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

by Margaret George

  I had no one to confide these apprehensions to. Crum was not a man to tolerate apprehensions, either in himself or in others. He would discuss only the realities of a situation, not its intangibles. Cranmer, close as I was to him in many ways, had so many apprehensions himself that I did not wish to encourage them.

  As for Anne, she had isolated herself completely in that court world where she whiled away her time. What happened beyond the doors of the Queen’s apartments was not of the remotest interest to her. As her spirits alternated between high-pitched nervousness and melancholia, I let her suit herself. Anything to keep her happy and to protect the pregnancy. Except dancing, which was too vigorous. I forbade her to dance.

  Thus it was with stunned disbelief that I beheld her dancing with great abandon late one evening after she had ostensibly retired. We had had supper together, a quiet one, as I had given leave in August to all the courtiers who wished to return home for visits. Court was always closed during the summer hunting season, and I was usually on progress. Anne had kept on the men in her retinue, but given the women leave to go. As we dined, I could hear Mark Smeaton playing plaintive love songs in the next room; the incessant rain muffled the actual melodies.

  Anne picked at her fo/div>

  Satan is a murderer. Jesus said so. He was a murderer from the beginning.

  From the very beginning: Anne had cursed Wolsey, and he had fallen from power and died mysteriously. I had thought of poison, but self-administered.

  How blind I had been!

  Warham had suddenly died, just when Anne needed him to.

  Percy, who had abandoned her under duress from his father and Wolsey, had been unable to perform with his wife, and was now dying of an unspecified wasting disease.

  My sister Mary had openly criticized my passion for Anne and supported Katherine, had refused to attend Anne’s coronation. Mary had become mysteriously “ill,” wasting away and dying at the age of thirty-five.

  Someone had tried to poison Bishop Fisher at a dinner at his home. Two servants had died, but Fisher, though ill, had survived. Survived, to be more surely destroyed through me, for denouncing the lies, the forged signature. ... Under your correction, My Lord, there is no thing more untrue.

  My gut contracted. I felt ill myself—poisoned. Could it be?

  Yes, she had struck at me, too. The mysterious leg-ulcer, appearing from nowhere, disappearing on the instant that I had done that which Anne wished —humiliated Mary, sent her to serve Princess Elizabeth, turned her home over to Anne’s precious brother George ... her creature.

  My impotence ... had it been a curse from her, or just the natural revulsion of my flesh from joining itself to hers, even though I knew not why? But she had overcome it, lifted it away, so as to bind me more closely to herself.

  I had begun dying, both in body and certainly in spirit. Like Fisher, I was not an easy victim, but the decline had begun. Anne’s slender little hands were guiding me on the sloping path leading to the grave.

  Her hands!

  I was violently ill; vomit rushed up into my mouth and I spat it into the basin on my sideboard.

  Anne’s sixth finger.

  She had a sixth finger on her left hand, a clawlike nub that branched off from her little finger. She wore long sleeves to cover it and was skilful past reason at concealing it. I had only glimpsed it once or twice, and such was her magic, and my resulting blindness and confusion in her presence, that I saw it, but did not see it.

  A witch’s mark.

  I was sick again, vomiting up green bile, bile that dotted the sides of the basin in mocking imitation of the emeralds thereon.

  She could read my thoughts. Even now, she knew what I was thinking. I remembered her knowledge of my substitute Oath for More, one I had never committed to paper.

  No. Her powers were not that strong, they could not penetrate even here. I was safe as long as I was not in her actual presence.

  Yet the confusion, the roar in my head, persisted. She could stir my thoughts, muddy them from afar, but not control or read them.

  She must be contained. I would order her aparorning. When it grew light.

  LXV

  I waited for that light with a fervency I thought I had lost forever. It belonged to childhood, to that time when the dark was an enemy, and only the light was friendly. A daytime moon was called a children’s moon because we preferred seeing it in the light....

  Dawn came and released me. In the clear light my revelations about Anne did not seem absurd, as is usually the case the next morning. Instead they seemed even more obvious and certain.

  Anne was a witch. She was tainted with evil and practised evil, nurtured evil and harnessed it for her own worldly advancement.

  Last night was her time. This morning was mine. And before night fell again, I must be far away.

  I had not hunted in a year. The season for stag and roe, my favourite game, had opened while Anne’s “pregnancy” kept me close at hand. I would go hunting, have clean sport in the daylight.

  The nearest forest where such game abounded was the Savernake in Wiltshire, three long days’ ride west of London. Sir John Seymour, my old companion-at-arms, had retired to his manor there several years ago, and was warden of the royal hunting preserve at Savernake.

  I would go there, pass some days at Wolf Hall, and wrestle with the terrifying revelations that had been thrust upon me. I would go alone. There were no companions whose company I wished. Nay, I needed one, for safety’s sake. Someone I loved, who was quiet. I would ask ...

  I heard rustling outside my door. I had not slept in my own bed—indeed, had not slept at all—and Henry Norris was searching for me. Henry Norris would be the one. Discreet. Silent. Committed to me.

  I opened my door to him. “Make yourself ready,” I said briskly. “I leave today to hunt in the West Country, and I wish you to accompany me.” To his surprised expression, I said, “It is for a few days only.”

  I must give no hint of haste, or of fleeing. Yet Anne must be contained, prevented from stirring. I knew not what to do with her, or what was required. I could not think. I was numb with what I now knew. It changed everything, but now it was I who must wear a mask. I needed time, time to think and recover myself and, yes, time to grieve. I was bereaved. I had lost a wife, and my own innocence.

  I rode in silence to the West. The setting sun warmed and consoled me, drawing me toward a resting place. I was tired, and longed for some respite.

  That first night, we stopped near Wokingham. The brothers of Reading Abbey were gracious (unlike those of St. Osweth’s!). We were given quarters that were snug and comfortable and told that we could join them for Compline in their chapel. We did so, and it was with profound relief that I joined in the prayers. They asked me to lead them, but I declined. I was in no spiritual condition to lead others in prayer.

  Night had fallen in the small priory. The monks filed away, silently, to bed. The Prior, Richard Frost, motioned us to follow him, and at our quarters he blessed us. Then, after lighting our candles, he bowed and was gone.

  A single candle on a bare table. That was my light, and I lay down on the cot where I would spend the night, and pulled the is left. They seated him kindly.

  He did not look different. He was the same John Seymour who had fought with me in France, had shared my dining table. His features were yet intact, his eyes the very same. Outwardly, all is as it should be; therefore the rest is preserved as well. So we think.

  His blue eyes rested on me. They looked at my hair, my face, my costume.

  “Who is this?” he asked querulously.

  “It is the King, Father,” said Edward. “He has come to hunt with us.”

  “The King?”

  He had known me, joked with me, ridden with me.

  “King Henry. Henry the Eighth.”

  He nodded, but there was no understanding in his eyes. I wanted to say, Remember the Battle of the Spurs, you rode right behind the French that day. Remember how they
ran!

  He smiled, an idiot’s smile. It was all gone. But no, it could not be. Behind that face, it was there yet. He lived, he nodded, he ate—how could Sir John be vanished? He was there yet, we just did not know how to call him forth.

  “Oh, ’twas merry!” he said. “Merry, merry ... no one’s merry. Not now.” He pushed his spoon about his plate.

  An infant. He had become an infant; his clock had run backward. But it was against nature. Either we were killed or we expired in weakness. We did not turn back into infants.

  “Now, Father.” A gentle voice, and two hands caressing him, arranging his plate. The vegetables—carrots and parsnips—separated from the mutton. He smiled and patted her hand.

  I looked to see who this was. At first I could discern nothing beyond the dull brown costume of a maidservant with a white headdress. I caught her hand.

  “You are kind, mistress,” I said. She was so unobtrusive, yet so competent.

  She pulled back from me, not demurely, but in insult.

  “It is hardly a kindness to minister to one’s own father,” she said, extricating herself from my grasp..

  “Jane?” I asked, but she was gone.

  “The French are foul,” said Sir John. “They lie in wait for us. They have not improved. But the Pope is worse. This new one ... he is much harder than Clement.” He shook his head, seemingly all alert and involved in politics, as he once had been. “They say he sucks his toes.” He cackled, fiendishly.

  Edward and Thomas continued eating.

  “They say he sucks his toes!” insisted Sir John, so loudly that the ancient timbers above us absorbed it. “And furthermore, the north tower needs repair!”

  As soon as was decently possible, I left the hall. Servants got Sir John to bed, and I sought mine. The bed was narrow, hard, and musty. Morning Mass in the nearby parish church was at six. I would attend. Meanwhile I fell asleep with my prayers—for Sir John, for Anne, for myself.

  We all attended Mass—the entire Seymour household, save Sir John. It was quick and unembellished. The priest mumbling his Latin was as colourless as the grey stones surrounding him. He mustwaiready been plucked bare.

  “A fine crop of pears this year,” said Cromwell, once again picking up my own unspoken thoughts. “The warm, clear May when they flowered, followed by all the rain, was just what a pear tree wants.”

  A good thing that something wanted More and Fisher’s wretched rain and storms. Certainly the grain crops hadn’t, nor had the people.

  “Try some of its elixir,” said Cromwell, handing me a small silver cup of perry—a fermented drink made from pears. Saluting one another, we sipped. The liquid was smooth and delicate.

  “Yes, the rain did them well.”

  He put down his cup and looked at me, waiting, his black eyes deep and understanding.

  “Crum, I have been hunting in the West for the past fortnight.” I knew he knew that—undoubtedly one of his spies had found his way to Wolf Hall —but it was courteous to volunteer it.

  He smiled. “And was the hunting good?”

  “Indeed. Hares, stag, roe—we dined to bursting on game every night. I had forgotten how very much I enjoy being a hunter. You hunt, do you not, Crum?”

  “With hawks, yes.”

  “I’m told you have a fine collection of hawks. Where are your mews?” Not here in London, surely.

  “In Stepney.”

  “We must hawk together soon.”

  “I would be pleased.”

  Pause. Enough pleasantries. “We must hawk together indoors first. There is one who flies at too high a pitch, one who never should have been empowered to fly at all—one who must be brought down and sent away,” I said. “Her feathers must be plucked, and she must be sent away, out of the royal mews.”

  Was there the smallest hint of a twitch in his lip, a suppressed smile? “The Queen does fly high,” he said, slowly but boldly.

  “It is in my power to lower her as surely as I raised her up. I would be rid of her, Crum, I would be rid of her. She is no wife to me.” More than that I would not say; it was not meet. Crum should be privy only to my conclusion, not the reasons behind it.

  “You would send her away, or un-wife her? Which is your wish?”

  “To un-wife her. That, above all!”

  Crum stood up—with my leave—and began to walk a bit. Up and down, up and down, upon the fine polished wood floor of his chamber. He stood by the window and placed his fingertips squarely on a large globe he had mounted on carved legs, and twirled it. The world spun, a glossy pattern of coloured countries and seas.

  “If there is a fault with the marriage that invalidates it, the world will consider the Princess Dowager vindicated and restored to her rightful place.”

  Katherine. Here in London she seemed nonexistent, vanished into the mists of the fens. Certainly she had ceased to exist for me. But to the Emperor and the Pope, all of England was the same, London no less remote than Kimbolton.

  “You will m">The Seventh Commandment: Thou shalt not steal.

  She had stolen the throne, had stolen the rites and anointing appropriate to a true Queen.

  The Eighth Commandment: Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

  It forbids lies, rash judgment, detraction, calumny, and the telling of secrets we are bound to keep. She did not tell lies, she was a lie! The Father of Lies had lain with her....

  The Ninth Commandment: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife.

  She coveted others’ husbands. Me, in the beginning; then Thomas Wyatt, Francis Weston, even her brother George. All were married, yet she demanded that they pay court to her.

  The Tenth Commandment: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s goods.

  Greedily, Anne had always looked to the possessions of others, wanting them to spite their owners. I remembered the insistence on depriving Katherine of the christening gown, of the royal jewels, on taking over Wolsey’s York Place. She desired the things only because they were treasured by an enemy.

  “Thoughts lead to deeds,” I said. “Must we wait for a murderer to murder?”

  “We must, as God Himself must. Besides, in the eyes of the law, he is not a murderer until then. Your Majesty ... can you not clarify the problem regarding the Queen? I could help you so much better if I knew your meaning exactly.”

  No. To let him be privy to my knowledge might endanger his life. The Witch would know.

  “No. It is enough for you to know that I must be rid of her, divorced from her. Find means to effect this! Use all your subtleties, use all your powers, but bring it about!” The same instructions I had once given Wolsey about Katherine, and he had failed. “Fail me not; it is a desperate situation!” Crum was not bound by his own glory and reputation; he was much freer to act than Wolsey had ever been. His own ambitions did not hobble him from serving his King. Our self-interests were perfectly in harmony.

  “I will need time,” he said. “It would perhaps be beneficial if I were to attend the Queen’s Michaelmas festivities to observe. If you could secure me an invitation?”

  So Anne was planning yet another of her fetes. “Yes, of course. Is it to be a large one?”

  “The entire court, so they say. I did not receive an invitation. The Queen has never ... cared for me.”

  “How ungrateful, considering that you masterminded the great revolution which she now uses as her throne.”

  He shrugged in mock humility. “I have not exhausted my capacity to mastermind, and nothing is secure forever.” His eyes were alight, like those of a small boy given a great wooden puzzle. His ingenuity was being challenged and given a chance to fly, hunt, and bring down prey—like one of his beloved hawks.

  I had received an invitation from Anne regarding the fete in honour of Saint Michael the Archangel and All Angels, to be given by Her Majesty the Queen, the time, the particulars, all interwoven with a curious pattern of black and white, in which gradually the design changed from one to the otherster
de Solicitor-General, was standing between Chancellor Audley and his wife. His utterly featureless, forgettable face smiled blandly, blankly. His lips moved, saying nothing. Yet his testimony had helped to convict More.

  More.

  His replacements and inheritors milled about: Thomas Wriothesley, another “find” of Cromwell’s, strutted about pointing and mincing. He had lately aristocraticized his name from Risley to Wriothesley and talked in what he assumed was a fashionable soft tone. Beside him stood Ralph Sadler, a pleasant little rodent of a man; William Petre, sweet and malleable; Bishop Stephen Gardiner, calculating but inept—an unfortunate combination.

  They all left a bad taste in my mouth. I found myself wishing to spit, particularly on the plume of Risley’s rakishly affected hat.

  It was with relief that my eyes found another group of “New Men.” There was William Parr, barely twenty, but with a gravity of manner that suggested an earlier era. He was from a northern family, one that had served me well against the Scots. His sister, Katherine, married to old Lord Latimer, was beside him, her youth not at all compromised by her husband’s needs. Although he was also from Lincolnshire, he kept a London town house and brought his wife often to court, where she sought out the few remaining scholars and Humanists, pointedly avoiding Anne’s suite. I was surprised—pleased, but surprised—to see her here this evening. Jane Seymour, in pale autumnal gold, stood talking to her, and beside her were Edward and Tom Seymour—the former wooden and mannered, the latter preening like a multihued cockatoo.

  The older men stood off in another clump by themselves—the Duke of Norfolk, looking as though he had an indigestible lump of suet in his belly that was turning his face yellow as well; next to him the Duke of Suffolk, untroubled as always. God, I envied him that. It was a special gift never to spend unrecoverable moments in worry or regret. Now that I knew the true reason for Mary’s death, I did not begrudge Brandon’s remarriage; it seemed a revenge on Anne that he did not grieve overlong. Where was his young wife? Not with him. That was no cause for alarm. Ah, I spied her with Lady Latimer, an equally young but serious woman. So different from Anne, they were....