The Autobiography Of Henry VIII

by Margaret George

  It was not I alone who had perceived it. The people as a whole had been repulsed by Anne. Now the sullen refusal of the crowds to cheer at her Coronation, the mob of women who had attacked her at the boathouse, the country people who spat at her as she rode past, the fact that even her uncle Norfolk referred to her as “the Great Whore” . . . all showed the truth. The truth to which I had been so blind.

  But then, it is in the nature of evil to confuse us; that is one of its weapons.

  I sank down on a window bench, only to leap up. The oaken bench, with an intricately carved lid, had vines and branches entwining the initials H.–A.: Henry and Anne. Mad with love, I had ordered dozens of things carved with those initials. They were now everywhere—from furniture in my inner sanctum of privacy to the gigantic choir screen in the chapel at Cambridge. H.–A. flaunted itself all over England.

  Revulsion is one proof of evil. But the foremost one, the sine qua non, is lies. Lies emanate from evil just as heat radiates from a fire. “Father of Lies” is Satan’s oldest and most descriptive name. He delights in lies, he is an artist of lies, he constructs the most subtle and delicate lies and admires his handiwork. He lies even when the truth might serve him better, because he prizes lies for their own sake. His pride in his lies means he often betrays his presence this way.

  Lies for their own sake, even when the truth might serve better purpose.

  Of what purpose was Anne’s lie about the pregnancy? The truth was bound to undo her, as it could not be hidden longer than a few weeks. It had weakened her cause, not strengthened it.

  Disguises, covertness, hiding—all are watered-down versions of lies. Anne and her masques, her make-believe . . .

  What other signs were there? I felt confusion, a great confusion and despair coming over me. I could barely think, or order my mind; it was as though a stick were stirring mud up from the bottom of my brain, clouding all my thoughts. With a great effort of will I fought against it. Other signs . . . ?

  Pride. Satan’s pride, his desire for power and conquest. Anne made “conquests” of people. Those captive people in her chamber tonight, dancing as if in a trance . . . nay, not people, she made conquests of men; she had no use for women, nor they for her. She kept these men-creatures in literal thrall to her . . . as she had done me, had done me. . . .

  I had performed as one under a spell, had turned against my oldest supporters and strongest beliefs. My erstwhile friends had become my enemies—the Pope, Wolsey, Warham, More, the people themselves. I was divided from my own family, cut off from my daughter, excommunicated from the Church.

  I was damned. And all for love of Anne.

  I had severed More’s head . . . for Anne. I had tortured and executed monks . . . for Anne. I had taken unto myself a servant, Cromwell, who sometimes seemed malevolent himself and who urged total destruction of the monasteries. Something in me had withstood his evil suggestions, until now. Yet not completely; I had given way to his “commissioners” and “inventory-men” who were even now visiting the religious holdings. . . .

  Satan seeks to destroy. Through me, Anne had destroyed much.

  Satan is a murderer. Jesus said so. He was a murderer from the beginning.

  From the very beginning: Anne had cursed Wolsey, and he had fallen from power and died mysteriously. I had thought of poison, but self-administered.

  How blind I had been!

  Warham had suddenly died, just when Anne needed him to.

  Percy, who had abandoned her under duress from his father and Wolsey, had been unable to perform with his wife, and was now dying of an unspecified wasting disease.

  My sister Mary had openly criticized my passion for Anne and supported Katherine, had refused to attend Anne’s coronation. Mary had become mysteriously “ill,” wasting away and dying at the age of thirty-five.

  Someone had tried to poison Bishop Fisher at a dinner at his home. Two servants had died, but Fisher, though ill, had survived. Survived, to be more surely destroyed through me, for denouncing the lies, the forged signature. . . . Under your correction, My Lord, there is no thing more untrue.

  My gut contracted. I felt ill myself—poisoned. Could it be?

  Yes, she had struck at me, too. The mysterious leg-ulcer, appearing from nowhere, disappearing on the instant that I had done that which Anne wished—humiliated Mary, sent her to serve Princess Elizabeth, turned her home over to Anne’s precious brother George . . . her creature.

  My impotence . . . had it been a curse from her, or just the natural revulsion of my flesh from joining itself to hers, even though I knew not why? But she had overcome it, lifted it away, so as to bind me more closely to herself.

  I had begun dying, both in body and certainly in spirit. Like Fisher, I was not an easy victim, but the decline had begun. Anne’s slender little hands were guiding me on the sloping path leading to the grave.

  Her hands!

  I was violently ill; vomit rushed up into my mouth and I spat it into the basin on my sideboard.

  Anne’s sixth finger.

  She had a sixth finger on her left hand, a clawlike nub that branched off from her little finger. She wore long sleeves to cover it and was skilful past reason at concealing it. I had only glimpsed it once or twice, and such was her magic, and my resulting blindness and confusion in her presence, that I saw it, but did not see it.

  A witch’s mark.

  I was sick again, vomiting up green bile, bile that dotted the sides of the basin in mocking imitation of the emeralds thereon.

  She could read my thoughts. Even now, she knew what I was thinking. I remembered her knowledge of my substitute Oath for More, one I had never committed to paper.

  No. Her powers were not that strong, they could not penetrate even here. I was safe as long as I was not in her actual presence.

  Yet the confusion, the roar in my head, persisted. She could stir my thoughts, muddy them from afar, but not control or read them.

  She must be contained. I would order her apartments guarded. And then take myself away, far away out into the country, where my thoughts could run free and clean once again, and I could grow strong and plan what I must do.

  I would give orders. In the morning. When it grew light.

  LXV

  I waited for that light with a fervency I thought I had lost forever. It belonged to childhood, to that time when the dark was an enemy, and only the light was friendly. A daytime moon was called a children’s moon because we preferred seeing it in the light. . . .

  Dawn came and released me. In the clear light my revelations about Anne did not seem absurd, as is usually the case the next morning. Instead they seemed even more obvious and certain.

  Anne was a witch. She was tainted with evil and practised evil, nurtured evil and harnessed it for her own worldly advancement.

  Last night was her time. This morning was mine. And before night fell again, I must be far away.

  I had not hunted in a year. The season for stag and roe, my favourite game, had opened while Anne’s “pregnancy” kept me close at hand. I would go hunting, have clean sport in the daylight.

  The nearest forest where such game abounded was the Savernake in Wiltshire, three long days’ ride west of London. Sir John Seymour, my old companion-at-arms, had retired to his manor there several years ago, and was warden of the royal hunting preserve at Savernake.

  I would go there, pass some days at Wolf Hall, and wrestle with the terrifying revelations that had been thrust upon me. I would go alone. There were no companions whose company I wished. Nay, I needed one, for safety’s sake. Someone I loved, who was quiet. I would ask . . .

  I heard rustling outside my door. I had not slept in my own bed—indeed, had not slept at all—and Henry Norris was searching for me. Henry Norris would be the one. Discreet. Silent. Committed to me.

  I opened my door to him. “Make yourself ready,” I said briskly. “I leave today to hunt in the West Country, and I wish you to accompany me.” To his surprised expression,
I said, “It is for a few days only.”

  I must give no hint of haste, or of fleeing. Yet Anne must be contained, prevented from stirring. I knew not what to do with her, or what was required. I could not think. I was numb with what I now knew. It changed everything, but now it was I who must wear a mask. I needed time, time to think and recover myself and, yes, time to grieve. I was bereaved. I had lost a wife, and my own innocence.

  I rode in silence to the West. The setting sun warmed and consoled me, drawing me toward a resting place. I was tired, and longed for some respite.

  That first night, we stopped near Wokingham. The brothers of Reading Abbey were gracious (unlike those of St. Osweth’s!). We were given quarters that were snug and comfortable and told that we could join them for Compline in their chapel. We did so, and it was with profound relief that I joined in the prayers. They asked me to lead them, but I declined. I was in no spiritual condition to lead others in prayer.

  Night had fallen in the small priory. The monks filed away, silently, to bed. The Prior, Richard Frost, motioned us to follow him, and at our quarters he blessed us. Then, after lighting our candles, he bowed and was gone.

  A single candle on a bare table. That was my light, and I lay down on the cot where I would spend the night, and pulled the rough wool blanket over me.

  Cromwell said monks were evil, and that all small priories were filled with corruption, worse than St. Osweth’s. Yet this one was holy and well run. I thanked God for it, even if it were an exception, for my soul ached. I cried that night, cried for Anne and myself. I had loved her, and been wrong.

  We reached Wolf Hall late on the third afternoon, after passing through a small portion of the Savernake forest. It was a woodland forest, not as dense as one would imagine; not solid trees, but broken with open spaces, coppices, and hedgerows. Wolf Hall, situated on a hill like an island in the midst of a sea of green leaves, was a small, half-timbered manor house.

  The most striking feature of the holdings was a gigantic barn, with an enormous dovecote attached to it. It dwarfed the manor house and was silhouetted by the rays of the setting sun.

  Edward Seymour met us, with pursed lips and proper manner. He reminded me, uncannily, of Bishop Fisher. Both were thin, ascetic, and controlled. Both had searching, myopic eyes. Both said less than they thought.

  “We welcome you,” he said. “We are overwhelmed with the honour.” He ordered our horses taken, then motioned us inside. We stood in a dark receiving room, built long ago to accommodate knights in bulky armour.

  “My father is not well,” he said. “In the last year, he has become . . . let me be frank. He has become a child.”

  “This is common,” murmured Norris. “It happened to my mother. It was . . . painful.”

  “It is pitiful,” agreed Edward. “My heart cries out whenever I see him. I keep thinking it is something he can control, something he could change if he wished. My father is gone, and in his place sits an infant, an imbecile. My mind knows he cannot help it, but my heart does not. I have consulted with my priest—”

  “A local one?”

  “Aye. One who has known us always. And he says that sometimes God changes us back to children before He calls us home. But that makes no sense. God is a God of creation, not of destruction. I cannot understand.”

  “Nor I,” I said. God had let me wed a witch, and given me a child by her. It was not as simple as depicted. God was more perverse, and the Devil stronger.

  “You will see him at supper,” said Edward. “You will see him as he is now, and you will remember him as he was when you knew him.”

  How much more pain and change could I stand?

  The Great Hall was really only a large room, with a double row of windows and no upper gallery. It was evidently quite ancient, from a time when all things were smaller. Once the Savernake Forest had been deep and dark and haunted, and men had taken refuge here in a Seymour’s—a St. Maur’s, as they had originally been called—hall.

  Now it was properly fitted out with long tables, and the rough walls had been plastered over, whited, and hung with shields and ceremonial swords in a decorative pattern.

  There were only a few of us to dine, that September twilight; and we were clustered up around the head of one table. I was seated in the place of honour, at the right hand of the host. They led him in, Edward steering his right elbow, Thomas his left. They seated him kindly.

  He did not look different. He was the same John Seymour who had fought with me in France, had shared my dining table. His features were yet intact, his eyes the very same. Outwardly, all is as it should be; therefore the rest is preserved as well. So we think.

  His blue eyes rested on me. They looked at my hair, my face, my costume.

  “Who is this?” he asked querulously.

  “It is the King, Father,” said Edward. “He has come to hunt with us.”

  “The King?”

  He had known me, joked with me, ridden with me.

  “King Henry. Henry the Eighth.”

  He nodded, but there was no understanding in his eyes. I wanted to say, Remember the Battle of the Spurs, you rode right behind the French that day. Remember how they ran!

  He smiled, an idiot’s smile. It was all gone. But no, it could not be. Behind that face, it was there yet. He lived, he nodded, he ate—how could Sir John be vanished? He was there yet, we just did not know how to call him forth.

  “Oh, ’twas merry!” he said. “Merry, merry . . . no one’s merry. Not now.” He pushed his spoon about his plate.

  An infant. He had become an infant; his clock had run backward. But it was against nature. Either we were killed or we expired in weakness. We did not turn back into infants.

  “Now, Father.” A gentle voice, and two hands caressing him, arranging his plate. The vegetables—carrots and parsnips—separated from the mutton. He smiled and patted her hand.

  I looked to see who this was. At first I could discern nothing beyond the dull brown costume of a maidservant with a white headdress. I caught her hand.

  “You are kind, mistress,” I said. She was so unobtrusive, yet so competent.

  She pulled back from me, not demurely, but in insult.

  “It is hardly a kindness to minister to one’s own father,” she said, extricating herself from my grasp.

  “Jane?” I asked, but she was gone.

  “The French are foul,” said Sir John. “They lie in wait for us. They have not improved. But the Pope is worse. This new one . . . he is much harder than Clement.” He shook his head, seemingly all alert and involved in politics, as he once had been. “They say he sucks his toes.” He cackled, fiendishly.

  Edward and Thomas continued eating.

  “They say he sucks his toes!” insisted Sir John, so loudly that the ancient timbers above us absorbed it. “And furthermore, the north tower needs repair!”

  As soon as was decently possible, I left the hall. Servants got Sir John to bed, and I sought mine. The bed was narrow, hard, and musty. Morning Mass in the nearby parish church was at six. I would attend. Meanwhile I fell asleep with my prayers—for Sir John, for Anne, for myself.

  We all attended Mass—the entire Seymour household, save Sir John. It was quick and unembellished. The priest mumbling his Latin was as colourless as the grey stones surrounding him. He must have served his entire religious life here, shuffling back and forth between the little altar and his living quarters, with never a surprise or challenge. Just to continue functioning in such a setting made him a hero, a silent soldier of Christ.

  Emerging from the little church, I turned to Jane, Edward’s younger sister. She was paler than ever in the wan early light.

  “You serve your father well,” I said to her. “It is a thankless task, and one you perform with love.” I could not tell her how distressing I had found it that Sir John was no longer himself.

  “It is not thankless,” she said. Her voice was familiar. It had a slight accent, or catch. “He thanks me for it. And
it is good to be able to repay the things he once did for me, as a child. Few children are given that privilege.”

  Privilege? To wipe the slobber of a dribbling jaw, to cut meat for a grown man?

  “For how long has he been . . . not himself?”

  “For at least two years. When I first went to court he was himself. But by my first leave—”

  “You were at court before this year? Did you ever—?” The delicate question was asked.

  “Yes. I served Princess Katherine, in her last days at court.” Her smooth voice showed no sign of hesitation at naming Katherine. She was no turncoat, no disavower. There was no shame in having served Katherine.

  “My brother called me back to court later. I have served the Queen since before the Coronation. But . . . it would have been better if I had remained here, with Father.”

  “Why so?”

  “He needs me.” A slight breeze blew at her, lifting her skirts and teasing her headdress. It should puff colour into her cheeks. She was far too pale. She laughed and pulled her filmy headdress back.

  Her motion . . . the laugh . . . her slightly accented voice . . . I knew her: the girl in the antechamber before Anne’s Coronation—that strange, moonlit girl.

  “You are a loyal daughter,” I said. Sir John was blessed. Would Mary have done the same for me? What of Elizabeth, half witch as she was?

  “Not loyal enough,” she said. “For every morning, and every night, I pray for him to be restored to his former self. I cannot love him as he is. I have tried, but I cannot. I want my father back; I cannot accept this shell!”

  “Yet you minister to him,” I said in wonder. “Hold him, and cut his meat.”