The Autobiography Of Henry VIII

by Margaret George

  “And wish he were something other than he is,” she said. “What sort of love is that?”

  In the days that followed I hunted much, and we dined on buck, roe, hare, or hart every evening. On September seventh, the priest said a special Mass for the Princess Elizabeth’s second birthday, and all prayed for her long life and health. Only two years ago things had stood so differently. I had believed in Anne, and old Sir John had been himself. Now Sir John drooled and clapped his hands when the priest pronounced the benediction.

  And what did Anne do? I did not wish to know.

  Jane ran the entire household, I came to see. Not only did she soothe Sir John and coddle him, but she oversaw the servants, tended the beehives, supervised the dairy cows, and sorted the linen, folding it neatly and laying it away. She clipped herbs and hung them to dry in the hot, dark rafters of the old barn, and when they were ready, she slipped them in with the bleached and folded clothing. She did all this as silently and silkily as a moonbeam, making it look simple and effortless.

  I was drawn to her, for in her presence I felt whole and calm—two things I had not felt since first beholding Anne. In her curious, milky way, she was an antidote to the poison Anne administered.

  I sought her out every day, but she was elusive and difficult to detain. Her tasks called . . . Sir John needed her . . . the wind was tugging at the linens stretched out on the grass to dry . . . the cat was up a tree and mewing. . . .

  At last I found her one afternoon tending the beehives. Sir John had a small apiary, set at the nether end of the orchard, and Jane was thrusting a smoking torch near one hive. She wore great thick leather gloves, and was swathed in white veiling—a strange echo of a bridal costume. She was humming to the bees, singing them a lullaby. I stood by the side of a pear tree and watched the curious ceremony, for it was passing strange. The humming inside the hive had ceased, as surely as if she had cast a spell over the insects. Gently she lifted up the lid over the tray inside, and took it out. It was laden with wax combs and dripping with honey: the bees had performed well. She replaced it with an empty wooden tray and spoke softly to the bees.

  “I thank you for your honey,” she said. “I am so sorry to disturb you. I trust you may use this new tray for your winter storage.”

  She turned to the next hive, her white veiling billowing out beside her, her smoke-torch giving off grey clouds which lulled the bees to sleep.

  She was purity, and innocence. Just when I had despaired of such and believed that evil had all things in its grip, Jane was here, whole and uncontaminated, white and immaculate and simple.

  The days passed swiftly—too swiftly. Sir John had kept a fine kennel of hounds: greyhounds for hunting the roebucks and stags; harriers for weasels, squirrels, and hares; mastiffs for the pests like polecats and stoats. It was soothing to ride out in the yellow mid-morning and pursue the quarry.

  So straightforward and simple; so obvious who was the hunter and who the hunted. Even the kills were clean—no confessions, no motivations, no guilt. Then, afterwards, a fine dinner. Impossible to be afraid, to think of anything other than the moment at hand, of the bow and arrow and one’s aim.

  There were no messages for me during those amberlike autumn days, nor did I send any. I wanted nothing but the slow reassurance of each sunrise and each self-sustaining day, while I gradually accustomed myself to what I now knew about Anne. Strange how quickly one can become accustomed to the unthinkable, once the first horror and shock are past.

  By the time my last day of hunting was over, and the beaters were heaping up the piles of game, sorting them into lots for skinning and eviscerating, it seemed that I had always known Anne was a witch, infused with the Devil, had always felt and feared her destructive power over me and those I loved or needed. She had done her worst to Wolsey and More, to my sister Mary, and now she would turn to Katherine, my daughter Mary, Fitzroy . . . and me as well. Perhaps even . . . Mary Boleyn’s child Catherine? Anyone she suspected might be a child or a love of mine, she could strike against.

  What would I find when I returned? Who would be “ill”? Chapuys had spoken of poison, and I had scoffed at him, thought it another transparent ploy to end Katherine and Mary’s political exile. Katherine’s insistence on preparing her own food—perhaps it had saved her life until now. What was it Anne had said of Katherine? “I am her death, as she is mine.” I am her death. . . . Yes, she meant to be.

  But to what end were all these deaths? Was the extinction of life, any life, the goal? Or was it more precise than that? Only certain lives?

  The halcyon days at Wolf Hall must close, and I must return to London, to Greenwich, where Anne was waiting. I must dispose of her somehow, and make it so that she was utterly and completely stripped of all power, and all opportunities for power.

  The ride back showed me, achingly and clearly, what it meant to discover that I had imbued hundreds of inanimate objects with meaning. On my flight to Wolf Hall, I had been in such shock and confusion that I had not seen anything around me. Now, calmer, I saw everything.

  The great round tower of Windsor came into view. Windsor, where on an autumn day like today I had made Anne a Marquess. My pride, my joy in her that day, all echoed back, mockingly, from the old stones there.

  The greyhounds, bounding ahead of us . . . Anne’s greyhound, Urian, had killed a cow on a hunting progress once. (Urian! One of Satan’s minions! She had even named her dog that, and I had been too blind to see what it betokened.) I had recompensed the farmer, so besotted with love, I remembered, that I counted it a privilege.

  A small wayside shrine, with a Madonna in yellow-painted robes. Yellow, that day at Hampton Court, Anne’s gown, and the flowers.

  Would an object never be just an object again, a building merely a building, a colour purely a colour, rather than a red-hot nail of memory? If only things would restore themselves to that, half the pain would be gone.

  LXVI

  We returned quietly, and I made no announcement to the Queen’s Chamberlain. The only person I wished to see, and straightway, was Cromwell. Cromwell, and possibly Cranmer. But Cromwell first.

  We conferred in his town house in London. It was located next door to the house of the Augustine Friars (soon to be disbanded) and conveniently close to York Place. Unlike anything of Wolsey’s, it was small and unostentatious. Cromwell never entertained “in state”; the idea of his hosting banquets for ambassadors and princes was outlandish. He was known to set a good table, and his private guests enjoyed tasty dishes and engaging conversation—much as More’s had done—but on an intimate scale.

  More. The remembrance of More gripped me so painfully I ached. I let it wash over me, because then it would recede. Otherwise it would never, ever abate. I knew that, but the attacks of guilt and sadness were debilitating.

  We were seated in Cromwell’s day chamber, a pleasant little room with a view out to his walled orchard. The apples were hanging heavy on some three or four trees, the leaves around them turning yellow. The other trees, the pears and cherries, had already been plucked bare.

  “A fine crop of pears this year,” said Cromwell, once again picking up my own unspoken thoughts. “The warm, clear May when they flowered, followed by all the rain, was just what a pear tree wants.”

  A good thing that something wanted More and Fisher’s wretched rain and storms. Certainly the grain crops hadn’t, nor had the people.

  “Try some of its elixir,” said Cromwell, handing me a small silver cup of perry—a fermented drink made from pears. Saluting one another, we sipped. The liquid was smooth and delicate.

  “Yes, the rain did them well.”

  He put down his cup and looked at me, waiting, his black eyes deep and understanding.

  “Crum, I have been hunting in the West for the past fortnight.” I knew he knew that—undoubtedly one of his spies had found his way to Wolf Hall—but it was courteous to volunteer it.

  He smiled. “And was the hunting good?”

 
“Indeed. Hares, stag, roe—we dined to bursting on game every night. I had forgotten how very much I enjoy being a hunter. You hunt, do you not, Crum?”

  “With hawks, yes.”

  “I’m told you have a fine collection of hawks. Where are your mews?” Not here in London, surely.

  “In Stepney.”

  “We must hawk together soon.”

  “I would be pleased.”

  Pause. Enough pleasantries. “We must hawk together indoors first. There is one who flies at too high a pitch, one who never should have been empowered to fly at all—one who must be brought down and sent away,” I said. “Her feathers must be plucked, and she must be sent away, out of the royal mews.”

  Was there the smallest hint of a twitch in his lip, a suppressed smile? “The Queen does fly high,” he said, slowly but boldly.

  “It is in my power to lower her as surely as I raised her up. I would be rid of her, Crum, I would be rid of her. She is no wife to me.” More than that I would not say; it was not meet. Crum should be privy only to my conclusion, not the reasons behind it.

  “You would send her away, or un-wife her? Which is your wish?”

  “To un-wife her. That, above all!”

  Crum stood up—with my leave—and began to walk a bit. Up and down, up and down, upon the fine polished wood floor of his chamber. He stood by the window and placed his fingertips squarely on a large globe he had mounted on carved legs, and twirled it. The world spun, a glossy pattern of coloured countries and seas.

  “If there is a fault with the marriage that invalidates it, the world will consider the Princess Dowager vindicated and restored to her rightful place.”

  Katherine. Here in London she seemed nonexistent, vanished into the mists of the fens. Certainly she had ceased to exist for me. But to the Emperor and the Pope, all of England was the same, London no less remote than Kimbolton.

  “You will have to take Katherine back,” Crum said, spinning the globe again. It creaked on its axis. “It is unfortunate that Your Majesty’s surplus wife is still about.”

  All that to float up to the surface again, like a corpse three days in the water . . . no, I could not endure it. But Anne, the witch . . . I could not endure that, either, as she meant to kill me.

  “What if it is not the marriage that is at fault, but the Queen herself?” I whispered. “A flaw, a deep and fatal flaw, that makes her . . .” not a human being, I wanted to say, but dared not . . . “not fit to be Queen?”

  “A moral failure?” he asked eagerly.

  Yes, selling one’s soul to the Devil could be described thus. I nodded.

  “Stealing, lying, false pretences?” He thought aloud, shaking his head and discarding each one.

  “They call her the Great Whore,” I said softly.

  “That would taint Your Majesty as well.” The mocking, the self-assurance, had drained from Cromwell’s manner. He leaned on the windowsill, and outside a playful breeze swirled some of the loose leaves off the apple trees. The weighted branches bobbed and dipped. “We do not wish such a solution. Treason—that is heinous, and infects only the traitor, not his object.”

  “She has broken every one of the Ten Commandments!” I cried.

  Now Cromwell abandoned all visible composure. “Your Majesty! I cannot believe . . . surely . . . not murder. The Queen has not murdered!”

  Yes, she has, I thought. Wolsey, Warham, Fisher, my sister Mary, Percy . . . and even now she is practising the black arts against others.

  “In her heart, Crum. In her heart,” was all I could reveal for now.

  “So have we all,” he said. “In the law, in the common law of the realm, it is deeds which condemn a man, not thoughts. You do see things as Supreme Head of the Church of England, where, of course, in spiritual terms, the intention itself is a weighty sin.” His shrewd use of flattery, he thought, would win the argument and dissuade me.

  The First Commandment: I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt not have strange Gods before me.

  Anne had taken Satan as her lord and master.

  The Second Commandment: Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

  In participating in Christian rites, by “praying” publicly, Anne was doing so, mocking the Lord.

  The Third Commandment: Remember thou keep holy the Lord’s Day.

  Her Sundays and holy days were spent in idle masques and banquets, glorifying herself.

  The Fourth Commandment: Honour thy father and thy mother.

  Anne was on bad terms with everyone in her family, except her brother George.

  The Fifth Commandment: Thou shalt not kill.

  Oh, here she had . . . she had. . . .

  The Sixth Commandment: Thou shalt not commit adultery.

  She would not do that, no, she was too vain to give herself to anyone besides Satan . . . and pride. Diana the moon-goddess: this commandment she had not broken.

  The Seventh Commandment: Thou shalt not steal.

  She had stolen the throne, had stolen the rites and anointing appropriate to a true Queen.

  The Eighth Commandment: Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

  It forbids lies, rash judgment, detraction, calumny, and the telling of secrets we are bound to keep. She did not tell lies, she was a lie! The Father of Lies had lain with her. . . .

  The Ninth Commandment: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife.

  She coveted others’ husbands. Me, in the beginning; then Thomas Wyatt, Francis Weston, even her brother George. All were married, yet she demanded that they pay court to her.

  The Tenth Commandment: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s goods.

  Greedily, Anne had always looked to the possessions of others, wanting them to spite their owners. I remembered the insistence on depriving Katherine of the christening gown, of the royal jewels, on taking over Wolsey’s York Place. She desired the things only because they were treasured by an enemy.

  “Thoughts lead to deeds,” I said. “Must we wait for a murderer to murder?”

  “We must, as God Himself must. Besides, in the eyes of the law, he is not a murderer until then. Your Majesty . . . can you not clarify the problem regarding the Queen? I could help you so much better if I knew your meaning exactly.”

  No. To let him be privy to my knowledge might endanger his life. The Witch would know.

  “No. It is enough for you to know that I must be rid of her, divorced from her. Find means to effect this! Use all your subtleties, use all your powers, but bring it about!” The same instructions I had once given Wolsey about Katherine, and he had failed. “Fail me not; it is a desperate situation!” Crum was not bound by his own glory and reputation; he was much freer to act than Wolsey had ever been. His own ambitions did not hobble him from serving his King. Our self-interests were perfectly in harmony.

  “I will need time,” he said. “It would perhaps be beneficial if I were to attend the Queen’s Michaelmas festivities to observe. If you could secure me an invitation?”

  So Anne was planning yet another of her fêtes. “Yes, of course. Is it to be a large one?”

  “The entire court, so they say. I did not receive an invitation. The Queen has never . . . cared for me.”

  “How ungrateful, considering that you masterminded the great revolution which she now uses as her throne.”

  He shrugged in mock humility. “I have not exhausted my capacity to mastermind, and nothing is secure forever.” His eyes were alight, like those of a small boy given a great wooden puzzle. His ingenuity was being challenged and given a chance to fly, hunt, and bring down prey—like one of his beloved hawks.

  I had received an invitation from Anne regarding the fête in honour of Saint Michael the Archangel and All Angels, to be given by Her Majesty the Queen, the time, the particulars, all interwoven with a curious pattern of black and white, in which gradually the design changed from one to the other, turning itself inside out. Of course: the feast of Saint Michael signified the annua
l autumnal struggle between light and dark, with dark triumphant. Clever of Anne. But then she was always clever, in a feral sense—just not very wise.

  I would stay away from her until the cited evening. That was simple enough to arrange, with the press of returning courtiers and the start-up of the law courts and the foreign ambassadors clamouring for interviews. I thanked God that the Queen’s and King’s apartments were separate. In the meantime I sent Anne friendly, courteous greetings, hoping to placate her and still any suspicions she may have had that I had not “forgiven” her for the false pregnancy.

  For the truth was, I was afraid of her. She had certain powers (to what extent I knew not, and that was half the fear of it), among them perhaps the ability to discern one’s thoughts, and certainly the ability to wreak bodily harm on enemies. I had no doubt that soon she would turn those powers on me, once she knew I had found her out. My task was to keep her from knowing as long as possible, until I could act first.

  In the meantime, Chapuys confirmed my worst fears. The Imperial ambassador, in an all-but-demanded interview, stood before me in anguish. Was my own equally visible, I wondered, as we faced one another: I seated on my throne, wrapped in the royal ermine, holding the sceptre of state; he bareheaded, clutching his hat.

  “Your Majesty, the word is that the Princess—the Lady Mary”—he made no quibble about the title—“is gravely ill. Her life is feared for.”

  He handed me the worn letter, folded and unfolded many times, with a message from Mary, and one from her confessor. I felt a slap of pain that she had chosen to write to Chapuys instead of me, but reason told me, assured me, that it was only natural she would appeal to her partisan. Still, it hurt.

  Mary did not describe her illness, but asked Chapuys to plead for her to be allowed to be nursed by Katherine, “my own dear mother and worth a thousand physicians.” Her handwriting was feeble and erratic, wandering about the page like a mongrel lost in the desert wastes. The confessor described the onset of the mysterious malady as “sudden, beginning on the Princess Elizabeth’s birthday, and causing the Lady great pain in her stomach and bowels, so that she is scarce able to retain any food, and wastes daily. Black bruises appear on her during the night, from what source we know not.”