The Autobiography Of Henry VIII

by Margaret George

  The prelates had a table of their own, the one farthest to the right. The Archbishop of Canterbury sat at its head, with the other ranking bishops, like Ruthal of Durham and Fox of Winchester, next to him. The rest of the length of table comprised almost the entire membership of Convocation, the “Parliament” of the Church. Wolsey was not at the table. His rank was too low, for at this time he was only an almoner and a lowly canon of Windsor.

  The long middle table held the peers of the realm and their ladies. There was only one duke in England left now (except the imprisoned Duke of Suffolk): the Duke of Buckingham, Edward Stafford. There had been other dukes, of course, but they had lost their titles, or their lives, or both, fighting for or against Richard III. Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, had fought my father at the battle of Bosworth Field, and lost. He was then demoted to an earl. His partisans put out a tale that after the battle he went to my father and said, “Richard was King, and as such I fought for him. If Parliament would make a post King I would fight for it, too, as would be my duty.” This is absurd, for Parliament does not make kings. And besides that, it is insulting to compare a king to a deaf-and-dumb post, and Howard was more clever than that. Now I was keeping him in the kennel of earldom, until such time as he earned back his title by some noble deed.

  Even the number of earls and, below that, marquises, were slim. The wars had thinned their ranks as well. At my Coronation a number of Knights of the Bath had been created, and these knights were now seated at the peer-table. But I considered knighthood to be properly earned only by valour and prowess on the battlefield, and until such time, there would be no new knights.

  The third table, on the left side, held those dear to Katherine or myself, for any number of reasons of the heart. There was the Lady Willoughby, who was actually Maria de Salinas, Katherine’s faithful girlhood friend from Spain, now married to an old soldier; Lord Mountjoy, Katherine’s household chamberlain, and Edward Baynton, her Lord Steward. Also at that table were my friends of the tournament Charles Brandon, Edward Neville, and Nicholas Carew, as well as Thomas More and Wolsey. A curious mixture, and yet they got on well enough, or so it seemed from where I sat.

  Katherine was on my right hand and my sister Mary on my left. Whichever way I turned I saw a lovely face, each so different. Katherine’s plump and honey-toned, with laughing hazel eyes; Mary’s, long and slender, with ivory skin and eyes the color of a cold April sky.

  “Ah, sweetheart!” I grasped Katherine’s hand and felt excitement there. The six weeks had passed, the ceremony was over. . . . “Thank you. Thank you for this wonderful gift you have given me. A son.”

  She returned the pressure of my hand. “Not I,” she laughed. She had a pretty little laugh in those days—like Spanish bells, I often thought, but never told her so; now I wonder why I never did. “It was God who gave him to both of us.”

  “No. You. You.” I slid my fingers under her belt, out of sight under the linen table-covering, knowing how ticklish she was, wanting to hear her sweet little laugh again. “You gave him to me.”

  She laughed, and I withdrew my fingers. “As you say,” she agreed.

  I turned to Mary. “I hope you meant it when you promised, as godmother, to ‘renounce the Devil and all his works, and the vain pomp and glory of this world.’ Did you?” Now I would tease her as well, my favourite sibling. Mary was fourteen, and already past childhood. She saw herself as a princess from old chronicles, to be wooed and won by a Sir Galahad. In truth, she was fair enough. But how can a princess promise to reject “the vain pomp and glory of this world”? It is what princesses are born to.

  “They do not necessarily go together,” she answered. “I meant the part about the pomp and glory.”

  I was startled. “I would have thought that was the part you’d stumble over!”

  “No. It’s the Devil who attracts me, I fear. There is something desirous in me of . . . not evil, exactly, but . . . some of the temptations of the Evil One.” She was blushing; oh, yes! It was the Devil’s call to her blood that she meant. A yearning our chaste mother had never known—the opposite pole from the Blessed Virgin and her marriage bed with the saintly Joseph. . . .

  “We must marry you soon,” I said, nodding.

  “No! I must choose him, it cannot be just anyone, or I shall be the worse—”

  “I shall choose wisely,” I promised her.

  “But I—” Her voice was rising in distress.

  “Now, now.” I patted her hand as I rose to welcome the company and call upon the Archbishop to bless the feast.

  We dined, as the phrase goes, royally. I shall not bore you with a recitation of the courses. Afterward there was to be dancing; and following that, I had invited the common people to come into the Great Hall and see the masquing. Katherine had disliked the thought of allowing the people into the palace grounds, and had tried to dissuade me.

  “It is not their place to enter into the private grounds of kings,” she protested.

  “Nonsense,” I had said. “That is a Spanish notion.” I had not forgotten that quaint attempt, long ago, to keep Father from seeing Katherine. “Your father and mother may have driven the Moors out of Spain, but Spain remains in the grip of the East, in her veilings between this and that: common people here, virgins there, and so on.”

  “There must be veilings,” she insisted. “And boundaries.”

  “Aye. But familiarity does not break down boundaries. So long as the essential boundary is not crossed, all others can come down.”

  Katherine and I would lead the dancing and then seek other partners, until the entire company had joined in the dance. I was proud to lead her out, proud for her to be beheld as my wife and the mother of my child . . . Jesu, how strange it is to write those words! For we became enemies . . . but then, how I loved her!

  We danced; broke apart, found other partners. I took my sister Mary. She was a superlative dancer. But as soon as I took her hand, she tried to continue our conversation: the one about her husband.

  “To marry without love would kill me,” she said.

  “You will learn to love him, whoever he is. For he will be royal, and the sacrament of marriage gives grace to love.”

  Now the music was rising. I hoped to end this conversation.

  “You are no priest, however much you strive to sound like one,” she scoffed. “Your words are not convincing. Could God have given you grace to love Katherine if she were old and barren?”

  A thumping drumbeat failed to drown out her words.

  “If it had been His will that I do so,” I answered.

  She laughed, a short, derisive cough. The music changed, and so did our partners. She chose Charles Brandon; I chose Maria de Salinas.

  How gracefully the Spanish danced! Maria was tall and slender, unlike my tiny Katherine, but supple as a blade of the renowned Toledo steel.

  “With your English name, one would never suspect the señorita beneath. Until one danced with her,” I said.

  “We love dancing,” she admitted. Her accent had almost disappeared, unlike Katherine’s; it lingered only in a certain cadence to her sentences.

  “Are you happy here?” I suddenly said. “Are you at home here? Do you ever wish you had gone back, like the others?”

  “No. Only I get a longing sometimes, as everyone does, for what I left behind, and remember only in a flawed way. The brokenness of my memories . . . I would like to repair them, someday.”

  An impossible sea-journey. An impossible wish. “In the meantime you are the Lady Willoughby, and an ornament to your husband,” I said pompously. I sensed even then how pompous I sounded.

  A change in tempo: time to break, again. This time I chose a young maiden, blond and soft. She did not dance well.

  “Are you new to court?” I asked. There were many come for the festivities, cousins and relatives of those already in residence.

  “Yes, Your Grace. I have come at the invitation of my uncle, Lord Mountjoy.” She nodded toward the
man Katherine was now dancing with. He was the chamberlain of her household.

  “Ah, yes. A Yorkshire man,” I said.

  “Lincolnshire, Your Grace.” She stumbled against me. Her body felt tender.

  “You do not dance in Lincolnshire?”

  My teasing fell flat. She tried to pull away, thinking I scolded her. I pulled her back. “I will teach you,” I said. “Here at court we all dance. You will need to learn, if you stay, Mistress—what is your name?”

  “Bessie Blount,” she mumbled. Still she tried to pull away, and then stumbled over her feet again. In embarrassment, she stopped dancing entirely. I held her and danced the steps for her, the way a child does its doll. She was as limp and unmoving as any doll. “I shall not stay,” she whispered.

  “Nonsense,” I said. “Do not spend your beauty in Yorkshire. We need you here.”

  “Lincolnshire, Your Grace.”

  The beat changed; the drum thumped. She quickly slid away, and not to another partner, but to shadows.

  When all the company (excepting only the old and infirm) were at last part of the dance, we went on to other steps and other rhythms. The French ambassador was easily persuaded to demonstrate “la Volta,” which he had learned in Louis XII’s court only last summer. Everyone danced there, except Louis himself, who was too aged and fragile to bend his knees.

  Whilst the company was engrossed in the dances, I slipped away to oversee the preparations for the masquing to follow. As I moved along the high walkway connecting the Great Hall with the antechamber, I could see the huge crowd gathered outside, waiting to be let in, as they had been promised. Beyond them, on the hills surrounding the city, the bonfires blazed yellow, red, pink, ordering the skies themselves to rejoice with us.

  “Your Grace.”

  I turned quickly to see Don Luis Caroz, the Spanish ambassador.

  “A word with you, por favor.”

  “Indeed.” I smiled, giving permission for him to proceed.

  “I have not had the opportunity to wish you, in person, my congratulations. It is a great day for Spain, as well.”

  “The daughters of Spain are fair,” I said, “and bring Ferdinand fine grandsons.” Katherine’s older sister Juana had a ten-year-old son, Charles, who was said to be clever, and was likely to become Holy Roman Emperor someday. That is, if he had not inherited his mother’s madness: Juana was known far and wide as “Juana la loca.”

  “Sí, sí.” Now he could proceed to his true business in seeking me out. “Your Grace, have you settled, finally, on the number of archers you will commit to King Ferdinand in Guienne and also in North Africa against the Moors? He is anxious to know, as he wishes his dear son-in-law to share in all his glorious conquests.”

  “Ummm. Yes. I believe I had promised”—a glance out the window, at the dancing bonfires, the happy crowd—“fifteen hundred archers. With longbow, of course.” There was no limit; I could do anything now, and I would. Something sang within me, something that had never been there before. “But I think three thousand would be more helpful. With”—go on, do it, you want to—“new cannon as well. We can test them in the field.”

  “Oh! Your Grace!”

  Had I not promised Father on his deathbed to fight the Infidel? Could I do less, now that God had so clearly shown his favour to me? “It is my privilege to fight the enemies of Christ,” I assured him.

  Outside the crowd moved, like scales of a snake. Snake. I must see to the masque. I nodded to Caroz and indicated that the exchange was over. Still he stood staring at me, his eyes wide and almost fixed. “Your Grace . . .” he said, “your cloak . . . it is magnificent. It blinds me!”

  It was a full-circled cape of cloth-of-gold, weighing almost ten pounds. I pictured with amusement the little Spaniard decked with it. Common men think only of the glow of gold, never of its weight. “It is yours,” I said, unfastening it, and draping it over his shoulders. He almost buckled, with both the weight and astonishment. O, his face!

  Before he could utter a word, I was past him and opening the door to the antechamber, which served as a rehearsal room in which the players were already costumed and speaking.

  “Continue, continue!” I ordered them. I could hardly wait to see this idea of mine enacted: the story of the baby Hercules strangling the serpents sent by jealous Juno to destroy him in his crib. I had needed a large child to play the part of the mighty infant; Sir John Seymour’s six-year-old son Edward was now wearing an infant’s robe and practising throttling the “snakes”—long tubes of multicoloured velvet that had young ferrets inside, so they would move and writhe on their own.

  “I hate the infant!” “Juno” proclaimed, pointing toward the crib. “Jupiter has sinned, and this child is the product of this sin. He must die!”

  Of course the infant prevailed over the serpents, and the happy conclusion was announced by “Britannia”: “Thus perish all the enemies of the King’s babe, who seek to harm him. Jealousy, envy, spite cannot stand against the will of the gods, and their protection gives our prince supernatural strength.” The company then gathered round the crib, raised their arms, and began an elaborate set-dance. I, as Jupiter, would appear in their midst, bringing the masque to a happy conclusion.

  Then we would all come forward, leaving the stage, and present ourselves to Katherine. For it was she I was honouring; she, as the goddess who had brought forth an heir. And if they said it was unseemly for a king to “present himself” to anyone, no matter who . . . well, I would do as I pleased.

  The order had been given, and the commoners admitted to the Hall. I could hear them now, the noise resounding, building to a roar.

  “Let us begin!” I cried, and the wheeled stage was pushed out into the Hall.

  The masque was superlative! Everyone gasped at the costumes, and particularly at the serpents. In the gleam of the leaping torchlight they appeared real: evil, jewel-like creatures, fitting instruments of a jealous goddess. When it was done, and we stood before that vast company, I felt myself overcome. Words I had not known were within me came rushing out.

  “Tomorrow I will ride against any knight in the realm,” I cried. “Here at Westminster, in the tiltyard, I challenge you. Come and meet your King!” A shore of pebbles before me, each pebble a person. A pretty beach. “All of you here . . . I invite you, as no King has ever invited his subjects: come, help yourself to the gold of my person.”

  I spread my arms wide, offering myself: needing to offer myself. They surged forward, all the people. I was enveloped in their warm bodies, breath, strength—for in numbers they were far stronger than any beast. They stripped, first, the gold letters of my costume—the H’s and K’s I had attached to my surcoat. Each was made of pure gold bullion. Then the surcoat itself. Then, handling me, they pulled at my very garments. The handling was fearsome, yet oddly arousing and exciting. Like being caressed by a hundred hands—or being crawled upon by a swarm of insects.

  They plucked me clean, in unceremonious, unruly parody of the ritual observed every evening in my bedchamber by my gentlemen servers. I was left with only my hose and linen undershirt, both almost transparent. I was naked for all to see. My body was displayed before the kingdom. For an instant I stood there, King and sacrifice. Then they attacked the others, Neville and Carew and Thomas Knyvett, stripping them likewise.

  Suddenly it turned ugly. The people were a beast, a beast with fangs, and they turned on the rest of the players, stripping them, and denuded Henry Courtenay, my pretty little cousin. That was enough. I gave orders. The armed yeomen of the guards pushed them back, out of the Hall and back into the common night. It was over for them.

  Katherine was rigid with anger by the time I reached her side. “You have turned this celebration into a mockery,” she said. “You have dishonoured our son. I am ashamed to have you for a husband.”

  I laughed. I knew that in spite of her proper words she desired and cherished me. My boldness appealed to something deep and hidden in her Spanish nature. “
Then I shall dress myself,” I said. “And keep my body veiled forever after.”

  In the privacy of the wardrobe room, I drew on fresh garments. They had actually stripped me to my very underhose! I chuckled as I pictured them the next morning, wondering what they would do with one patch of the King’s vest, or of his sleeve.

  WILL:

  It was hard to say which excited the imagination of my fellow villagers more: the idea of enriching oneself by the gold, or of seeing a King and his Privy Chamberers stripped in public.

  “He let them touch him!” my mother said incredulously. “And he didn’t mind—nay, he invited it!”

  “It was only his wife who made him put them away,” put in my father. This discussion took place at the supper table, while they were ladling out a pungent rabbit stew—pungent because the rabbit was past usual consumption time. My father stuck a large piece in his mouth. “Harry would have had himself naked,” he said, his words slurred because of his chewing.

  My mother tore off a piece of bread from a stale loaf and soaked it in the rabbit juice. “We could have had a gold letter,” she said wistfully. “Then our lives would have changed.”

  “Only for a year,” replied Father. “And then what? Back to foul rabbit stew?” He made a face as he chewed up a semi-rancid piece.

  Neither of them questioned the fact that the King lived in such wealth that the loss of the gold letters meant nothing to him. On the contrary, they were proud of having such a wealthy King. They did not connect their poor eating with the elaborate court masques designed by the revels-master.