The Autobiography Of Henry VIII

by Margaret George

  “Mary’s christening gown!” she babbled on. “I must have Mary’s christening gown! What better way to impress upon the people who is rightful heir to the throne? What better way to humiliate Katherine and Mary? Yes, I shall send for it at once!”

  Now her eyes danced, in the way I had once found so enchanting, as they always did when she planned some mischief.

  “You are foolish,” I said with distaste. “Why do you wish leftovers, remnants of another’s life? Why do you not order a new christening robe to be made expressly for our child? You can cover it with pearls. It will become a treasure, to be admired for generations. Instead you covet something old that belongs to another woman.”

  Like myself? As Katherine’s husband, I had had value. As her own, was I diminished?

  “I want the gown,” she insisted. “And I will have it.”

  A few days later a furious letter came from Katherine, refusing to give up the gown with all the moral righteousness at her command.

  Anne was irate over her rival’s stubbornness and hauteur. “Make her surrender the gown!” she shrieked at me, snapping the letter up and down and beating the air with it.

  “I cannot,” I replied. “The gown is not Crown property, as were the royal jewels. Katherine is within her rights to keep it.” The fact that Katherine treasured it pleased me.

  “Her rights? What rights does she have?”

  I was shocked. “The same rights as any English subject. Amongst them, the right to own personal property.”

  “She deserves no rights! She refuses to acknowledge me as Queen! That makes her a traitor!”

  “There is no law saying all citizens must formally acknowledge you as Queen. At this time we rely on the old precedent that ‘silence gives consent.’ ”

  “You will have to change that law soon enough,” she taunted. “There are many different kinds of silences, and soon—very soon!—it will be important to differentiate between them. You will be forced to do so, for your son’s sake. Then the executions will begin!” Her eyes narrowed. “Executions. All traitors will be executed, Harry—Katherine and Mary, and that stupid Thomas More. You will have no choice!” Her voice rose to a crescendo.

  “Anne!” I grabbed her shoulders and shook her, hard. It was like breaking a demoniac spell. She changed before my eyes, melting from a vituperative fiend to a confused, honest creature.

  “You excite yourself,” I said lightly. “It is not good for the child. Come, I shall show you the great bed of which I spoke. It has, as I remember, the most delicate carvings. . . .” I spoke soothingly, thus calming her.

  Alone in my bed that night (as the physicians had forbidden Anne and me to come together again as husband and wife until after the child’s birth), I was thankful that I had been able to quell her rising hysteria so quickly. Time enough later to reflect on her accusations about Katherine and Mary and her predictions about the measures that might be needed to combat their continuing popularity.

  Popular they were. Just the previous week the villagers at Buckden had surrounded the little palace and cried out to Katherine, “God save the Queen! We are ready to die for you. How can we serve you? Confusion to your enemies!” Whenever Mary was glimpsed, people shouted similar things to her. It was quite clear where the populace stood.

  The next week I had an edict printed and proclaimed to the sound of trumpets throughout the land: Katherine was no longer to be addressed as Queen. Anyone doing so faced death. But they were free to shout anything else, so long as that one word was omitted—and English is a language rich in synonyms and substitutions.

  However, the publishing and proclaiming of the edict served to pacify Anne, as a concrete and external thing always did. Laws and jewels and titles had always been her comfort and security, her refuge.

  In only another six weeks, all would be changed, I reminded myself. Once the heir was safely born, and Parliament had sworn fealty to him as Prince of Wales, the country would smile upon Anne and Prince Edward and abandon Mary.

  Announcements of the forthcoming solemn event were being readied. Three dozen scribes were copying out “deliverance and bringing forth of a Prince.” I selected two of the creamiest vellum parchments, without blemish or wrinkle, to be sent to Francis and Charles, and assigned my two most skilled scribes to write upon them. In my mind the announcements were already at their destination. Just running my fingertips over their blank surfaces gave me a feeling of victory and completion.

  Anne’s day of confinement drew closer, and whenever she shrilled or pouted or moped, I found myself counting the days until the ceremony of “taking her chamber” would be held. It had been prescribed in my father’s reign, and every detail of ritual must be followed, to ensure a good delivery. First a group of noblemen and ladies must conduct Anne to Mass in her private chapel, then serve her with spice and wine under a cloth of estate in her Chamber of Presence. Then her Chamberlain would pray aloud that God would send her a good hour.

  Then two men would escort her to the doors of her inner chamber, through which she would pass to her fate, sealed off from any contact with males. Even male lap-dogs and male songbirds were not permitted in the lying-in chamber, and no portraits of men or even illustrations of male beasts.

  Before she was immured, however, Cromwell came to me with grave news indeed.

  “It has come,” he said, simply. “I have word that it has already crossed the Channel and landed at Dover, last night.”

  There was no need for him to pronounce the hated word: excommunication.

  “Clement signed it a fortnight ago.”

  “Curse him! Could he not have waited another two weeks? Anne takes her chamber on Assumption Day. But if she hears of this beforehand . . . ! O, I must intercept it first! Crum, meet the Papal envoy, tell him I shall receive him at—at”—what convenient house lay between London and Dover?—“Crowley. Hurry!”

  Crum looked amused. “Are you so eager to receive your own formal damnation?”

  Odd, I had not even thought of it in those terms. “The Pope has no power to damn me,” I said naturally, without scrutinizing my words. “All he has power to do is write a proclamation designed to alarm my wife and endanger her unborn child. It is the nasty, petty gesture of a weak bully.”

  Just so, in one unguarded moment, I revealed my mind to myself. Most of life’s tests swoop down on us similarly unrehearsed, and so we carry a lurking fear that we will fail them.

  Quickly I prepared to ride to Crowley. It meant missing the entertainment Anne had planned for midday, with a poetry contest between some courtiers, an indoor fountain making cool sounds in the oppressive summer heat, and her dessert of sherbet (Crum had presented her with the recipe), with which she was planning to surprise her guests. It was cherry-flavoured, and she had spent hours perfecting the taste. I myself had helped with it; now I must give an offhanded excuse and hurry away. Anne was disturbed, and was not fooled; she sensed that something important had happened.

  It took four hours to reach Crowley, a rudely furnished hunting lodge used by my grandfather Edward as a favourite place to relax after a day’s excursion with his brothers, Clarence and Richard. I had always liked it, in spite of its unsettling associations from the wars. It was comfortable there; it was the sort of place where a man could take off his boots and snore by the fire. And it was here, too, that Anne and I had passed those heated days during the progress of 1531, when she almost let me into her chamber time and again, but always barred me at the last moment. Was that truly only two years ago?

  Now I came to meet a different challenge, in the person of Clement’s representative. I strode into the lodge, happy to have arrived first, as that gave me a subtle advantage. I looked round. How different it looked by day, when I had no fire in my blood, no desires I sought to have satisfied. Those who compare victories in war with victories in love are fools, and probably have experienced neither.

  I had time enough to become bored before a glint of sun on a helmet far down th
e road to the east signalled the approach of Clement’s proxy.

  A foreign power on English soil, trudging along to exert its jurisdiction—this was the last time such an anachronism would be seen, I thought. Never again. I had banished such pretensions from Continental minds and made them unacceptable for any patriotic Englishman.

  Even in my own boyhood, things foreign were seen as “better” than things English. Arthur must have a foreign bride; the Tudor dynasty would not be confirmed as “royal” until a European royal family condescended to marry into it. And so Katherine had come, and yokels had cheered the Spaniards and stood in awe of them as they passed along muddy paths. And because of that curious journey more than thirty years ago, another band of foreigners was snaking along another muddy path in another attempt to meddle in English affairs.

  I grinned. I could hear the rapid Italian in the distance. This was 1533, not 1501. Their time had passed. I was an English king and my wife was pure English as well, and we ruled a nation proud to be counted “mere English.”

  The tittering Popish popinjays drew up to the lodge’s entrance and sat, brown and slight and sly, waiting to be received.

  As they were shown in to stand before me, I appraised them. What had begun with antagonism on my part ended in bafflement. Was it these men of whom I had, for so long, stood in awe? What a fool I had been!

  Their leader, travel-soiled and tired beyond the point of nervousness, merely handed me the Papal scroll, as unceremoniously as a farmer passing on a sausage. Doubtless he had been instructed otherwise, but the lulling informality of the lodge and the lack of court witnesses made it too easy to skip the ceremonial.

  I took it just as carelessly, and made a show of unrolling it and reading it without emotion.

  It should not have disturbed me. I knew—or, rather, decreed that I knew—that Clement (born Giulio de’ Medici) was not the Vicar of Christ, but just a misguided bishop. He had no power to pronounce spiritual judgment on me. No power, no power . . . I had staked my kingdom, my soul, on that belief. Why, then, did I stagger, even for a moment, under it?

  Wherefore in the name of God the All-powerful, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, of the Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and of all the Saints, in virtue of the power which has been given us of binding and loosing in Heaven and on earth, we deprive Henricus Rex himself and all his accomplices and all his abettors of the Communion of the Body and Blood of Our Lord, we separate him from the society of all Christians, we exclude him from the bosom of our Holy Mother the Church in Heaven and on earth, we declare him excommunicated and we judge him condemned to eternal fire with Satan and his angels and all the reprobate, so long as he will not burst the fetters of the demon, do penance and satisfy the Church; we deliver him to Satan to mortify his body, that his soul may be saved on the day of judgment.

  He who dares to despise our decision, let him be damned at the coming of the Lord, may he have his place with Judas Iscariot, he and his companions. Amen.

  The words were baleful, ugly, designed to strike terror into the victim. But I knew them to be powerless. I knew. I did not feel cut off from God. Quite the contrary. Instead, I felt closer than ever to the Divine Presence, the Divine approbation.

  Clement was a fool. A political fool. That was all.

  The ride back from Crowley seemed drearier than the ride out. Carrying the Papal scroll felt a bit like clasping a dead thing to myself. It was harmless—why, then, did it feel so eerily evil?

  I had forgotten about Anne’s “entertainment,” and so was puzzled for a moment when I heard all the voices and merriment coming from her apartments. I had no desire to go in and dissemble before guests; what I really most wanted was to go alone to my Privy Chamber. I was exhausted, and not from the ride to and from Crowley. But in only three days Anne would be sealed away, and I would not see her until I held our son in my arms. I owed it to her to join her party. Wearily I walked in.

  People had reached that stage at the end of a gathering where they were relaxed and, having fulfilled protocol, could do as they liked. And what they liked, evidently, was to cluster around Anne.

  She reclined back in a padded chair, a courtier on each side of her, one in back, one at her feet, and Mark Smeaton a respectful ten feet away, paying homage on his lute. All I could think of was Mount Olympus, surrounded by cherubs and sighing mortals.

  She smiled languidly as she saw me come in, but did not move or wave any of her admirers away. Perhaps she felt naked without them; in any case, they seemed a natural part of her.

  “I trust your business went well,” she said. “Pray join us. You appear tired.”

  Tired? Yes, to receive one’s excommunication, to read about one’s present and future damnation in explicit terms, was draining. I grunted and took a seat nearby. But I had no heart for the merriment, and soon excused myself.

  When Anne eventually sent them away and came to see me, I was deeply asleep, in a blank, starless world.

  LIII

  Only two days before the chamber-taking. As always when great events were scheduled, I attempted to honour them in advance. As always, I failed. The truth was that both Anne and I were on edge with the waiting, and had little to say to one another. So it came as a relief when, on August fifteenth, the prescribed ceremony began, and Anne was conducted to the Chapel Royal for Mass, then served her traditional cup, then, her Chamberlain having prayed fervently for God to send her a good hour, her brother George and her uncle the Duke of Norfolk escorted her to her Privy Chamber door. In she went, followed by her women, and the doors slowly closed behind her, sealing her in.

  “We are only lacking a great stone to roll across the door,” observed Norfolk.

  “So that the saviour—the heir, that is—can roll it away?” asked Nicholas Carew.

  In spite of myself, I was shocked at their blasphemy. How dared they speak this flippantly of Christ in front of me, the Defender of the Faith? Remembering the damning Papal parchment, I felt a spot of darkness spreading out over myself, my court, my kingdom. . . . No, that was nonsense. The secret parchment had nothing to do with it.

  “You will answer to a heresy charge if you voice such things!” I snapped.

  Norfolk looked startled. “I meant no harm, Your Grace. ’Twas but a jest—”

  “A jest in my son’s name! A poor jest indeed!”

  The two of them shot each other a look that said, “The King is vexed. Stir him not.” They bowed and took leave. It was a look I was to see more and more often: a look that managed to be both condescending and fearful at the same time.

  The end of August was a glorious burst of fulfilment. The harvests were coming in, heavier than any in recent memory. The fruits were so swollen on every tree that their sun-warmed, dusty skins seemed near to oozing. To sink my teeth into a fresh-plucked pear or plum always sent juice spurting all over my mouth. The sun lay warm and golden on my head, and I took it all as an omen, as the hand of God upon me.

  September seventh. The wedding day of Charles Brandon and Katherine Willoughby, if all proceeded as planned. That thought cast a pall over the morning as I proceeded to arise, to say my prayers, to begin the day. I prayed for their happiness, but found that it was words only, words without attachment to my heart. Instead of seeing Katherine in her bridal wreath, I saw Mary in her marble tomb. She had been dead just three months to the day.

  Hoping to shake off this sadness, which was spreading like a stain across the day, I called for a horse and took a solitary ride toward Eltham Palace. It lay some three miles from Greenwich, farther back from the river, and up on a windy hill, through ancient forests.

  How many times had I ridden here as a Prince! Every hundred yards took me back some five or six years, until I was barely ten years old, and still a second son, by the time I stood on Eltham hilltop. How many times had I stood just here, dreaming of the future, watching the Thames shining far away, like a bright ribbon? That boy seemed very close to me now—that lonely, odd little boy—and I
longed to reach out and reassure him, say, “It all came right, my lad!”

  “Your Grace!” A page galloped toward me, his voice shaking. It was now—and Anne’s time was here. I looked no more at Eltham, at the old grounds where I had played and fought Father and envied Arthur. That was gone; the future awaited me at Greenwich. I turned back toward the river and rode crazily to reach the red and white palace where Anne was in labour.

  I had but one thought—my son! I did not care what colours Greenwich was, I did not care how sweaty and dirty I was, or how I stank. I tethered my horse and rushed inside, waving aside grooms and others who would have hindered me.

  It was a long way to Anne’s lying-in chamber. Along the way, beautiful and well-groomed servitors appeared, bent on dissuading or slowing me. Why? At that moment my mind could not absorb it.

  “Your Majesty, if you would just bide—have a cup of wine—”

  “Your Majesty—the ladies are still with her—”

  I brushed them aside, as so many insects, and stood at last at the outer doors to Anne’s chambers. Two very ill-at-ease women appeared to bar my way.

  “Your Majesty, the Queen is tired—”

  Tired! Of course Anne was tired! I pushed the women to one side and opened the great doors myself.

  At first the chamber just within seemed deserted. I expected there to be wine and merriment, people dancing about. This was a glorious day, a day of celebration for all the kingdom. The last time I had had a living healthy son was more than twenty long years ago.

  Motes danced upon the sun-rays. The world itself must surely be dancing! I stood stock-still, sheer exuberance making me plant my legs, throw back my head, and cry, “A son!” Then I ran, I galloped like a boy, across the polished boards of that long chamber, toward my wife and heir. I leapt over the slanting rays and reached the final, inner set of doors. As I was wrenching them open, someone grasped my arm. A serving woman. I shook her off like an annoying puppy and rushed into the room.