The Autobiography Of Henry VIII

by Margaret George

  The plans were drawn up. My world was ordered, like a chessboard freshly laid out with new ivory pieces. How the board—the squares and duchies of Europe—gleamed before me! On my side were Ferdinand, Maximilian, the new Pope, Leo. We were to launch our attack on France on many fronts simultaneously, coordinating them by means of the fastest messengers in Christendom (albeit mounted on Arab horses). Katherine and I spent hours imagining the battles Ferdinand and I would fight as comrades-in-arms; she longed to cross the sea with me and fight alongside us. Only the coming child prevented her.

  “With the Scots vanquished, I could come,” she said wistfully. “Only I would not endanger the child for anything in this world.” She patted her stomach tenderly.

  “Nor I, my love.”

  “I am so deeply happy that you and my father will meet at last.” True, I had never seen Ferdinand, except through Katherine’s devoted eyes. “And that you have chosen—or rather, allowed me to choose—a name from my family: Philip Charles.”

  The men in her family seemed blessed with vigour and longevity; perhaps I had become superstitious about the doomed Henrys, Richards, and Edwards in mine. In any case, it seemed a small enough concession at the time. Anything to keep Katherine happy so that the child might grow in peace.

  “Aye, yes.”

  Her devotion to both Ferdinand and Jesus often interfered with her devotion to her husband’s earthly needs. More and more I had found those needs taking on a life of their own, pulsating within me and demanding a hearing. They cared little for Katherine’s scruples, or for mine, either. I was twenty-three years old and a man, that was all they knew. Katherine’s maids of honour, her ladies-in-waiting, particularly the Duke of Buckingham’s married sister, seemed to rouse that imp within me. Satin pulled taut over breasts roused it in me.

  The sound of a lute in Katherine’s outer chamber called it forth like a cobra rising to a snake charmer’s flute. Out there would be the ladies, the maids, playing tunes, passing time, all arrayed in satin and velvet. Like a sleepwalker, I was drawn away. Like a sleepwalker, I was an onlooker only; all that ever happened was in my own head.

  The foul letter lay there like a dead fish, stinking with corruption, slime, and rottenness. Ferdinand had played me false, had betrayed me all along. At the very hour when I was entering Tournai in conquest, he was signing a secret peace treaty with the French. His toady and minion, Maximilian, had followed suit.

  This whole long winter, whilst plans were being meticulously formulated, munitions ordered, supplies replenished (the precise image of these things danced across my brain!), and my flagship taking shape, board by board, beam by beam, at great cost and rush, so as to be ready for launching in June . . .

  And I had even called a Parliament, humbled myself to approach them for money . . .

  Ferdinand had already betrayed and abandoned me, leaving me either to call off the war and look the fool to the entire world, or else fight the French alone.

  The Judas!

  Blood rushed into my head as all these images (the Parliament, the flagship, Ferdinand signing the secret treaty; his partisan daughter, Katherine, singing his praises) clashed at once. I felt I would explode, only no words could utter my rage. Spittle came into my mouth and all but choked me.

  Grabbing the letter, I rushed to Katherine’s quarters, as maddened as any hashish-chewing infidel. She was, as usual, “at prayer.” I pushed aside her wheedling little pet priest, Fra Diego (a Spaniard!); in fact I grabbed him by his pectoral cross and spun him by it, and flung open her chapel door.

  Her back was to me, all golden in velvet. I strode over to her and yanked her up off her knees.

  “Well, Madam, what say you to this?” I shoved the offensive letter right up against her nose. “You knew it all along! You betrayed me along with him! You’re his creature, you sneaking little . . . foreigner!”

  She snatched the letter and her eyes skimmed it. “I knew nothing of it,” she said calmly.

  “Liar! Liar!” How dare she lie? Did she think me that stupid, that much of a dupe? Perhaps I had been, but no more. God, how I hated her. She had never been anything but a Spanish spy in my bed.

  “I know what you are, now! What you have been all along! An agent for Spain, put here to make me clay in Ferdinand’s hands, a vessel—a vassal, ha ha—for him to piss in! And that’s all he’s done—from the episode in 1512 with the archers, to the non-appearance last summer, and now this. Tell me—what are his latest instructions to you? What are you to do now, my sweet spy? For I know he’s sent you instructions. I know there’s a letter here, someplace—” I rushed from the tiny chapel to her work room, with her desk and locked boxes. “Yes, it’s here.” I tested the little rounded wood box nearest to hand; naturally it was locked. I smashed it open. There was nothing inside but inks and seals.

  “But of course, you’d never put it there. It’s hidden. No, not even that. You’re too clever. You memorized it, then destroyed it. It’s all in here.” I put both my hands on the sides of her skull. “If I smash that, too, will the letter pop out?” I squeezed, hard.

  “You are behaving like a madman,” she said, in a strong, unflinching voice. Courage—she had that Spanish courage. “A madman, not a King.”

  “What are your instructions?” I insisted in a parody of a whisper, close to her ear. “I will have them.” I turned her to face me. “Were they to wheedle more money from me, for one of your father’s causes? Were they to send me to a war alone, to weaken England so that others can claim us? Yes, turn us into meat for anyone’s taking . . . he’d like that, wouldn’t he?”

  “There are no instructions, and I have never acted with loyalty toward anyone but you. If Ferdinand has betrayed you, then he has betrayed me also. From henceforth I renounce him.” Her voice was filled with sorrow. Very convincing. “It grieves me that my father should care so little for me that he would do this to my husband.”

  Father! She was grieved for him, not for me.

  “Well, you’ve lost him! Do you understand me? Swear by this cross”—I stepped into the next room and plucked it from the anxious priest’s neck—“that you renounce him. With no reservations, no conditions. Else I will divorce you!”

  She looked at me in disbelief.

  “Yes, divorce you! You are either my wife, and loyal to me, or his daughter. His actions prove you cannot be both, and keep your honour. Swear!”

  She clutched the cross. “I swear that I am, and ever will be, a loyal and true wife to my sovereign lord and King.”

  “That’s only half! Renounce him!”

  She clutched the cross so tightly her knuckles looked like clay marbles. “I—renounce—my natural father, Ferdinand.” She seemed to shrink with each word.

  “There. That’s done. And if you’ve sworn falsely”—I took the cross from her limp and sweating palm—“you’ve damned yourself.”

  “You know . . . there’s no divorce.” Her voice was small.

  “Oh, yes, there is.”

  “Annulments, yes. But divorce was forbidden by Our Lord.”

  “As an ideal, yes. Like ‘be ye perfect.’ Just bring me a son, and there’ll be no divorce.” Then I thought of something else. “I think it best that you sever all reminders of your former connections to your other life. There’ll be no ‘Philip Charles’ in the Tudor family. I’ll find a good English name.”

  Turning, I left her standing in her work room, tears streaming down her face. But instead of a helpless, frightened woman, all I saw was a tool of the evil Ferdinand, a viper I had nourished in my breast, had crowned and set up in my own household.

  I remained in that state for the better part of the evening. Vesper-time, when I was wont to join Katherine at her prayers, came and went. I knew she would be waiting for me. But I could not bring myself to join her. I expected her to send a message to me. But she did not. Good. Just the sight of her handwriting would have inflamed me, as I would have pictured it framing her secret, treasonous letters.
/>   But as the hours passed and I prepared for bed, I began to feel foolish. Not at my accusations, for Katherine had been a partisan of Ferdinand’s all along—indeed, at one time she had even been empowered to act as his envoy at my court!—but at my wild, naked emotion that had completely controlled me, rather than the other way round. I had screamed, I had almost frothed, I had physically harmed the priest. Was I a boy or a man? Shame flooded me.

  I mounted the steps up into my great bed. Still no message from Katherine, no appeals to me to return and forgive her. That was a mistake on her part. But I thought it calmly; my anger was cold now.

  I settled myself into the mattress. Rest was sweet. I was exhausted from my emotions.

  Divorce. Where had I come by that word? There was no such thing for Christians; Katherine was correct. Christ had been quite specific about that, when they—which “they”?—had questioned him concerning divorce. “They” must have been the Pharisees. It was always the Pharisees, wasn’t it? But then there was an exception, a sort of condition that permitted divorce. It was something Saint Paul had mentioned. I made up my mind to ask Wolsey when I met with him the next morning. He was a priest, even if he was no theologian.

  After Mass, I went directly to Wolsey’s apartments in the Palace, where I found the Archbishop already at work at his desk. The Archbishop, I noted, had not attended Mass himself.

  “Read this.” I dropped the offensive Spanish letter on his heaped desk. It rolled down a pile of ledgers like a log, coming to rest right at his hands.

  His plump fingers smoothed out the parchment, and he read it in less time than it has taken me to write this.

  “Abomination!” he whispered. “He is bound for the very lowest circle of Hell, with his fellow traitors: Judas, Brutus, Cassius. Satan will embrace him.”

  “Yes, yes.” His eventual whereabouts did not concern me so much as knowing who embraced him now: all the world, so it seemed. “I will be revenged. And sooner than in the Hereafter. What think you to trumping him?”

  “What, fighting him? And France as well?”

  “I said trumping, not fighting.” A plan was taking shape in my mind, a most phantasmagorical plan. “I will outdo Ferdinand in duplicity.”

  “Impossible.”

  “I can excel in anything I set my hand to,” I insisted. “Even duplicity. Listen”—the thoughts gave instant birth to the words—“Ferdinand has made a secret pact with France? I shall make a public ceremony of brotherhood with France!”

  “Your ancient enemy, that you hated up until yesterday?”

  “Now I hate Ferdinand more; so his enemy has become, on the instant, my friend.”

  “Your Grace, this is so sudden, it will never be believed.”

  “What is a fait accompli can be believed. What is sealed by marriage can be believed. Tell me—what are the conditions permitting divorce?”

  “Whose divorce?”

  “Any man’s divorce.”

  “There is no such thing as ‘any man’s divorce.’ There are only particular exceptions to the binding nature of marriage.”

  “Marriage to a traitor?”

  “I assume . . . that the only way one can commit treason against his spouse is by way of adultery. Unless the spouse is a ruling monarch; then other forms of treason would also be marriage-treason. But since thereby the guilty one would be executed for the treason, the remaining spouse would be widowed, not ‘divorced.’ Death—deserved death—would end the marriage as surely as natural death.”

  “In short, it would be quicker to execute for treason and become widowed in half a day than to approach Rome for a divorce and wait half a year?” I spoke in theory only, of course.

  Wolsey rose from his desk and came toward me. He had begun to put on weight as a result of the official banquets and entertainments he now frequented. “Surely you aren’t thinking of—yourself? You cannot divorce the Queen because of her father’s deceit. Although, God knows, I think you deserve a French princess on your arm and in your court.”

  His burst of candour shocked me as much as my proposed turnabout shocked him.

  “Why, Wolsey. You don’t like the Queen?”

  He was all explanations. “No, Your Grace, I do like and admire her, I only meant . . . that a graceful French girl would be such an ornament to the court, such a jewel on your arm. Someone who dances and masques, someone who—”

  “Yes. I understand.” Katherine had become so much more serious in the past year or so. Still, Wolsey had no way of knowing that hidden Moorish side. . . . “France, and its curious combination of elegance and decadence . . . I’d like to sample that in a woman.” I had never sampled any woman but Katherine. “But I am married and do not qualify for a divorce. You are correct: Ferdinand’s treason does not transfer onto his daughter. Her only ‘treason’ is in failing to follow the Biblical command to ‘leave your mother and your father.’ Her heart’s in Spain still. But her body’s here, and has been technically faithful.”

  “Besides, she carries a child.”

  “Yes.” But even that seemed tainted.

  “However, there are other means of coming close to France.” He steered me back onto that subject. He seemed eager; his eyes shone.

  “Indeed there are. And other marriages. My sister Mary—to the King of France!”

  His face registered the jolt that passed through his whole body. “Your Grace!” He licked his lips. “A thought of genius!”

  “It came to me, just on the instant. God sent it.” I truly believed that.

  “We will break Mary’s betrothal to Charles of Burgundy,” he said.

  That would delight her. She had hated the idea of marrying the Habsburg boy, Katherine’s nephew, who was four years younger than she. But later she had gotten into the spirit of it and carried his portrait about and attempted to sigh over it. She would be pleased to abandon the effort and go be Queen of France.

  “Queen of France? By marrying that decaying roué with the false teeth? No, no, no!” She kicked His Highness’s gift: a statue of Venus, with Cupid hovering over one shoulder. “No!” The statue toppled over, smashing the marble Cupid’s nose.

  “My dear sister,” I explained, “he is a King.”

  “He is repulsive!”

  “Queen of France! Think on it, my dear, think on it well. You will be celebrated in song and verse, will be First Lady of Europe. You will be able to do as you please, wear exquisite clothes, be heaped with jewels.”

  “And at night?” Her eyes narrowed. “At night I will pay the price.”

  “What is a quarter-hour of drudgery in exchange for twelve hours of power and luxury?” I helped myself to a cherry from her silver bowl of them, affecting a casual demeanor. By God, if this light touch did not suffice, then I should be forced to use force against my dearest sister.

  “When did you become so hard?” she asked quietly. “This is not my brother speaking, not the Henry I have known, but some other man.”

  She touched on a delicate point. Of late I had felt that hard part growing, taking shape and rising within me like a rock rising from a lake, displacing all the sweet and placid water around it. It had first gathered itself when the word divorce had sprung unbidden to my lips, when I had turned against Katherine, if only for a short while. I had not known I harboured such an alien presence within me; but by now it no longer seemed alien, rather an integral part of myself. It was necessary for a King to be hard—at times.

  “Yes, the soft-hearted child you knew has gone. In his place is a King,” I said. “A child looks only at what he wants, at what he wishes were true. A King looks at what is, and how to drive the best bargain.”

  “And the best bargain for you is that your sister be Queen of France.”

  “ ’Tis the best bargain for you, as well. You’ll see. Besides”—I blurted this out—“he can’t live long. A little investment on your part now would lead to great reward later. You’re young. You have decades to enjoy the jewels and titles without the od
ious presence of Louis himself.”

  She looked disgusted, not pleased. “To hear you speak thus is a greater loss to me than my virginity to Louis. You are no longer Henry.”

  “Oh, he’s still there.” Keep it light, do not venture into this with her. Settle the French marriage.

  “Yes, to be brought out whenever charm is required. For the young Henry, my brother Henry, is a winsome man. What has done it to you? Is it Wolsey? A calculating, ambitious priest—”

  Everyone wanted to blame Wolsey for everything. He was a handy scapegoat. The “charming” Henry served yet to mask the “new” Henry and his doings.

  I sighed, then spoke honestly. “Wolsey does nothing on his own. He has no power I do not grant him. He is entirely my creature.”

  “Then where did this foreign Henry come from? This Henry who gambles and masques and hunts with worldly courtiers, writes bawdy lyrics, and avoids the Queen’s chambers and the scholars he once frequented?”

  “My little nun,” I scoffed. “I am a man, and I enjoy what other men enjoy.” Still, I had yet to find myself in any woman’s bed but the Queen’s. A popular term for adulterer was “bed-swerver.” Well, I had not swerved in that way. “And as for my ‘worldly courtiers,’ I’ve noticed that you enjoy dancing with the Duke of Suffolk.”

  “All women do,” she said.

  “Aye. He’s a ladies’ man; he knows what pleases them. He’s been married, more or less, to three already, and still maintains his bachelorhood. A neat trick.” I envied him.

  Mary shrugged. “Shall I become worldly as well? Follow your example?”

  “You may as well, and sooner rather than later. While you still have your looks and can drive a reasonable bargain—unlike our other sister.”

  Poor Margaret, late the Scots Queen, now a coarsening woman with decreasing market value, and frantic for a man. As soon as she had given birth to James IV’s posthumous son, she had taken swaggering Archibald Douglas, the Earl of Angus, as her lover.