Culpepper.
A dozen eyes blinked back at me. I thought my heart would break, I thought myself torn into shreds, as I whispered, “Arrest Culpepper. Question him.” A stirring, and my servants went to carry out my bidding.
It was all coming now, the recall, in brutal and torturous detail. Her pretend-chastity, which I had been so loth to violate that I rushed forward the marriage in such haste; her lewd behaviour on our wedding night, appropriate to a jade who was long past sweetness; Dereham’s Syrian love-cream; Culpepper and Catherine’s absence during my illness, and her skittishness; my attributing her high colouring on those mornings to her religious experiences at Mass; the locked doors on the great Northern Progress, with the trumped-up story about the Scottish assassins, and her kisses and assurances the next morning. O God!
I wept, putting my head down on the Council table. My hat rolled off, revealing my balding scalp. I was naked as I had never been, and I cared not, so great was my grief. I had loved Catherine, had believed her chaste and loving. It was all a lie. She was a whore, a scheming whore, who had gone to court “to make her fortune.”
I swayed up and screamed, “A sword! A sword!”
No one shorhow that you do. For I never longed so much for a thing as I do to see you and to speak with you, the which I trust shall be shortly now.
The which doth comfort me very much when I think of it, and when I think again that you shall depart from me again it makes my heart to die to think what fortune I have that I cannot be always in your company.
My trust is always in you that you will be as you have promised me, and in that hope I trust still, praying you then that you will come when my Lady Rochford is here, for then I shall be best at leisure to be at your commandment.
I thank you for promising to be so good unto that poor fellow, my man, which is one of the griefs that I do feel to depart from him, for then I do know no one that I dare trust to send to you, and therefore I pray you take him to be with you, that I may sometime hear from you one thing.
I pray you to give me a horse for my man, for I have much ado to get one and therefore I pray send me one by him and in so doing I am as I said afore, and thus I take my leave of you, trusting to see you shortly again and I would you were with me now, that you might see what pain I take in writing you.
yours as long as life endures
Catherine
One thing I had forgotten and that is to instruct my man to tarry here with me still, for he says whatsoever you bid him he will do it.
Catherine. Her frantic, muddle-headed “arrangements.” This could be no forgery, for it reflected all too perfectly her personality.
It makes my heart to die to think what fortune I have that I cannot be always in your company....
The “fortune” that kept them apart, that “made her heart to die” was me, my existence, my presence.
Oh, why did it stab me so hotly to realize it, to savour the full meaning? Why did not the full meaning—she was an adulteress, a traitress—cancel out the pain of the little, petty particulars? Yet it was these little things that had the sharpest barbs....
For I never longed so much for a thing as I do to see you and speak with you....
As I had written Anne so long ago, almost the same words-what was it I had said? “her absence having given me the greatest pain at heart that neither tongue nor pen can express”?
Catherine had had the same madness for Culpepper, then.
No, with her it was not so enduring. It was mere lust, not bewitchment.
Yours as long as life endures, Catherine....
She had never written me a single letter.
“Thank you, Cranmer,” I said slowly. “I think it best that you go to her, take her confession now.”
It was the next day, while I was awaiting word from Cranmer, that Will received a message from Lady Baynton, Catherine’s married sister.
“Dereham did what he did by force,” div width="1em">How like Catherine, I thought. She said one thing and now wishes to retract it, like a child choosing trinkets at a summer’s fair. “I like this—no, I’ll have this instead.” But it was no more the time to dance.
At length Cranmer came, so nervous he was trembling. “ ’Tis done,” he murmured. “She has given a confession. Take it.” He thrust it to me, the odious task performed.
“What ... state was she in?” Oh, tell me something of her, what she wore, how she looked—Sweet Jesu, did I still love her, then? I all but spat.
“In a frenzy of -lamentation and heaviness.”
Play-acting! As she had play-acted all along. But what if she were changed? No, impossible. “What said she of Dereham?”
Cranmer reluctantly opened the page of his personal notes. “Of Dereham she said, ‘He had divers times lain with me, sometimes in his doublet and hose, and two or three times naked, but not so naked that he had nothing upon him, for he had always at least his doublet and as I do think, his hose also, but I mean naked when his hose were put down.’ ”
She remembered every detail, she cherished them! Odear God! And the doublet still on—I remembered our wedding night, when she had had me do the same ... it excited her....
I thought the top of agony had been reached, but each day brought new heights, and this confession most of all. I would read it, then, read it and die. And be done with death, as I was already done with living.
It was addressed to me. So she wrote me a letter at last.
I, Your Grace’s most sorrowful subject and most vile wretch in the world, not worthy to make any recommendation unto your most excellent Majesty, do only make my most humble submission and confession of my faults.
Whereas no cause of mercy is deserved upon my part, yet of your most accustomed mercy extended unto all other men undeserved, most humbly on my hands and knees I do desire one particle thereof to be extended unto me, although of all other creatures I am most unworthy to be called either your wife or your subject.
My sorrow I can by no writing express, nevertheless I trust your most benign nature will have some respect unto my youth, my ignorance, my frailness, my humble confession of my faults, and plain declaration of the same referring me wholly unto Your Grace’s pity and mercy.
First at the flattering and fair persuasions of Manox, being but a young girl, I suffered him at sundry times to handle and touch the secret parts of my body which neither became me with honesty to permit nor him to require.
Also, Francis Dereham by many persuasions procured me to his vicious purpose and obtained first to lie upon my bed with his doublet and hose and after within the bed and finally he lay with me naked, and used me in such sort as a man doth his wife many and sundry times, but how often I know not.
Our company ended almost a year before the King’sMajesty was married to my Lady Anne of Cleves and continued not past one quarter of a year or a litignorance and frailness of young women.
I was so desirous to be taken unto Your Grace’s favour, and so blinded with the desire of worldly glory that I could not, nor had grace, to consider how great a fault it was to conceal my former faults from Your Majesty, considering that I intended ever during my life to be faithful and true unto Your Majesty ever after.
Nevertheless the sorrow of my offences was ever before mine eyes, considering the infinite goodness of Your Majesty toward me which was ever increasing and not diminishing.
Now I refer the judgment of all mine offences with my life and death wholly unto your most benign and merciful grace, to be considered by no justice of Your Majesty’s laws but only by your infinite goodness, pity, compassion, and mercy—without the which I acknowledge myself worthy of the most extreme punishment.
She lied! She lied even here, even in her “honest” confession, she lied. Where was Culpepper in this, eh? “I intended ever during my life to be faithful and true unto Your Majesty.” The effrontery, the brazen deceit, in her very crawling phrases revealed that she did not know yet that Culpepper was taken. Her duplicity was stu
nning.
All my love for her ceased upon that instant. I saw her entire, for what she was.
I nodded to Cranmer, who was standing by, near to whimpering.
“Thank you. You have done well,” I said. “A faithful servant is not one who leaps to attend to joyful tasks, but one who takes it upon himself to shoulder the doleful ones. There are many to serve the bridegroom, but no one to lay out a corpse.”
“I am grieved for you, and wish only to help.”
“You have proved yourself over and over, but at no time more than now. I had so many to help me marry the Princess of Cleves. Where are they now?”
“The chief one is dead, Your Grace.”
So he was brave as well as true, I thought. Not one in a thousand would have voiced that, although all would have thought it.
“Cromwell.” I laughed a mirthless laugh. “Oh, how he would have relished these days, to have seen his enemies, the Howards, brought low. To have seen me shamed by that slut! My just reward for having chosen her over Cromwell’s Lady Anne.” Cromwell must be laughing—if one can laugh in hell. I know that demons cackle and jeer, but the damned?
“No one with any heart or goodness could laugh at these circumstances,” Cranmer insisted. Because he was good himself, he could not imagine its absence in others.
“They must be brought to trial,” I said, my mind leaving Cromwell in his shroud. “First the men, then Catherine. See how she feels when Culpepper denies her. As he will. He will swear he loved her not. How will she like that, to be denied publicly by the lover for whom she is giving up everything? That will hurt her worse than the sword which is to follow. He will deny her, you know. He will deny her and throw himself on my mercy.”
I rubbed my forehead. My head was pounding. “The men must have an open trial. Admit everyone at court, and their friends, to attend. Foreig cruel or bloody, but see for themselves how deceived and betrayed I have been!”
He nodded unhappily.
“Do not look so miserable. The worst part is over. Now only formalities and legalisms remain.”
He bowed.
Suddenly I thought of something. “Oh, and Cranmer—bring me back the original letter that Catherine sent Culpepper. I would have it in my safekeeping. Such pieces of evidence have a way of disappearing just before a trial or hearing. As the original Papal dispensation for my marriage to Katherine of Aragon did just prior to the opening of the legatine court; as my letters to Anne Boleyn vanished and reappeared at the Vatican. I shall keep the Queen’s letter upon my person, so that anyone wishing to steal it must steal it from my very bosom.” As my wife was stolen.
But no, she had not been stolen. She had stolen away on her own.
Alone again, I sat down and opened the “confession.” I reread it slowly, word by word, as if this time I would see something that had not been there before, something that would redeem and negate the whole of it.
Instead I found more sorrow than ever.
First at the flattering and fair persuasions of Manox, being but a young girl, I suffered him ... which neither became him with honesty to require....
Francis Dereham by many persuasions procured me to his vicious purpose ... and used me....
The subtle persuasions of young men and the ignorance and frailness of young women....
The tone stank, the wheedling attempt to excuse herself and shift all the blame onto the men. How much more becoming if she had stood up for herself, shouldered the responsibility! Better a proud Delilah than an excuse-making Eve.
And why had she wanted to marry me?
I was so blinded with desire of worldly glory....
The fool! She was too stupid even to flatter! She just stated flatly that she coveted the jewels and gold.
O, I had loved a stupid harlot. Bad enough a harlot, but a fool as well. A girl too unschooled to write a grammatical letter, and too unclever not to insult the very one from whom she was begging mercy! Evil and subtlety, such as her cousin Anne Boleyn employed, were grand snares which could catch any mortal man. But stupidity! I had been ensnared by the surface charms of a simpleton!
CIX
The ugly secret was out and scampering about the realm like an army of rats. It would undoubtedly reach York and Lincoln far more quickly than the progress had, undoing all the good I had accomplished there for the majesty of the Crown. The trial would clarify and satisfy every morbid curiosity, for I cared not if every foul fact were exposed. Let the full abominations be known. I cared not for my own pride; but let no one afterward accuse the state of injustice, or a trumped-up trial, as they had over the Witch.
Catherine was given orders to surrender her royal apartments at Hampton and move, under guard, to Syon House, a former monastery. Her presence there would certainly deconsecrate it, if the Church had not already done so.
Since her hysterical confession, I had sent Cranmer back to >
Faced with Culpepper’s admission, and the evidence of her letter to him, she fainted.
“He could not—he dared not—” she murmured, collapsing. Upon opening her eyes, the first thing she demanded was, “The letter! The letter!”
“It is taken, Madam,” she was told. “The King’s Majesty hath it.”
She keened and wailed. She then confessed to meeting Culpepper in pre-arranged secret places and by the backstairs of palaces; that she had called Culpepper her “little sweet fool” and given him a velvet cap and ring for love tokens.
“But there was no sin between us, I swear!” she wept, with one breath, while with the next blaming Lady Rochford and Culpepper for having pressed her for these meetings.
Lady Rochford had a different tale to tell, one that exonerated her. She had arranged these meetings at Catherine’s mysterious urgings. Furthermore, she swore that “Culpepper hath known the Queen carnally considering all things that I hath heard and seen between them.”
Enough. Enough of this. Now the entire truth must be driven out. Dereham and Culpepper and Lady Rochford and Catherine Howard and all the other Howards must be brought to trial. The preliminaries, the investigations, were over.
Guildhall, in London. The entire Privy Council, and the foreign ambassadors—the French envoys Marillac and Castillon, and the venerable Chapuys—were in attendance when the men were brought before the company of jurors.
I was told that Dereham was charming. His arrogance was gone and he traded on his background, his good family, and his love for Catherine and honest intentions. He cherished her, he said, and his only thought was to make her his wife. He had been heartbroken when he returned from Ireland (whence he had gone only to make his fortune so that he could offer her the luxuries she so deserved) to find that she spurned and scorned him. She was no longer a simple maiden at the Duchess’s, but a girl with a court position, which had quite gone to her head. Her other suitors—particularly a certain Thomas Paston and her cousin Thomas Culpepper (Thomases again!)—did not worry him. It was the King who was his rival, the one before whom he must reluctantly give way. Nevertheless, “If the King were dead I am sure I might marry her,” he had claimed.
If the King were dead. He had imagined my death, wished it. Evil intent, malice in the heart. And then—he had requested a position in Catherine’s household. Clear proof and evidence that he had wicked intentions.
The Duchess had sponsored him in this request. She, too, had a stake in all this. She was involved.
Culpepper was less abject and co-operative than Dereham when first he was brought in. Clearly he disdained to share the floor with a commoner like Dereham. But in a flash of pride he blurted out that all along the progress they had met secretly, with the connivance of Lady Rochford, and always at Catherine’s hot insistenceivyand with the reckless nonchalance that was his trademark, he threw away his life, and Catherine’s. There could be no mercy now, no mercy for any of them. They were a nest of traitors, traitors who had crouched in the royal apartments planning and wishing my illness and incapacity: Dereham seeking a place
in Catherine’s household, and Culpepper conveniently near to “serve” me. Yes, serve me poison, as he had done in March, when I was taken so ill. It was not from God that this illness had come, it was from human hands, in Satan’s service. I had been stricken, had almost died, so that he could have access to the pleasures of my wife’s body.
Die. These instruments of evil must die.
On December tenth, they were taken out of the Tower and transported to Tyburn, the place where commoners were executed.
The Privy Council had advised me that Culpepper’s offence was so “very heinous” that it warranted a notable execution, despite his petition to be permitted the kindness of decapitation.
Culpepper. The pretty, lusty boy whom I had loved, as only rogues are lovable. The serpent I had nourished in my bosom, protecting him from the penalties of his own folly and evil. He had raped a gamekeeper’s wife and then murdered one of the villagers who tried to save her. This was deserving of the death penalty, but I had been dazzled by his beauty and words, and therefore I had pardoned him. In so doing I had done wrong. He had taken it only as licence to continue his evil, not repent it. In showing misplaced mercy I had created a monster.
The traitor’s death: as excruciating a death as human ingenuity could contrive.
Culpepper had earned it. Nonetheless I wrote out on parchment, “Sentence to be commuted to simple beheading,” and sent the message straight to Tyburn to meet the executioners.
Let them call me softhearted, womanish. Could I help it if I had a tender conscience and desired to show mercy?
Christmas. There were no festivities, and Catherine was still a prisoner at Syon House, while I kept to my own apartments and read and reread her letter to Culpepper until I knew every wrinkle on the paper, every ink blot. Why did I do this, like a monk repeating a rosary? Why did I torture myself so? If I thought to make myself insensitive to the wound, it had just the opposite effect: I never allowed it to heal, and by my constant probing, I kept the wound open.
The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers Page 51
