The Autobiography of Henry 8

by Margaret George

  Mary Rose was lost; lost in a moment.

  “What happened?” I cried. I had had my head turned toward Mary Carew, had been conversing with her. Yet that had been scarcely two minutes.

  “The ship—listed,” said Kate. “It seemed to be pushed over. The balance was bad; it tipped on the instant—”

  “But by what?” The wind had been very light.

  “It seems—by itself,” she said, confused. “I could see nothing that would have pushed it thus. It was almost like a drunken man, losing his balance. A drunken man falls, not for that he is pushed, but because he is drunk. Thus seemed it with the ship.”

  “A ship does not founder upon nothing!”

  “This ship did,” she insisted.

  “God! God! God!” screamed Mary Carew, seeming to hear her husband’s cries from the lost ship.

  “He is safe,” I assured her. “Only those belowdecks will have—will have—” I could not finish. “Those who could jump clear are swimming. I see them now. Rescue boats will pick them up.”

  “George cannot swim!” she cried. “He hated water, hated being in it—”

  I reached out to hold her, as now I could say nothing to comfort her. Unless the Vice-Admiral were one of the men clinging to the masts, he was lost, if he truly could not swim. Already there were dots surrounding the site of the wreck. Dead men? Or swimmers?

  Hysterical, she tried to fling herself over the wall. I pulled her back, and she began to beat on me, pulling at my clothes and clawing at my face.

  “Why should you live?” she shrieked. “Why should he”—she pointed at the militia-captain—“and she”—she gestured at Kate—“and even he”—she threw a pebble at a lazy circling gull—“and my George not?”

  I gestured to the guards. “Take her away. She is a danger to herself. Confine her.”

  Two huge Hampshiremen encircled her and led her away, making a cage of their arms.

  I, too, wished to shriek and cry. Mary Rose, with six hundred men, lost. And for no reason, no apparent reason, save—Divine will. God’s finger had reached out and touched my pride, my beautUl8ingiful ship, and sunk her. As punishment? As warning?

  The way Kate laid her fingers on my arm, I knew she was thinking the same thing. The masts of the ship pointed at me like the handwriting on Belshazzar’s wall. But what did it say? I could not read it clear. O, I was weary of these hateful, muffled messages from Him....

  Great Harry swung about, executing her turn perfectly. The fault lay not in the lack of wind, then, or in the captain’s skill, but in the very design of Mary Rose. But what? She had proved seaworthy for thirty years. What had happened to her now? Truly it was the handwriting....

  The nettlesome French galleys provoked Great Harry, emboldened by the shocking sinking of the man-of-war Mary Rose. Now our English row-barges, a counterpart to their galleys, streamed out to engage them. I had thought row-barges, combining both sail and oars, to be transitional vessels that we soon would not need. But here they carried the day, and did what the great warships could not: chased the French away. Now the French fleet lay outside our Solent waters, waiting to pounce.

  Night fell, and the action ceased. Our vessels were anchored in the Solent, and the French were around the spit, invisible. The rescue boats had saved thirty-five men from Mary Rose, and they had all been on the open top deck, and swept directly into the sea. They were for the most part seamen, unschooled, superstitious, and hard—unable to describe what had happened to them or their ship. They were of no help at all in reconstructing the tragedy. Sir Gawen Carew, George’s uncle, aboard Matthew Gonnson, had passed near Mary Rose just as she had begun to tack; he claimed that George had cried out, “I have the sort of knaves I cannot rule!” Had they mutinied?

  Thirty-five out of six hundred. I sat in my quarters in the granite bowels of Southsea Castle and pondered that fact. Kate was with me, sitting glumly at my side, tracing meaningless patterns with my walking stave on the floor.

  “They will attempt a landing during the early hours of dawn,” I said. “On the Isle of Wight. Their plans are to establish a camp there, and then take Portsmouth—in reprisal for Boulogne.”

  “How do you know this?” she asked.

  It was obvious. “As an old soldier, I know.”

  “And you must lead the militia here of twenty-five thousand men, when they land?”

  “Yes.”

  “They have landed no other place?”

  “No.” The signal fires had not been lighted. The French were, thus far, confined to our area.

  “So they concentrate their fury upon you?”

  “Yes.” Good that it should be so. I worried about Boulogne. Had they left it alone? Or were they harrying it as well? If they did, could Henry Howard and his garrison hold it?

  “The ship—” she began, hesitantly.

  “Was a great loss,” I finished. I did not wish to discuss it, even with her.

  Dawn, at five o’clock. I had barely slept. The French were ashore oidth="1em">Outside Basingstoke I found Sandys’s house—“The Vynes,” a sign announced at its entrance. I looked down its long entranceway, bordered on each side by young lime trees. Someday they would grow giant and sheltering, but for now they were as yet tender and easily felled. They bespoke newness, yet they had already outlived their planter.

  Our little party came down the mile-long avenue of struggling trees, and faced the great mansion. It was all of red brick, clean-edged and new. It was beautiful; beautiful as most of my palaces never were, for they were so large, or else built by other men....

  Kate pulled up beside me. “Sandys has built a magnificent home.” She paused. “Pity he could not live to see this moment.” I must have made a depreciating gesture, for she continued, “The moment his sovereign came to visit. Think you not the ‘H’ was intended for this? Think you not that whatever chamber you lodge in tonight will be designated the King’s Chamber, and kept as a shrine forevermore?”

  She looked so fierce! “Ah, Kate—”

  “Can you not understand?” She sounded angry. “You bring the people joy. They will build an entire house on the hope that someday you might see it, visit it!”

  She spoke true. Yet I had seldom allowed myself to consider it enough, to luxuriate in my subjects who revered me so. Instead; I had addressed myself to foreign potentates and powers: Francis, Charles, the Pope. They would never honour or keep a single thing that I had done.

  We halted at the end of the brave tree-bordered drive. I sent a groom to the door to announce our presence. It opened; then the groom was left to wait for a quarter-hour whilst confusion erupted within.

  At length a man appeared, squinting his eyes as if he beheld an eclipse. “Your Majesty,” he stammered. “I am but a merchant, a poor unworthy servant—forgive me, but I cannot—”

  “Cannot offer your King a night’s shelter?” I kept my voice low and gentle. “That is all I ask. My Queen and I are weary, and would break our desperate journey en route to London. We ask only for a bed, and two small meals. Our party is small”—I indicated our few companions—“and if they cannot comfortably lodge here, they can find a place in the village.”

  “Nay, nay—” He jumped about and waved his arms. “There is space aplenty here.”

  “Poor man,” whispered Kate. “Your royal presence has quite unstrung him.”

  “My Lord Chamberlain Sandys built this house,” I said. “Oft he begged me to come and lodge with him, but I was never able. Consider this a debt, then, that I pay to my loyal servant; one that I neglected and left too late. ’Tis a personal matter between us; it concerns you not.”

  He bowed nervously. I knew what he was trying to say. Unexpected events try us most. I put my fingers to my lips. “We do what we can. And if we do that, then that is acceptable to Almighty God.” And to anyone else, I added silently. For my part, the greatest favour he could do me was to provide me with silence and a bed.

  “Aye. Aye.” He kept bowing.

/>   The; and he had known William Sandys since babyhood. The entire village had been proud when Sandys went to make his fortune at Court; although Hornbuckle had actually made more of a fortune by staying in Basingstoke. No matter, though, to the common mind: fortunes made at court were always magical, and better than those made at home. Sandys’s house was the envy of the village. And then, suddenly, the house was for sale, and Sandys entombed in the local church. Hornbuckle had bought the property, feeling both obligation and guilt. His friend was dead; how could he assume his property, walk in his shoes? Yet letting another do so seemed more of a betrayal. At last, reluctantly, he had let himself take possession of the property, although even now he itted. “Not quite yet. Now I feel nothing. As though a block of winter were in my heart, imprisoning it.”

  “You will,” she assured me. “You will feel all of it, but only later. I do not understand it, but that is how it happens.” She was out of bed now, fastening on her garments. “Feeling returns only after the person is buried.”

  “But I should feel something besides this ice-locked nothingness!”

  “You feel what God allows you to feel. If nothing, now, it is for a purpose. God wishes you to feel other things.”

  God, God, God. I was weary of Him and His capricious ways.

  “Am I supposed, then, to care only for the French war at this time? Because England is in danger?”

  “Evidently,” she said, and smiled. “One task at a time. God decides which.”

  Her faith was so simple and sweet. But “simple” so easily slides over into “simplistic.”

  CXXVIII

  At Whitehall, where all messengers had gathered, awaiting me, it seemed that nothing was happening elsewhere in the realm.

  Except that Brandon lay dead.

  The English fleet yet lay anchored in the Solent and waiting for orders, with the French poised just out of sight. There had been no landings at any place along the southern coast. Nor had there been in Scotland. Francis had failed his promise there, as he failed all his promises. Now perhaps the Scots would understand the nature of their ally.

  Across the Channel, Boulogne was quiet. The French interest lay elsewhere, for the moment. Yet Henry Howard was having problems maintaining discipline and morale amongst his men. They broke out in quarrels and rancour continuously. His fault or theirs?

  I issued orders: the fleet was to pursue the French, corner them, and do battle with them. In spite of the loss of Mary Rose, I believed we could cripple the French fleet and send it limping back to Francis, like a sick child. The Earl of Surrey was to return to England, to attend the state funeral of the Duke of Suffolk. The armies at all points were to continue to maintain their posts.

  As I must maintain mine. My health, seemingly so improved by the earlier campaign on the Continent, had deteriorated. (I can safely write it here.) Fluid had accumulated in my leg, so that sometimes I had no sensation in it, and it was swollen and ugly. There was no resurgence of the open ulcer, Jesu be thanked. But I feared that any hour it might be reactivated.

  Also (I hesitate to write it even here) ... there were nights when I thought I heard the monks again. The ones who had been in my chamber when ... during that time after Catherine’s execution. They stood in the corners and mouthed the selfsame words. But now I knew them to be false, so I heeded them not. Why did they continue to haunt me? I had done nothing to encourage them. Was it that they scented a weakened man?

  Weakness. It drew forth all the jackals, to snap and snarl and quarrel over their victim. But I was more clever than they, the jackals roaming about my kingdom and Privy Council. They had only their noses, to scent a sick man; I still had brains and pomoutheont>

  All would be well.

  Except that Brandon lay dead.

  A state funeral is a formidable thing. I had never attended one, not as an adult. I hated them. All the protocol, all the rank and privileges which must be observed, with the focus of it all an insensate body.

  The body, the earthly remains of Charles Brandon, had been disembowelled and soaked in spices for ten days. Then it had been put in a cerecloth, and that wrapped in lead, and that laid in a coffin, and that simple coffin enclosed in another. Around that were arranged garlands and ribbons. I never saw Brandon himself, only the formal outer festoonings of what had once been a man.

  Would I have wished to see him, to see his flesh white, his lips set, his great chest sunken?

  He had been, after Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, the highest-ranking noble in the realm. I had made him so; taken the mud-spattered orphan and raised him up. I had done well to do so, as he was worthy of his rank.

  My sister Mary had loved him.

  Now he had another wife who would mourn him. But would she, truly? The truth is, I had loved him more.

  Brandon lay dead.

  The insistent chorus was coming more often to me now. Feeling had crept back, and was only waiting behind a barricade to burst out.

  The Order of the Garter customarily held ceremonies in the Chapel of St. George in Windsor. Brandon was to be buried in the choir of the chapel, only a few yards from Queen Jane. All twenty-five Knights of the Garter were called upon to be present, even though they represented the foremost defence of the realm. For this one day we must be undefended, and pray that God would stand watch whilst we did honour to Brandon.

  I had moved to Windsor—even though I disliked the quarters there, as too closely associated with my grief after Jane’s death—to oversee this funeral. I wished to make some sort of personal memorial there, to say something. I attempted to write an elegy, but my verse did not come. I tried to compose a prayer, but it sounded pompous. There were words I wished to say. I knew I had almost heard them before, but they slipped from me. The fruitful ground, the quiet mind ...

  Yes. I had read them. They were Henry Howard’s, part of a poem. I sent for him.

  It was the night before the funeral, and all Windsor was in mourning. My apartments were hung in black, and there was no music. In the Chapel of St. George, Brandon’s coffin lay on a catafalque, tapers flickering all around it. I would go down later, would keep vigil as a Knight of the Garter should do. But now there was still the poem to be attended to.

  Howard came upon the stroke of nine. He was dressed all in black: I had ordered the court into full mourning.

  “Did you bring your poems?” I asked him.

  He held out a portfolio of papers. “All I had,” he said. “As you requested.and exhaustion have, I fear, routed my Muse. Yet I found a phrase echoing through my mind, and I think it to be yours. It is ‘The fruitful ground, the quiet mind....’ ”

  “Aye. ’Tis mine,” he said quickly. He must have been pleased, but like all artists he disdained to show it. “Here is the entire poem.” He plucked out a sheet and laid it down next to my candle.

  Yes! It was exactly what I wished to say. It expressed my own inner feelings.

  “It is—my own words,” I said, amazed.

  Now he blushed. “The highest award one can give a poet. We sit in our little rooms, composing for ourselves, but believing that all men must feel the same. We are alone, but united with every human being—if we are good. If we are bad, we are united with nothing, and no one. The frightening thing is that, sitting in the little room, one does not know to which category one belongs. One must sit there in faith.”

  “Yes, yes.” I did not wish to flatter him overmuch. “I dislike to use borrowed trappings, but I have no choice. My own words will not come, and yours are already there.”

  “They are to be used by others. I hope that in years to come, when I am no longer here to give permission, they may continue to serve man’s inner needs.”

  I looked at him. I believed his words to be true and heartfelt. As an artist he was noble. But as a man he was petty, unstable, and rancourous. How did the two intertwine?

  “I have reports of your difficulties in Boulogne,” I said at length, hating to break the spell—the spell that bound us a
s journeymen in the arts. Now we must revert to ruler and subject. “What seems to be the cause of this trouble?”

  “The city is a bastard child of England,” he said. “We retain it, but for how long? In Tournai, we were committed to incorporating it into England. Vast sums were assigned for its upkeep. Frenchmen, citizens of Tournai, were to take seats in Parliament. But everyone knows that Boulogne is but a war-pawn, to be returned to France for a ransom. So who shall bother with it? The men are restive, and order hard to keep.”

  I sighed. His words were true. Keeping Boulogne victualled and defended were enormous expenditures, and I no longer had the cash reserves I had had in 1513. The truth was that I could not afford Boulogne, as I had afforded Tournai.

  “Well, do your best,” I answered. I knew he was waiting for me to reveal my ultimate plan for Boulogne. And oh, yes, I had one: to unite it with Calais, to double the English holdings. But all that took funds, funds which I did not have. I owed the money-lenders of Antwerp huge sums, plus interest, for the taking of Boulogne.

  I was tired. “Thank you, my lad,” I told him. “You may go now.”

  He bowed, stiffly. He was displeased.

  “I call you ‘my lad’ because you were my son’s friend,” I said.

  He smiled somewhat. “There is a poem about our years at Windsor,ow I was alone in the room. The candles jumped and flickered, and I remembered yet another reason why I hated Windsor: my son had flowered here in his brief season. He had brought colour to the dead drab stones, a momentary life. But Windsor was death. Nothing survived here.

  I began rifling through the poems, looking for the one celebrating his life. Surrey’s portfolio was so fragile. Too fragile to entrust a reputation or memory to.

  So cruel a prison how could betide, alas?

  Surrey had written the poem in prison, then. His imprisonment had served to bring my son back to life for me, if only for an instant.