The Autobiography Of Henry VIII

by Margaret George

  “Aye.” She smoothed her hands over her straining bodice. The satin rearranged itself in shining folds all encircling her breasts and accentuating them. O ice-blue satin!—how can you promise such passion? “Desires I hope will find favour and mercy in your sight, Your Majesty.”

  “Mercy? Nay, I’ll give you no mercy!” I chuckled. No mercy until I lay sated on soaked sheets. No mercy until daylight besmirched our chamber. Dirty day! With its ugly peeping eye and neat divisions.

  I whispered in her ear. “Come to my bedchamber tonight.”

  I felt muscles stirring and resistance flowing through her. “Nay. Nay!”

  So. She was set upon virtue, and would yield her lock only to the key of a marriage rite. So be it. For that she should have, and speedily.

  But, oh! How to endure this night? It was as though I were but nineteen, and she forty-nine. Her chastity made her at one with the oldest woman in farthest Scotland. Unawakened is the same thing as played out.

  “I shall groan all through the hours,” I said, half-groaning even then.

  “I would not be a man, then.” She smiled.

  Women groan from desire, too, I thought. You shall see.

  Instead I smiled. “Good night, sweetheart,” I said, unwittingly giving the same farewell that I gave Anne every evening. What else was there to say to an untouched bride?

  Cromwell I gave instructions to.

  “You have prepared a statement for the Princess of Cleves to sign?” I asked.

  “Yes, Your Majesty. It is all set down here, as best I understood your desires.” He produced a short document.

  “If it said what the true nature of the complaint is, it would be even shorter.” The parchment said it, said something—what matter, as long as the game was ended? I laid it down.

  “There is another matter, Your Majesty,” said Cromwell happily. “A matter pertaining to money.” He looked as if he expected me to salivate. Was I perceived as that simple, then? And that greedy?

  “In the monastic suppressions, we overlooked one order. The Knights of St. John of Jerusalem.”

  Ah, yes. The militant order of monks, the sword-arm of Christ. They had formed originally to protect defenceless pilgrims to Jerusalem. They had fought the Infidel and set up hospices all along the pilgrim routes. As always, competence and filling a need where no services existed had made them powerful and then wealthy. Today the order held land and privilege all over Europe. They were true knights, though, in the purest sense of the word. And their name stood for strength, honesty, compassion.

  “. . . a profit of ten thousand pounds,” Cromwell was saying.

  “But who will take their place?”

  He smiled crookedly. “No one. Because they are not needed today.”

  “Charity and protection, not needed?”

  “Not en route to Jerusalem. Perhaps in other guises, at other stations.”

  “But with no formal organization?”

  “The Knights did not begin as a formal organization. They began with one man’s courage and charity. Other men of vision will see the needs today.”

  I sighed. I was reluctant to sign, as if by signing I would at long last kill something lingering in myself.

  “I shall leave it here for you,” Cromwell said at length, placing it firmly on top of a stack of lesser documents for my attention, things pertaining to rent-leases in Kent and shipping regulations for Alicante wine.

  After he had left me alone, I reread the first parchment carefully. It stated, succinctly and reasonably, why the marriage to Anne was no marriage. It outlined the privileges Anne was to acquire upon becoming “the King’s most entirely beloved sister.” She would take precedence over all women of the realm, with the exception of my Queen (who was left unspecified) and my daughters. She would be granted a large annual income of about five thousand pounds, and two royal manors, Richmond and Bletchingly.

  In exchange, she had merely to sign and acknowledge that we were in agreement on this. Then she had to write her brother and forestall any notions he might have of “avenging her honour.” She must assure him that her honour was in no wise threatened and that she and I were in perfect harmony on this matter.

  Attached to the document was an envelope containing a terse statement by Cromwell: “It will doubtless be necessary for the King’s Majesty to speak personally to selected members of the Court and the foreign ambassadors on this matter, viz, to wit: ‘The marriage between the Princess of Cleves and myself has never been consummated, due to our inner conviction that this was no true marriage. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth and Wisdom, communicated itself to us unmistakably, and we obeyed.’ ”

  How neat and vague and high-minded. But what if questions were asked? Must a King open himself so personally to public knowledge? How much would people demand, and how far was I bound to answer?

  I found I could not sign the paper. I would have to search the matter out more fully with Cromwell in the morning.

  XCI

  That night I could not sleep. And pacing my work room (lest I wake the slumbering Culpepper) I spied Cromwell’s lights still burning in his court chambers. He was reputed never to sleep, and now I confirmed the rumour. The great astronomical clock in the gatehouse was striking three as I crossed the inner courtyard to his quarters.

  Pushing open his door, I found his immediate receiving room deserted and dark. The lights were farther within. I traversed the distance, drawn on like an insect toward a torch.

  A noise inside. Cromwell had heard me.

  “Who’s there?” he asked in a tremulous voice, not at all his own. “Who’s there?”

  “The King.”

  There was a scurrying, and then a wild-eyed Cromwell in a silk night-cover came forth.

  “I saw that you were up,” I muttered, “and fain would talk to you again about the ‘statement’ you say I must give, before others are about to overhear us.”

  “Of course.” His eyes darted round nervously. “Of course.” He gestured toward his work room beyond, and I entered it.

  Two candles were burning on his work desk. It was a large, flat surface made up of a door from one of the suppressed monasteries, laid across two carved capitals. Evidently he took glee in working on the corpse of monasticism, so to speak.

  “From whence came these articles?” I asked, as much to gain time as anything else. I wanted an opportunity to look round the room and spy out what he kept about him. I wanted to know, at last, what Cromwell was.

  “From St. Mary’s, Your Grace. The first monastic house we suppressed.” He looked fondly at the spoils.

  I nodded. “Sentimental value.”

  Over in a far corner I saw a stack of books. Of what sort? It was a pity that heresy did not demand the visible props of Popery. No statues, no rosaries, no Reserved Hosts. Just malice in the heart.

  “Aye.” He had composed himself now, was ready to meet any scrutiny. “There was a matter troubling Your Grace?” he asked.

  “The ‘statement’ regarding the Princess of Cleves. There is something in me which dislikes to sign it.”

  “In what manner does it offend your sensibilities? I can amend—”

  “I know not how, precisely. But it disturbs my conscience.” What disturbed my conscience, truly, was the putting away of a good woman for no other fault than not exciting me.

  “It need not be done at all!” he said merrily. “Perhaps these pricklings of conscience are showing you another way, the most righteous way!”

  Any chance that his handiwork would survive elated him. But it could not be.

  “Nay, it must be done. It is necessary for the realm that I have a true Queen and perhaps other heirs. It would give Edward comfort, too, not to carry the burden alone.”

  Cromwell nodded, as he had to; wondering if a new Queen on the throne would represent all manner of connections he had sought to quash.

  I turned quickly and swung round to glance at the parchments spread out on his work-surface. The
y were innocent enough, or seemed to be. One never knew. They might contain codes; I knew he had devised some. To disguise his plans?

  I then let my eyes search his chamber. The light was so poor it was difficult to see into the far corners. I thought I saw a shelf laden with odd-shaped vessels. Abruptly I made my way to it, taking one of the candles with me. Behind me I could hear Cromwell following anxiously.

  Yes, it was a row of jars and bottles and little boxes. Some were evidently quite ancient; I could tell by the worm-eaten wood.

  “What are these things?” I asked. I reached out and took one, a rounded container with a hinged lid. Inside was some sort of ointment. I took a smear of it. It smelt vile, like a decaying animal.

  “I said, what is in these containers?” I repeated. How dare he not answer forthwith?

  “I—it is—medicines seized from the monastic infirmaries,” he finally said. “That one you hold—it was used to help failing hearts . . . you remember . . . as Carew had, that time in the cave—”

  Carew. Yes. Unfortunately, his heart had finally ceased to beat due to his treason, not to his disease. But for others who had the same affliction . . . ?

  “Is it efficacious?”

  “Indeed! It saved many lives; the monks of that abbey were noted for that particular cure.”

  “Why, then, have you not made it available to our own physicians?”

  “The monks—it would reflect well on them if it were known that they had devised such cures. No, I prefer—”

  “You prefer to hoard these medicines here! You prefer men to die rather than think well of the monks!”

  “It is necessary to discredit the monks!” he insisted.

  “Necessary for whom, Cromwell?” I murmured.

  The clock outside struck the half hour. I used listening to the clock as a pretext to approach the window-seat laden with the mysterious books.

  “Ah, yes,” I mumbled, opening the casement. I stuck my head out and rested my left hand on the sill, quite naturally, and the right on—“Hallo, what’s this?” as the pile slipped out from under my pushing hand.

  Muffling a curse, Crum came forward, gathering up the books. Suddenly a spitting and hissing from under the window-seat gave way to an angry cat. A black cat. The animal glared at me with fiendish eyes, red by candlelight, but seemingly with a luminosity all their own, an unearthly glow. I felt my skin go hot and cold.

  Still, I forced myself to pluck one of the books from the pile. I opened it casually.

  Thomas Münzer’s letters, edited by Luther. Münzer—the Anabaptist rebel who preached open revolt against princes and led the Peasants’ Revolt in Germany in 1524! An heretical book—one of the worst in existence.

  I threw it down and took another. Melanchthon’s treatise, denouncing me as Nero and wishing that God would put it into the mind of some bold man to assassinate me. This had been printed in Zurich and smuggled into England.

  “Crum,” I whispered.

  “These are all seized from known heretics, Your Grace, and held as evidence pending their trials,” he said smoothly and smugly. “By your own reaction, it is clear how very condemning they are. Any man possessing such filth must perforce be a heretic. Is it not so?”

  “They contaminate your chamber, Cromwell—being kept here so close to your person,” I finally said.

  These were not “heretical” texts, like the standard ones by Zwingli, Calvin, and Luther. They were calls to revolution by Devil-possessed men. No one would possess such textbooks of insurrection unless he were plotting one himself.

  He shrugged. “Unfortunately I must keep them within sight at all times, guarding them. Think you not how quickly they would disappear else?” He laughed, a mirthless laugh. “It’s worth a man’s life to destroy this evidence. And a man fighting for his life is given strength by the Evil One himself.”

  Or given clever answers by him, I thought. Satan protects his own.

  I knew now what I needed to know. I offered a silent prayer to Christ for showing me these signs, for opening my eyes. But, oh! my heart was heavy as I bade Cromwell a good night. How I wished he had turned out to be something other than what he truly was: the most capable minister a King had ever been granted—seduced and corrupted by heresy and the desire for power.

  What few hours remained before dawn I passed in a state of strange consciousness, waiting as the room passed from darkness into a blue fog. At last there was stirring in the outer chamber: the rustling sounds of water being heated, clothes being laid out and brushed, men stretching.

  I swung my legs over the side of the bed, acting the part of a sleepy man forcing himself to stir. I groaned and muttered and rubbed my eyes—then recoiled. The odour from the confiscated monastic salve still clung to my hands, like a living thing.

  “Water!” I called. “Water!”

  The Groom of the Bedchamber appeared, with a silver pitcher of heated, perfumed water and a mound of fatted, herbed soap. So anxious was I to rid myself of the taint of Cromwell’s vindictiveness that I skipped the ritual attached to my morning ablutions and plunged my hands straightway into the water, scrubbing them furiously myself rather than submitting to the usual gentle ministrations with cuticle-stick and sponge. Again and again I washed my hands, until the clear scented water grew scummy and my hands were raw. There, now they should be clean! I held them out to receive a coat of perfumed lotion.

  I called for a Privy Council meeting in mid-morning. I wanted to give them their assignments, make my humiliating “confession,” and have done with it. By this time tomorrow, I kept reminding myself, it would all be over.

  I sat alone in the chamber, awaiting them. I was all attired in sombre garments, befitting a less than joyous occasion. Brandon and Wyatt would carry the message to Anne, I had decided. As for the horrible acknowledgment—the entire Privy Council would have to hear it, to make it both official and binding.

  The first man into the chamber was William Paget. Stolid and utterly colourless and reliable, he was Secretary of the Council. He coughed and bowed deeply to me, then quietly took his place and awaited the others.

  Within three minutes William Petre arrived, clad likewise in colourless, drab attire. On his heels came Audley and Sadler. As they took their places, I could not help but think of wrens and poor winter birds sitting in dreary tiers on bare December branches.

  Then came the Old Men, all resplendent in luscious colours and sumptuous fabrics. Norfolk, of course, as ranking peer of England, draped in velvet; Suffolk, in cloth-of-gold; even Gardiner, as Bishop of Winchester and leader of the churchly traditionalists, along with Wriothesley his hanger-on, were brightly attired.

  At length the filing-in was complete and they all sat, obedient to the day’s business. As the King never personally attended Privy Council meetings, they knew this was no ordinary agenda.

  I rose. “My good Council and servants”—I stressed “good” and “servants”—“I am here to share with you a secret matter of mine own heart.”

  They looked uneasy.

  “Yea”—I pulled the prepared statement from its cover—“I, having contracted a marriage in good faith and having participated in a marriage ceremony with all good intentions, find now that my marriage is no true marriage in the eyes of God and the laws of men.”

  I looked up at their faces. They appeared frozen. Good.

  “The Lady Anne of Cleves was not free to make such a marriage, so it seems. There was precontract, from childhood, to the present-day Duke of Lorraine. This evidently is binding in every way.”

  Now for the difficult part. God, how I hated it!

  “Our bodies, in recognition of this, refused to join. We have remained chaste, and have not known one another.”

  The Earl of Southampton tittered. Then the others followed suit, trying all the while to suppress their mirth. The more they stifled it, the more it grew.

  Damn them!

  “So you wish to know the exact details?” I said sharply. Such a hush
fell over them that a man scarce would have credited it. “Very well, then!” Do not do this, one part of me said. Yes, do! another taunted. Outdo them in vulgarity and embarrassment. “When I first came to the bed of the Lady Anne, I felt by her breasts that she was no young maid; their slackness, and the looseness of her belly-flesh, so struck me to the heart that I had neither will nor courage to try the rest.”

  It was more than they had reckoned for, more than they cared to know.

  “And so I have received a Sign, and so has she,” I concluded calmly. I dealt out two sets of parchments, one with my left hand, one with my right.

  “These papers here”— I tapped gently on the ones resting beneath my left hand—“are to be delivered to the Lady Anne, who is even now at Richmond. They outline the settlement I wish to make her. After all, she is a foreigner here in our realm, and doubtless frightened. The terms are most generous, gentlemen.” I outlined them: the rank, the privileges, the income. “I appoint you, Brandon, and you, Wyatt, to deliver these to her this very day.”

  Before they could look uneasy, I grasped the pile under my right hand. “These are ecclesiastical matters,” I explained. “They should be submitted to Convocation and approved there. Naturally the Church of England will declare the marriage null, and free us both to marry again.” I nodded to Cranmer, and he came to fetch the papers. Oh, how very different from the days of Wolsey and the legatine court and Campeggio and the decretal commission. How clean and simple it was now. By sundown it would all be done!

  They shuffled out, some of them lingering ever so slightly in case I wanted to consult with them and amplify what I had just said. Amplify? I had said more than I had ever wished to, more than any sane man would wish to.

  It was all for Catherine, I thought. For Catherine I had debased myself so, opened myself up to ridicule and speculation. Yet love was a cruel and insane master. I had felt that I had no choice, and even as I burned with shame, I offered it up as a gift to her, perfect proof of my devotion.