The Autobiography Of Henry VIII

by Margaret George

  I stood looking at her. Poor Anne. Asleep, she looked so young, like the girl I had first fallen in love with. She had given up her youth for me; had endured public calumny; had grown into a woman, waiting for me to make a move. Now this humiliating venture into France—meant for her triumph—had ended, once again, as her disgrace. How stubborn, how childlike, to put on the erstwhile Queen’s jewels and then fall asleep.

  I approached her, supremely beautiful there in the half-light of the large candle standing on the nearby table. The dancing candlelight flickered off the cut surfaces of the gems round her neck.

  “Anne.” I touched her. She did not stir.

  “Anne.” This time I shook her, gently. She slowly opened her eyes and looked at me. She seemed confused.

  “Oh,” she finally said, then looked down at her finery. She had evidently meant to wear it in privacy and take it off long before I appeared. Now she was embarrassed.

  “You are practising for being Queen,” I heard myself saying. “There is no harm in that.”

  She shook her head, and tried to reenter the world. “I—I fell asleep. . . .” she mumbled.

  “So I see.” I laughed. She did not. Instead, she forced herself up out of her chair and began to walk rhythmically up and down the room, twisting a bit of lace in her hands all the while. For a long time she did not speak. She seemed as a madwoman. Finally I interrupted her nervous to-and-fro motions, as one will stop a sleepwalker.

  “Anne, what is it?” I asked, as gently as I knew how. Yet she continued to stare at me with blank eyes—open, but uncomprehending.

  “Anne,” I persisted, “you must tell me what eats away at you so.”

  She looked at me mournfully, as if she knew but were loth to tell. I had seen the same look in Mary’s eyes when she was but seven or eight and had done something wrong.

  “It—it is—only that I am sad.” She touched her jewels. “I love to touch them. They are royal. And when I am alone, I can believe in all you promised—that I will be your wife, that I will someday be honoured in France, and that the French King himself, not his whore, will receive me.

  She came toward me, took my face in her hands. “Ah, Henry. The King of England is my only friend.”

  “And you will be Queen of England,” I assured her. “And then you shall have many friends. So many you will not know which truly are your friends.”

  She laughed, a half-stifled laugh. “All those in power say such. But I should imagine I will always know my friends.”

  “You think, then, that to be in power is to leave perception behind?”

  She spun round. “Indeed it is. For no man will tell you the truth. All seek their own advancement, all come to drink as a horse from the trough. And slobber beforehand.”

  I winced. “Anne. Be a little kind.”

  “Never! As they were not kind to me!”

  “I was.”

  “At times.” She resumed her walking. “Yet, like all men, you will have both. Trinkets and love-tokens for me, and ceremonial appearances with Katherine. Two wives. I wonder that you do not turn Turk and acquire two others. The Islamic law permits four, so I believe.”

  I felt anger rising in me. “By Our Lady, Anne! You do push me too far!”

  She stood still, at last. In the firelight she looked like a statue; the folds of her gown fell in carved lines. Then she spoke again. “Too far? You who have had women for over twenty years? All sorts—from the pious Katherine to my honeycombed sister, Mary? And I a virgin?” She then moved, came closer. “You sent away the boy I loved, before I was even twenty. And what have you offered me in return? Nothing. Nothing but waiting—and vituperation.”

  “I offer you myself—and the throne.”

  “In what order?” Her harsh laughter rang out. I hated her laugh. Then she turned again, and I saw her face by firelight and forgot all else.

  “I cannot make you Queen before we are married,” I said. “Cranmer will marry us. But until he is empowered by the Pope, his words and ceremony mean nothing. Worse, they will taint our cause. It is only a little time more. We must be patient.”

  “Patient!” she shrieked, walking quickly across the room. She began feverishly opening coffers and chests, flinging out garments. “All these have I had fashioned since I first came to court! And now they are already judged passé! How much longer? How much longer?”

  “But a few months, sweetheart.” I hoped to soothe her.

  “A few months! A few years! A few decades!” She looked ugly, her mouth twisted abnormally.

  “This is unseemly,” I said. “A Queen must not behave so.”

  She stopped and pulled herself up. “Yes. A Queen must be patient and long-suffering. Like Katherine. Wait ten years for a betrothal. Wait another seven for a marriage. And then wait another six while the King plays himself out with his paramour . . . the latest in a long list.”

  “Anne—this is unfair. You know that the others—”

  “Were as nothing to you? Why, then, did you bother with them?”

  “I cannot—”

  “Answer that? Nay, you will not!”

  She tossed that long heavy hair and smirked at me. Anger mastered me, made me its slave.

  “I will answer what I please!” I reached forward and grasped her shoulders. They were thin things; I could feel the bone right through the flesh. I expected her to wince; she did not.

  “I have jeopardized my kingdom for you! Alienated myself from the ruling order of things in this world, made an enemy of the Pope, the Emperor, and my beloved daughter—what else can I do to prove to you that you are supreme in my life?” She still kept that aloof, smug expression on her face, until it finally drove me into a fury. “And yet you will not give me the simplest gift—the gift any milkmaid gives her lover. And all the while you wear the royal jewels!”

  I reached over and with one adroit movement ripped the jewels from her neck. I did not bother with a clasp, and the string broke; I heard some stones glancing off the floor. Anne’s hands flew to her neck; a thin red welt was already appearing where I had snapped the cord. She was outraged. Her eyes followed the bouncing, freed jewels onto the carpet. Already she was marking the place where they might have fallen.

  “Such wanton destruction betokens immaturity,” she said, gathering up the pearls and rubies hastily. Soon she stood to her full height, her hands brimming with precious stones. I took each of her hands and pried them open, spilling the gems and pearls.

  “Such haste betokens greed,” I said.

  She looked back at me. She was as beautiful as ever, but somehow I now both hated and wanted her.

  “You shall hold me in your hands no longer,” I heard myself saying, and suddenly it was true. I reached out for her and kissed her. She resisted for an instant, but then suddenly flung her arms around me hungrily.

  Never had she inflamed me so. I knew that tonight—this bleak October night in France—was the night I had longed for for six years—nay, all my life.

  My kisses fell on her face, hair, neck, breasts. I felt her tremble against me. I carried her over to the pillows and the fine furs heaped up against the wall near the fireplace. At once she was entirely mine.

  I was not thinking at all; my mind had died and in its place was a great well of feeling. I knew I loved her; I knew I had waited for her for over half a decade; I knew she was here tonight, and yielding to me. Beyond that I had no thoughts.

  She was passive, yet not passive—a yielding sort of presence. She too knew what was coming, and yet could not resist it. She embraced it as she embraced me.

  The coming together on the cushions before the fire was like a flame, a shaking of the soul. Even as it happened, in some far-off corner of myself I heard an inner voice saying, You will never be the same. It is all gone. Yet at that moment it felt as though all had just arrived. I burst upward into light, freedom, euphoria.

  Afterwards . . . there is always an afterwards. Yet this one was surprisingly gentle. I came back t
o earth to feel Anne next to me, Anne looking into my eyes. Her eyes seemed different from those of only a few minutes past. She stroked my face. Her naked body was half covered with the furs lying near the fireplace. Only her face was as before, with her long hair framing each side of her face and providing a modest cover for her breasts.

  “Anne—I did—”

  “Shhh.” Gently she laid her fingertips to my lips to silence me, then leaned over to kiss me. “Say naught.”

  What a gift, to be allowed to say naught! To keep one’s feelings to oneself.

  Together we lay for a long time, wordlessly, until it began to grow chill and the fire was almost down. I roused myself to get another log. She reached out a butterfly-like hand and stopped me.

  “No,” she said. “Let it die. It is late.”

  Wordlessly I dressed and left. I could not speak, nor were there any words I wished to say, even to myself.

  XLVI

  The next few days in France were taken up with petty business. I attended to it all, yet I was hardly there. I could not let myself forget the three hours in Anne’s apartment, yet I circled around them in my mind as something too terrifying and sacred to touch upon. Anne herself I saw not at all. Even on our voyage back to Calais she kept to her chambers below decks and sent me no message.

  I did not see Anne for several days after our arrival back in England. She repaired to her quarters in the palace and seemed nunlike in her avoidance of company. I assumed she was ashamed and sensitive about her behaviour during our time in France, so I sought her out to reassure her that she had nothing to fear.

  She looked more beautiful than ever when she opened the door and stared at me. I had almost forgotten her face, so jumbled up was it with my fantasies. In some demented way I wished I might never see her again. Yet at the same time I longed for her.

  She stared at me, as at a stranger. “Yes?” she asked, politely.

  “I wish to speak with you alone.”

  It was early morning. She knew I meant truly to speak and nothing else.

  I walked into her apartments. Here at Richmond they were rather sparsely furnished. She kept her best pieces at York Place, her favourite residence.

  “I scarce know how to begin,” I began.

  “Begin at the beginning,” she suggested, leaning against the mantle in a relaxed manner. She was not nervous; she did not dread the encounter, after all.

  “Yes. At the beginning,” I heard myself saying. “It is difficult. . . .”

  “Between those whose hearts are in tune, nothing should be difficult,” she finished for me, easily.

  I cleared my throat. Nothing could have been less true. But Anne was young.

  “I wish you to understand,” I began, “that our time together . . . in France . . .”

  Now she turned, her green skirts swirling for a moment like sea water, then lying still. “Nay. I understand nothing. Save that I have made a fool of myself.”

  I rushed over to her (fool that I was) and grasped her shoulders. “My dear Anne, I am even now setting plans for a great celebration and Mass—elevating you to one of the highest peerages in the land. You will be the Marquess of Pembroke. Not Marchioness—Marquess!”

  She looked shocked. The colour drained from her face, making it even whiter than before.

  “You will be a peer in your own right,” I continued. “The title will be yours, and in your family forever. There is only one other woman of that rank in England, and she only by right of her husband’s title—the Marchioness of Exeter. But you will share yours with no one, and it is a semi-royal title. My uncle Jasper Tudor was Earl of Pembroke.”

  If I expected her to look awed or indebted, I was mistaken. Instead she looked sad. “Does this mean I am to settle for this? Never to be Queen?”

  “No! This ceremony shall serve merely to hoodwink the Pope. For he shall think as you do. And, thinking so, grant the bulls for Cranmer—yes, your Cranmer!—to be made Archbishop of Canterbury. That once achieved, we shall be free! Cranmer duly consecrated according to Rome to satisfy the conservatives; Cranmer pronouncing my marriage to Katherine null; Cranmer marrying us. This is subterfuge, my love, nothing else!”

  She stopped and mused a bit. Behind that pretty face (albeit strained of late) was a hard, smooth-clicking mind—the equal of Wolsey’s. I could almost see her thinking: I have given myself to him. Even now I could be with child. If it should never come about that I be Queen, in spite of his promises, what then?

  “And my descendants?” she asked coolly.

  “It is written in the patent that all heirs male of your body will inherit this title. It expressly does not say, ‘all heirs male legitimate.’ ”

  “Why male only? If I can have the title in my own right, why not my daughter?”

  “Anne—the entire question of a daughter inheriting on equal terms with a son is what has brought me to my present situation! Can you not see—?”

  She cut me off with a smile and a quick question: “And when is the ceremony to be?”

  “In only a few weeks’ time. At Windsor. Order yourself gowns, my love. Charge it all to the Privy Purse.”

  She softened, came over to me and kissed me. In only a few seconds’ time we had traversed the entire length of the royal apartments to my inner bedchamber.

  I arranged for Anne’s “elevation,” as it was called, to follow a regular Sunday Mass at St. George’s Chapel at Windsor. It was a spectacular building, light and sparkling in the new style, and I thought it would form the proper setting for the unprecedented thing I was about to do.

  Truth to tell, it was only the first of many unprecedented things I meant to do, and I was anxious to see how this harbinger would be received. Would the people “murmur” or not? Would they bow to the inevitable and mask their disapproval behind dissembling masks? Or would they openly criticize?

  I raised her up, then presented her with her own patent to read. She read it out in a surprisingly loud, clear voice, as if daring the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the French and Imperial ambassadors, the churchmen, or anyone else present, to find fault with it. She was always that way: reckless, defiant, entirely self-contained. It was that which I loved in her; it was that which I came to hate in her.

  She finished the reading. I then stepped down and fastened the ermine-trimmed, crimson mantle of her rank round her shoulders. I placed the coronet on her shining hair and gave her the patent. She thanked me graciously—and so distantly that one might truly have thought us strangers—and then the trumpets sounded once again and she turned and left the chapel.

  I looked round, trying to ascertain the reaction of the assemblage. They were uncomfortable: the lack of movement, the absence of spontaneous stirring, betrayed them en masse. Curse them! I thought, then caught myself up short. What had I expected? I myself hated the first full day I had to wear new shoes. They never felt quite right. But a week later one felt as if one were born with them. Just so, the people would feel about Anne!

  Later in the afternoon I sought Anne out in her apartments at York Place.

  She was now simply dressed, in a light gown, and wearing no jewels. The coronet rested on a small table, and the crimson velvet mantle was draped across a chair, as if she were loth to put them away.

  I glanced around approvingly. The apartment had been furnished in exquisite taste. She would do the same in my other palaces—banish the dour Spanish influence. I thought with great relish of her having Katherine’s confessional and private penance-chapel dismantled and replacing them with a sunny window-seat where one might play the lute.

  She rose to greet me, and her face was full of joy. We embraced as lovers, so different from our decorous behaviour only a few hours earlier.

  “You look no different as a Marquess,” I said.

  “Ah, but I feel different!” she retorted, twisting away from my grip and almost skipping over to the coronet, which she placed on her head, somewhat askew. She giggled. I came over to her and removed it.
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  “A crown will become you better.” I ran my hands up through her heavy, shining hair, all the way up her neck and to her head. “But the usual Crown of St. Edward will not do for you. Your head and neck cannot bear the weight. I must have a special, lighter crown made for you.”

  She looked up at me. “Is my neck not strong enough?”

  “The crown is extremely heavy. No, you shall have your own. Only those with a bull-neck can bear the present one.”

  “Like yourself and Katherine?” she laughed. Truly, that afternoon she seemed more like a schoolgirl than anything else. She seemed even younger than the Princess Mary.

  “Yes. Not slender willows and daffodils like you.”

  She threw back her head and laughed. “Then make me one, my love,” she said, first holding my hands and leaning back, so that her fine hair tossed and shone, then pulling me after her into her private chamber.

  She was laughing; I was laughing; I had never been happier, nor loved her more. I believe we made Elizabeth on that drowsy, yet heightened afternoon.

  New Year’s Day, 1533. My feet ached from standing in full state all day, both receiving and distributing the royal gifts in the new Great Hall of Hampton Court. Outside, the sky was a peculiar flat white, while inside all was red and gold and blue—fire and velvet and wine. I gave many spectacular presents—selected by Cromwell, as I no longer had the interest or the time to involve myself—and received many useless and flattering gifts in return.

  Returning to my apartments, I was glad to be done with it. I called for Anne, who came within a moment, or so it seemed.

  “Happy New Year, my love.” I gave her her present—yet another jewel. I expected her to be bored by now with jewels. But she received this one, a sapphire from Jerusalem, with hushed delight.

  “I did not have it made into any ring or brooch,” I explained. “The stone itself was brought to England by a Crusader who fought alongside Richard the Lionheart. It had lain in the same chest for more than three hundred years, in its wrappings from the Holy Land. Somehow those wrappings seemed something I should not disturb.” Would she understand?