The Autobiography Of Henry VIII

by Margaret George

  XCII

  Now there was nothing before me but to wait while Brandon and Wyatt carried the message. Only a few hours until it was concluded—the King’s Great Matter this time tamed and turned into only a Small Matter.

  I laid down my cloak of state (which I had had to wear in addressing my Council) and felt free in my linen shirt. It was June, and already the sun was high and the air warm. I knew I would be incapable of remaining indoors and attending to state papers and correspondence, although they called to be answered. I would take a turn about the gardens here at Hampton. Wolsey had once been interested in gardening to the extent that he had hired a horticulturist; Anne (the cursed one) had planted beds of bulbs that long spring when she waited at Hampton and I could not bring myself to join her, so revolted was I by her presence. By rights Hampton should have magnificent gardens by now. Today I would inspect them.

  I left the royal apartments by the stair-door, and soon found myself in the formal area near the Great Maze. Mazes were expected, required. Every formal garden had to have a maze, so that lads and lasses could spend at least a quarter of an hour getting lost in them, hunting for the end (which gave them a topic of conversation), and then doing their business unobserved. I would have none of mazes today. I nodded to the maze-keeper and his attendant and struck out toward the south side of the Hampton grounds, where great vistas were laid out.

  Close to the palace itself was a sunken garden, surrounded by a brick wall. I had seen the wall itself many times from my gallery, but never really inspected what lay inside. That it caught the sun I knew, and that was all.

  Now I entered into its secret place, and was dazzled. Along their tidy beds, roses bloomed with such heavy loads of flowers on their stems that it seemed the branches might break for colour, weight, profusion. The south and west exposure of the walls were one mass of climbing roses, so that each brick had some twenty blooms spread out upon it. Taken all together, in a glance, they were “rose”—that is, the sweet blush somewhere between red and white. As my eye took them all in at once, suddenly “rosiness” ceased to be an adjective and became instead a sensual experience.

  Loth to spoil the spell, I walked out into the midst of them. Now that I was closer I could see the slight variations: how one was stark white and another more dusky. How even the thorns varied. Some were triangular, with an exuberant crest and hook; others were straight-sided, as if their hearts really were not in the business of tearing flesh. The climbers, I saw as I approached them by the southern wall, had the most tamed thorns of all. I touched one carefully and found it to be soft. I could also feel the heat radiating from the south-facing bricks. Here it was as warm as the lands of the Infidels—where, legend had it, the rose had originated.

  An old gardener was crouched down between the bushes, applying dung to their roots from a leather bucket he carried with him. As I approached him, I saw that the beds of roses subtly changed colour, and varied from pure red to a gentler pearly shade. The three bushes where the man laboured bore faint yellowish tinges in the flowers’ hearts, though the outer petals were glowing red.

  “Master gardener!” I called. Slowly he stood upright. He was ancient. His face was so wizened and wrinkled it was difficult to see the eyes, and a great hat shaded his entire face. But his hearing was evidently in order.

  “Eh?”

  “Is this garden your special charge?”

  “Aye. For twenty years.” He gestured toward the wall of climbers. “I started these when they were but small shoots. One came from Jerusalem. The red one. We call it ‘Saviour’s Blood.’ ”

  “Tell me,” I asked, “the colours of roses. Are they but red and white?”

  He hitched up his pantaloons and strode out of the plants. “In the wild, yes. But in gardens one can cross them, modify the colours somewhat. But we cannot get two colours on one flower, no, alas.” He was thinking I had come to chide him about producing a perfect “Tudor rose” like the ones in carvings, which had red petals on the outside, white inside.

  “But these”— I grasped the perfect flower with the hint of yellow in its heart—“could you produce a yellow bloom, eventually, from this?”

  He shrugged. “I am trying. That has been my project for nigh on a decade. But always the red outer petals reappear! Once I thought I was nearly there. I will show you. I pressed it. The petals were all yellow, with red streaks only on the very outer petals. But the next season!” He looked disgusted. “It reverted back to red.”

  He motioned me over to his round, thatched gardener’s hut in one corner of the walled garden. He disappeared inside for a moment, then reappeared with a flat, dried flower resting on a piece of parchment.

  “My yellow rose,” he said with a melancholy look. Indeed it had been nearly gold. What a shame! “Aye.” I commiserated with him. “I can see how close you came.”

  Inside the cottage I saw row upon row of pots and planks laid out with cuttings. “May I?”

  He nodded, and I stepped inside. The man had as many cuttings and seedlings as I had state papers waiting my attention. Inside this hut he was monarch and I but a curiosity-seeker, a petitioner.

  “Could you develop a rose without thorns?” I suddenly asked. “If you can vary the colour, can you not vary the stalks, the stems, the leaves, and other attributes, including thorns?”

  He shook his head. “The thorns seem to be a part of it all, Your Grace. They are always there. Some green, some brown, some sharper than others; but for every stem there must needs be thorns, in my experience.”

  “Could you breed a bush with negligible thorns, do you think?”

  “I never tried.”

  “But if you tried?” Oh, this was the thickness of common folk. Also their protection.

  “Try, then!” I said. “I would make it well worth your while to develop such a bush. A rose without a thorn.” I came closer to him, fixed his eyes. “It has meaning for me. I need your help!”

  “I can try, Your Majesty.”

  “How long would it take?”

  He looked alarmed. “I do not know. I cannot guess. I thought I had a yellow rose”—he nodded again toward the preserved one—“but it disappointed me.”

  “Aye.” I turned away and let up on my stare.

  “And then there’s winter. All those months when all one can do is wait.”

  Winter. Waiting. Oh, I knew it well.

  “Do your best,” I said. “Eventually all things yield before a man’s best.”

  I stepped out of the rose-cottage, and once again into the bright sunlight. Brandon must be at Richmond by now; Anne would be reading the terms.

  “Until then, take this,” he said, handing me a small clay pot with a newly planted cutting in it. Thanks to the old man’s expertise and the rich new soil, a bud had opened already. I touched its stem and guided it near to my nostrils. But it was not the sweet rose scent I smelled. The stench from Cromwell’s hoarded salve still clung to my fingers, even after all that scrubbing, all these hours.

  “Oh!” I jerked my hand away so quickly that the pot fell, shattering. “I—”

  Now the old man was offended. He bent down and began gathering up the pieces. But he would still develop my rose without a thorn. He must. I had commanded him.

  “Forgive me,” I said. “It was an accident.” Wiping my hands on my handkerchief, I hurried away.

  The stench. The stench of Cromwell’s meanness. He befouled even this day. Striding into the hateful indoors, I called for Culpepper. He was nowhere to be seen. Well, then a page would have to do. I must see Cranmer and straightway tell him of what had happened last night. The roses were forgotten.

  Cranmer had never left the palace to return to Lambeth after the Privy Council meeting, the page informed me. Instead he had busied himself discussing Biblical translations and theology with the high-ranking clergy on hand for my announcement. Imagine his surprise when I burst in upon him where he sat at a polished oaken table with his fellow churchmen. Spread out befo
re them were all the English translations of Scripture available: the Venerable Bede’s, and the heretical Wycliffe’s and Tyndale’s, as well as Coverdale’s and Matthew’s. The Holy Word of God was splayed out before them like a man on the rack.

  “Gentlemen,” I said, striding into the room and making a gesture of respect toward the Holy Scriptures. The prelates all stood upright, spilling some of the contents of their laps. “I am gratified to find you toiling over the Word of God on such a fine June day. Our Lord will surely give you a heavenly reward for that.” I smiled. No one smiled back. They feared I tested them.

  “It sorrows me to have to borrow the Archbishop of Canterbury for a time,” I said, gesturing toward Cranmer. “I shall return him, I promise.”

  “You may carry on,” he said. “Please do sort out the various words for ‘angel’ used in the Resurrection texts. I would be most grateful.” Still they did not smile.

  “Come, Thomas,” I muttered, putting my arm around his shoulders. I steered him from the room. Around the corner I let him loose. “I apologize,” I said. “But these are grievous matters.”

  Still he shook his head like one awakened untimely from a dream, until I spoke plainly once we had reached the safety of my withdrawing room. Oh, that little oak-panelled room, how well I knew every tree-ring and wrinkle on its walls! How I longed to settle business elsewhere—but nowhere else was safe, and free from Crum’s spies.

  “Thomas, Cromwell’s a traitor. And in league with the heretics.”

  The tall, calm churchman, with his pale eyes, did not respond.

  “I tell you, last night I had the proof!” I told him of all my growing doubts, my fears, apprehensions, intuitions, reports, and finally of the treasonous texts themselves. Still Cranmer stood there like a statue from ancient Rome, with all the drapery of justice and his office cloaking him in a mantle of sense and reason.

  “An Anabaptist insurrectionist amongst us!” he finally said.

  “Exactly. He has been in league with them since I know not when.” (Was it back when he had made me the sherbet? Oh, surely not then! We were friends then.) “And through him they seek power over my realm.”

  Cranmer was near weeping. “I trusted him, Your Grace. You trusted him. I believed the love of God and of Christ to be truly in him. Oh, dear my Lord, if you cannot trust him, I wot not whom you may trust hereafter.”

  Those were divinely inspired words, but at the time I heeded them not, so agitated was I, and bound to eliminate Cromwell.

  On high treason he’d be arrested, yea . . . as soon as this interminable day came to an end. As soon as the complicated business with Cleves was out of the way—if Anne agreed, and wrote her brother as I’d instructed—then there would be no further administrative need for Cromwell.

  The heat of the day broke and even twilight was ebbing before my two matrimonial ambassadors reappeared. They were dust-covered and looked weary. But not afraid. That was good. That meant they had not failed in their assignment. Somewhere in the welter of rolls they carried on their persons (and it seemed they had more than a stag had antlers, so did they protrude all over) were the signature and seal I craved.

  “Well?” I rose from my chair.

  “She agreed, Your Grace,” sighed Brandon, pulling out the one paper that mattered and handing it to me.

  I grasped it and let my eyes run like a leaping child to find the requisite signature, down far at the bottom: Anna, Princess of Cleves.

  “Christ be praised!” I muttered.

  Only then did I think to offer them stools to sit upon, and some nourishment. It had been a gruelling day for them as well as for me. Gratefully they seated themselves and held out their dusty hands for bowls of water to wash them. A page performed the duty.

  “The Queen—Lady Anne—had a hard time of it,” spoke Wyatt in a hushed voice, as his hands were being dried.

  It was to be expected. After all, she loved me, and had assumed she would remain Queen of England forever. “Yes, I pity her,” I said. And I did. I knew what it was to suffer unrequited love, or to be deprived of a station in life to which one felt called.

  “She fainted when she saw us appear round the hedge to her garden,” said Brandon.

  Fainted? Could it be? No, absurd! She was no Virgin Mary, to bring forth without knowing a man. Where had my fancies taken me? She had done it out of love, out of desperate love.

  “Poor lady,” I murmured.

  “She thought we had come with her death warrant,” continued Brandon. “She thought to be arrested, tried, and then executed.”

  I chuckled contemptuously.

  “She was clear frightened, Your Grace. You had shown your disfavour and lack of consent from the start, then sent her away without you. She is no fool. I am sure she is well acquainted with the course of behaviour you took with Anne Boleyn. The withdrawal, the disfavour—all was being repeated.”

  “Save that she had no lovers!” I shrieked, turning round. “Save that she was no witch! Save that she did not plan my death! Small differences, would you not agree?”

  “Aye, aye,” murmured Wyatt.

  “By all that’s in heaven, yea,” echoed Brandon. “She revived promptly,” he added.

  Her strong constitution would see to that, yes.

  “She seemed delighted with the agreement, and the terms. In half an hour she changed into the gayest maiden I had beheld in a season.”

  Gay? Delighted? To lose me as a husband? I remembered Katherine’s agony, her insistence on keeping me as her spouse.

  “She sent you this token.” Brandon took out a velvet pouch and produced her gold wedding band.

  “Well, well,” was all I could say. Anne had agreed. I had won.

  I gestured toward the darkened window. “Tomorrow I’ll send flowers from Hampton’s gardens,” I promised.

  “There are lovely gardens at Richmond,” said Brandon. “Her own gardens now.” He cocked an eyebrow. He knew me well. But must he be so smug?

  I shrugged. “The gesture is all.”

  It was true. Anne had indeed acquiesced, and was content to style herself my dearly beloved sister. The next day she sent me flowers, and thus I lost a wife and acquired a sister. Along with the masses of daisies, irises, and lilies she sent, was the letter to her brother, the Duke of Cleves, for which she sought approval before sending.

  My Dear and Well-Beloved Brother,

  After my most hearty commendation: Whereas, my most dear and most kind brother, lest you take the matter lately moved and determined between the King’s Majesty of England and myself somewhat to heart, I had rather ye know the truth by mine advertisement, than for want thereof, ye should be deceived by vain reports. Thus I thought meet to write this present letter to you; by the which it shall please you to understand, how the Nobles and Commons of this realm desired the King’s Highness to commit the examination of the matter of the marriage between His Majesty and me to the determination of the Holy Clergy of this realm.

  I did then willingly consent thereto; and since their determination made, have also, upon intimation of their proceedings, allowed, approved, and agreed to the same. God willing, I purpose to lead my life in this realm.

  Anna, Duchess of Cleves, born of Cleves, Gulick, Geldre, and Berg, and your loving sister.

  There. That should persuade him to stay his hand. I changed “willingly” to “gladly,” inserted a disclaimer above “intimation.”

  But it was well done. Oh, Anne pleased me!

  And now there was the other ugly matter. The disposal and destruction of Cromwell, lately my servant, but now, it seemed, the heretics’.

  He was arrested, upon my orders, as he took his seat at the Privy Council. Earlier that day, as he was walking to the Council chamber, a high breeze had blown his velvet hat off. As he was the ranking man in the group of councillors, by all tradition they should not have kept their heads covered in his presence when he was bareheaded. They should have yanked their caps off in deference. But they did not.


  Thus it was that Cromwell knew. “A high wind it must be,” he said in a loud, clear voice, “to leave me uncovered and you with all your bonnets on.” They bowed and kept silent, enclosing him as he walked, grimly now, toward the Privy Council chamber.

  Once he was inside, the Duke of Norfolk approached him, as he had long rehearsed in his mind to do.

  “My Lord Cromwell, I arrest you on the King’s orders, of high treason.”

  Then Cromwell fought, and all his composure left him. He flung off the two serjeants-at-arms assigned to escort him to the Tower. He screamed and began flailing. Four Yeomen of the Guard were required to subdue him.

  I shuddered at the telling of it.

  “He seemed possessed,” stammered Cranmer. His shaken manner annoyed me. The highest churchman of England, flinching before a manifestation of the Evil One? How, then, could ordinary men look to him for strength and protection?

  “He knew he had failed in his secret mission,” I explained to Cranmer. Still, he had almost managed to throw off my men. “And Satan will give him eloquent words in the Tower, we can be sure of that. The only defence is not to read the honeying, lying, beguiling letters. Mark you, he will send them to us both. Destroy them without opening them.”

  Cranmer continued to pace my chamber, like a sleepwalker. “The people rejoice,” he finally said.

  “Aye, and well they should.” I remembered how one of the issues of the Pilgrimage of Grace was that Cromwell be removed. They had, perhaps, been guided by the Holy Spirit after all. In some things. Not all.

  I walked over to Cranmer and put my hand on his shoulder. He resisted for an instant. “In the war of Light and Darkness there is much bloodshed,” I said, seeking to comfort him. Still he kept gazing blankly out at the countryside, as though he expected to see a mass of Pilgrims reappear.

  “You have studied the Cleves documents?” I inquired.

  “Aye, Your Grace. And signed them. The Church finds that, as you and she confessed, there was no marriage at all. By the highest authorities, in union with Your Majesty, the King is a bachelor and his sister a spinster, and both free to marry.” (He wisely did not say “again.”) “The realm so desires you to be married,” he continued, “that at the same time, Parliament will petition you to wed. For the good of the realm and the happiness of your subjects.”