The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers (49 page)

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

Authors: Margaret George

BOOK: The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers
8.47Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
It was time for yet another audience. I motioned Henry Howard to come to me. He galloped up to my side, his pretty face seeming even more fresh than the snow.
“You are of an age with my son,” I said. Mary was lost to me, but not Henry Fitzroy. I must not neglect one for the heartbreak of the other. “You were born in 1517, am I correct?” I knew I was. I was master of just such minutiae.
“Yes.” He was surprised, then flattered, as we all are when someone remembers a personal fact about us.
“Seventeen. My son, Henry Fitzroy, is two years your junior. I would give him a companion to share tutors and pastimes with. Would you find that to your liking? I would treat you as princes together, at Windsor. What say you?”
“I say—I say yes,” he said. “Oh, yes!”
Two not-quite-princes, but both having princely blood. “Good. My son needs a noble friend. And you, I think, need to be with others of your age and station. Both of you have been too long confined with women and old men.”
His laugh told me I was right. “In the spring you shall come to Windsor,” I said. “Directly after the Order of the Garter ceremony, in which both you and he shall take your places in that noble company.” In one offhanded phrase I had elevated him to the highest order of knighthood in thme tds attention and affection. As does Henry Howard. They are both sorely neglected.”
“Henry the Good Samaritan,” she mocked—or did she? “That is not as others perceive you.”
“If you are to be Queen,” I reminded her, “you must cease to be concerned with how ignorant people perceive you. Only be concerned with how God, who sees all, perceives you.”
We finished our stew—it was delicious, seasoned with herbs I could not identify—in silence. Then I said, “Parliament opens two days from now. They will be enacting the bills concerning our marriage and Elizabeth’s primacy of succession.”
This is the moment,
I wanted to say.
The moment that makes my love for you a matter of law. And treason.
My private passion had become a concern of lawmaking bodies.
“This Oath that will be required . . . it will first be administered in Parliament.”
“And then to everyone.” Her voice was calm.
“All it will require is that . . . that the person swears that Elizabeth is the heir to the throne, excepting any sons we may have.”
“So simple. How many words?”
“Twenty, thirty. But . . . there are meanings behind the words. We know what those meanings are. There will be some, perhaps many”—how many?—“who may find it difficult to take the Oath.”
“Because they are not hearing the words of the Oath, but the imaginary words behind it.”
“Yes.”
The dinner was done. The food, the plates, like all meals finished, were repulsive. I could not leave them soon enough. I stood, and we sought a padded bench on the far side of the chamber. I rang for the leavings to be removed.
“The Oath is my pledge of love to you,” I assured her. “It is the greatest offering I can make you.”
She laid her gentle hand on my shoulder.
Just then the servitor came to clear away the things, so we remained frozen in our words and actions, but not in our thoughts. Those continued to race, change, rearrange themselves. By the time he left, they were of another order entirely.
“You will not flinch?” she said. “Even though perhaps those you care for, consider dear, may refuse the Oath?”
“Flinch?”
“Refuse to punish them? To let them suffer the penalty of treason?”
“I never flinch.”
Who would not sign? Some would; I refused to predict the actions of individuals . . . of those I loved....
Anne was with me, Anne for whom all this had come about. The restorative magic of food was spreading itself all throughout my body, with wine following in its wake. I was floating. . . .
Anne was beautiful, worth all I had had to move to have her. Now I wanted her.
Yes, wanted her! The miracle was here, it had happened after all. My powers were back....
And Adam knew his wife.
I knew Anne, or felt I did. Knew her to every sinew and bone, so very like mine....
Or so I believed.
LVIII
A
t midday, three days after my return, I went to Parliament in state.
The Thames being frozen, I could not be rowed in the royal barge to Westminster, where both houses were meeting for the opening. Instead I had to walk, with a full complement of retainers and advisors, under a canopy of royal estate, carrying the mace of England, along the Strand. I was gratified to see that windows were still opened and people still hung over the sills to glimpse their King, and that their cries were gladsome ones. What would they change to after Parliament had finished making its bills?
 
Inside the antechamber at Westminster Palace, I fastened on my heavy gold-and-ermine robes and had the crown placed on my head.
The King in Parliament
was about to take place: my presence, united with Parliament, was the highest law of the land.
Both the Lower House (Commons) and the Upper House (Lords) were gathered together in the Lesser Hall today, a chamber tiled in green and white. In the middle of the room, four ceremonial woolsacks—enormous tasseled bundles saluting England’s foundation of financial greatness, wool—served as seats for judges and record-keeping clerks, as well as for Sir Thomas Audley, the Lord Chancellor, More’s successor.
The House of Lords consisted not only of fifty-seven peers (“Lords temporal”) but of fifty high-ranking clergymen (“Lords spiritual”) as well. Commons were about three hundred strong, elected knights and burgesses from all the shires of the realm.
The Lords sat on benches arranged in a great double rectangle around the room, prelates on my right and peers on my left; the Commons had to stand outside, at the bar, behind their Speaker. I sat upon a throne overlooking them all, under a white embroidered canopy of estate, set up on a dais covered in blue and gold—gold Tudor roses and fleurs-de-lis. Flanking me on the dais were my advisors and councillors, particularly Cromwell.
This was the fifth time this Parliament had sat. It was to last for seven years, and become known as the Long Parliament. Thus far it had enacted many things, but they had been aimed primarily at abuses that had long rankled good Englishmen: the separate privileges of the clergy, the taxes and tithes to Rome. This time was different. This time I would ask them to define treason—according to my terms.
Standing before them, my crown heavy on my head, I spoke.
“Before you are bills which will define the meaning of treason. We had always thought we knew the meaning of treason. It was instantly recognizable, as we recognize toads, snakes, vermin. Who could mistake a toad for a tabby cat?”
Laughter.
“But in these perilous days, it is not so simple to distinguish. Our ancestors had only to be alert for snakes and rats. But in our sad days, alas—even Satan can disguise himself as an angel of light.
“That is a quotation from Scripture,” I continued. “That is just an example of how things have changed. For translated Scriptures abound, and any man might chance to read them—aye, read them, and misunderstand them!”
and1em">
“Parliament has taken the Oath, and all the heads of London guilds,” I said. “When the weather breaks, then we shall send the commissioners to the rest of the realm.”
“It will be June before Northumberland and the Marches are accessible,” he said. “You will have to rely on the Percys to protect the commissioners and smooth their task. The Percys ... a thorn in Your Grace’s palm. Henry can be trusted, but he’s dying, so they say.”
Anne’s Henry, her girlhood love. Dying? He was so young, Anne’s age.
“He was puny.” Crum—as always—answered my unspoken question. “The North did not agree with his delicate constitution—neither the climate nor the manners. He could thrive only in the softness of a court.”
But you made that impossible.
Tactfully, he did not say it.
“The French court, more like.”
“Indeed. Where one could be—what was it ‘twas said about Caesar?—‘every man’s woman and every woman’s man.’ He evidently could not satisfy his wife. She left him and returned to her father’s home. Wretched creature, Percy. A decrepit boy.”
“So by August the Oaths should have been given, and received, in every reach of the realm.” Enough of Percy, of his dyings and inadequacies.
“Yes. The names of the loyal will be in our hands, also of the dissenters.”
“Then we shall have to decide how to deal with them.”
“Death is the penalty prescribed by law.”
Yes, the law was very clear on that. But executions . . . there had been no executions in England except for heinous, active treason, like the Duke of Buckingham’s, for thirteen years. (The Duke had intended to conceal a knife on his person and assassinate me during an audience.) But automatic executions for refusing to sign a paper?
“The sentences must be carried out, else no one will trust the law or believe Parliament can enforce what it passes,” Crum insisted.
“I pray that all may take it,” he added. “For their sakes, and ours.”
 
Was I duty-bound to try to warn those who might consider refusing? Those who might not realize that the time for temporizing had run out, that the law would show no mercy? It would be on my conscience if I did not.
Conscience? No, that was my excuse, a high-sounding one. The truth was that love—if I had love for these people—commanded me to do it.
Mary I had already gone to. Katherine I could not, as she was near Cambridgeshire, and travelling was impossible just now betwixt there and London. I could write her, advising her of the danger she was in.
More. Thomas More, in Chelsea, keeping to himself since he had resigned as Lord Chancellor. Writing his everlasting books, his letters, his devotions. The Bishops of Durham, Bath, and Winchester had sent him my twenty pounds to buy proper robes to come to London and attend Anne’s Coronation with them. He had declined the invitation, with an impertinent “parablesisteda little way into the water. Not only had it not been enlarged to accommodate larger vessels, but it had declined sadly from what it was. The planks were gamely mended, but still warped and sagging; the entire thing swayed under my weight.
Down at the watergate More was waiting, leaning against the wicket. He was as brown and plain as a wren, weathered like the planks of his decaying pier.
“Thomas!” I said, hoping not to betray my surprise at his appearance. “I have so looked forward to this time!” I motioned to my servitors, carrying the fitted box with its precious set of one-of-a-kind lenses, and the astrolabe swathed in velvet. “Now we shall catch her out—Dame Luna.”
He reached out his hand and grasped mine. “You are heartily welcome, Your Grace.” He opened the gate and bowed low. I strode in and encircled his shoulders with my arm, hugging him close to me. He did not resist. Together we walked toward the house.
In the fragile, cold twilight it was quiet. Unlike that happy, lazy summer afternoon (the only other time I had visited him), there were no servants scurrying, no children romping on the grass. The beehives were dormant, and even the goats were nowhere to be seen.
“My children are married,” he said, seeming to read my very thoughts. “Grown up, gone away. Elizabeth married William Dauncey, and Cecily, Giles Heron. My father died recently. Even my little ward, Margaret Gigs, has married my former page, John Clement. Dame Alice and I are left quite alone. It happens much sooner than you think.”
“And Margaret?” I remembered his bright, shining daughter.
“She married her Will Roper,” he said. “Another lawyer. Our family is beset with them. We need a farmer or a goldsmith to give us diversity.”
“You had a Lord Chancellor and a Parliamentarian.” I could not help saying it.
“Three generations of lawyers,” he said, ignoring my gibe. “But the house will not be entirely empty and sedate tonight. I have asked Margaret and Will to join us. Ah!” He gestured toward a glowering, dumpy figure standing in the doorway. “Here is Alice.”
If More looked like a wren, she looked like a buzzard. Thickened and soured since our last meeting, she was a pudding gone bad.
“Your Grace.” (Such venom in the words!)
I passed into the winter parlour, and was shocked. Much of the furniture was gone, the tapestries taken down, the fireplace cold.
We have you to thank for this,
Lady Alice seemed to be saying, in everything but words. But which “you” did she mean? Me, for my Great Matter? Or her husband, for not bending himself to it, for absenting himself from power and court? They went hand in hand: my Great Matter was his as well.
More never sought to explain or to apologize for his reduced state. He seemed to accept it as natural, as he accepted the coming of spring. “We will kill the fatted logs,” he joked, “for we have a great and honoured guest.” In that way he ordered a fire to be kindled, lest I take cold.

Other books

A Difficult Boy by M. P. Barker
Watchers by Dean Koontz
Crashed by K. Bromberg
Chasing Temptation by Lane, Payton
Break Point by Danielle LaBue
An Idol for Others by Gordon Merrick
Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague de Camp
Murder by Mistake by M.J. Trow
Aurora in Four Voices by Catherine Asaro, Steven H Silver, Joe Bergeron