The Autobiography Of Henry VIII

by Margaret George

  My sleeps were dreamless.

  In mid-spring, Katherine gave birth to another half-formed, dead son. Al-Ashkar estimated its womb-age to be five and a half months; Linacre, six and a half. What difference? It had missed life by a long margin.

  As soon as the physicians permitted, I resumed marital relations with her. That was all it was, now. A duty, a political necessity, like signing state papers in my work room. The fluids still flowed, as impersonally and promptly as the ink with which I signed the documents, Henricus Rex. My personhood, my essence. Onto parchment, into my Queen.

  Passion—almost equally impersonal—I delivered into Bessie.

  Mary was arriving back in England, and there was to be a ceremony at Dover to greet her. I made certain I was not there; for to be there was to confer approval on her actions, and that I would never do. Brandon, the (created by me!) Duke of Suffolk, was her protector now. Let him see to her needs.

  All communication between us passed through Wolsey. Brandon could not approach me without Wolsey’s leave; neither could Mary. Mary I wished to see, therefore I made arrangements for us to meet in London on the royal barge. Together we would be rowed up and down upon the Thames, where we could speak one last time before I relinquished her to Brandon forever.

  The woman who approached the landing-ramp was taller, more beautiful, than I remembered. She wore a cloak of deepest blue velvet, gathered about the neck and shoulders, that floated outward like the Virgin’s. But she was no virgin. Her very step was changed.

  The oarsmen saluted her. “Your Majesty.”

  I welcomed her, but said pointedly, “Queen no longer, my men. She is Duchess.”

  “I remain a Princess, regardless of my husband’s title,” she said, a smile masking her determination.

  “Shall we go below?” I took her hand, leading her belowdecks, where the royal stateroom, with all appointments for our comforts, awaited—not the least of which was that we would be insulated from the ears above.

  We settled ourselves on the silken cushions: strangers.

  “So you have followed your heart,” I finally said, for want of anything else to say. “As you threatened to do.”

  “I love him!” she cried. “I love him, I love him, I have loved him since I was a child!”

  The oars outside the windows made slurping noises as they dipped in and out of the water.

  “Can you not see him for what he is? A womanizer, someone who knows all the tricks, all the things to win an unsophisticated heart.”

  “Is that so?” Her face took on a transcendent, triumphal look. “And what did he win by marrying me? Banishment from court, and from your favour.”

  “He won England’s fairest jewel.”

  “And your best playing card. Who is the calculating one, Brother?”

  I stood accused. Yes, I was worse than Brandon. He had seen Mary and loved her, risking my wrath and banishment from court. I had seen only the loss of a playing card. When had this happened to me? I hated myself, hated that thing I had become: ugly, base, experimenting with my own body as if it were a thing apart from myself.

  But a realist. A king who was not a realist cheated his people. That was the truth of it.

  A bright arc of foam, spray: the Thames was rising past us. I saw York Place on our port side. Wolsey’s residence had gaily fluttering banners planted by the water-stairs, inviting dignitaries to stop and tie up.

  “Are you with child?” I asked abruptly.

  “Yes.” Her voice changed. “It must have happened the first time. When he came to me in that little room in Cluny, where I was a prisoner.”

  Spare me the recounting, I do not wish to hear it; no, it isn’t the hearing of it, it is the imagining of it, and I cannot stop that. . . . Jesu, deliver me, torture me not. . . . I cannot bear the torture of trying to imagine what it is beyond my scope to imagine, and what I long for above all else. The door that cannot open for me.

  “I wish you joy.” I took her hands. “I wish one of us Tudors joy. Just one, so I can feel that one escaped. We are not a happy family, by and large.”

  Mother. Arthur. Margaret. And now, added to them, myself, Henry VIII of England, childless.

  “Life as a whole is not happy. Only moments. This is my moment. It will pass.”

  So I could no longer begrudge it to her.

  “Yours will come,” she said.

  She was kind, and loved me, but she did not understand. “Aye.” I nodded.

  “And will pass, as mine.”

  “Forget the passing!” I cried, exasperated. “If you think on the passing, you kill the living thing! Stop it, I command you!”

  She laughed. “As King?”

  “As King.”

  “You cannot command what cannot be controlled,” she replied. “Know you not that?”

  Now we were level with Blackfriars, the great, sprawling monastery of the Dominicans. Soon London Bridge, with its nineteen supports, would loom, and we would have to shoot the rapidly swirling white water.

  “No. I try always to command, and to control. It is my duty.”

  “Poor Henry.” She laughed, and then it came: the tremendous shaking of the barge, as the water took it over, possessed it, curled it down between the legs of the bridge. In spite of the tightly fitted door, rivulets seeped in around the frame, trickling down the carpeted stairs.

  Then, all at once, it was calm. Eerily so. We were on the part of the river below the Bridge, where the Thames suddenly becomes a cheerful public river. Wherries and rowboats plied the water, taverns and docks and shipyards lined the north bank. Rising in back, grimly, was the white rectangular thrust of the Tower.

  Greenwich Palace spread itself out on the south bank, with gulls circling overhead. It was a sea-palace, one that seemed to be linked to foreign places and tides rather than to London,

  We were almost there. I could see the landing pier, and the waterman at the ready to greet us and tie up the barge.

  “Mary, this Francis,” I suddenly said, “what is he like?”

  “A devil,” she said. “With a smiling face and a long snout. ‘Le Roi Grand Nez,’ they call him.”

  “How tall is he? Is he as tall as I?”

  “Yes. About your height.”

  Unlikely. I was unusually tall.

  “And does he . . . what are his legs like?” I meant what is his body like, is it strong and muscular, weak and weedy, fat and soft? Is it as good as mine?

  “I did not avail myself of it,” she said.

  “But surely you could tell—”

  “Jewelled raiment and well-tailored clothes disguise bodily defects,” she said. “That is what they are designed to do.”

  They were throwing out the landing ropes. There was not time for an answer, an honest answer.

  “Was he a man?” I cried.

  She looked puzzled.

  The barge bumped against the padded piles. We were there.

  “All men are men,” she answered. “More or less.”

  XXV

  With the departure of the Duke and Duchess of Suffolk came the arrival of Wolsey’s cardinal’s hat. The hat, conferred by Leo X, along with a blessed golden rose for me for my fidelity and orthodoxy, arrived at Dover, encased in a regal box. Wolsey arranged that it be conveyed to London with all proper reverence, there to be welcomed by the Abbot of Westminster Abbey. Afterward it was placed upon the high altar of St. Paul’s, and then, in a drama designed to dazzle the eye, it was placed upon Wolsey’s head, creating a scarlet presence against the ancient grey stones. The chanting of the choristers framed the moment in divine approbation.

  “You see what a serpent you have nurtured in your bosom,” muttered Katherine, standing stiffly beside me. “He glistens and gleams like the very creature in the Garden of Eden.”

  A splendid metaphor. Wolsey’s satin indeed gleamed by the fluttering candlelight. But he was too plump to pass for a serpent. I said as much, while the chanting covered my low voice.

  �
��A demon, then,” said Katherine. “Although Satan himself is sleek, some of his lesser demons must be gluttonous, just as their counterparts on earth,”

  “Ah, Katherine.” She hated Wolsey with such an unreasoning hate, held him responsible for all the changes in me, when in fact he merely facilitated them; they originated within myself.

  “How long will you wait before appointing him Lord Chancellor? Will it be a Christmas gift?”

  Damn her for her insight! In truth, I had planned a December ceremony, separating the cardinalship from the chancellorship by a decent interval of two months. Archbishop Warham was old and ready to retire. But more to the point, I no longer listened to him on political affairs or considered any of his opinions, so he was useless in his office.

  “It is no gift. He has earned it.”

  Katherine did not reply, merely gave me a withering look of disdain. I did not care to argue. I was keeping my promise to myself, never to fight or hurt or upset her again. Her new pregnancy must be undisturbed, even if it meant coddling and cossetting the bitter and illogically resentful vessel it rested within.

  My new Lord Chancellor and I had much to discuss, in February of 1516. The Christmas festivities were over and done with. Archbishop Warham had gracefully surrendered his office and retired to Canterbury to concentrate on his spiritual duties, and Wolsey had assumed the mantle of the highest political office in the realm, along with the highest ecclesiastical rank, as England’s only Cardinal.

  Did he ever regret the lost Joan Lark and his sons? Or had the sacrifice been well worth it? It had taken only three years to go from the Lark’s Morning Inn to this, once the decision had been made. Tactfully, he never referred to it. He was a man of the present. The Welsh longing for unnamable things was not a part of his makeup. I envied him that.

  “King Francis has proved himself,” he said bluntly, that raw February morning as we settled ourselves before his gigantic Italian work desk.

  I knew what he meant. He meant that Queen Claude was pregnant. Francis had proved himself alarmingly, then, both as a warrior and as a getter of children. Within only a few months of his accession, he had taken the field, leading his troops into battle at Marignano in Italy, winning a stunning victory against the Papal forces. Francis meant for northern Italy to become French, and he was well on his way to achieving it.

  “Perhaps it will die.” I cursed it, then.

  “Nothing Francis does seems to die, or not thrive. Truly, he seems to have extraordinary luck on his side.” Wolsey was annoyed by this. One could counter stratagems, not luck.

  “And all anyone talks of is his wretched court! His styles, his ballet de cour, his plans to build châteaux.”

  “A novelty, Your Majesty.” Wolsey sniffed daintily at the silver pomander he had affected carrying. “He is the newest king in Europe. ’Twill pass.”

  “Ah, but he is not the newest King!” I produced the telling letter that had arrived only that morning, and handed it to Wolsey.

  His eyes attacked it. “Ferdinand is dead.” He crossed himself, by rote. “Charles of Burgundy is King of Spain.”

  “Yes. A sixteen-year-old Habsburg is now the newest—and youngest—King in Europe.”

  “And that makes you the old fox among them.” Wolsey smiled. “We’re well rid of Ferdinand. He was useless to us; useless to everyone, in fact. A new king in Spain, a boy-king . . . what possibilities this offers!”

  “For manipulation?”

  “How well we understand one another.”

  “That is why you are where you are.” And let him understand that it was I who had put him there, not he himself. Without me, he could do nothing, was nothing. “Not all boy-kings can be manipulated. Age is not necessarily a measure of innocence.”

  “I understand this one is unworldly, peculiar.”

  “The truth is that he is unknown. As I myself was when first I came to the throne.”

  “We will make it our business to know his nature, gather information. I have several connections in the Burgundian court, reliable witnesses . . . if paid enough.”

  In retrospect I cannot help but laugh at Wolsey’s primitive methods of spying; at the time they passed for sophisticated. The genius of Cromwell had not yet applied itself to this art.

  He continued, “And then there’s the Queen. She can make contact with her nephew, and from his replies we can get a sense of—”

  “No!” I cried. “Katherine must not be told of her father’s death!”

  “But it is a fact; it will be known everywhere by tomorrow.”

  “By tomorrow I will have her immured in her lying-in chamber, sealed off from all contact with court, as custom decrees. She is too near her birthing date. I will not, will not have her distressed at this time! Ferdinand will not cost me this child—as he cost me my wife’s loyalty and affection! Let him rot, and spare my child!”

  Wolsey rose, his robes shimmering. Crimson satin is a passing beautiful fabric. “Your Majesty, this is the Queen’s . . . ?” The question was delicate.

  “Sixth pregnancy,” I cried, my voice rising. “But so near the end now, and she has been well content, and healthy. Pray for me, Wolsey! Do not question me, as a political creature, but pray for me, as a Cardinal!” Or have you quite forgotten how, I wondered. Did Wolsey ever pray? Had he ever prayed? Or had he never had a priestly vocation at all, only a burning ambition that drove him to use whatever means were at hand?

  “Pray for me, for my child!” I swept all his work papers off the polished surface of his inlaid desk. “That is your business, your only business!”

  Katherine was brought to bed on February eighteenth, 1516, and after a short labour, she was delivered of a fair daughter.

  I held both of them, flooded with happiness. “We’ll name her Mary,” I said. After my sister, I thought. May she be as lovely and loved as my sister Mary Tudor Brandon.

  “After the Virgin,” whispered Katherine.

  Outside the chamber doors, all the court awaited the news. I threw open both tall doors, stood, legs apart, in the doorway.

  “We have a fair Princess!” I cried. “And if it is a girl this time—why, by the grace of God, boys will follow!”

  Our cries of joy reverberated up to the gilded ceiling.

  Then the Venetian ambassador, Giustinian, shuffled forward, a sad expression on his face.

  “I am sorry, Your Grace, that after all your previous losses, this should be a girl.” He looked downcast. “Perhaps God does not intend you to have a male heir,” he whispered close to my ear.

  The fool! “Am I not a man like others?” I cried.

  He seemed not to have heard me. “Am I not a man like others?” I screamed, right in front of the courtiers. I seemed unable to stop myself.

  WILL:

  Aye, that was the question that haunted Henry: Am I not a man like others? Years later, George Boleyn virtually condemned himself to death at his trial by reading a statement to the effect that he and his sister Anne had laughed at Henry’s lack of vigour and manhood. “He hath neither potency nor manhood in him,” I believe the words were. Of course that was twenty years after Henry’s outburst at Giustinian, but I believe he was always unsure of himself in this regard.

  And why not? His first bride ultimately preferred her beads and confessor. His second mocked his potency and cuckolded him with his courtiers. His third soothed him, but soon died. His fourth was so distasteful to him he could not perform—but nonetheless it was humiliating to have to obtain a public annulment on the basis of nonconsummation. The fifth cuckolded him in grand style and held him up to public ridicule. The sixth—he was too ill to use her services for anything beyond nursing, and even she was reported to have said, in response to his proposal, “Sire, it were better to be your mistress than your wife!”

  Behold the much-married monarch: he rises up early in the morning. But what of lying down late at night? Was he a “man like others,” or no?

  Certainly in his youth he was lusty.
Bessie Blount and Mary Boleyn (begging your pardon, my dear Catherine) could attest to that. But alas, we cannot ask these damsels, and there are in fact no living witnesses to Harry’s potency . . . or lack of it.

  The entire subject was one that caused much perturbation, that much we can ascertain. A curious fact: he had more wives than mistresses.

  I mention this only because the King is so popularly assumed to have been a satyr. The idea of having six wives titillates the average man. He thinks only of the bed-sport of marriage, never of its inevitable dismal consequences: boredom, bickering, disillusionment, legal entanglements. That is why most kings take mistresses: certainly it is easier and less taxing. But Harry’s conscience would not permit him to practise the customary droit de signeur, except under exceptional circumstances.

  XXVI

  HENRY VIII:

  Katherine and I were happy together in this child. She brought us to share, once again, all that we had once held in common: our love of music, of scholarship, of quiet camaraderie. The little Princess Mary was precocious and took early delight in the world about her. It was a gladsome thing to find the proper tutor for her, select musical instruments suitable for her, rejoice in her first steps and happy laughter. For she was a bright and winsome child, who never cried. As parents, Katherine and I were at peace with one another.

  During the next year she became pregnant again, but had an early miscarriage, even though we took no progress about the home shires that summer, as a precaution.

  Wolsey and I had more than enough to occupy us politically, with the struttings and aggressive posturings of Francis upon the Continental stage, and the gentle transfer of power in Spain to young Charles, who remained an enigma—an enigma carefully guarded and schooled by his grandfather, Maximilian. Across the Mediterranean, an arrogant and brilliant new Sultan of Turkey, Suleiman, had begun his reign by conquering all the surrounding territory with terrifying ease. The Papal lands, lying midway between both Francis’s and Suleiman’s ambitious paths, were presided over by an increasingly jittery and threatened Pope Leo.