”

  Having been given an impossible task, Cromwell accepted the commission unemotionally. He bowed, a stiff little smile on his face.

  “Yes, my Cromwell,” I said smoothly, “I am so anxious to hear my dearly beloved wife speak to me in my own tongue. It will complete my happiness.”

  A flicker of worry crossed his brow, that brow trained so well in Italy. Then he did his masters well. “As you say, Your Majesty. In your pleasure lies my happiness.”

  And your welfare, I thought. And your very existence.

  I nodded expansively and chucked Anne on the cheek.

  That evening, after the light supper of cold venison, pudding, and bread, a slim young man was announced. Anne and I were once again retiring to the “bridal bower,” and the rest of the courtiers and attendants had withdrawn—doubtless to jest and pity me. Well, their laughter and their pity would be short-lived.

  flourished a basket of books, pens, and paper.

  Crum—always daring in fulfilling a request. Who would have thought of sending someone to begin lessons this very night? Only Crum.

  I motioned the young tutor in, sat him down with my bride before a table.

  “I ... am ... Anne.

  “You ... are ... Martin.

  “He ... is ... King Henry.”

  I fell asleep to this refrain on the second night of my new marriage.

  LXXXVIII

  For the next week or ten days, Anne gave herself over completely to her English lessons. I was astounded by her concentration and diligence. Every morning when I left her, I kissed her on the cheek and said,

  “Good morning, sweetheart.” At night before going to sleep, I gave her yet another chaste peck and said, “Sleep well, my dear.” By the fourth morning she was able to say, “Good morning”; by that evening, “And you as well, husband”; and before many more days were out she was inquiring solicitously about my state business, my Council meetings, and the forthcoming nuptial tournaments and celebrations. Soon I would have a talking horse.

  She was also (as befit a domestic beast) docile in allowing her women to be sent back to Cleves, in being assigned a whole new group of attendants, and in being measured and outfitted for a new wardrobe. Her “elephant ear” headdresses were cheerfully surrendered, and she showed a surprising taste for luxurious fabrics and fashionable gowns. She certainly had the frame to carry any extravagance in weight or colour. It was truly like trapping a great horse.

  I spent my days closeted in meetings, poring over the latest diplomatic dispatches regarding the “amenity” between Charles and Francis. They must catch no wind of the lack of success in my new marriage, and rather than trust anyone, I must play my part so well that no one, not even Cromwell, would suspect. So I acted the happy bridegroom, watching myself as though I were detached, marvelling at my own ability to dissemble. It is a talent I suspect everyone possesses. Those who lament, “I can never lie, my face gives me away,” are the cleverest liars of all.

  Forward went the plans for the great national celebrations. Protocol must be served, and on a windy day in late January the jousting barriers were put up in the tiltyard of Whitehall Palace; the brightly coloured flags were raised, and the spectator stands were hung with the Tudor colours.

  Crum had employed an innovation: the royal boxes were enclosed, and heated with braziers. We were to gaze out at the contestants through glass plates.

  The day of the royal tournaments was blustery and overcast, one of those days that seem grey throughout. But inside the royal glass boxes it was high summer, with all the chattering and uncovered necklines that accompany warmth.

  Anne was wearing a square-cut golden velvet and cloth-of-gold gown, and on her hair she had a thin gold wire coronet set with emeralds—quite the latest fashion. She seemed exuberant to be attending this joust.

  “In-a Cleves, ve haf no such tang,” she enunciated carefully.

  No, I supposed not. What an insufferably dull place s tender and succulent as her foot. She still clutched the handkerchief, but tears glistened on her flushed cheeks, and her cushion-like lips quivered. She was the most sensual creature I had ever touched, the most fleshly and entirely of the senses, of this earth ... and I knew, in that instant, that I must possess her.

  I said nothing. I stood up, made my way back to my royal seat.

  It was settled. She would be mine. I had but to speak to arrange it. I lived in a world where all desires could be satisfied, but where the lack of desire had been the fearsome thing, the thing that weighed on me and made me feel dead.

  Now I lived again. To want was to be alive. And I wanted Mistress Howard, wanted her so violently I was ashamed and breathless at the same time.

  That night I could not sleep. Truly. For the first time since I had beheld Anne Boleyn at the investiture (June 25, 1525; I would never forget that date) and been bewitched, I had not had such a feeling. Was this, too, witchcraft? No, I knew better now. Anne’s witchcraft had come later. That initial feeling I had had was genuine and undesecrated.

  To experience it again! I had thought never to do so, and now to be given it, unsought, at my age!

  I lay awake all night, enjoying the love yet to come, relishing the fact that I knew it would come to pass, for I had power to command, and what I wished, I could take. I was no Culpepper. But in the interval between the framing of a desire and the acting on it—therein lies the torture, and the bliss. A person is never more ours, yet never more unattainable, than in those hours.

  Anne snored softly beside me. I felt fondly toward her, knowing that she was the odd means of having brought about my present and future bliss. Without the arranged marriage, I would have been content to languish forever, mourning and feeling myself dead. I had believed myself so. I even felt gratitude toward Francis and Charles. Without their enmity, I never would have had to make this forced marriage, then I never would have had a Queen, and the Queen would never have had a household—

  Enough! This was absurd. One might as well be thankful that one’s father lay with one’s mother on a certain night, and that the midwife was saved from tripping on the stairs because of a fortuitous candle. The truth was, I was gloriously in love—rebom, as it were—and that was all that mattered. Things were as they were, and to care overmuch who brought them to this pass was to busy oneself wastefully. Any action not bringing a lover to the possession of his loved one was wasted, unless it be savouring the moment to come.

  Culpepper’s wounds were slight. He had been pricked by a lance-tip that somehow found it
s way between the overlapping thigh-plates of his armour. The surgeon had cleansed his wound and bound it with pink satin.

  “Her colours,” said Culpepper with a wink, as he reported back to my sleeping chamber for duty. He unwound the satin carefully and placed it reverently on his night-table.

  “Whose?” I forced myself to ask, casuallyours.

  “—turnips.”

  They crowed with pleased laughter. I enjoyed hearing Anne’s delight. Without the shadow of my presence, she seemed a lighthearted person, altogether at odds with her leaden appearance.

  “Very good, sweetheart,” I said, strolling into the room. The laughter ceased. That hurt me.

  “Come, come,” I chided. “Do not interrupt yourselves for my sake. What else is in the market? A fat hog, perhaps?”

  But they would not resume. Feeling let down, both in my original intention of seeing Mistress Catherine and, unaccountably, in having intruded on Anne and being excluded, I made my way back to my own chamber. This was the time when I would gladly have saddled a horse, gone hunting, left the palace and my feelings behind. But I was not now capable of riding. Lately my leg-ulcer caused me such pain from being rubbed on a saddle that I no longer could endure it. Moping about my chamber on this bleak February day, I called for one of the few pleasures left to me—Will.

  Will worked, still, when wine failed and company palled. Almost imperceptibly he had passed from being an entertainer for my private moments, witty and full of scabrous gossip, to being a listener and a wise commentator—especially after Jane had died and I simply could not abide fools about me, I mean true fools, not professional jesters. Fools who murmured unctuous platitudes about how “time will heal all” and “you will rejoin her in heaven,” and “she would not want you to grieve overmuch.” It was Will alone who was honest and brave enough to say, “I know that you would trade the remainder of your life to speak to her for just a quarter of an hour on the most trivial subject.” And I could answer, “Yes.”

  Now I relied on him more and more, telling myself that I must not, as to place so much trust and need on a single person was to court Fate overmuch. I had only to remember Wolsey, More, and Jane herself.

  He stood before me in the work chamber, in his ordinary clothes. He seldom wore cap and bells anymore, as the costume offended his sensibilities and was necessary only if he performed in public. Before me, at eleven in the morning, it would have been absurd.

  “Will,” I muttered, “I am utterly lost, forlorn.”

  His dark quick eyes searched mine. “No, Hal”—he preferred to call me Hal, as no one else ever did—“you are bored. Call it by its proper name.”

  “What is boredom, then? Define it for me.” Already boredom had flown, at Will’s magic touch.

  “Boredom is that awful state of inaction when the very medicine—that is, activity—which could resolve it, is seen as odious. Archery? It is too cold, and besides, the butts need re-covering; the rats have been at the straw. Music? To hear it is tedious; to compose it, too taxing. And so on. Of all the afflictions, boredom is ultimately the most un-manning. Eventually it transforms you into a great nothing who does nothing—a cousin to sloth and a brother to melancholy.”

  “You make it sound romantic, and doomed.”

  He shrugged. “It can be. The odd thing about it is that it is so easily cured. One need only force himself to perform the ‘boring’ acti wood pattern that one had stared at when at a certain hurtful juncture at one’s life. Without these, ghosts were flown. Katherine had been here; Anne, too. Jane as maid of honour. Each of them had made the place so different, in her own time, that it seemed surrounded by different bricks; it seemed the windows should give out on different views.

  I glanced out the east window from the Queen’s Privy Chamber. The same Thames flowed by, rushing now and swollen with the spring waters. I looked about me, rejoicing in the bare boards and open rooms. I always became excited at new beginnings, and that was what empty rooms meant to me.

  Within my mind I heard music—vanished music from other rooms, other times. Such was my mood that morning that I did not question it but stood and listened. Slow, long, plaintive ... things that once had been, but were no more ... it had a sad beauty all its own.

  They were real notes, though. A false one was struck, whereas a false one was never struck in memory....

  I moved forward, turning my head. The sound was stronger in my left ear. It was coming from the rooms deeper within the Queen’s suite. I passed through the audience chamber, through the outer council chamber. The sound was richer. I stood in the entranceway that branched to both the left and the right, and I could not discern from whence the sound came. I waited some moments, holding my breath. My ears did not decide for me, but my intellect. I knew (being one, myself) that musicians always preferred natural light to artificial. Windows lined the left side of the Queen’s apartments, letting in God’s light. Therefore I went to the left, and—

  Stopped absolutely, my breath frozen, movements arrested, while my mind recorded for all time the sight of a great, ivory-keyed virginal, all naked in a stripped room, with Mistress Catherine Howard leaning against it, picking out notes. I watched her labouring, alone in the room, an expression of pure delight on her face. I knew what it meant to be left alone for a whole day to play a new instrument, to learn and master it with no one listening. It surpassed sensuality, it surpassed almost all other experiences.

  Each note sounded out loud and clear, flinging itself jubilantly into the spring air. I stood, hidden, as long as I dared. Then I felt it was deceitful, so to intrude and spy on an artist’s solitude, and I stepped out boldly.

  “Mistress Howard,” I said simply, making my way across the worn floorboards toward her, “I see that you, too, delight in a well-tuned virginal.”

  She gasped and drew back, like a child caught at something naughty. “Your—Your Majesty—” She stumbled up and grasped at her skirts. The pushed-back virginal bench fell with a crash behind her.

  “Nay, nay.” I hated it when, in a private situation, I evoked embarrassment and fear. Officially, of course, it was different. “I myself enjoy practising in deserted rooms, where no one can possibly overhear.”

  She bent over and pulled up the fallen bench.

  “Pray you,” I said in what I hoped was my most soothing voice, “continue your playing. I always enjoyed hearing the Lady Mary play the virginals, and—”

  Not Anne Boleyn. I shut out that horrible memory, of . I 221;

  The lass smiled and smoothed her skirts. “At my grandmother’s. I had a tutor.”

  “When did you begin? You must have studied for many years.” I seated myself beside her on the narrow bench.

  “No. I”—she thought swiftly—“it was for one year only, when I was thirteen. Yet I studied diligently then. And continued to practise after my tutor had departed.”

  “You enjoy music, then?”

  “I love it.” She smiled. I was struck by her composure; but then, when artists come together, it often happens that their calling overcomes shyness, differences in station, everything. We speak a common language, and everything else is hushed. It happened, even, that my love and desire for her were set aside for a moment in the glow of her music, where we became equals.

  I reached out and fingered the keyboard, remembering old melodies; she listened. Then she played, and I listened. Midway she laughed, and I glanced at her glowing skin and deep black lashes and was overcome with love, desire, all blended and heightened by the music and even, absurdly, by the virginal before us with its chipped old keys.

  She turned to look at me, not averting her eyes, as proper maidens do, but looking me full in the face. Her eyes were ice-blue and rimmed in some darker colour, which only made her appear all the more remote and untouched, waiting for me.

  “Catherine,” I finally said, astounded at how calm and unwavering my voice was, “I love to hear you play, and I fain would play beside you all my life. There is much of
me that has been lost, misplaced—not irretrievably, as I had feared-but for a time. I would share that person with you, and in return I would give you—I would give you—whatever your heart longs for,” I finished weakly.

  “A new virginal?” she asked. “The keys of this—”

  She did not understand! “Certainly, that. But, my dear, what I am asking you—”

  What I am asking you is this: Can you love an old man of near fifty? Can you be wife to him?

  “—is whether you would be my—”

  Whether you would consent to be Queen? One does not beg someone to accept a high state office! It is its own reward!

  “—whether you would wed me?”

  She stared at me as if I were mad. Then she said, slowly, “I cannot ... no ... it cannot be ... you have a wife already.”

  Anne Boleyn’s words! I felt flung into a vortex of time, where nothing had changed, and we were condemned to repeat the same mistakes and words forever and ever.... Your wife I cannot be, for you have a wife already; and your mistress I will not be....

  “I have no wife!” Those words, too, were the same. “I have the power to put her aside.” Different words, now. Words earned through six long years of testing.

  “You mean—I would be Queen?”

  “If you consent to become my wife, yes.”

  She shook her head, dazed. “Little Catherine Howard size="3">And the chance to speak has gone to yours, I thought. Call Cromwell what you like, you fool, he never lets himself be flattered, and he never lets down his guard. He would never betray his mind so. I looked at Surrey contemptuously. “They come from good stock. It is upon such honest, decent Englishmen that the future of the realm depends.”

  “Aye, aye,” he quickly agreed, eager to be as beguiling as he imagined himself. “Certainly they are not made of the same material as Cromwell, no—for they are honest, and have no secret plans of any sort, beyond recognition for themselves. But Cromwell, well, we don’t know his desires, do we? He does not seem to want any of the things any normal man would want. There’s talk” —he smiled a puzzled smile—“that he’s the Devil.”