In fairness, Anne said nothing, betrayed no disappointment. For which I was thankful. Pity and courtesy are also somehow more insulting than outright insults.
I was deeply troubled. What had befallen me? I had always been able to perform. Was it my age? I was forty-two. I felt young, but my father had died when only nine years older than I.
And there was something else. I had, that past autumn (just about the time of Elizabeth’s birth), noticed a little sore on my left thigh. I applied ground-pearl ointment to it. But it did not clear. It festered for a while, then closed over. I thought no more about it. Then, a few weeks later, it reopened. This time there was pain, considerable pain.
I had Dr. Butts put a dressing on it, but I had to select doublets that were longer than usual to conceal the telltale bulk of the bandage. I avoided standing as much as possible. I was unable to ride or play tennis; naturally I did not come to Anne’s bed during these times. I was inordinately fearful that someone—anyone—should discover my secret. Used to thinking of myself as a whole man, the paradigm of health, I was disgusted and frightened by the thought of any unexplained weakness. My very anger against my body probably delayed its healing.
The Christmas revels came and went, and instead of Mary visiting me at court, I had other, uninvited guests: my impotence and leg ulcer. The festivities were gruelling for both. The dancing and heavy, tight costumes exacerbated the mysterious thing on my thigh; and the sight of Anne, displayed in all her splendid dark beauty for all the court to see, mocked my incapability so cruelly that I wept in the privacy of my chambers.
LV
January, 1534. The year that, supposedly, was to be the best of my life was off to a bitter start—as bitter as the weather outdoors. The Thames had frozen a fortnight earlier, and the sun had not shone for twenty days. The earth was hard and bare; no snow had fallen, and none was foreseen.
What should I do? I knew the answer, of course. It was the one thing I had not done, should not do, but must: go on pilgrimage. Ask Our Lady to remove my infirmities: go to any lengths to enable me to serve God as King.
“Your Grace! You cannot!” For the first time ever, Crum’s composure dropped. “To go publicly to one of the monk-run shrines, when we—when you—are in the process of investigating them—what will people say? What will they think?”
“Say that I go there to inspect their vileness for myself.”
His expression changed to one of admiration.
Cranmer was equally flustered. “But we pronounced these Virgin-shrines ‘excesses.’ Popish excesses.”
“But have we the right to condemn them sight unseen? That seems most unfair.”
“The people will misinterpret it. They will think you worship there, not inspect there. Then when you order them torn down, will they not be confused?” He blinked at me. I could read his mind so easily. He was thinking, Is this King sincere in his break with Rome? He is like a man who would break with his sweetheart, yet keeps going out of his way to pass by her house.
“Never fear, Thomas,” I reassured him. “This is a private, passing matter. All will proceed later as God intends.” It would never do for him to know my secret.
Anne wanted to go. I said it was a journey for men only, owing to the severity of the weather. She begged me to wait until spring. But my urgency was such that I must needs go immediately, although I could not tell her why, could not let her know of the agony I was suffering in not being able to make love to her—and to endure it a day longer than absolutely necessary was unthinkable.
“Afterwards I will see Mary at Beaulieu House and settle this business. It is not meet that you come and entreat her; but I as her father and King will bring her to heel.”
Anne nodded. “Good.”
Suddenly an idea came to me. I would not go alone. “Tell your brother George I would have him accompany me. I would become better acquainted with him.” I remembered the shy but ambitious youth I had met at Hever so long ago. I had brought him to court with Anne, then forgotten about him. What was he like? “And let him select one or two companions of his own. And young Howard, that poetry-making cousin of yours—”
“Henry, Earl of Surrey?”
“Aye. I would fain know the youngsters about court. A new generation has grown up around me.” Another idea came. “I’ll bring Carew and Neville, those from my generation. Let me see them play together. And then”—the brilliance of this broke upon me—“Chapuys must come, too! Let him see for himself how stubborn Mary is, but how well guarded. The Emperor can chew on that for a while! And the Pope as well.”
“Best have Cromwell join the company, if you truly wish to make Chapuys miserable.”
I roared with laughter. “Aye! Yet they get on well together in company, so I am told.”
She smiled slyly. “Try them and see.”
WILL:
And so the King brought all these odd bedfellows together for his own amusement, to see what sort of music they would make together. Indeed, there had grown up two generations at court by now, and none reflected this change better than the Howards themselves.
The older Howards—Thomas, the Duke of Norfolk, and his mother Agnes, his wife Elizabeth, and all eleven of his siblings—were conservative, stiff, unimaginative Catholics. The men fought and the women served as chatelaines on their great northern estates. That was all they knew, and all they cared to know.
Their offspring, the network of young cousins—Henry, Earl of Surrey, his sister Mary; the Boleyns, and all eight of Edmund Howard’s children—were at best modern and liberal court-creatures, at worst dissolute. The King was left on his own to discover first-hand which were which.
HENRY VIII:
So it was that on the last day of January an odd assortment of pilgrims left Richmond Palace and set out for the shrine of Our Lady of Wrexford.
We turned east, heading into the rising sun, riding along the same route I had taken to London that first morning I had arisen as King of England so long ago. Then the breezes had been scented and I had felt stronger than any man among the thousands lining the path. It was no longer a slender path now, but a wide, well-trodden road, and I had a special pad on the side of my saddle to ease my troublesome leg. Before leaving, I had smeared the leg with ointment and bound it in luxurious thick layers of gauze, knowing they would be undetectable beneath my bulky winter travelling cloak. How much better it felt to be swathed so protectively. Now if no one jostled me—
“Magnificent, Your Grace.” Chapuys came perilously near, his sparkling eyes seeking any idiosyncrasy that might betray a person’s weakness. I reined in a little to the right, keeping him well away from my leg, laughing nonchalantly all the while. “I am impressed by your devoutness. To make a pilgrimage in January is highly unusual—and must betoken a need of some sort.”
I felt anger burst in me like sparks from a dry log. He knew! No, impossible. He merely tried me, probing to see where my weakness lay. “I go to inspect the ‘holy’ site before deciding its fate. I would be loth to condemn anything without a hearing.”
“As you did the Queen? Riding away that July morning and never seeing her in person again?”
I sighed. Our little round-robin concerning “the Queen” was to begin again. It had a number of set lines:
I: I assure you, I left no Queen behind at Windsor.
Chapuys: I assure you, you did. A grieving Queen who loves you sore.
I: I do not understand. Oh—you are referring, perhaps, to the Princess Dowager?
Chapuys: Nay, to the Queen.
And so on. The exchange had once been mildly amusing. Now, like so many other things, it had become tedious and irritating to me. Perhaps we should have the lines copied out on two cards such as actors use, so the next time we met we could merely exchange them and be done with it.
I cut off his amiable baiting. “You will see her daughter, the Lady Mary, in a few days. Then you can decide for yourself how the Princess Dowager’s stubbornness is causing hardship
for Mary.”
“She is Your Grace’s daughter as well,” smirked Chapuys. “Unless the pious Queen is truly what you claimed she is, the chaste relict of your brother Arthur, and Mary was begotten by the Holy Ghost.”
Another voice spoke: “Such levity with the Holy Spirit’s name is scarcely fitting for a devout Catholic like yourself. ‘All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men.’ ” I had not heard Cromwell’s approach, and now his smooth voice, sliding into the conversation as slickly as a wet knife, startled me. And Chapuys as well. The two glared at each other across my horse’s neck.
“It is exactly this attitude that has corrupted the Church and the monks until, alas, they stink. You see, you profess to love the Church, but you mock her with men. Fie, Chapuys! No earthly lady would be served by such a knight. Had I daughters, I would not let them give you their colours,” continued Cromwell.
“Nor would I wear them for low-born damsels, the offspring of a self-seeking peasant.” Chapuys sat in Spanish arrogance, his agile frame sitting his horse easily. His silver-studded saddle gleamed in the thin sunlight, reflecting little dancing rays onto Cromwell’s plain brown leather one, and his coarse wool mantle. A great block of a man, Cromwell.
He looked down at his plain attire. “I? Self-seeking?” He chuckled. “I am plain Master Cromwell, sir. No titles, no jewels, no lands. I seek naught but to serve my King. I have only one master—he who rides here beside me.”
Chapuys snorted, almost exactly in time with his horse’s noisy exhaling.
Behind us rode Will, silently. He was to accompany us to the shrine and then take leave to visit his sister and her family, who lived a day’s ride farther away. I had worked poor Will hard in the past year or two, with scarcely a thought as to his own needs. I was glad to grant his request. He, in turn, agreed to endure the (to him) unappetizing religious aspects of the journey. But he would enjoy the bickering and tension en route, I could tell—it was what he throve on. Well, he would get a feast of it long before we reached our destination.
The six others rode in a clump behind Will, chattering, their frosty breaths rising above them and creating a common cloud. George Boleyn, Nicholas Carew, William Brereton, Edward Neville, Francis Weston, Henry Howard: what did they have in common? A thirty-year gap separated Henry Howard and Edward Neville. Of what were they talking? But talking they were, and animatedly. A few words carried on the brisk air: sir . . . France . . . Elizabeth . . . fortnight. . . .
Elizabeth. Would Mary finally come to serve her? What a stubborn child she was! I would let her know this behaviour would no longer be tolerated. She would serve Elizabeth as Princess, or—or—
Or what? I did not know, I did not want to consider what action I might be forced to take. Back in London, scribes were readying shiny stacks of Oaths to be distributed throughout the realm once the weather broke. Commissioners would sit before the stacks in each town and village, witnessing the signatures of all guildsmen, officers of the law, clergymen, apprentices, swearing—upon their eternal souls—that they recognized my marriage to Anne as true, and Elizabeth as my sole (for now) heir. On their left would lie a deadly scroll, to be inscribed with the names of those who refused to sign the Oath in the presence of witnesses. The scroll would not list their reasons, merely their names.
What would I do with those heaps of scrolls? For I did not delude myself that they would be returned to the palace blank.
The sky was clear, the sun small and shrunken, like a withered apple. Nothing was alive on the land; there was no movement anywhere. How easy to believe that this reflected the state of the kingdom: silent and suspended. It did; but by May all would be altered.
Chapuys moved close to me again. “My knee feels a sudden ache,” he said. “There will be a change in the weather, I fear.”
How womanish southerners were! Coming from a land of pomegranates and soft breezes, they could not endure the shift of a breeze. Or was this a trick, an excuse to gallop ahead to Beaulieu House, to speak with Mary in private? How transparent he was.
I patted my silver flask, filled with a blood-warming drink from Ireland called uisgebeatha. I handed it to Chapuys. “Drink this. It will stifle your knee.”
He took a draught and wheezed. “ ’Tis poison!”
“Not to the Irish, so I am told.”
Chapuys shook his head. “My knee—I beg you, it tells the truth. I suggest we seek shelter—”
The sky was ringing clear. “What, in broad daylight? We have another five hours of good riding ahead of us,” I assured him.
On we went, stopping for a brief rest and refreshment, then continuing, to make the most of the short winter day. The sun swung over and behind us, throwing long shadows before us.
And then the shadows faded, although the sun had not set. Exactly when this happened I know not—only that I suddenly became aware that we had been shadowless for some time, heading into a blue twilight. Then I turned and saw it: a great woolly blanket of clouds swathing the sun, and the wind running before it, stinging cold. And hanging from the cloud like a weighty grey curtain was the snow, moving faster than any horse could gallop. It would catch us in less than an hour.
My hands shook, and I felt colder inside than the wind on my face. There was nothing around us—no village, no manor house, not even a peasants’ dwelling. I had exulted in the stark open spaces we had passed through since noon, bare fields lying exposed to the sky, but now they were more threatening than any enemy fortress.
“How far to Thaningsford?” I called, signalling for my men to halt. I kept my voice cheerful.
“Two hours’ ride,” answered Brereton. “I know; my father had tenants—”
“Due north there’s a hamlet, called something ‘Grange,’ ” said Carew. “I think it may be closer.”
“Are you sure of its location?” I shouted. No time now for his bumblings. He had always been slipshod about details.
“Yes—no—” The wind whipped his cap off, and he snatched it back in midair. “I think—”
Obviously he did not know. I looked round at the others. Chapuys sat regarding me with irritation, and the others merely looked blank, as if expecting me to conjure up a shelter by sleight-of-hand.
I indicated the coming storm. “We can either ride hard to the north or south and hope to go around it, or we can use our time to make a shelter here.”
“We cannot go south; the river is there and we cannot be sure it is solidly frozen so we can cross it,” said Boleyn.
A clear head. A sensible statement. I warmed inside toward him.
“Ahead of us lie nothing but open fields, at least as far as Edwardswold. But a half hour to the north is a forest,” said Will.
My mind leapt at this. A sheltered area, and then a half hour needed to construct some sort of shed. Yes, we could do it.
“North, then!” I had to cry loudly to be heard above the rising wind. I wheeled my horse around and motioned them to follow.
They had to. Whatever I said, they must obey. I prayed that I led them toward safety. But as I changed direction and the wind hit me sideways, it felt wrong, misguided. Every instinct within me cried, Not this way. Run before the wind, not across it. Seek ready-made shelter. What can you possibly construct in less than an hour that will prove of adequate protection against this gale? I ignored that voice. Logic told me to go the way I was.
The wind snapped my cloak like a woollen sail, swirling and dragging behind me. I felt naked, so easily did the cold and wind penetrate to my bare skin.
I buried myself in my horse’s mane, seeking warmth. His flesh seemed cold underneath the hair, and sweat-foam froze in little clumps on his neck. I felt the surge of muscles working rhythmically as he ran, his headway slowed because of the wind’s force against his left side. My own left leg was completely numb, and the cold seemed to be draining my strength, pulling my blood down into a core somewhere. I glanced behind
me and saw the others struggling. The bank of clouds was closer now, visibly closer, and the promised forest was nowhere in sight. Where was it? Had Will been mistaken? But he was usually so sure of his facts.
The first stinging bits of snow hit my cheek. God, but I was cold. Suddenly my horse shook his head questioningly and veered off to the right, plunging down a dirt bank into a field.
My hands had lost their grip; the fingers were so numb they seemed severed from the rest of my body. I could no longer control the reins. Cold, cold, cold—I could think of nothing but the cold, it drove everything else from my mind. I must escape this cold, I must—
Ahead . . . way ahead, a good five to seven miles . . . a black line, a something. Whatever it was would break the force of the wind. I kicked my horse as hard as I could, then wrapped each rein round and round my senseless hands. Let the arms do the work of the hands.
“Come!” I yelled.
Another slap of snow across my left cheek. I scarcely felt it on my exposed flesh.
Ahead, the fine black line grew prickly. Trees. The forest. Will’s forest.
The trees ahead were oaks. It was an old forest, an original forest that had existed since Becket’s time, waiting for us. With a last burst of speed, my horse plunged into it, and immediately I felt the wind lessen as it broke upon the oaks instead of on us. A hush like a mother’s sigh enveloped us.
I turned to see the others galloping in. Chapuys . . . Will . . . Carew . . . then the rest, indistinguishable figures now, totalling nine. All accounted for.
Only now did I look about. The forest was deep and dark, and the terrain rough with fallen logs and rocks. Dangerous ground for horses. Should we lead them but a little way into the gloom, then stop and make our shelter, or take a chance of riding farther in hopes of finding better protection or even, possibly, an abandoned shelter? As soon as the choices had presented themselves, I knew the answer: the one with the greatest risk, but the greatest possible reward. We would ride deeper in.
The Autobiography Of Henry VIII Page 50