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

by Margaret George

  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.

  I knew what I must do. Go to Brandon’s coffin, where it stood before the high altar. There I would say farewell to him, privately.

  The church was empty. The great catafalque stood, like a building itself, black and square, blocking the altar. All about it flickered tapers, lit hours ago and now burnt half down and guttering. They illuminated the coffin in a ghastly, pagan way, jumping like sacrificial maidens.

  I knelt on the stone steps. I closed my eyes and tried to see Charles, tried to conceive of his really being there. In my mind I knew his corpse rested somewhere within the great black-draped box, but in my heart I had no contact with him. Charles ... what had been my last words with him?

  That night he had come on board Great Harry ... what had we said as he took his leave? What was it, what was it?

  “It will be a long night,” I had said. “My thoughts go with you.”

  “To be alive is to fight the French. Remember, Your Grace, how we planned it all, at Sheen?”

  “Old men fight boys’ battles. Well, good night, Charles.”

  “Good night, Charles,” I repeated, and touched the mourning-cloth. “You spoke true. ‘Remember how we planned it all, at Sheen?’ And we lived it. To live a dream is life’s highest reward. Sleep well, my friend. I join you soon.”

  I started to rise, but now it all came rushing back upon me. His hand-grasp at Sheen, when he had caught me scrambling over the wall. His bedding of me after I had just wed Katherine of Aragon, and I such a frightened virgin. His acting as my champion throughout my madness with Nan, even enduring censure from his wife. His faithful support of me after Jane died. Suddenly I saw his face in all its ages, heard his laughter, felt his love; that love which had always been present, supporting me. The love which I had sought elsewhere, never realizing that I had had it all along.

  Now I was alone. The one person who had truly loved me, and known me throughout all my life, was gone. Brandon had loved me when I was yet the second son; had taken my side when Arthur still held favour and sway.

  I put my hand up along the great coffin. “I love you,” I said, as I had never said to any woman.

  As if sealing a pledge, I pressed my hand down upon the black velvet; kept it pressed there as long moments passed and I heard the discreet coughs in the rear of the cavernous chapel. The official watchers waited to God of His great mercy to take unto Himself the soul of our dear brother here departed, we therefore commit his body to the ground: earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust: in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, through Our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall change our vile body, that it may be like unto His glorious body, according to the mighty working, whereby He is able to subdue all things to Himself.’ ”

  The Duke’s household chamberlains came forward and broke their staves and threw them into the pit, signifying that their master was departed forever.

  Now the grave was ready to be filled in.

  “Let us now pray as Christ hath taught us,” Cranmer said, and led us in the Lord’s Prayer.

  Out in the dazzling, hot sunshine, we blinked. We were still alive; that was the shock, not the brightness or the incongruity. Inside, all was stopped and cold. But outside, all the while, life was burgeoning. Insects attacked us and bit us. Flowers drooped from the heat of the sun; the attendant had forgotten to water them the evening before. The sheer busyness of life seemed a sacrilege. We were immediately sucked back into its demands.

  Outside, people gathered in little knots and began talking—the more frivolous the subject, the better. There is a great need for that after a funeral, and I had no doubt that many would engage in the marital duty as soon as they reasonably could. It almost seemed to be a part of the obligation—or perhaps the rebellion against death.

  You see how alive we are? As long as we do this, you cannot touch us. This certifies how alive we are. Nothing of your domain, death.

  In the Great Hall of Windsor Castle, the funeral feast awaited. I had ordered the finest cakes and meats to be provided, and the best ale from Kent. The traditional little funeral cakes from Suffolk were provided by the household baker from Brandon’s estate of Westhorpe. He had made each one exquisitely, with the ducal arms in miniature on the lid of the pie.

  “To honour my master,” he had said, when presenting them. They must have taken him days.

  “He is honoured,” I assured him, “in servants like you.”

  I eyed them now, neatly arranged upon the royal gold platters. Why are exquisite foodstuffs part of death? The living expect to be fed, even though they have done no labour.

  The hall was filling up now, as the mourners came in out of the sharp noon sun. The two factions of the Privy Council grouped about their rallying points—Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey—like eddies of a whirlpool, black cloaks turning slowly about their centres.

  About the Seymour centre there were William Petre and William Paget, the principal secretaries; Tom Seymour himself, of course; and important, but missing, was John Dudley, serving now in Boulogne as captain.

  Swirling and circling around the hub of their wheel, Henry Howard, were Bishop Gardiner; the Duke of Norfolk; and Thomas Wriothesley—the conservative spokes.

  When had these factions arisen? There had not been factions when I had had Wolsey the other. Now both parties snapped and snarled at one another like rabid dogs in August. What was the purpose of factions? To steer the sovereign in one direction or another. But this sovereign would not be steered—surely they knew that.

  Then it must be another sovereign they sought to control.

  Edward.

  They foresaw my death, and looked ahead to the control of Edward.

  It was my funeral they celebrated now; mine after which they congregated and ate their meat pies and laid their plans. This was how it would be. This was its true rehearsal. It was one thing for me to realize this; it was another for my enemies to do so.

  Damn them! I would stay alive as long as possible, thwart their plans!

  In truth, there was no one fit to rule in my stead. There must needs be a balance between old and new, the selfsame balance as existed inside my head. Therefore, therefore—I must appoint both factions to act as Protectorate Council for Edward. They would cancel out the bad aspects of each other. But, oh! so cumbersome ...

  I looked at them. They were such small men. The meek shall inherit the earth. But what is the translation, the exact translation, of meek? Surely it is not “colourless,” “shortsighted,” “timid.” Such were the men who strove to guide England.

  I walked about the guests, smiling and pleasant. My person was now so large that dragging it about was an effort for me and meant that I could address only the person standing directly before me. I spoke to Brandon’s widow, Katherine, who, although tear-streaked, seemed reconciled to “the hand of the Almighty.” I talked with my nieces, Frances and Eleanor: pretty lasses, and seemingly healthy and intelligent. They had married and had children already —unlike my own childless, bastard daughters....

  The sun streamed through the high-placed windows of the Great Hall. I took a seat—a great mourner’s bower, all decked in black—and watched. I felt dead myself, and my whole being ached. There was but a little way to go, and it must needs be alone.

  Kate was talking with Tom Seymour. I saw them, far down on the floor below. (Is this how hawks see?) I wondered what they were saying. I watched her face, and it was a face I had never seen. She loved Tom Seymour.

  I knew it, and even could say the words to myself. She loves Tom Seymour.

  Now I indeed felt buried in the crypt with Brandon. All he had experienced, as a true knight ... and yet never, never had a woman he loved, loved another man first and thoroughly. He had died without that wound.

 
Well, our wounds are our selves.

  I swung myself down from my seat, addressed the company, and went to my private apartments.

  But not before I began to see strange horns sprouting from the hired mourners’ cloaks, shimmering and glowing.

  CXXX

  All this took place over a year ago. And what has happened since then?

  In regard to France, prudence dictated a settlement, although God knows I have no love either of prudenraw up a peace treaty. That was after New Year’s, and there were festivities honouring them, although they were faint and lacklustre compared to similar events in the past. Oh, how we used to celebrate treaties! I remember the Treaty of London in 1518, when Mary was betrothed to the French Dauphine, and Wolsey so happy, and Katherine of Aragon so glum. And then ... but I ramble. Yes, there once were bright festivities. But brightness has dimmed—or perhaps my eyes can see beyond the lustre to the hollowness now, and so I spare myself the expense and participation altogether. Thus I allowed the French to buy back Boulogne for two million crowns over an eight-year period. It is worth more than that to England, but only if we could truly defend and victual her on a permanent basis. I tried to do that, and failed. Now I had to give her up, like a wife I could not keep.

  Wife. Kate ... ah, Kate. A wife I could not keep. Well, no more of that.

  My health continues to improve. I have grown a bit more unwieldy, but the corner has been turned, and as my leg is now completely well—no more attacks!—I hope to begin exercising shortly, and regain my youthful shape. It is still there, hidden, and I will bring it forth, now that my illnesses are past.

  Even though I am completely well, daily I work on my will, setting forth the secret governing council for Edward, selecting and culling names, then discarding them. It is a great labour. No one is to know of my plan. I keep them all in the dark. There are surprises in my choices! I outsmart my councillors. They think they know me, but they do not. I have hidden my papers well, inside ... no, I will not write it here. But I mean for the “changers” to be checked and balanced by the “stayers.”

  That is why I had to chop off the head of the serpent, the Howard serpent, Henry. He meant to coil round my Edward, imprisoning him. Venomous, ugly thing. I stopped him.

  But all is well in the kingdom now. I have kept my naughty factions balanced and soothed, and they have caused no further problems.

  Only the voices in my head, the annoying visions, have proved a problem. Occasionally I have done things I could not remember, but always I have rectified them as soon as possible, and no harm has been done.

  Oh, yes—there was that fool who just recently (yesterday, or was it longer ago?) asked me what my earliest memory was. I was cross with him. I must send for him and make it up. Those sorts of things, those tidying-up things, occupy me much of late. Yet majesty must always be gracious.

  It is time-consuming, making up for the voices in the head. But they are growing less, and then I will have more time to attend to the things dear to my heart. I have waited all my life to do so. At last it is almost at hand. O, to be just a man!

  CXXXI

  WILL:

  And there it ends, just as the King himself did, some few days later. King Henry VIII died when he was fifty-six years old, in the thirty-eighth year of his reign, expecting to live and reign much longer.

  He was never the same after Brandon’s death. Despite the brave words in his journal, he was melancholy and ill—either in body or in spirit—ibr most of the time remaining to him.

  The things to of succession, yet remained illegitimate—a neat bit of legal juggling by their father to increase their rights and desirability as wives without compromising his belief that he had never been legally wed to their mothers. He loved those daughters, and wanted them to have as full and happy lives as possible. (A love sparsely returned on their parts. If the unnatural act reputed to Queen Mary is true, then indeed King Lear was well served by Goneril and Regan in comparison. To curse and desecrate her father’s skeleton ... !)

  As to the French, the Scots, the Emperor, the Pope—well, as you know, Francis died directly after Henry, although he rallied long enough to send a teasing, insulting note to his fond old rival before both expired. The Emperor resigned his crowns, the Netherlands one in 1555, the Spanish one in 1556, and retired to a Spanish monastery. The Pope finally led his General Council at Trent, which hardened, rather than softened, the position of the Catholic Church against the Reformers. A battle line was drawn, and the Church seemed ready to fight rather than compromise. Why, it was almost as if she had principles!

  The Scots actually show signs of succumbing to the Reformed faith, which would change the entire character of their realm, in relation to both England and the Continent (requiring them to find some Scriptural excuse for their money-grubbing). It is true that Mary Queen of Scots adheres to the Old Faith; but increasingly she is at odds with her Council and countrymen and isolated in this matter of religion, so that she has to import foreigners, Italians and French and such, to buoy her up in her faith. A surprising turn of events, would you not agree—although you hold that the Lord directs the Protestant victory?

  As for the King’s will: what a troublesome document that turned out to be! He used it to control his councillors, waving it over their heads like a schoolmaster with a whip. Do this, and (perhaps) I shall instate you: do not, and you shall (probably) be omitted from my will. He kept it in a secret place, amending it constantly (oh! he was old: only old men act so!), tut-tutting over it. The price he paid for this old man‘s—and tyrant’s—luxury was that upon his death it was unsigned, almost undiscovered, and questionably legal.

  Those constant games that he played with his courtiers led them to play games with him. Hide the document—hide the news. Dangle me—and I dangle you. Divide and rule—unite and outsmart. The last few months were so Byzantine I felt that Suleiman would have been perfectly at home amongst us. Intrigues, flatterers, panderers, betrayers all stalked the corridors and Long Gallery at Whitehall, where the King lay fighting the Angel of Death. Factions in the Privy Council waited to seize power, sure that they could trounce their adversaries. When the old King was dead, when the breath was out of him at last ... then they would move, sweep into power.

  But the Almighty had other ideas, did He not? Little Edward, Henry’s pride: his reign was like a shadow, insubstantial and quickly over....

  And all their machinations and arrangements went down like dust, and they had to flee before Mary, Queen Mary, the Catholic angel of vengeance.

  Now need I set it down, what Henry’s death and interment were.

  The King died on January twenty-eighth, 1547, at two o’clock in the morning. He had been quite ill since autumn, and by mid-January ” They began ransacking the chests, the boxes, the coffers.

  I remembered the journal. It was of no use to them but to desecrate. But where had he put it? The last I had seen it, it was at his desk....

  Feathers were flying. They were ripping open the mattress underneath him, searching for the will. Cranmer begged them to stop.

  “If he’d left the will in a proper place, we’d have no need of this,” they replied. “But no! Like the madman he was, he hid it even from his own Council—”

  I slid open the hidden desktop, and there the journal lay, right in plain view. I took it out.

  “What is that, fool?” Tom Seymour wrenched it from my hands. Upon seeing the tiny handwriting, he lost interest. He could scarcely read.

  “My poetry,” I said. “Ideas for poems I hope to write, upon retirement.” A journal would interest them, threaten them. Poetry would bore them, and be safe. Henry Howard knew that, as he had attacked King Henry under the guise of writing about the Assyrian king Sardanapalus (“... with foul desire/And filthy lusts that stained his regal heart ... Who scarce the name of manhood did retain ... I saw a royal throne ... Where wrong was set/That bloody beast, that drank the guiltless blood”).

  “Fah!” He tossed it back. “
Begone. No one wants you now. It’s our day, the day of the Seymours, the day I’ve waited for since my stupid sister married that rotten, evil hulk of a King.” He grinned and repeated the last sentence in the dead King’s face—the face to which he had always been unctuous and simpering in life. Now I, too, began to see the red in Thomas’s eyes, which the King had recognized in his “madness.”

  I walked out of the death-chamber, the journal tucked beneath my arm. Outside in the adjoining Privy Chamber the remainder of the councillors and courtiers waited to hear the word, to know where the King’s soul lingered. No, in truth, they cared not where his soul was, but only where his will and his gold and his heir were.

  Nonetheless it was a good reign, and beyond the courtiers, the realm grieved his going. He had done well by everyone but himself.

  CXXXII

  I fled down the corridors, seeking only to escape the clutching hands and covetous faces of the self-seekers now gathered around the dead King’s apartments. I found my own quarters and made my way to a pallet without lighting a candle, lest anyone see the light and come to question me.

  When dawn came, I awoke and found that the great palace of Whitehall was still, hushed—pausing for death. The supplicants and mourners had departed, the watchers had gone to bed; the sun was not yet up. Death held sway; Death ruled the realm.

  Where had the scramblers for the will gone? Had they found it? What did it say? Had they scampered off to proclaim the news? Or did they hold it fast, like a cardplayer with a losing hand—hoping for deliverance, for some “rearrangement”? Were they themselves working to bring about that rearrangement?

  I came up to the royal apartments. I had to knock now; there was no friendly King to let me in. The head of the Yeomen of the Guard grabbed me and searched me.

  “What madman woul1; I asked, more in wonder than in anger.