The Autobiography Of Henry VIII

by Margaret George

  I reached out my arm to her, and together we found seats and prepared to listen to a series of compositions performed on a reed instrument by a young man from Cornwall.

  He was small and dark, like all his people. The melodies were haunting, dreamlike, unlike anything I had heard before. They spoke to a soft, lost side of myself.

  Afterwards I talked to him. I had a bit of trouble understanding his accent, as his mother tongue was Cornish. I complimented him on his musicianship and enquired after the sources of his melodies.

  “I modelled them on native melodies, Your Grace,” he said. “There are similar tunes across the sea in Brittany,” he added. “Often my father and I cross there, and while he does his business, I do mine.”

  “And what is his business?”

  “He is a fisherman, Your Grace.”

  “And yours?”

  “A musician.”

  “And only that?”

  “Aye. It’s what I’m called to.”

  “But what of your father’s trade?”

  He shrugged. “Perhaps somewhere a musician’s son longs for the sea.”

  So simple. He made a revolutionary idea sound so logical. Here was a true New Man, and what Surrey could condemn him? And I had taken pleasure in his offerings!

  Often, after the entertainments were over, Catherine and I would stroll about the grounds of the Archbishop’s Palace. This area upstream, where Lambeth and, across the river, Westminster Abbey and Palace lay, was quiet and bucolic. Lambeth, with its quiet walks, rounded cobblestones, and faded bricks, invited one to take off one’s shoes, put aside one’s cloak, and say, “Now, my friend, let us discuss this ‘business’ of Church taxation—but first, some wine.” All things, even weighty state things, were just conversations between two friends. And therefore all things were possible.

  Catherine and I stood often by the river’s edge at the great water-steps. A dozen lanterns flickered there, lest an unwary foot slip on the wet stones of the landing. Always there were barges of estate tied up there, brave carvings of arms glistening with gold leaf on their prows, waiting to take their masters back to great-houses on the Strand.

  We always walked a little distance away, else the boatmen might overhear us. There was a brick footpath along the river’s edge, and that was our favourite. We followed it to its end and then stood there, listening to the lapping of the water. In the magic of Lambeth and its ancient accessibility, in the power of May, nothing was beyond reach. Including Catherine as my wife.

  I put my arm round her and pulled her close. “I can wait no longer,” I muttered. The evening had been intoxicating, a foretaste of what awaited me daily, once my private life was rearranged. “There is no reason to postpone what we both are longing for.”

  She nodded eagerly, and pressed herself up against me.

  “It will not be difficult,” I assured myself out loud. “Anne is not my wife in the eyes of God.”

  “In the eyes of Cromwell, though, she is Your Grace’s wife,” said little Catherine in a clear, bell-like voice.

  “Cromwell . . .” Oh, what was I to do about Crum? “Cromwell must learn to live with disappointment,” was my lacklustre reply.

  “What he has so adroitly done, set him to work to undo,” she said gaily. “As when a child is naughty, her mother makes her toil on the very thing she has ruined. The Duchess often made me take out stitches of the shifts I had embroidered, and done poorly.”

  My beloved Catherine, granddaughter of a great noble house, forced to do needlework for servants! “Was it tedious?”

  “Aye. But it learnt me to notice what I did with my needle. Before that, I was careless, and sloppy.”

  “You were but a child.”

  “So is the Lady Elizabeth. Yet she knows well how to follow each movement that her needle makes.”

  Elizabeth. What matter what Elizabeth did?

  “Yes, let us put Cromwell’s cleverness to task,” I chuckled. “Let him take out his own labouriously contrived stitches.”

  She laughed. “He caged you. Let him set you free.”

  “I would not be free, little bird, but bound to you.”

  She reached out and slid her hand along my cheek. The faint light from the boatmen’s torches lit the left side of her face—a half-mask.

  “You are a half moon,” I murmured, leaning over to kiss her. She returned that kiss heartily, hungrily, sweetly. I quivered, shuddered, erupted with desire.

  “Nay, nay—” she was whispering, her voice rising in urgency. “My Lord!”

  I was ashamed. I had frightened her, threatened her chastity. “Forgive me,” I said. My breath was still coming in short gasps.

  She drew her cloak around her. Jesu, how could I have insulted her so? She was crying.

  “Catherine, I meant no harm. But this—this is unnatural.” At that moment I knew it, felt it. “We must be wed straightway. It is meant to be. No more standing before the Thames, alive with longing.” Even the slap-slap-slap of the water against the riverbank sounded sexual to me. “I will speak to Cromwell tomorrow.”

  Still she kept her face buried in her cloak, her shoulders hunched. I reached out a steadying hand. “Hush now.” I soothed her. When she had done crying, I put one arm around her and led her back to her waiting barge. She leaned against me all the way, and yet when the time came to play her part to her waiting uncle Norfolk, she smiled gaily and threw off the hood of the cloak as she joined him in the Howard barge.

  Her cousin Surrey, the Lady Norris, Mary, widow of my lost son Fitzroy: all the Howard youngsters awaited her in the barge, and she outshone them all. As the rowers pulled away from the riverbanks, and the sound of music and the faint lantern light echoed and reflected on the water, I wondered what it was to belong to such a great tribal family, and how it felt.

  XC

  I awoke well before dawn, savouring the spring sweetness. Every hour seemed precious now, every aspect of the day steeped in a rare perfume. The birdsong outside my window was finer tuned than any human consort of viols. Oh, how beautiful was the world! Catherine would soon be my wife, and I would have someone again to share these exquisite moments of life.

  Culpepper stirred on the pallet at the foot of my bed and groaned. He rubbed his eyes and sat up, muttering all the while. His breath was foul. I looked at him, in all his youthful strength and beauty, enmeshed in a hangover; and suddenly it seemed to me a desecration, a perversion of what a man was meant to be. He marred the day, like a boil on a virgin’s cheek.

  I must see Cromwell, if this thing were truly to come about. And so I sent for him, which I had not done in some time. He appeared so promptly I could almost credit young Henry Howard’s tale of diabolical power; only the Devil could travel with such speed.

  Clean-shaven and obedient, he stood before me. “Your Grace?” He bowed smartly; only his rising voice betrayed eagerness and compliance.

  “Things are breaking up on the Continent, like clouds on a March day,” I began.

  “Sire?”

  “I no longer need the alliance with Cleves!” I barked. “You erected it; you dismantle it.”

  He looked disdainful. “That is—”

  “Leonardo da Vinci—even he!—dismantled the arches and pavilions he created for Princess Katherine’s Coronation. He supposedly was a great artist—certainly Francis thought so, buying every small canvas he painted!—and yet he was not above cleaning up his messes. Now you do the same!”

  “Sire?” He looked pained and confused. “Pray you, be specific. I am no artist, and have erected no arches filled with cherubim. Nor have I painted Madonnas in strange landscapes.”

  “No, you have brought a travesty of a Madonna to my landscape!”

  He looked blankly at me. What an actor!

  “I mean the Lady Anne of Cleves! A Madonna—that is, a mother—she will never be, and the political reasons for the marriage are insufficient. Francis and Charles drift apart, like those March clouds, and my good coastal defence sys
tem will protect me better than an alliance with the Duchy of Cleves. It was a mistake, a ghastly mistake that robs me of the opportunity to happiness. So undo what you have so dexterously done!”

  “I thought . . . that you were fond of the Lady . . . the Queen,” he mumbled.

  “I am fond of my hunting dogs and of the first lute I had as a boy. But that is not enough for a marriage!”

  Instead of responding with abject obedience, he walked about the chamber a bit—though I had not given him permission!—and at length turned back to me, musing. (He acted as if he actually had a choice as to whether to obey or not. Why did he try me so?)

  His eyes were narrowed. “It is Norfolk who has put you to this,” he said coldly. “He seeks to use you for his purpose.”

  “No one uses me!” I bellowed. The fool! “Least of all you!”

  He started; I continued. “Yes, you! All over the kingdom they say you use me. Use me for your own schemes. Protestant schemes. Now prove to me that they lie. Undo this insulting Protestant alliance you concocted for me, that you erected just like one of Leonardo’s symbolic arches, all out of papier-mâché and paint. Tear it down. It is as insubstantial as a paper arch.”

  He looked grim. “Your Grace—”

  “Do it! What has been done can be undone!”

  In a heartbeat he accepted the challenge. “What provision shall be made for the Lady Anne?”

  I waved my hand impatiently. “A manor—a palace—a royal income.” Those were Cromwell’s concerns. I stopped. Anne was dear to me in a peculiar way. I even loved her, but it was a singular sort of love.

  “She shall be my sister,” I said. “I will keep her and cherish her as if she were my dear lost Mary. I have no family,” I said, almost in wonder. “I would like a sister.”

  “You must be more specific,” he said dryly.

  I sat down and the words came. “She shall be titled ‘the King’s sister.’ She shall be given royal residences and . . . shall be my friend.”

  “A high honour.” Did he mock me? I shot a look to his face. “One of which I am uncertain, of late.”

  “Oh, Crum.” I laughed, but did not answer him. A deflection is no answer; it is not even a sop.

  I knew deep inside that Crum was becoming dangerous, and had changed since first he came into my service. He had outlived his usefulness both to me and to England. There were signs—signs that even he could not hide: his obvious partiality toward the Protestants on the Continent, his strange leniency toward heretics and Reformers, his uncharacteristic reluctance to enforce “the Whip with Six Strings,” and his determined maneuvering for the Cleves marriage.

  Yet I hung on that human balance, liking the man, even while knowing he was bad. I lacked the courage to act on my intuition, to just . . . end Cromwell. Eliminate his presence from my government. Each time I would say to myself, “Next time—next time I’ll do it—” and yet each time he would walk from my chamber a free man, enveloped in his customary power. Power that I must needs revoke. Next time.

  So. Now it would be done. I had no doubt of that. I had frightened him, and a frightened Cromwell was a sure servant. He would untangle me from Anne. But I was pleased at my decision to offer her a place in my family. Of course, such a thing was unprecedented, but then, so was our entire relationship. If Cleves were as dull as it seemed to be, Anne would surely have no wish to return to it.

  I felt a contentment fuller than any in years. I paced the chamber a bit, trying to understand why.

  Of course. I was being given something few men were ever gifted with: an opportunity to relive my life and have it turn out differently. What was Anne of Cleves but a second Katherine of Aragon—a foreign princess to whom I could not be husband? Only this time, instead of wasting years seeking Papal sanction, I had but to say “Do it” to Cromwell—and it would be done. Instead of appealing to foreign rulers and clinging to her “rights” to me, Anne would co-operate, and we would remain friends.

  And Catherine Howard! She was Anne Boleyn before she became hard and heartless and corrupted. By some great miracle (for who can understand God’s mind?), I had been given a second chance.

  That evening I was to dine with Anne, as I usually did on Thursday evenings; long, comfortable suppers before a hearty fire. I was not disappointed this time.

  Anne greeted me affectionately at the door to her withdrawing chamber and pointed to a board set up before the open window, looking out on the summer twilight. My accustomed chair, well bedecked with velvet pillows, was drawn up.

  “A new game?” I inquired. How she loved games!

  “Ja!” She beamed. “It is call-ed ‘Var.’ ” The board had a figure drawn upon it that was funnel-shaped—narrow at one end, wide at the other. To the side were grouped carved horses and men, and wooden coins of different colours.

  “Pray explain.”

  “Ah, ja. Veil, it takes ze income from the monasteries, ze New Vorld, ze banks—vool produck-sion, all zose things, and zen buys men with zem, zat is, soldiers, and—zese nations var together.”

  It was an elaborate and intricate game, based on sources of income for ten countries, and their national goals. Depending on how money was channelled, the outcome could vary tremendously.

  As the clock struck midnight I had England mired in a messy war with France, while the Emperor stood on the sidelines with Scotland, and the Pope amassed land wealth.

  “Leave it set up!” I cautioned. “I wish to conclude this game, see it through to the end.”

  She laughed. “I am glad it pleasures you so.”

  “Where did you find it?”

  “I made it up.”

  I was dumbfounded. “You? You created it?”

  She was brilliant! A mathematician, a financier, a strategist. Oh, why was she a woman? Poor Wolsey. If only he had had one-third her grasp of these things.

  “You are gifted, Princess. Would I could make you Chancellor of the Exchequer. Or War Minister.”

  “Und vhy not?” she asked blandly.

  “Because you are the Queen,” I replied. But will not be for long, I thought. And then, why not . . . ? No, impossible. But I would need someone to replace Cromwell. . . . No, absurd!

  “Goodnight, sweetheart,” I said quickly, nodding and kissing her hand. I walked down the corridor to my own apartments swiftly, lest I suddenly act on my own impulse. Beheading a Queen had not alarmed the populace as much as appointing one Finance Minister would.

  Within a fortnight Cromwell reported that all obstacles were cleared. The “cause” had been found: Anne’s precontract with the Duke of Lorraine, but, more importantly, the lack of consummation.

  “The lack of consummation, or my inability to consummate the marriage? Be clear, Crum!”

  He shrugged. “Of course it would be more . . . persuasive . . . if you attested to your inability to consummate it. But ’twill serve as well if you present it as a matter of policy that you simply chose not to.”

  “It makes me sound as if my private parts wore the crown instead of my head.” He looked over at me, and I could almost read his mind: In you, Sire, they do.

  “First you made me a public cuckold with Anne, now you’ll have me publicly impotent!” I grumbled.

  “You said you wanted to be free! Is it my fault that freedom lies through a little play-acting of a personal nature?”

  Play-acting? But Nan was an adulteress—a witch as well, of course, which is far worse and demands death, but an adulteress in the bargain. . . .

  “A King should not be put in the position of public ridicule like that,” I maintained.

  “You open yourself up to much more ridicule if you try to ride the old ‘precontract’ horse again. Ride the ‘inability’ horse and you’ll have the support and sympathy of every man in England. There’s no one with cock and balls who hasn’t suffered a similar attack at some time in his life. That much is certain.”

  “I am not to be like other men! A King is different—that is what it all rests
on.” That much was certain, too.

  “It is not as if you had no children,” he said. “And will have more,” he added. “It was merely with a woman the Holy Spirit showed you was not a true wife.” He made my selective failings sound moral and brave.

  I grunted. Oh, what matter? I would say it and be done. They would laugh for a day, a week, but I should be free nonetheless, and able to wed my Catherine months sooner than going tortoise-like along the dignified precontract route. O my Catherine, see how I love you! I will suffer even this scorn and count it as nothing, just to possess you a week, a day, an hour sooner.

  Anne was instructed to leave straightway for Richmond Palace—supposedly because of an outbreak of plague in London. She was told that I would join her shortly. Once she was away, I was at leisure to pull out the long marriage contract with the Duchy of Cleves and spread it on a permanent surface where I could consult it whenever the fancy struck me.

  I could invite Catherine to my private apartments without circumspection. I could take her out to Nonsuch and bid her select furnishings for the Queen’s apartments.

  “They are not yet complete,” I said, “and will be decorated entirely to your taste.”

  She giggled a little. “I know not how to furnish a palace.”

  “This palace, my love, is a pleasure-seat. It is to reflect entirely our tastes and desires. As such, there is no model—just as there is no one quite like either of us.”

  “I have no . . . formed tastes.” How lovely she appeared as she said this.

  “But you have desires!” I reached across and encircled her with my arm, reeling her in and close to me.

  Yes, desires. I knew she must pulsate with them. Although her entire bearing was graceful and maidenly, somehow I sensed—perhaps it was her plump fingers, unexpectedly moist; or the way sweat formed a little bird’s wing between her shoulder blades when she walked but a little way—that she was a creature of passion. I had but to awaken it. And I would, I would. . . . Before the Michaelmas goose was slaughtered, by God, I’d be churning her into a passion like a choppy sea before a rough wind.