The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers (71 page)

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Authors: Margaret George

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How neat and vague and high-minded. But what if questions were asked? Must a King open himself so personally to public knowledge? How much would people demand, and how far was I bound to answer?
I found I could not sign the paper. I would have to search the matter out more fully with Cromwell in the morning.
XCI
“I know not
how,
precisely. But it disturbs my conscience.” What disturbed my conscience, truly, was the putting away of a good woman for no other fault than not exciting me.
“It need not be done at all!” he said merrily. “Perhaps these pricklings of conscience are showing you another way, the most righteous way!”
Any chance that his handiwork would survive elated him. But it could not be.
“Nay, it must be done. It is necessary for the realm that I have a true Queen and perhaps other heirs. It would give Edward comfort, too, not to carry the burden alone.”
Cromwell nodded, as he had to; wondering if a new Queen on the throne would represent all manner of connections he had sought to quash.
I turned quickly and swung round to glance at the parchments spread out on his work-surface. They were innocent enough, or seemed to be. One never knew. They might contain codes; I knew he had devised some. To disguise his plans?
I then let my eyes search his chamber. The light was so poor it was difficult to see into the far corners. I thought I saw a shelf laden with odd-shaped vessels. Abruptly I made my way to it, taking one of the candles with me. Behind me I could hear Cromwell following anxiously.
Yes, it was a row of jars and bottles and little boxes. Some were evidently quite ancient; I could tell by the worm-eaten wood.
“What
are
these things?” I asked. I reached out and took one, a rounded container with a hinged lid. Inside was some sort of ointment. I took a smear of it. It smelt vile, like a decaying animal.
“I said, what is in these containers?” I repeated. How dare he not answer forthwith?
“I—it is—medicines seized from the monastic infirmaries,” he finally said. “That one you hold—it was used to help failing hearts... you remember ... as Carew had, that time in the cave—”
Carew. Yes. Unfortunately, his heart had finally ceased to beat due to his treason, not to his disease. But for others who had the same affliction... ?
“Is it efficacious?”
“Indeed! It saved many lives; the monks of that abbey were noted for that particular cure.”
“Why, then, have you not made it available to our own physicians?”
“The monks—it would reflect well on them if it were known that they had devised such cures. No, I prefer—”
“You prefer to hoard these medicines here! You prefer men to die rather than think well of the monks!”
“It is
necessary
to discredit the monks!” he insisted.
“Necessary for whom, Cromwell?” I murmured.
The clock outside struck the half hour. I used listening to the clock as a pretext to approach the window-seat laden with the mysterious books.
“Ah, yes,” I mumbled, opening the casement. I stuck my head out and rested my left hand on the sill, quite nds were raw. There, now they should be clean! I held them out to receive a coat of perfumed lotion.
I called for a Privy Council meeting in mid-morning. I wanted to give them their assignments, make my humiliating “confession,” and have done with it. By this time tomorrow, I kept reminding myself, it would all be over.
I sat alone in the chamber, awaiting them. I was all attired in sombre garments, befitting a less than joyous occasion. Brandon and Wyatt would carry the message to Anne, I had decided. As for the horrible acknowledgment—the entire Privy Council would have to hear it, to make it both official and binding.
The first man into the chamber was William Paget. Stolid and utterly colourless and reliable, he was Secretary of the Council. He coughed and bowed deeply to me, then quietly took his place and awaited the others.
Within three minutes William Petre arrived, clad likewise in colourless, drab attire. On his heels came Audley and Sadler. As they took their places, I could not help but think of wrens and poor winter birds sitting in dreary tiers on bare December branches.
Then came the Old Men, all resplendent in luscious colours and sumptuous fabrics. Norfolk, of course, as ranking peer of England, draped in velvet; Suffolk, in cloth-of-gold; even Gardiner, as Bishop of Winchester and leader of the churchly traditionalists, along with Wriothesley his hanger-on, were brightly attired.
At length the filing-in was complete and they all sat, obedient to the day’s business. As the King never personally attended Privy Council meetings, they knew this was no ordinary agenda.
I rose. “My good Council and servants”—I stressed “good” and “servants” —“I am here to share with you a secret matter of mine own heart.”
They looked uneasy.
“Yea”—I pulled the prepared statement from its cover—“I, having contracted a marriage in good faith and having participated in a marriage ceremony with all good intentions, find now that my marriage is no true marriage in the eyes of God and the laws of men.”
I looked up at their faces. They appeared frozen. Good.
“The Lady Anne of Cleves was not free to make such a marriage, so it seems. There was precontract, from childhood, to the present-day Duke of Lorraine. This evidently is binding in every way.”
Now for the difficult part. God, how I hated it!
“Our bodies, in recognition of this, refused to join. We have remained chaste, and have not known one another.”
The Earl of Southampton tittered. Then the others followed suit, trying all the while to suppress their mirth. The more they stifled it, the more it grew.
Damn them!
“So you wish to know the exact details?” I said sharply. Such a hush fell over them that a man scarce would have credited it. “Very well, then!”
Do not
do this,
one part of me said.
Yes, do!
another taunted.
Outdo them in vulgarity and embarrassment.
“When I first came to the bed of the Lady Anne, I felt by her breasts that she was no young maid; their slackness, and the looseness of her belly-flesh, so struck me to the heartred and looked weary. But not afraid. That was good. That meant they had not failed in their assignment. Somewhere in the welter of rolls they carried on their persons (and it seemed they had more than a stag had antlers, so did they protrude all over) were the signature and seal I craved.
“Well?” I rose from my chair.
“She agreed, Your Grace,” sighed Brandon, pulling out the one paper that mattered and handing it to me.
I grasped it and let my eyes run like a leaping child to find the requisite signature, down far at the bottom:
Anna, Princess of Cleves.
“Christ be praised!” I muttered.
Only then did I think to offer them stools to sit upon, and some nourishment. It had been a gruelling day for them as well as for me. Gratefully they seated themselves and held out their dusty hands for bowls of water to wash them. A page performed the duty.
“The Queen—Lady Anne—had a hard time of it,” spoke Wyatt in a hushed voice, as his hands were being dried.
It was to be expected. After all, she loved me, and had assumed she would remain Queen of England forever. “Yes, I pity her,” I said. And I did. I knew what it was to suffer unrequited love, or to be deprived of a station in life to which one felt called.
“She fainted when she saw us appear round the hedge to her garden,” said Brandon.
Fainted? Could it be? No, absurd! She was no Virgin Mary, to bring forth without knowing a man. Where had my fancies taken me? She had done it out of love, out of desperate love.
“Poor lady,” I murmured.
“She thought we had come with her death warrant,” continued Brandon. “She thought to be arrested, tried, and then executed.”
I chuckled contemptuously.
“She was clear frightened, Your Grace. You had shown your disfavour and lack of consent from the start, then sent her away without you. She is no fool. I am sure she is well acquainted with the course of behaviour you took with Anne Boleyn. The withdrawal, the disfavour—all was being repeated.”
“Save that she had no lovers!” I shrieked, turning round. “Save that she was no witch! Save that she did not plan my death! Small differences, would you not agree?”
“Aye, aye,” murmured Wyatt.
“By all that’s in heaven, yea,” echoed Brandon. “She revived promptly,” he added.
Her strong constitution would see to that, yes. “She seemed delighted with the agreement, and the terms. In half an hour she changed into the gayest maiden I had beheld in a season.”
Gay? Delighted? To lose me as a husband? I remembered Katherine’s agony, her insistence on keeping me as her spouse.
“She sent you this token.” Brandon took out a velvet pouch and produced her gold wedding band.
“Well, well,” was all I could say. Anne had agreed. I had won.
I gestured toward the darkened window. “Tomorrow I’ll sendOatlands, just a high-ceilinged chamber on the second storey, hung with hunting trophies. Stags’ heads and boars’ heads stared at us with their glass eyes.
Catherine and I sat side by side and laughed at everything. We laughed at Brandon when he stood up, cup in hand, and made a solemn toast about matrimony. He himself had been married four times, and had been one of the chamberers on my wedding-night public bedding with Katherine. It all seemed to come together now, all was one. We laughed, and we touched. And touched. O sweet Jesu! That touch!
We smiled at Cranmer’s gentle well-wishes. (And touched.) We clapped at the Lady Mary’s. (And touched, under the table, lest she see.) We bowed gravely at little Edward’s. He spoke three words in Latin, memorized for the occasion. And all the while the sun was lowering, making shadows on the rows in the grain fields outside. At last it set, but the interminable summer twilight lingered on and on, until I longed to order it to disappear.
At long last it grew dark enough in the feasting chamber for candles to be lit, then torches. It was time for our guests to take their leave, and so they did, with kisses and well-wishes. There was to be no ceremonial bedding this time. Like any wool merchant or soldier, I was free to take my bride to my bed unaided.
It was a new bed, purchased from a local magistrate in the nearby village of Weybridge. He had commissioned it from a London artisan, meant it for a grand guest chamber he had had in mind for a manor that never came about. It was of good English oak and agreeably carved, and quite large, in aping the nobility. It stood now in the royal Retiring Chamber, its great four-posts scraping against the sloping ceiling.
I led my sweet Catherine into the chamber, closing the snug, dark door behind me. It was passably dark in there, and the one lighted candle on the wooden chest danced in the billowing summer air. Two dormer windows gave out on the ripening fields. I made to close them. Catherine stopped me, putting her soft hand on my arm.
“On this my wedding night,” she said, “I would not be shut up and closed, as in a tomb. I would have a little breath of heaven, of the world beyond.”

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