The Autobiography Of Henry VIII

by Margaret George

  “Abandon her, Wolsey,” I said. “Or never look again for any favour at my hands.”

  I pushed the Wolsey family aside, the warm, clambering boys.

  “I abandon her!” he cried. “I will nevermore see her face! Grant me only your love, that is all I desire, all I need—” He almost clutched at my garments.

  “See that you do.” The pretty Joan Lark was standing in the inn’s doorway, sorrow and fear written on her features. Now I understood her agitation at seeing me. All was clear. I hated her, hated Wolsey, hated their sturdy sons.

  “They are bastards!” I called, pointing at them. “Worse than bastards, they are the offspring of a priest who has betrayed his vows. The most vile of all things!”

  A priest who had betrayed his vows: cursed before God and man. Wolsey himself was a frail reed. “I leave you to God!” I cried. “He alone knows what to do with you!”

  All the way back to London, over the same (but how different!) dull, dead fields, I had but one refrain in my head: Wolsey had loved. Wolsey had a passion. Wolsey had sons. That miserable priest! God had given a sinning priest healthy sons and shoved them under my nose! Why was He so cruel? Why would He torment me so?

  XX

  France. I stood in France, my great army around me. We were besieging Tournai, a fair jewel of a walled city not far from Calais.

  Yes, I stood there, and by my own will. Certainly there had been delays, obstacles that would have turned back anyone less determined. But I had overcome them: overcome the problems of raising, equipping, and transporting forty thousand men, the largest English army ever to land in Europe; overcome the reluctance of those who preached “caution” and warned me, “Do not hazard yourself, England cannot lose its King, especially as there is no . . .”

  No heir. I had overcome my fears in leaving Katherine, once again pregnant (praise to God!), to act as Queen-Regent in my absence, even though the Scots were gathering at our back.

  I had also overcome my innate reluctance to execute the traitor Edmund de la Pole; it was not safe to leave him behind in England, where conspirators stood ready to free him and to proclaim him King. So he perished on the scaffold before we set sail.

  WILL:

  I notice Henry does not linger on this fact, but records it briskly, as a matter of small note. At the time the people referred to it as “spring cleaning at the Tower.”

  HENRY VIII:

  I had even overcome the timidity and lack of firm plans from my “committed allies.” Ferdinand had yet to meet me, and Maximilian had only just shown up, without troops, offering to serve as a soldier under my command whilst we besieged Tournai.

  The Holy Roman Emperor was an odd little man, with reddish gold hair and a chin sticking out like a shelf. He appeared so affable that one never questioned his thoughts or his motives. Yet this man controlled the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, and bits and pieces scattered about Italy and France! Now he trotted about in my wake as I inspected cannon and their positions, helped load and fire the bombards (our sulphur from Italy was certainly superior, thanks to the Pope, and gave a nice explosion), and at night he dined with me in my collapsible timber house (which boasted all the amenities of my Privy Chamber at home, including my great bed.) He also relieved himself in my private stool-closet, discreetly attached to the house. After dinner, candles flickering on our massive formal dining table, we spread out maps and discussed strategy.

  “Tournai will look pretty, razed to the ground like Thérouanne,” chuckled Maximilian. I had besieged Thérouanne for twenty-three days, and when at last it had surrendered, I ordered everyone out and destroyed it.

  “I will never raze it,” I said. “I plan to incorporate it into the Pale of Calais, make it English. Why”—I thought of this on the spot—“we’ll send representatives to Parliament!”

  “Your Grace!” laughed Wolsey. “That would mean you would have to garrison them. They’d never go to Parliament otherwise—they’re French!”

  “Well, parliament is a French word,” said Brandon, attempting to be jolly. “It means ‘let’s talk.’ And that’s all Parliament does—talk, talk, talk!”

  “Aye, aye!” The rest of the company laughed, just to be a part of the merriment.

  “Thomas More speaks of a silent Parliament,” Wolsey said. “He plans to lead one.”

  “More speaks of many things, most of them preposterous,” chimed in Edward Neville. Sir Edward Neville: I had knighted him just four hours past for his bravery on the field.

  There had been much bravery on this campaign. I was astonished at how very brave an ordinary man can be when confronted with the enemy. The first night we marched, it was pouring rain, and we were bogged down in a sea of mud. I rode round the camp at three in the morning, in my armour, to hearten and encourage my men. “Well, comrades, now that we have suffered in the beginning, fortune promises us better things, God willing.”

  Suddenly there was a knock at my door. A Scots herald stood outside, come to declare war on England! He concluded, “My King summons Your Grace to be at home in your realm, on the defence.” He was wearing his clan badge and hat, and seemed oblivious to the fact that his King, James IV, was acting in a base manner in choosing this time to attack.

  “You have come a far way to deliver your cowardly summons,” I said at length. “It ill becomes a Scot to summon a King of England. Tell him that never shall a Scot cause us to return! We see your master for what he is. For we never esteemed him to be of any truth, and now we have found it so. Therefore, tell your master I have left the Earl of Surrey in my realm at home to withstand him and all his power.” Another thought came to me, directly from God. “This say to your master, that I am the very owner of Scotland. He, being my vassal, rebels against me. With God’s help, I shall repulse him from his realm. And so tell him.”

  The Scotsman began to glower. I turned to my Garter-King-at-Arms. “Take him to your tent, and make him good cheer.” The chivalric amenities must be observed.

  As soon as he was out, Wolsey asked, “Can Howard hold them? We feared this!”

  “God will hold them,” I said. Strange that I should be the one to trust in God, whilst Wolsey trusted in details. He had provisioned this French campaign: he had seen to the barrels of tallow to keep the bowstrings supple; the balances and weights to weigh the proportions of saltpetre, sulphur, and charcoal to fire the cannon; vinegar for cooling the guns in action; leather buckets for carrying gunpowder; and so on. But God was not a factor.

  True, other churchmen fought. Fox and Ruthal both had battle-armour and commanded one hundred men apiece, and Pope Julius led his troops in person. But they surely carried Christ postilion with them. Wolsey rode alone, in front of his two hundred men.

  “God will prosper all our doings,” said Sir John Seymour, one of my comrades-in-arms. Steady, reliable, level-headed. A true Englishman.

  Tournai fell after only eight days’ siege. Each of the Twelve Apostles (for I had ordered them, and they had proved magnificent) got to fire only once a day at the city walls, before the white flag waved and a ceremonial surrender was arranged. Tournai gave itself up to us, and we entered it in triumph, with a great procession. The people shouted and called me “Alexander.” My men, riding behind me, were heaped with flowers and ribbons.

  That day I kept my armour on far past sundown, revelling in its rigid casing and Spartan embrace. Every time I wished to bend, its stiffness reminded me that I was a warrior and a conqueror. I had it on yet when the letter came from Katherine. I remember, because I had to remove the gauntlet, the iron glove, in order to break the wax seals and unfold the parchment. And it was dark then; I had to order more candles to be lit so that I could read clearly.

  That day I was indestructible, inviolate. I knew the news could only be good. Therefore it was without surprise or even jubilation that I read that Thomas Howard had met James IV at Flodden Field on September ninth and, by gunfire and arrow-storm, destroyed the Highlanders and their leaders. James IV a
nd his bastard son Alexander had both perished within a yard of the English standard. The bishops of the Isles and Caithness, the abbots of Inchaffney and Kilwinning (had they thought of Christ?), the earls of Montrose, Crawford, Argyle, and Lennox, together with most of the Scots nobility, had been massacred.

  Twelve thousand Scots had fallen on that wet and cruel ground of Flodden. They were decimated. Scotland was destroyed for a generation.

  “Your Grace,” wrote Katherine, “shall see how I keep my promises; sending, in exchange for your banners, a King’s coat.” I opened the pouch attached; inside was a royal coat, cloth-of-gold, soaked and stiff with a King’s blood. It had rents and slashes from battle-axes and swords. Holding it up before me, I felt fear, not joy. I dropped it on the ground.

  “Scotland, and its King, have perished,” I said, to inform the waiting men-at-arms around me, companions, my fealty-sworn soldiers: Brandon, Neville, Carew, Bryan, Seymour, Boleyn, Courtenay.

  They let out a great cheer. “A glorious day!” yelled Brandon.

  “Our King is mighty, he destroys his enemies!” cried young Courtenay.

  I stepped to the door of my “house” and looked out across the flat plains of France, feeling the wind in my face. Whenever I want to recall that moment, that high moment of military triumph, I have only to close my eyes and open a window and let the wind blow steady and a little cold across my cheeks and lips. I do it sometimes, in moments of uncertainty. Then I become young again, and mighty.

  WILL:

  Katherine thought she was pleasing him by sending him the bloody Scots King’s coat in exchange for the captured Duc de Longueville. As if they were an equal exchange!

  Katherine was very devoted to Henry; Katherine was very competent and loyal; Katherine was very stupid in crucial ways.

  HENRY VIII:

  We landed at Dover, almost four months to the day since we had set sail for France. Then, there had been all the excitement of seeing France—I, who had never seen any of England, save the parts around London—and fighting there, against great odds. France had proved fair; and I had proved a warrior. Now part of fair France was my booty.

  All along the Dover-London road, my subjects were waiting. They wished to see us, touch us, call their greetings. We had done well; we had touched a nerve in Englishmen, and aroused a longing in them. And next year we would further satisfy that longing, for we would invade France yet again, this time well coordinated with Ferdinand and Maximilian. This season’s campaign had been but the beginning.

  WILL:

  It was here that I once again saw Henry VIII. I was one of the throng along the selfsame Dover-London road, and I was eager to glimpse him, the Boy-King. I stood for hours, so it seemed, waiting for a hint of movement on the road stretching away on either side. The King is coming. No, the King will be an hour yet. It was interminable, yet I dared not leave. At length—it was almost noon, and we had been waiting, standing, since dawn—he came into view, sitting proudly on a great white horse. He was dressed all in gold, and he himself was gold: his hair, his eyes, his glowing skin. He looked fresh, and as full of grace as any knight new-blessed at Jerusalem. My—whatever it is within the breast that expands into life at such moments—pride, for want of a better word, was touched, and I felt ecstatic beholding him, both as if I were King myself, and at the same time awed that we had such a King.

  HENRY VIII:

  Katherine was awaiting me at the Palace of Richmond. When I reached London, so eager was I to see her I did not bother to change my travel-stained clothes, in which I had lived since boarding my warship at Calais. Instead, I changed horses, so that I might gallop to her on the fastest steed in the royal stables. I had been faithful to her all the time I had been away, even during that time in Lille, between the besieging of Thérouanne and Tournai, when we celebrated our first victory and there were many Belgian ladies eager to “comfort” a warrior-king. . . .

  I had never been unfaithful to Katherine. I did not believe it was right. I had pledged myself to her, and I would keep that pledge. My father had never been unfaithful to my mother. I could not have borne it if he had insulted her so.

  The towers of Richmond Palace, rising pale and beseeching against the blanched autumn skies. Inside, inside, was my wife. Mother-to-be, victor at Flodden Field . . . oh, truly I was blessed.

  Down the walkways (people on all sides pushing, claiming me) I flew toward the royal apartments. And there she was, at the entrance, like any schoolchild, not a royal daughter of Spain. Her hair glinted gold in the murky light. Then it was embrace, embrace; and I felt her warmth in my arms.

  “O Henry,” she whispered, close by my ear.

  “The keys to Tournai.” I had carried them on my person. Now I presented them to her, kneeling.

  She took them, clasped them. “I knew you would win a city. So many times, as a child, I saw my mother or father return with such keys, keys wrested from the Moors—”

  So. She compared the memories. Ferdinand and Isabella driving the Moors from Spain, pushing them back, city by city. Could her husband measure up?

  We were traversing the royal apartments. We would go to hers, as the King’s were dark and silent and not yet in order. “The Moors are back in Africa, where they belong,” I said.

  “Yes.” Her face was shining. “And the Scots are back in the mountains, where they belong.”

  In her withdrawing room, we stood still a long moment and kissed. Her lips, how sweet!

  “You put Moorish honey on your lips,” I murmured.

  “I do nothing Moorish!” she said, pulling away.

  “Surely the Moors had good things to give Spain—”

  “No. Nothing.” Now her lips, so soft, were set in a hard little line. “There is nothing good from the soft beds of the East.”

  “Yet you spent your girlhood in the ‘soft Moorish East.’ ” I teased. “Watching the fountains play in the Caliph’s Palace in Granada. Come, teach me.” I reached out for her belly.

  Which was flat. Entirely flat, and hard as her mouth had been when dismissing the Moors.

  “He died,” she said softly. “Our son. He was born the night after I received word that the Scots were massing. In between midnight and dawn. Warham christened him,” she added. “His soul was saved.”

  “But not his body,” I said rotely. “You say—‘he’?”

  “A son,” she said. “A little son, not formed enough to survive. But enough to be baptized! His soul has gone to Paradise.”

  “Now you do sound like a Moor.”

  My son. Dead.

  “It was the Scots,” I said. “They killed him. Had it not been for them, and their dastardly attack, you would not have delivered before your time.” I broke away from her. “They stand punished. Their King is dead.”

  A present King for a future King. Had they truly been punished?

  I came back to her and enfolded her in my arms. “We will make another King.”

  I led her into her sleep-chamber. But it was not duty that called me, but desire, as Katherine was at her ripest and most beautiful: a queen who defended her realm, a mother who mourned a son, a daughter of the East who could give exotic pleasures, no matter how her Catholic conscience denounced them.

  XXI

  In recognition of their services on the battlefield, I restored Thomas Howard to his lost dukedom of Norfolk; and I made Charles Brandon the new Duke of Suffolk.

  WILL:

  A title recently vacated by Edmund de la Pole, as it were.

  HENRY VIII:

  Wolsey, too, must be recognized. God had opened many Church positions in the last few months, as though anticipating our needs. I gathered them up, making a bouquet of them, and presented them to Wolsey: Bishop of Lincoln, Bishop of Tournai, and Archbishop of York. In one brief ceremony he catapulted himself (like one of the cannonballs from the war machines he had helped supply) from simple priest to powerful prelate. “For a man only lately a mere priest, you aim high.” I smiled. “I lik
e that.”

  “What else could I aspire to?” He attempted a look of innocence.

  “What else, indeed? And for what do you intend this palace you are planning?”

  Wolsey had just acquired the lease of a tract of land far upstream on the Thames from the Knights Hospitalers. He had consulted masons and builders and had twice already braved icy riding paths to inspect the grounds.

  “Hampton? ’Tis not a palace, ’tis but a manor house. An archbishop, after all, must have quarters befitting his office.”

  “There’s York Place for that.”

  “It’s old and damp.”

  “So are my palaces. So, my friend and minister, you aim at something grand. How would you like a . . . cardinal’s hat?”

  “Yes.” No disclaimers, no hesitation. “Cardinal Wolsey. That’s higher than Canterbury. A cardinal would be a worthy representative and minister for you. As King, you deserve no less a man to serve you.”

  His flattery was so ready. “Oh, yes. I owe it to myself to make you Cardinal. Let’s see, now. There is a new Pope. What is he like? How best should we approach him for this little favour?” I paused. “We’ll flatter Leo. He’ll send the cardinal’s hat, never fear. By this time next year . . . I’ll be King of France, and you’ll be Cardinal Wolsey!”

  And I would be a father, pray God. The Queen was pregnant again, and surely this fourth time we would have what we—and England—so deeply desired. And urgently needed.