The Autobiography Of Henry VIII

by Margaret George

  Garlands were hung, five separate Yule logs were brought in; one hundred silver visors were made for guests at the mummings and Twelfth Night masquerades. The King’s Musick practised several hours a day for the concerts, and I even composed three new pieces—a motet and two ballads, my first compositions in years.

  The peers came from all the realm, at my express invitation, to keep Christmas at court and greet their new Queen. Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, sixty-five years old now, with his sad hatchet face. Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, grown great and bearlike, his hair and beard silver-sleek and glossy. Had I truly forgiven him for remarrying so soon after Mary’s death? Inasmuch as I hoped gentle Jane would forgive me, for two years seemed not much longer than two months to me now.

  Howard and Brandon: the only two left from the old forest, standing like massive oaks. All around them were the striplings, the “New Men” like Paget, Wriothesley, Southampton, Audley. They were slight, and would remain so, no matter the many titles with which they were bedight: nonentities, civil servants. The true men, like More and Wolsey, were gone, and no one of their caliber had arisen to replace them.

  Old men’s thoughts! I chided myself. And not fitting ones for a man awaiting his bride. No, although much had changed, to have survived and flourished was a virtue, there was life in us all yet, and we would keep Christmas in ringing fashion.

  But as it happened, we kept it as a bachelor court. For high winds kept the Channel clear and made a crossing impossible for Lady Anne and her royal convoy of fifty ships, until the third day of Christmas, that is, December twenty-seventh.

  Although I laughed and made merry, it struck a chord of memory in me: the ill-omened, delayed voyage of Katherine of Aragon in coming to England. . . .

  Again, old men’s thoughts: seeing omens everywhere, cowering like a dog. So the winds blew! So what? A man could face winds, delays, whatever Fate sent, and on his own terms. Whatever the winds blew me, I could grapple with—and win.

  The fair Lady Anne made the Channel crossing in only five hours (there—was that not a contradictory omen?), landing at Deal. She was received in high state by Brandon and his Duchess, and the Bishop of Chichester, a retinue of knights, and “the flower of the ladies of Kent,” as the romantic Henry Howard described them. They escorted Anne and her ladies and company to Canterbury, there to be received by the Archbishop and high prelates of England.

  A white madness of a snowstorm halted her entourage at Canterbury an extra day, but as soon as the skies cleared, the Duke of Norfolk, Lord Dacre of the South and Lord Mountjoy and all their knights and esquires swelled the ranks of the welcoming throng, until it must have resembled a triumphal procession. Then, on New Year’s Eve, it was halted once again by a storm. The great party celebrated the beginning of 1540 snug within the walls of Rochester Castle, whilst I did the same at Hampton Court.

  But as midnight struck, I could not help but envy all those—some hundreds, already—who had beheld my bride before me. I must, somehow, see her in private myself ere I would meet her before all London in the elaborate ceremony Cromwell had devised. So I informed Crum, who looked pained.

  “The ceremony—” he began.

  “Yes, I know! I am to be a puppet, a gorgeously dressed doll paraded out to meet another puppet. We have already even prepared a stage by cutting down all the furze and bushes between Blackheath and Greenwich. But, Crum, such a thing cannot foster love!”

  He winced at my choice of words. “Indeed it can. Indeed, nothing else is guaranteed to, among the people. They love with their eyes. They want to see gold, silver, rubies, sapphires, emeralds. They want to see armour, all covered with designs, and great horses festooned with silk. That is what provokes love in the populace, Sire.”

  Why, then, did not the splendid Coronation win love for Queen Anne? I answered myself: because they knew her for a witch.

  “But in me, Crum! In me! I would need have love fostered in me!”

  He stared at me, appalled at his misunderstanding. “Forgive me. I thought you had . . . outgrown your need of that.”

  “Grown too old, you mean!” The fool! The stupid fool! To hint that I was old! To insult me so!

  “No, Your Grace. I meant grown beyond this corrupting need of yours.”

  Stunned, I felt no anger. Only a consuming curiosity. “Corrupting? Pray, speak. Tell me.” Caution and self-protection covered his face. “Nay, have no fear. Speak all your mind on this matter.”

  “I mean, Your Grace, that your wish to love and be loved is a weak thread that runs through the otherwise extraordinary fabric of your character. I had hoped that it had been pulled from you—as a tailor can remove a discordant or inharmonious thread from a mantle—lest that thread spoil the whole.”

  “So to love is a weakness in a man?”

  “To need that love in order to feel alive is. It renders you dependent on something beyond God, Christ, food, water, and sunshine for your sustenance. A free man needs only those five elements. You need six. Therein are you not free, but a vassal.”

  I had no answer. “But I will go see Anne alone,” I repeated stubbornly.

  Alone in my bedchamber that night, I looked at Jane’s miniature for a long time before closing the locket firmly. I knew I could not wear it once I had a new wife, and that would be in only a few days’ time. Strange that Crum would see the ennobling emotion of love as weakening and corrupting. I had always thought of it as the opposite—strengthening and purifying. Certainly, when I was in the throes of love I was capable of performing the most extraordinary feats. In fact, I could not perform them without it. In between loves, I lay idle, fallow, directionless—awaiting the fresh arrival of love as a becalmed ship awaits a strong wind to fill its sails.

  The picture of a becalmed vessel, its sails slack and wrinkled, utterly impotent, was not a pleasing one. But the analogy did not hold, not really. . . . I sought love because it brought out the best in me, made me the man God intended me to be. Everyone was entitled to love, to a helpmate, a wife. It was God’s plan. It was Cromwell, with his lonely bachelorhood, who was unnatural.

  I kissed Jane’s miniature, remembering especially her beautiful white skin. Holbein had captured it so well in the tiny portrait. I would have been content with Jane—I was content. But to search no more, to give up: was that not, truly, the mark of the weakling?

  No, I would sally forth on the morrow. I would brave this snowstorm and surprise Anne at Rochester Castle. She would scarce expect me, and what a joyous, pretty secret it would be between us.

  And now to bed. I mounted the three steps and called Culpepper to bring the bed-furs. In he came, laughing and flushed.

  “The sables,” I indicated. “I shall need them tonight.” The sound of the wind outside rose even above the crackling of the fire. He came over and carefully arranged the glistening dark pelts around me. “And put some myrrh on the fire,” I said suddenly. “It is the eighth day of Christmas.” He grinned at the extravagance. “Take some for yourself,” I said impulsively. “Let all the Privy Chamber attendants share it with me. It is a new decade!”

  LXXXVI

  Early in the morning, being still of a mind to visit Anne (for often in the night I would change my mind, hence I always preferred to sleep on a thing), I roused eight gentlemen of my Privy Chamber and bade them make ready to accompany me to Rochester. It was not a far ride, and the snow had ceased falling; so we arrived at the castle before dark. Along the way, with each crunch of my horse’s hooves in the icy snow, I felt my excitement mounting. I marvelled at it, as a thing I had long thought dead; tried to control it, as along with such wild exhilaration go nervousness and a sick feeling inside, a debilitating shyness and an all but incapacitating fear. But it was useless, and in the end I gave myself up to it, swimming in the heady ecstasy of a lover’s anticipation.

  Approaching the grey stones, now sleek with ice, I felt my heart pounding so loudly it sounded, in my ears, like the beating of a falcon’s wings, just as
he leaves the wrist. Be quiet, be quiet, be calm . . . no, do not! Soar all you like, my sweeting.

  Into the castle, past the stunned guards. All was quiet, most of the castle empty, drained into the Great Hall, where everyone was gathered on this second day of 1540, drinking, talking. I bade my party join them, and forbade anyone to follow me as I sought out the Lady Anne. They obeyed.

  Now I made my way to the great Privy Chamber, wherein Anne was presumed to be, the passage leading up to the door so dark that I had to grope along, feeling as if I were participating in a masque, in an intricately staged New Year’s entertainment, as I had done so many times before.

  The hard iron of the chamber door was unyielding, stiff. I wrenched it, and it shrieked, like a witch’s cry, and the door swung slowly, slowly open. I felt the hairs on my scalp rising, tingling, with the suspense of that groaning, sliding door. . . .

  Her dress was of cloth-of-gold. Magnificent! Her back was to me, as she gazed out the tiny, slitted window onto the white landscape below.

  “Anne!” I cried.

  She jumped, then jerked round. I could see nothing of her, as the light was coming from directly behind her. She made no sound beyond a horrified gasp of terror.

  My long brown woollen cloak! I had forgotten to remove it, and now stood before her dressed like a highwayman. No wonder she feared me—feared for her life. I ripped it off me and stood before her, in my golden and green robes of state.

  “Anne!” I cried in joy. “It is I, King Henry!”

  She screamed, then clapped her hands over her mouth. “Herr steh mir bei! Wie in aller WeIt—!”

  She did not recognize me. “I am Henry, the King!” I repeated.

  A woman came scurrying in from the adjoining chamber, along with a guard. The guard, whose face looked young but who had the body of an old hog, bowed. Then he jabbered something in the ugliest language I had ever heard. It sounded like the rumblings of a bowel. Anne replied in the same medium. Then the guard stammered, “For-gif ze Lady, King Henry, a-bot she zhot you vere a grrooom, a horse-master.”

  Now the Lady Anne had bowed before me, and I saw that her entire head was enveloped in a grotesque hat of some sort, with stiff wings and many folds, a madman’s kite. She stood up, and only then did I realize how gigantic she was. A female Goliath. And, in turning to me—

  Her face was repulsive! It was as brown as a mummy’s, and covered all over with pits and smallpox scars. It was uglier than the faces of freaks exhibited at country fairs, the Monkey Woman, the Crocodile Maid, it was sickening—

  A spray of spittle landed on my face. It was speaking, and in that language that was no language, but a series of grunts and gas-churnings. Her breath was foul, it was a nightmare, this could not be happening!

  I backed out of the chamber, feeling for the door behind me, slamming it shut, leaning against it. I felt nausea fighting its way up in my throat, the acrid stench of it, but I fought it down. As the sickness receded, so did the excitement, the panic, the fantasy. What rose in its place was anger: anger so cold and yet so hot I had never felt its like before.

  I had been duped, betrayed. All those people who had seen her—all those envoys who had met her, who had arranged the marriage—they had known. Known, and said nothing. Known, and deliberately led me into this marriage. They were all in it together—Cromwell, Wotton, the Duke of Cleves, Lord Lisle, and the entire company at Calais. And Holbein! Holbein, who could capture the subtlest facial characteristic with his brush; Holbein, for whom no skin was too fair, no hue of cheek too difficult to reproduce, no jewel too faceted to be perfectly captured and rendered—Holbein had made her pretty!

  I stalked back to the Great Hall, where all the conspirators were gathered. Yes, gathered and drinking their stupid mulled wine and laughing at me. I could hear the laughter. They were all imagining the horrible scene taking place in Lady Anne’s chamber, only to them it was not horrible, but comic. They would pay for this!

  “Lord Admiral!” I called from the doorway, and the throng fell silent. The Earl of Southampton turned around, grinning—a grin that wilted.

  “Come here!” I ordered, and Fitzwilliam came toward me, a puzzled expression on his face. What a fine actor he was! Better that he should not have been quite so fine.

  “Sire?” Just the right note of bewilderment.

  “How like you the Lady Anne, Admiral?” I asked softly. “Did you think her so personable, fair, and beautiful, as reported, when you first beheld her at Calais?”

  “I take her not for ‘fair,’ but of a ‘brown’ complexion,” he replied—wittily, he assumed.

  “How clever you are. I did not know you fenced with conceits and metaphors, along with Wyatt and Surrey.” I glared all about the room. “Is there no one I can trust? I am ashamed of you all, ashamed that you dared to praise her, and reported her—by word and picture!—as winsome. She is a great Flanders mare! And I will not have her, no, I will not be saddled with her, nor ride her, nor hitch her to any conveyance in England!”

  Never, never, would I touch her! If the propagators of this cruel comedy thought to see me wed her—assumed I would be meek enough to follow through—they did not know Henry of England! What did they take me for? Francis of France, forced to marry “the Emperor’s mule”?

  “Saddle your own horses, and come with me! You shall answer for this at Greenwich.” I would not return to Hampton Court; God, no! Greenwich for business, for unpleasant business. It was at Greenwich that I had married Katherine of Aragon; it was at Greenwich that Anne had borne the useless Princess Elizabeth, and had lost my boy-child. Let Greenwich be the place where the Flemish Mare was turned around and shipped back to the Low Countries to pull her dray!

  The bitter cold was heightened by the time we got back to Greenwich, as the sun was setting—a small, shrunken, bloody thing—and the sixteen-hour night was beginning. I rode straight up to the gatehouse and passed through, across the great courtyard and right up to the royal entranceway. “Summon Cromwell,” I barked to a page as I strode toward the Privy Council chamber. It was dark and dusty, not having been used these past two months while I kept court at Hampton. Attendants hurriedly brought beeswax tapers and dusted off the Council tables. A fire was laid to drive the dank chill away. In the meantime we kept our travelling cloaks on. I took my place at the head of the table and waited silently.

  Cromwell appeared. Upon entering the chamber he looked astonished. “Your Grace—honoured Council members—” he began, playing for time while he figured out what was occurring, the better to be in control.

  “I like her not!” I relieved Cromwell of the mystery, and of the need for preliminaries and niceties. There he stood, the man responsible for all this. My enemy.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The Flanders Mare! The Lady of Cleves—I like her not, she repulses me, she is an abomination in a headdress! And you would have me wed her, you would have me lie with her, you would have me make her a Tudor and have her crowned! The woman is hideous, a malformed beast—”

  Cromwell knitted his brows in anger. “Oh, Your Grace! To think that we have been so deceived!” He turned on the Admiral. “You saw her, you met her at the border of Calais, you welcomed her, with members of the King’s household, and lords and gentlemen, and two hundred yeomen, all in blue velvet and crimson satin, and mariners—you saw that she was not what she had been reported. Why did you not keep her . . . penned up . . . in Calais, and notify our sovereign King, our kind King Henry, that she was not as she had been represented?”

  Fitzwilliam, the Admiral, looked shocked. “I had no such authority,” he whined. “To have done so would have been insubordinate. I was commissioned to receive her and bring her safely to England, and so I did, and anything else would have been treasonous.”

  Cromwell snorted. “Yet you lied in your letters to His Majesty! After you had beheld the ugly woman, you wrote of her beauty. Was that not a malicious misleading of your King?”

  “I did not c
laim that I myself found her beautiful! I only repeated the opinions of others, who had sworn to her beauty. No one can blame me for not criticizing her, especially as opinions of beauty vary from beholder to beholder—and I believed that she was shortly to be my Queen.”

  “Enough of this! All of you misled me!” I shouted. “Now you must undo the wrong you have done. You shall find a means of freeing me from this engagement—I care not by what means or on what grounds, but it shall be done. Or someone shall pay dearly for making me appear a fool!”

  “We will find a technicality, a legality somewhere,” said Cromwell smoothly. “Send for Osliger and Hostoden, the Duke of Cleves’s ambassadors. They accompanied her to England.”

  While the unfortunate Germans were being sent for, Cromwell sat down and began to drum his fingers on the table, thinking out loud. “Legality—what’s legal? A disease that prevents childbearing . . . but that’s after the fact. No, we shall need something ironclad. A consanguinity? Too farfetched. A precontract? She has none, we’ve investigated that. Not a virgin? Hard to prove. Scandalous conduct? Messy. Besides, we’ve used that already; it has bad associations. Reflects on the King. No, it will have to be the precontract business. It’s dull and dreary, but it’s all we’ve got. And it has nothing to do with character, with personal likes and dislikes.”

  The Cleves ambassadors, misunderstanding their function (so well did Cromwell play his part), were effusive in their assurances that no precontract existed.

  “Ach, that childhood betrothal between our Lady of Cleves and the Duke of Lorraine—it was merely a conditional agreement between the parents of the two parties,” said Hostoden, a great, florid burgomaster sort.

  They grinned in unison, as if they had practised it. “The formal revocation is attested to in the Chancery of Cleves, in the records for the year 1535.”