The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers

by Margaret George

  The infant had been bathed, swathed, and put in his cradle. I stood looking over him for a long while. His resemblance to my lost Prince Henry was unsettling.

  My wife had had a monster. My mistress had had a healthy son.

  Clearly, God was giving me a message. One too blatant for even me to ignore.

  I spent the remainder of the long summer’s day at the Priory. Bessie fell asleep, sleeping the sleep of the young and healthy, undisturbed by conscience, worn out by natural physicality.

  The Priory was a neat little community. It nestled in the slightly rolling foothills of Essex, which looked like green knolls. Everything seemed ordered and elevated into more than the everyday. I walked through the stables, the kitchen garden of herbs, the greater vegetable garden. Everything was kept in the most transcendent order, as though the Lord might appear at any moment and puto’s just to placate him and entice him to France. Ha! Now he was out his money, out of Leonardo’s services, and stuck with the dark painting of the half-smiling woman that everyone agreed was ugly.

  “And I am showing my good intentions on my face,” I said, fingering my new beard. Francis had proposed that neither of us shave until the meeting, as a token of good faith. I was not sure I liked myself with a beard. Certainly it changed my face.

  WILL:

  As it turned out, Katherine hated the beard and begged him to cut it, “for her sake.” Still trying not to cross her, still half hoping for an heir, Henry succumbed and shaved the beard. This provoked a diplomatic crisis, as Francis was thereby offended, and Henry’s ambassadors had to explain the circumstances. Francis’s “dear mother” Louise hastened to assure them that “men’s love is shown not in their beards but in their hearts,” and the incident was smoothed over.

  Then, belatedly, Henry started growing the beard again just prior to his departure. Thereby it was not long enough to offend Katherine, but could serve as a token of goodwill toward Francis. Such are the weighty considerations that diplomats must deal with.

  HENRY VIII:

  June, 1520. I stood on the castle deck of Great Harry in the fairest winds God ever sent mortal man. We skimmed across the Channel—nay, we,flew. The great sails, painted to look like cloth-of-gold (trompe-l’oeil, the French say—oh, they have a word for everything!), billowed out and did their duty. We were bound for Calais, to undertake the great meeting between the French and English courts. It had all come about, despite the deep reservations of everyone on both sides.

  Including—perhaps most of all?—Katherine, who mounted the steps up to the forecastle to stand, now, by my side. Part of me noted how slowly, how painfully she moved. Her arthritis had made stair-climbing difficult for her in the past two years. The other part of me welcomed her presence as a companion.

  “Look, see! There is Calais!” I had sighted it only once before, but took an authority’s pleasure in pointing it out to her.

  Before us was France and the cupped, fine landing beaches of her northern coast. Behind us, equally visible, were the high white cliffs of England.

  “It looks so harmless,” she said.

  “It is harmless. For the land you see is England, the Pale of Calais.”

  Why did even my wife, the Queen, forget that I was King of part of France?

  The plans had been settled to the last detail. I, and all my company, were to land in the Pale of Calais, and thereafter, Francis and I would meet—and all our courts with us—just at the border of the two jurisdictions. Afterwards, each would entertain the other on his own land, and on his own territory. Special cities—temporary, splendid, as those can be only when permanency is not a factor—had been could not resist asking. I was young, remember.

  “The Kings move?” He looked bewildered.

  I felt a rough hand on my shoulder, and turned to see the angry face of the building master. He gave me a shove. “Stop talking to my workmen!” He suddenly moved and grabbed the other man by the shoulder. “What was he asking you? Dimensions, designs, secrets?”

  “He wanted to know about the hill,” the man said slowly.

  “Cursed Frenchman!” The master builder looked around wildly for something to throw at me, and found a large dirt clod. He heaved it in my direction. “Go tell Francis he has no hope of bettering us! Go tell your master that!”

  I would learn no more, and I had seen enough. So I left and continued walking in the direction of Ardres, the first town outside the Pale of Calais. From a hill nearby I watched an identical swarm of workmen building similar structures for the French King. I opened my square of cloth and took out my bread and cheese and last year’s softening apple, and ate. I started to laugh at them, but somehow could not. As a child I had promised myself always to answer my own questions and to hold nothing back from myself. Are they not fools? Are they not simpletons? The French King will come, and the English King will come, and then they will go. In ten years they will not even remember the glass in the palace windows. But why should that disturb me?

  Because it is wasteful, I answered myself. Because no man should be happy to serve another with no hope of recognition. Because all is temporary, and this reminder of the passing nature of things saddens me.

  A blacksmith in my village, reputedly stupid, had once speculated as to why Father’s mare had lost her new shoe so unexpectedly. (I had been sent to complain, as Father suspected shoddy work.) “Well now,” the smith said slowly, “there’s always the reason. And then there’s the real reason.”

  I found many reasons for my peevishness and sense of outrage about the royal enclaves being built, but the real one was this: I wanted to be there, and there I could not be.

  It would be simplistic to say that my detachment from such things began that day, but certainly I began to distance myself from that world. Everyone wants to feel special in some small way, and mine was to see myself as an aloof observer perched on a wall, watching the parade of human folly—royal and common—passing beneath me. Eventually I convinced myself that I had freely elected that stance.

  The day came, in June. The King was arriving, and we must welcome him, every last resident of Calais.

  I was there, upon the docks, as my master had directed me. I had dutifully helped him tidy the shop and festoon it properly with Tudor green and white, and flags, and mottoes for the royal visit. For three days street-sweepers had been busy gathering up the trash and offal from the main thoroughfares (it was hoped the King would not take it into his head to go down any others). The populace was anxious to see its King again and to see its Queen for the first time. Deep in everyone’s mind was the (futile) hope that if the French and English Kings met in friendship, the peculiar status of Calais would be resolved and the contradictions of our everyday life disappear.

  Henry’s ship came into harbour—a huge bulwark with golden sails. We all gaped at it. A nKing himself appeared on the decks.

  It was my third sighting of him. I had seen him twice before, once returning from his French wars, and before that, riding to the Tower.

  He is not the same, was my first thought. The figure on deck, heavy in majesty, was not that of the boyish soldier-King I had seen on horseback seven years earlier. He was stolid in a way the other never could have been—fixed, as in a carved figure.

  But he is thirty now, I told myself. Thirty and almost fifteen years a king. Time changes men....

  He stepped down and strode across the gangplank to the docks. He was wearing clothes that tore one’s heart in envy—beautiful, costly things of gold and velvet and satin. He was robust and handsome as mortal men seldom are. I stood in awe of him, at a moment in time when I beheld human perfection—perfection that must, perforce, decay. He raised his arms, and everyone fell silent. He spoke to us, telling us of the forthcoming meeting of monarchs. It was the first time I had ever heard him speak. He had a superb voice, smooth and yet able to carry quite a distance. What a man, I thought.

  Then Queen Katherine appeared on the decks. She was wearing so many jewels the sun glin
ted off them and kept her face hidden. She raised her hand and made a gesture to the onlookers. Then she turned and slowly descended the ramp to join her husband.

  She was squat and old, and there was a stifled gasp from the crowd. They had expected a beautiful young Queen, someone like Henry’s own sister Mary, and instead there was this ... Spanish warship. Indeed, she did resemble a man-o’-war, with her stiff brocaded skirts and strange, boxlike headdress (standard in the Spain of her youth, some thirty years earlier) and slow, deliberate movements. One almost expected a gust of wind to puff out her skirts and blow her along.

  Standing beside her husband, she did not turn toward him or acknowledge him in any way. Instead, she raised her hand in stately fashion (to which we were expected to respond by cheering) and turned her head into the sun.

  Which was a mistake. The sunlight on her aged face, in combination with the ugly headdress, reduced the onlookers to silence. She is so old, we all thought. (Later it was reported that Francis had observed, “The King of England is young and handsome, but his wife is old and deformed”—a remark for which Henry never forgave his “dear royal brother.”) But one can understand Francis’s bewilderment, as we were all struck by the contrast. On the one side, Henry, handsome and bursting with physical power; on the other, a woman riddled with gout and troubles.

  HENRY VIII:

  Katherine and I walked through the streets to a joyous welcome. It was dusk when we set out, and the individual faces in the crowd could be seen by natural light, but by the time we ended the procession, torches had been lit.

  We retired to a town house owned by a wealthy wool merchant, on loan for our royal use. We began to settle ourselves for sleep. But then Wolsey appeared. I left Katherine (doubtless she welcomed the privacy to make her personal devotions) and went downstairs to confer with the Cardinal.

  He was wearing lesser ceremonial clothes—designed to impress the onlooker, but still permitting some ease of movement and com the widowed Queen’s hurried departure ... ah, they dance as if it were their profession!”

  Some few unimportant people had remained in France after Mary had eloped with Brandon. But what of them? They were negligible.

  “What dance measures do you prefer?” he pressed me. “I will instruct my musicians.”

  “I dance anything. It is of no matter which begins.”

  “A monarch without modesty!” he exclaimed. “How refreshing!”

  As the tables were cleared away, the musicians began to assemble in the far end of the hall. There were not as many of them as in an English ensemble, but I trusted they would make decent music.

  Katherine and I would lead out the first measure, an Alhambra-rhythm, as danced in Spain. She could still do a turn and execute a measure to those melodies, recalling her girlhood.

  The company applauded dutifully. Then Francis and his Queen did a slow, dignified dance.

  Now both Claude and Katherine could be retired, while Francis and I danced with others, having honoured our spouses.

  Francis brought a woman over to me. I had seen her in the French company and at once began speaking French to her, when Francis corrected me.

  “She is one of yours, mon frère.” He touched her bare shoulders lightly. “An Englishwoman. Mary Boleyn.”

  The lady bowed. She was wearing a May-green gown, as I recall, that wrapt round her shoulders and breasts. Her hair was that honey colour which always aroused me, whether in fabric or hair or just the sun streaming into a room. It was my weakness. How did Francis know?

  I took her as my partner. “An Englishwoman, harboured in the very French court?” I murmured. She followed my every movement, as no Englishwoman ever had. It was both maddening and seductive. “How many of you were there?”

  “Not many,” she replied. “My sister Anne, for one.”

  I looked about to indicate curiosity. In France, I already felt, everything was indirect, including questions.

  “She is too young to be here. She does not yet put up her hair. A wild creature, so our father says.”

  “Perhaps France will tame her.”

  “That is his hope. In truth, France does not tame, but refines, boldness.”

  The message was clear. I took it. “When we return to England, we would take comfort from your presence,” I said.

  One sentence. So much simpler than the untutored business with Bessie.

  “As you wish,” she replied, looking at me. She did not touch me.

  That inflamed me more. She was a clever courtesan.

  For courtesan she was. I could recognize one by now. This one had been polished by Francis to a high sheen. Had he enjoyed her? What had he taught her?

  I had resolved not to involve myself with women, after the business with Bessie. But a practised courtesan? Surely that was different.

  And the njoer advice, and closeted himself with her until noon every day for “consultations.” She in turn called him, “Mon roi, mon seigneur, mon César, et mon fils.”

  For an instant his smug face altered. Then he smiled. “Indeed,” he said. “I shall name her after my beloved mother. I can think of no greater honour.

  Evidently, I thought. Pity you cannot marry mère yourself. He was truly disgusting.

  WILL:

  And would Henry not have been closeted with his own mother, had she lived? How closely linked are jealousy and disgust? Why have no learned men studied this? I myself find the question more absorbing than the dreary debates raging today about the true nature of the Eucharist.

  HENRY VIII:

  Penny being through, I raised myself out of the leather chair and removed the towel. “I have business to attend to,” I said pointedly.

  Still, Francis continued to stand before me, smiling absurdly. Must I make a banner and wave it before his hooded eyes? “I thank you for your assistance,” I said. “But now duties call us in separate directions.”

  He bowed. “Indeed. Yet we shall meet later—in the afternoon, for the first joust.”

  Protocol dictated that I accompany him through my private apartments. Reluctantly I joined him and together we left my bedchamber, traversed the inner chamber, and opened the door into the large Privy Chamber. At least a dozen attendants looked expectantly toward us.

  “Bon jour, ” said Francis, lifting his plumed bonnet.

  The chamber was some twenty feet wide. Before we had crossed ten, Francis abruptly paused. He put one finger against his cheek and raised his left eyebrow. Then he plucked off his head-covering and tossed it into one corner.

  “Wrestle with me, brother!” he cried.

  He caught me off guard. Before I could even alter my stance, he came at me, hitting me unfairly, throwing me on my back.

  A row of surprised courtiers stared down at my shame. I knew now why Francis had selected a tightly fitting costume for me—it hampered my movements quite effectively.

  He stood back, a false look of consternation on his face. “O! O! Sacre bleu!” He uttered a string of similar French inanities.

  But he did not offer me his hand or help me to my feet. Instead, he stood well back, trying to appear surprised.

  I rose to my feet. “In France, do you not customarily give an opponent the chance to prepare for a contest?”

  “One must always be prepared for the unexpected, cher frère.” He rolled his eyes toward the painted ceiling and shrugged. “Life seldom warns us when she is ready to strike a blow. I merely imitate life.”

  I stripped off the confining surcoat. Let us fight, then, away from pubons) they applied equally to all of life as well, to the very fact of being born a human creature. His last point, that rain and hail and “strange skyward happenings” had wrecked the pretty pretend-palaces, summarized the whole meeting: the entente cordiale was insubstantial and immediately destroyed by the first breath of real politics.

  That did not stop me from being annoyed with Bishop Fisher, that nattering busybody. He had always been irritating and interfering. My grandmother Beaufort
and he had been “thick as thieves,” as the saying goes. On her deathbed she had ordered me to “obey Bishop Fisher in all things.” Ha! My days of obedience had ended, although she could have no inkling of that. I paid little heed to the cantankerous old theologian, and certainly never sought his advice. But this public preaching on my foreign policy ... it had to stop. I gave orders.

  Everywhere the clergy were publicly debating, denouncing, and pronouncing. The German monk, Martin Luther, had even gone into print with three theological tracts: On the Liberty of a Christian Man; Address to the Nobility of the German Nation; On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church of God. The last one was a direct attack on the Church in general and the Pope in particular, claiming that the prophecies in Revelation, Chapter 17, had come true at last. (“And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will show unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters.... And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.... And the angel said unto me ... I will tell thee of the mystery of the woman.... The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth.... And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth.”) It was obviously the city of Rome, on its seven hills, and the Pope, t;s beliefs to be heretical and dangerous. Taken as a whole, they led to anarchy. They also rebelled against Christ Himself, Who plainly set up the Church.

  I believed the Church should be purified, not dismantled. And that is what I have done with the Church in England. It is simple! Why do people make the simple so complicated?