The Autobiography Of Henry VIII

by Margaret George

  Now I lived again. To want was to be alive. And I wanted Mistress Howard, wanted her so violently I was ashamed and breathless at the same time.

  That night I could not sleep. Truly. For the first time since I had beheld Anne Boleyn at the investiture (June 25, 1525; I would never forget that date) and been bewitched, I had not had such a feeling. Was this, too, witchcraft? No, I knew better now. Anne’s witchcraft had come later. That initial feeling I had had was genuine and undesecrated.

  To experience it again! I had thought never to do so, and now to be given it, unsought, at my age!

  I lay awake all night, enjoying the love yet to come, relishing the fact that I knew it would come to pass, for I had power to command, and what I wished, I could take. I was no Culpepper. But in the interval between the framing of a desire and the acting on it—therein lies the torture, and the bliss. A person is never more ours, yet never more unattainable, than in those hours.

  Anne snored softly beside me. I felt fondly toward her, knowing that she was the odd means of having brought about my present and future bliss. Without the arranged marriage, I would have been content to languish forever, mourning and feeling myself dead. I had believed myself so. I even felt gratitude toward Francis and Charles. Without their enmity, I never would have had to make this forced marriage, then I never would have had a Queen, and the Queen would never have had a household—

  Enough! This was absurd. One might as well be thankful that one’s father lay with one’s mother on a certain night, and that the midwife was saved from tripping on the stairs because of a fortuitous candle. The truth was, I was gloriously in love—reborn, as it were—and that was all that mattered. Things were as they were, and to care overmuch who brought them to this pass was to busy oneself wastefully. Any action not bringing a lover to the possession of his loved one was wasted, unless it be savouring the moment to come.

  Culpepper’s wounds were slight. He had been pricked by a lance-tip that somehow found its way between the overlapping thigh-plates of his armour. The surgeon had cleansed his wound and bound it with pink satin.

  “Her colours,” said Culpepper with a wink, as he reported back to my sleeping chamber for duty. He unwound the satin carefully and placed it reverently on his night-table.

  “Whose?” I forced myself to ask, casually.

  “My fair cousin’s,” he replied. “The one I spoke to you about before the Queen’s arrival.”

  “I forget her name.”

  “Catherine Howard. Daughter of Edmund Howard, the Duke’s youngest brother.”

  I remembered now. I had always held Edmund in the same category of regard I reserved for perpetual drunkards, perverted monks, and deserter soldiers. The wretch had died in debt and unable to perform his duties, of course.

  “After her sad father died, she had to be taken in by her step-grandmother, the dowager Duchess of Norfolk.”

  A part of me sensed danger. Her inheritance was bad, her upbringing pathetic. Blood and training tell. Another part of me was indignant. By those standards, Our Lord would be reckoned of no account.

  Her eyes were innocent. They told me all I wished to know. (What had become of my knowledge that everyone is a consummate liar? Banished, along with all my other painfully acquired knowledge and experience, in the vortex of love.)

  “Have you made her your own yet?”

  He chuckled. “No. I wait upon a proper time.”

  The shrug of my shoulders did not betray the rush of relief I felt. She was untouched! I would not have had her otherwise; I could not have stood to know that another had enjoyed her.

  Like Katherine, and Anne Boleyn! Other men had held them, other men had parted their legs and inserted their members into their soft flesh, had rubbed back and forth within them, had left a sticky mess . . . foul, foul! That was so sickening, so revolting, to take another man’s leavings. No man could do so and remain a man.

  People wondered what I had loved in my Jane. Her purity. To know that she was untouched, that no man had soiled her.

  I must move quickly with Catherine Howard, lest Culpepper besmirch her. Then I would not want her. No, knowing another had been there before me, had sported himself upon her and within her, would make her diseased in my eyes. I must be first, and only.

  “We must find you a wife,” I said to Culpepper.

  He laughed. “I would rather have mistresses.”

  “Nay,” I insisted. “You need a wife to spend your energy on. Stay away from Mistress Howard. Her only dowry is her virginity. Do not rob her of it.”

  He shrugged. “Be it as you command. I am thankful I am no woman, to have to trade in virtue.”

  Virtue. Purity. Modesty. Chastity. All men mock them and denigrate them. Yet all men are struck and awed in their presence.

  The next morning, as I made my way to Anne’s study, ostensibly to listen in on her English lessons, I glanced all about me, hoping to see Catherine Howard. As a maid of honour, her duties were everyday ones: selecting combs, brushing clothes and inspecting them for lice, cleaning and laying out jewellery. It was the higher ranking ladies-in-waiting who attended the Queen in ceremonies. Therefore it was in Anne’s chambers where I must seek to find Mistress Catherine.

  Anne was alone with her tutor, however, the stammering youngster who nonetheless seemed to be a genius in the rapid teaching of the tongue.

  “In—ze—”

  “ ‘The’ ”—

  “In—the—market iss, apple, pear, cheese, und—”

  “ ‘And’ ”—

  “—turnips.”

  They crowed with pleased laughter. I enjoyed hearing Anne’s delight. Without the shadow of my presence, she seemed a lighthearted person, altogether at odds with her leaden appearance.

  “Very good, sweetheart,” I said, strolling into the room. The laughter ceased. That hurt me.

  “Come, come,” I chided. “Do not interrupt yourselves for my sake. What else is in the market? A fat hog, perhaps?”

  But they would not resume. Feeling let down, both in my original intention of seeing Mistress Catherine and, unaccountably, in having intruded on Anne and being excluded, I made my way back to my own chamber. This was the time when I would gladly have saddled a horse, gone hunting, left the palace and my feelings behind. But I was not now capable of riding. Lately my leg-ulcer caused me such pain from being rubbed on a saddle that I no longer could endure it. Moping about my chamber on this bleak February day, I called for one of the few pleasures left to me—Will.

  Will worked, still, when wine failed and company palled. Almost imperceptibly he had passed from being an entertainer for my private moments, witty and full of scabrous gossip, to being a listener and a wise commentator—especially after Jane had died and I simply could not abide fools about me, I mean true fools, not professional jesters. Fools who murmured unctuous platitudes about how “time will heal all” and “you will rejoin her in heaven,” and “she would not want you to grieve overmuch.” It was Will alone who was honest and brave enough to say, “I know that you would trade the remainder of your life to speak to her for just a quarter of an hour on the most trivial subject.” And I could answer, “Yes.”

  Now I relied on him more and more, telling myself that I must not, as to place so much trust and need on a single person was to court Fate overmuch. I had only to remember Wolsey, More, and Jane herself.

  He stood before me in the work chamber, in his ordinary clothes. He seldom wore cap and bells anymore, as the costume offended his sensibilities and was necessary only if he performed in public. Before me, at eleven in the morning, it would have been absurd.

  “Will,” I muttered; “I am utterly lost, forlorn.”

  His dark quick eyes searched mine. “No, Hal”—he preferred to call me Hal, as no one else ever did—“you are bored. Call it by its proper name.”

  “What is boredom, then? Define it for me.” Already boredom had flown, at Will’s magic touch.

  “Boredom is that awful state o
f inaction when the very medicine—that is, activity—which could resolve it, is seen as odious. Archery? It is too cold, and besides, the butts need re-covering; the rats have been at the straw. Music? To hear it is tedious; to compose it, too taxing. And so on. Of all the afflictions, boredom is ultimately the most un-manning. Eventually it transforms you into a great nothing who does nothing—a cousin to sloth and a brother to melancholy.”

  “You make it sound romantic, and doomed.”

  He shrugged. “It can be. The odd thing about it is that it is so easily cured. One need only force himself to perform the ‘boring’ actions, and the condition itself flees. Something about the physical action dispels the boredom. Yet once it has set in, and got its grip on a man, he is usually too enervated to rout it, even by the simple expedient of putting one foot in front of another.”

  “Will, I am enervated. But not from boredom. Will, I am—in love!”

  He received this astounding confession calmly. “That, of course, is the most guaranteed cure for boredom. It never fails, in the short run. But it has the disadvantage of always failing in the long run. Well—you stand warned. Who is she?” He did not say “this time.” He did not slide his voice sarcastically. He merely inquired, brightly, pleasantly.

  “A girl come to court.”

  “Well, I did not suppose it was someone you had met in the fields. Where else would you meet anyone, save at court? Your choice is quite limited, in truth. I don’t suppose you realize it.”

  “She is young and unspoiled and fresh. A rose without a thorn!”

  “Nameless, I see. Equipped with all the standard love-evoking mechanisms to inflame desire in such a jaded old roué as yourself. It’s always a ‘young girl.’ O Hal, how boring!”

  “How can you say that?”

  “To be boring is to be predictable. Have you ever sat down to a Twelfth Night masque, and it is about Cupid and Psyche, and you see, within the first few moments, that you are going to have to watch all the tests that Venus sets her: the separation of the rice and wheat, the borrowing of beauty from Persephone, and so on, and so on? And something within you groans and thinks, ‘O dear, I have to sit through all this!’ There are no surprises, just the known and inevitable. That is how it is with you and your ‘rose without a thorn.’ Ho-hum. You will idealize her and trust her, and she’ll betray you, either with a youngster, or just with Time himself. And you’ll be unhappy.”

  Even Will did not understand! I was stunned.

  “Be original, Hal. Fall in love with an old widow. Now there’s a story!”

  “I am not a story! I am a man! I do not exist to prove theories of tale-spinners. Do I not have a right to happiness?”

  “How boyish! A ‘right to happiness.’ You do not even have a right to life, let alone happiness. That you live, and thrive, is a gift. A gift the gods did not confer on Prince Arthur, or on Queen Jane. There are no ‘rights,’ only gifts. Although one can increase one’s chances of receiving those gifts by acting in certain time-tested ways. Sadly, the doting older husband and child-bride combination is not one of them.”

  “I cannot help it. I tell you, I am possessed!” I cried. Even as I said it, I felt the strength of that possession—impossible to dislodge, save by consummation and attainment.

  “You are always ‘possessed’ by something,” he finally said. “Are you never just Hal, without some sort of visiting spirit? Does it not become crowded inside your earthly skin?”

  “No! To be alive is to teem with spirits!”

  “To be alive is to teem with your own spirits, not a host of alien ones.”

  “Words, words! I will have no more words, but only the Lady Catherine.” There, I had stated it.

  He laughed. “I would have thought that name would be one you could never stomach again.”

  “So was Anne! Can I help it if one-third of the women in Christendom are named Katherine, another third Anne, and the last third Elizabeth? Shall I seek amongst the Infidels for a Melisande or a Zaida?”

  “Eventually you may have to, if you continue ‘falling in love’ apace. You are not yet fifty, and have at least another twenty years of lusting—and calling it love—before you. England may prove too small for you.”

  I could not help laughing. He reduced it all to the manageable, the understandable. Men of logic, who think so differently from men of instinct and passion, always do. They are thus a great comfort for the aftermath, the returning-to-earth part of the love-journey. But not for the beginning; no, not for the beginning. They scoff at magic, and beginnings are magic in their purest form.

  He settled himself down on a great cushion before the fire. “Now you must plan your campaign. Shall you win her before Easter, do you think?”

  I let him chatter on, but I scarce heard him, as the great obstacle to Mistress Catherine Howard emerged in my mind. That obstacle was in her very name: Howard. The Howards were of the North, and steeped in the Old Religion. “It was merry in England before we had the New Learning come amongst us,” the Duke had once grumbled, and as a whole, the family were conservative and against the very changes I had brought about. To entangle myself with a Howard bride meant to turn my back on everything I had done since that mockery of a legatine court in England. Catherine was but a bait in a vast, complicated, political bear-trap. And if I took that bait . . .

  But if there were a way to snatch the bait without springing the trap? There must be. I would find it.

  Just as her cousin Anne Boleyn had done before her, Catherine managed to elude me, although this time it was accidental. I never found her about Queen Anne when I came to make my formal calls on her, and I dared not increase the frequency or the length of them, lest Anne become attached to me. Above all I did not want that, although she was rapidly becoming alarmingly English. She had progressed to a level of everyday speaking that was on a par with a schoolchild’s, had befriended both my daughters, and was busy planning gardens to be laid out in mid-April, after the last frost. If she were disappointed or dissatisfied with our marriage “arrangement,” she did not show it. It was going to be difficult to pry her loose when the time came.

  It was also difficult to keep Cromwell at bay and soothed. He was by far the cleverest man in my kingdom, shrewd and cunning if not truly visionary; his instinct for personal and political survival was legendary. I took the greatest care that he should be unaware of my reevaluation of him, but to disguise this I had also to conceal my true feelings for Queen Anne.

  After the first few days, Cromwell had inquired timidly as to whether the Lady Anne pleased me more than I had originally thought? Since the answer to that was both yes (in her unexpected ability to make any room she was in feel comfortable) and no (in her physical repulsiveness), I merely grunted and said, “Somewhat.” This reply made him more nervous than before, so I knew it was a mistake. An apprehensive man notices far more than a contented one, and in the future I must see to it that Cromwell was contented enough to betray himself, or at least to reveal his true feelings about Lutheranism.

  The situation in England, though, was this (I could admit it and see it, even though I disliked its implications): we had become, in the eyes of the world, Protestant, and the very things I cherished and relied on depended in large measure on the existence of Protestantism (as it was now being fashionably called, rather than Lutheranism). What were these things? My own conscience, for one. Upon my private conscience I had based my break with Rome and my annulment of the incestuous marriage with Katherine. My conscience I had set up as the highest law of the land. I looked for Divine guidance, and I embraced it. Directly between myself and God there was a relationship, and the intermediaries (Church, holy traditions) were to be leapfrogged en route.

  But Lutheranism—I mean Protestantism—was so social. It would make man the interpreter of things, and ultimately the focus of all values on earth. In time, no institution or building or objects would be seen as divine at all. It would be all Man, Mankind, and Humanity, and the world wou
ld revolve around Man and his little deeds, his little struttings. It would follow, then, that a King is but a man, and every man a potential King. . . .

  I despised Protestantism! It led ultimately to anarchy. Therein lay the paradox. England’s safekeeping rested uneasily on a justification that ultimately would seduce us to barbarism once more. I was charged with steering a middle course between the destructive extremes of Rome and anarchy. I could do it, although it became more and more difficult. But what of Edward, coming after me?

  Protestantism might seem appealing to Cromwell, but he could not foresee where it would lead. Cromwell and his forces must be stopped. Protestantism must be allowed to progress no further in England, lest it wash like a spring tide over Edward when he came to the throne, and sweep him off it.

  At court, we prepared to move to Windsor to spend spring and to bring in the May. Carts were readied and drawn up before the courtyard, and workingmen spent two full days carrying out wrapped articles and loading them carefully. Everything was inventoried, and all our favourite objects were to be transported to Windsor. The most delicate ones, of course, were not to be moved. Each palace contained a few of those: a finely tuned clock in one; a ponderous organ in another; a painting whose unstable colours could not withstand exposure to the elements. That was why, each time I returned to a royal residence, I greeted and rediscovered a host of old faithful friends.

  Everything had been moved from Greenwich, and I had stayed behind only to review some pesky state papers, which, once signed, would be delivered directly to the Chancellor. I always enjoyed the feeling of a place just deserted, its life gone elsewhere. It gave me a sort of cheap melancholy to roam about the empty rooms, and it was a pleasure I always allowed myself, on one pretext or another.

  Today, as I waved away the last of the Imperial messengers (Charles still called Francis “brother”; how tiresome!), I decided to walk across the adjoining hallway and into the Queen’s apartments. I did so, marvelling not for the first time at how much larger a room appeared without furniture—not just a little larger but double or triple the old size. Without furniture or trappings, it had no personality at all. “Ghosts” were mainly tied up in tangible objects: in the hanging that one was observing when someone said certain words; in the inlaid wood pattern that one had stared at when at a certain hurtful juncture at one’s life. Without these, ghosts were flown. Katherine had been here; Anne, too. Jane as maid of honour. Each of them had made the place so different, in her own time, that it seemed surrounded by different bricks; it seemed the windows should give out on different views.