The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers (55 page)

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Authors: Margaret George

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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....
There was William Fitzwilliam, the Lord Privy Seal, of an age with myself, standing with the two Dukes. He disliked Anne (not that he had ever said so directly, but he conveyed it in every disdainful gesture. I would have enjoyed seeing him take the Oath, as he undoubtedly did it with a mockery that belied the words), and his weathered face was set like an obstinate donkey’s as he rocked on his heels and waited for the latest manifestation of her foolishness. By his right elbow was good, solid John Poyntz, of Gloucestershire, with a face like those I had seen lining the roads whenever I went out on progress, and his friend Thomas, Lord Vaux, made a Knight of the Bath at Anne’s Coronation. Vaux bore a remarkable resemblance to Thomas Wyatt, but he had no literary ability whatsoever, even though he attempted to write poetry. Beside all these stood Cranmer, primly and eagerly, as though he really enjoyed this and awaited the “entertainment.”
In another self-contained circle were Edward Neville, Nicholas Carew, and Henry Courtenay, a sort of old snowbank of privileges and ideas. Left over from an earlier time without ever having achieved or striven for anything then, they were melting in the new times and felt themselves trickling away. Chapuys was with them, his swift movements and nervous energy always a pleass surprised to see that Satan was handsome. His face was even familiar, but, in the flickering footlights, appeared altogether new. It shone with supernatural beauty.
“I am he, the light-bringer, Lucifer, the morning star,” he said, and indeed he was all these things.
Evil was not always ugly; it was at its strongest when disguised as an angel of light, and who knew that better than I?
“Fight with me!” he exhorted us all. “Together we shall defeat the angels and reign forever in heaven!”
A battle ensued, and only the Archangel Michael and his hosts of extra angels routed Lucifer and his black legions. All about the Great Hall, braziers were lit, and clouds of smoke poured out, enveloping everyone. The fight on the stage extended to us as well; suddenly both angels and devils were amongst us, shrieking and struggling. A great heavy wing smashed against my chair, scattering feathers; and three demons scurried after its owner and crawled between the rungs of my chair. I recognized one: Francis Bryan, with his eyepatch. Then a familiar gesture, the way he tossed his hair, betrayed another, and my heart froze: Henry Norris was decked out as a demon in Anne’s masque. The fight turned real; swords were drawn. The onlookers joined in the pandemonium, and yet I cared not. A drowsy lethargy had sunk over me, paralyzing my limbs and dazzling my mind. The smoke ...
“Opium.” Anne, once again, read my thoughts. “Purchased at great expense and trouble from the East. It is the Great Lethargy, Sloth in a powder. ... But watch now, it will prevent any harm.”
The swords slowed their momentum, dropped by their owners’ sides. Motion turned to heaviness. Only the demons retained their quick movements, as if immune. They shrieked and raised their arms, and from beneath the black-draped platform swarmed a horde of evil beings: werewolves, phantoms, mummies, banshees, ghosts, grave-worms, corpses, witches, warlocks, decay, regret, remorse....
Anne rose beside me, crying out with them, her red mouth open and curved, and I knew her for a vampire, eager for blood, as she had sucked mine and turned me, too, into a creature of the night, a creature who had changed into something alien, and lived by others’ blood, even the blood of his friends.
She took my hand, and I rose with her. I had become as she was: just as evil, just as bloodthirsty, just as tainted. Her lips had infected me, corrupted my being. Yet I would not be that way, I would be redeemed.... In vain I looked for an angel. I saw only a dismembered wing lying on the floor, torn from its shoulder harness and with its wax frame sagging and trampled.
My head spun; my senses were suspended. I felt myself following Anne, letting myself be pulled along a dark, muffled, secret passage leading away from the Hall. Westminster was full of such secret ways and connections, fashioned as it was in ancient times. Anne was taking me away, away from the safety of the others, and this moment was one I could no longer avoid or postpone.
Her fingers were slender and cool as the jewels upon them. Her face was seen only in brief licks of light from the guttering torches in their iron sockets. Behind her, her costume streamed out—great, billowing, smokelike puffs. I was drugged; the opium smoke had stunned me, like the smoke from Jane Seymour’s torch putting the bees to sleep.
We were in a chamber. It was a small chamber, hung with filmy draperies. There was a strange odour within. I had never smelled it before, and it bore no lto any other; therefore I cannot describe it, save that it was sweet and caressing.
“The end of the fête,” I said slowly. It seemed my lips were numb.
She drew back her hood, which shrouded her face. The coverings fell and her face, unique and entrancing, was revealed. To see it was to remember, and to relive, and then to enter once more into the past, when it had commanded supreme obedience and longing in my heart.
I knew better, and yet I loved her once again.
Almost all of me did. The conquest was not complete, for there were parts of me new-formed since first I had loved her, and those were not in her power to reclaim; those stood apart in clucking denunciation. But for the rest, they rose up like the dead at the Day of Judgment. And once again there was that rush of feeling, of transport, of excitement.
But not quite. It was not quite the same. I knew more now, it had all been spoilt somewhere along the way, and that lodged itself like a stone in a shoe; we may run, and leap, and bound, yet the landing is sharp, and so we do not bound quite so high or exuberantly ever again.
I loved her with all my might and heart; but soul and mind did not enter in. This time they demurred.
She came to me and kissed me.
How many months, how many years ago had I longed for her to do exactly that? There had been a time when I felt near death because she did not. Yet here it came to me, unbidden and unsought, with her body pressed up against mine, and all the gestures I had once so coveted, and while it was exciting, it was not soul-satisfying. I had grown beyond whatever hunger she once could have satisfied.
Yet my body—my Judas-body, ever the betrayer—responded and for an hour or so helped me believe that I had not changed, that all was as it once was.
“My Lord, my love, my dearest—” Her words poured, molten, in my ears. There was, of course, a bed, all bedecked in the sheerest linen, laid with furs and pillows of swan’s down. Anne had arranged all this, had had servitors set it all up, much as I had once done in heated anticipation in my own chambers.
Her words, her hands, her voice, all reached out to me and sought to claim me. Because I was stronger now, and essentially free of her, the appeal was all the more poignant. I could appreciate, as I never had before, the exquisite little things about her: the way she drew aside her clothes, even folding them without actually folding them; her dramatic ability to turn a little storage room into a chamber of carnality; the sensuality behind her desire to watch the light playing on the opalescent surface of the draperies, so that they seemed to pulsate and throb from within. I saw all this, and appreciated it; but the appreciation itself was somehow an enemy to, and acknowledgment of, lust sapped by time.
Was it all gone? Of course that is always the question. If I wade out into a pond, it may seem, on the surface, calm and empty. How safe to shrug and clamber ashore again, never venturing to plunge below the cold, demanding, slimy surface. If I lay with Anne upon the bed, what would happen? Could I predict how I would feel? Did I dare to find out?
She pulled me, and I followed. Yes, I would do it, because if only I could feel those feelings once again, it would words pouened and was larger than ever. Ugly black streaks spread out on all sides of it. Dr. Butts was still with Mary, and I did not wish to separate them, so I was forced to treat my affliction myself. None of Dr. Butts’s associates was knowledgeable enough—or discreet enough —to involve himself with my illness.
Meanwhile, the reports were that Mary did not improve. Neither did Fitzroy, who was wasting away before Henry Howard’s devoted eyes. I could not bring Mary here, for security’s sake (unless, of course, she took the Oath), but I could bring Fitzroy.
Then came word that Katherine had fallen ill—“obviously,” said the report, “of poison.” Thus, in spite of Katherine’s precautions and suspicions, Anne had prevailed. Whether by natural methods (bribed cooks, powders) or supernatural, no longer mattered. What mattered was that Anne had prevailed. And she was now pregnant, carrying a child, with the Act of Succession vested in that child, and we had all become dispensable, I most of all. As the pain shot through my leg, I had a constant reminder of that.
Chapuys was frantic with worry about both Katherine and Mary, and betrayed his very real personal affinity for them, apart from political maneuverings. He begged for permission to visit Katherine, but I withheld it for a time. I knew that any attention from Chapuys, with its representation of outside concerns, might stir Anne to injure Katherine further, until she was beyond help from any quarter. To flatter me, Chapuys pestered me for a tennis match, something I had long ago urged upon him.
“In the enclosed court at Hampton, we can play during the nasty weather,” he said.
“Perhaps. Perhaps.” I could not run about on this infected leg, but I hoped it would diminish by Christmas. “At the holiday time, when we move there.”
Would I even be walking by then? What would Anne’s hand have done to me by then? I must consult with Cromwell, my totally unscrupulous and utterly discreet Cromwell.
 
“I must be rid of her!” I cried.
“We have already determined that as long as Katherine lives—” he began.
“Aha!” Therein her own hatred and jealousy was her undoing! For, out of spite, she was causing Katherine to languish and fail. “If Katherine should die, then Anne can be set aside,” I finished.
“In a special limbo designed for ex-wives,” suggested Cromwell.
“By God, you sound as if you expect it to be a permanent position, created by me!” I barked.
“No, no, Your Majesty,” he assured me. “Nothing of the sort. It would be an unnecessary expense to the Exchequer—on a permanent basis.”
I settled myself more comfortably on my chair, and rested my leg upon a padded footstool. I wished I could mention my leg to Crum, but I dared not. I realized with a start that I trusted no one now; there was no one I knew to whom I could reveal any intimate thing about myself without fear of betrayal. So that was what Father had meant. It was loathsome, this aloneness. He claimed it was the price of kingship. Was it? At present, the answer was yes. Was it worth it? The answer to that was also yes. One can get used to anything.
A wad of pain worked its way up my leg, and it was all I could do to keep from crying out. “So that the moment the child is born ... she may be sent away.” My belly contracted with the pain, but my will kept the cry of pain from escaping. Crum never heard it.
“There are rumours,” he said. “Rumours that the conspirators stand at the ready in Northumberland and along the West Marches to spirit Katherine away.
Would he never be gone? I could not mask this pain much longer. “So the dream has come about, and the Papal forces are ready to move,” I said. “It was inevitable. Yet”—another spasm of pain—“if Katherine is ill enough, it all comes to nothing.” Yes, the Devil was stupid to wound Katherine.

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