The Autobiography Of Henry VIII

by Margaret George

  No! Such a filthy practise, no, Catherine could not have . . .

  “Could it have found its way there accidentally?”

  “No, Your Grace.”

  “How long had it been there?”

  “Judging from its appearance, for many years.”

  Jesu! Some evil Arab physician had done this to her as a baby. How? But there were Arab physicians ready enough to be found, even in England. I had found Al-Ashkar. The Duchess must have had one at her service, ready to do her bidding. She did not mean her poor niece ever to conceive—why? Was the old woman that bitter and angry at her charge? At having to bear the cost of raising her worthless stepson’s child? There may be children, had she thought, but I’ll assure there are no grandchildren? How cruel old women can be.

  “Thank you, Dr. Butts,” I said. I would reward him well for his discovery.

  I re-entered the chamber where she lay. My heart ached for her, so misused all her life. To be orphaned and neglected was one thing, but to be rendered artificially barren. . . .

  “All was well?” she asked anxiously.

  “Yes,” I assured her. I sat down on the bed and soothed her. She was trembling.

  “He said there would be more bleeding, perhaps heavy,” she said.

  It was natural. The womb was rebelling against its misuse.

  “It will soon be over.” My hopes for a child were even now staining the cloths beneath her buttocks. “Let us plan our Christmas together, now. Shall we keep court? Where?” I sought to distract her, cheer her.

  “Hampton,” she said without hesitation. She could not know how unsettling a choice that was for me. But no matter—anything to make her joyful.

  “As a child, whenever I thought of court, I thought of Hampton. All the great glassy windows, the Italian statues, the astronomical clock; I imagined royal barges all lining the river; oversized kitchen ovens cooking night and day . . . all the world would be there. . . .”

  “Stop, stop,” I laughed. “You have seen all this in your mind?”

  She nodded.

  “Then you shall see it all in truth,” I promised.

  I stood up and looked about the small room. Suddenly I had lost my taste for remote hunting lodges; happiness had proved as elusive here as anywhere else. It was time to return to Hampton.

  She bled for a week, following the physician’s instructions and drinking a potion of ground dried pennyroyal mixed with red wine three times a day.

  “The wine is to replace the lost blood, and the pennyroyal is to staunch the flow,” he explained.

  When that danger was past, we set out for Hampton Court to keep Christmas, sending notice to all eligible members of court throughout the realm, and even to Scots nobles and Irish peers, to come and join us. All were welcome. Replies came quickly, and the allotments of rooms and servants’ quarters were spoken for so greedily that by St. Nicholas’ Day there was not a single chamber or even corner of a chamber free.

  “You have your wish, sweetheart,” I assured her. “By my reckoning, fifteen hundred will lodge here for the entire Twelve Days of Christmas. The kitchen fires will blaze night and day. The Lord Steward requests five thousand geese alone to feed this mighty company. How like you that?”

  She smiled. “And there will be balls, and masked dancing?”

  “As many of them as you wish,” I said.

  “Imagine everyone disguised—all fifteen hundred of us,” she said dreamily.

  “Much mischief would occur.” Oh, the maidenheads lost, the husbands cuckolded! All in honour of Our Lord’s birth.

  I proposed for Will to go about in an Infidel turban and pantaloons, but he refused. As I said, he was most dour and out of sorts these days.

  “Costumed or not, you shall not hide yourself away, Will. Too many idle people must be entertained, lest they get into fights. You know the problem of keeping men indoors too long. It transforms them into be-ee-easts.” I sucked my stomach in for the tailor who was measuring me for my masquing-coat. All of cloth-of-silver it was to be, with a matching visor and cape.

  “Well?” I inquired of the tailor.

  “Forty-six inches, Your Grace.”

  That was five inches less than at this exact time a year ago. But still eleven inches more than the waist of my youth. Another hard season or two of training, of strength-tossing of the caber and wrestling, and riding—that should do it. Even though in June I would be fifty.

  I waited for the tailor to leave, then turned back to Will. “I expect your co-operation. God knows, there is enough to poke fun at. There’s the Pope and his lecherous Italian family; Charles and his growing piety, more like madness; Francis and his mania for hunting; as well as the pitiful Reformers and their increasing heresies—”

  Will stood up, his eyes flat and hard. “By God, I cannot!” he snarled. “It’s none of it humourous, or have you grown so blind you see nothing, as inhuman as your enemies depict you? The Pope is no longer Clement, a weak and hounded Italian degenerate, as you would have it, but Paul, a determined and fighting soldier in this war of religion. It is a war, and not just one of pamphlets and tracts any longer. The Church is fighting for her very existence, and the battle-lines are drawn—right across the middle of Germany. Pope Paul means to roll that demarcation line back, to recapture Germany and France, possibly to push the Protestants right off the Continent. Paul is no Clement, but the leader of a counter-Reformation. Cromwell was right, you know. It is all-out war. It pleases you to see the Pope as a buffoon, defeated by you. But the Old Faith is capable of a vicious fight for its life, and the forces are being readied. Reginald Pole and the Pilgrimage of Grace were but the advance rumblings.”

  I grunted. True, Paul III was more active than Clement VII. A sea turtle is more active than a land turtle, but both are turtles.

  “Charles has grown pious, it is true,” Will went on. “But his rehearsing of his own funeral—is that mad? Or is it mad of ordinary men not to? We all know we shall die. Yet we fail to draw up wills, fail to have coffins carved. Answer me, Hal—is your will drawn up and witnessed?”

  “Not yet. I would not let vain men think they have no longer to please me! Let them wait to know my plans!”

  “Ah. And do you know where you will be interred? You are a King. What sort of tomb will you have? Should you not at least have selected the marble for the statues, employed a sculptor? Or are you trusting to fate to entomb you nobly?”

  “I shall be buried next to Queen Jane,” I said. “And as for all those provisions for grand tombs—Wolsey lies not where he planned. I myself will lie in his sarcophagus. What good is planning?”

  Will shrugged. “Francis is eaten up with the Great Pox. Poor man, his only distraction and pleasure lies in hunting. Certainly he can no longer enjoy the delights of women. Do you find that humourous? That his groin and privates are a mass of sores and open putrefaction?”

  “If he can no longer enjoy the delights of women, it is because he enjoyed them to excess before. There are those who claim I am smitten with the Great Pox,” I snorted. “They lie.”

  “Then exhibit yourself to the great company assembled here and scotch those rumours,” chuckled Will. “Have your hose open for all to see.”

  I threw back my head and laughed. “Should you fail me, I might have to resort to that. But Will”—I cocked one eyebrow—“my private parts are employed a great number of hours each day, so they may not be available at convenient viewing hours.”

  He looked disgusted, started to say something, then turned away. A moment passed. Finally he said, “The heretics are no laughing matter, either. Truly, they go further and further afield, until they will never see their way back to the main body of Christianity. They take every aspect of doctrine and expand or alter it in some way. There is that Spaniard, Servetus, who attacks the Trinity, saying Christ has no place there. There is the Dutchman, Menno Simons, and his followers, who make peaceableness a religion. Then there are those who attack the Sacrament of Baptism, sa
ying only an adult can choose it, therefore all true believers should be re-baptized—”

  “The Anabaptists,” I sneered. “The worst of the lot!” I hated the Anabaptists, hated everything about them: their smug, fiery self-righteousness, their screaming sermons, their hysterical emotional appeals. I had condemned three to be burnt at Smithfield just a month earlier.

  He nodded. “Then there are many who attack the Sacrament of the Eucharist, claiming it is a memorial meal only; others the Sacrament of Holy Orders, insisting priests and laymen are the same . . . some nonsense about ‘the priesthood of all believers.’ ”

  “Yes, those ex-priests who lust after women and marry nuns. What, you do not find them humourous?”

  “When men commit sins in the name of religion, it is not humourous,” he said. “And this is happening more and more. Worst of all, one can no longer count on certain sympathies from one’s audience. That terrifies me, Hal—and it should you.”

  I stared at the crackling fire, as men will do to gain time. He was right. Of the men and their retainers flocking to court to keep Christmas, one could assume nothing about their religious leanings. The ugliness of heresy had seeped into the very fabric of English life, rotting its threads and discolouring its purity.

  “It does, Will. It does.”

  He looked surprised, as if he no longer expected me to listen or understand.

  “But what can I do, besides what I am doing? I did not create heresy. I cannot prevent its multiplication on the Continent. Here in England I am fighting a war on both fronts—Romanism and heresy. I formulate a middle way and try to punish extreme dissenters on either side. But I cannot pursue it too vigorously. I wish not to turn England into a terrified state like Spain, with its Inquisition. Nor a battleground like Germany. Even my Privy Council divides into the two camps, and I had to execute Cromwell and More for their extremism. O Jesu—when will men see sense?”

  “Not in our lifetime,” Will said. “And I fear worse to come in the next generation.”

  “You have saddened me so that I myself can think naught but gloomy thoughts. What shall we do to make our guests laugh this Christmastide, Will? For we must occupy them with something happy.”

  “Lechery and lust, the old standbys,” he said. “No politics. Just over-hasty youth, impotent old men, cuckolded husbands, swords that will not stand to thrust, young wives with rich old husbands. . . .”

  “Aye, aye. That’ll be mirthful. And what of young husbands with rich old wives?” I thought of Bessie Blount. Poor woman. Did Clinton truly love her?

  “Aye, ’tis a growing custom in our day, as women outlive their men. Mark you, where there’s a great discrepancy in age, there’s usually an equally great discrepancy in wealth.”

  I smiled, oblivious of his meaning. O fool!

  WILL:

  I tried to tell him, but he was deaf and blind. And, oh! the sniggering remarks about his privates and how they were engaged—he sounded like a dirty little boy. I was embarrassed for him, even if he no longer had the good sense to be embarrassed for himself.

  As for his assertion that people thought he had the Great Pox, that is simply not true. It was Wolsey who was accused of having the Great Pox and attempting to spread it to others by “blowing in their ears.” It is indicative of the state of the Church in England at the time that no one thought it odd or unlikely that a Cardinal might have fallen victim to such a malady.

  Although Wolsey was indicted for his malicious attempt, Parliament thanked God that He had seen fit to preserve the King from the Cardinal’s alleged illness. “His most noble royal body was saved,” the words went.

  Incidentally, the Great Pox, alias the French Disease, alias the Morbus Gallicus, has acquired yet another name recently: syphilis. Some sensitive soul wrote a poem about a shepherd who had offended Apollo and was sent the disease. Syphilis was the lad’s name. Now people want to call the disease that as well. As if a pretty name will change its loathsome nature!

  But you, of course, are not concerned with such things.

  XCVI

  HENRY VIII

  I conferred with my master of court ceremonial, William Hobbins, about which festivities should be celebrated.

  “By the Grail, we have enough to choose from,” he muttered, then quickly checked himself. “By the Grail” was a Popish expletive, like “by Our Lady.” Lately the latter expression had been slurred into “bloody,” but it fooled no one. Was this man, then, a secret Roman? Will was right—you could assume nothing.

  “We should select the ones most suitable for large crowds. Everyone in England is coming, so it seems. Do you know the clan chieftain Donald, Lord of the Isles, is sending a nephew here?”

  “I hear they drink blood,” he said. “They’re still pagans, you know.”

  “Nonsense.” I looked forward to meeting the man. I had never seen an actual Highland Scot, never talked to one. This one was at odds with the Lowland Scots, who were my enemies. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. A fine old saying.

  “Here is a list of possible diversions.” He proffered a parchment with neat categories all drawn up.

  Laboriously we constructed a program that would not leave close on fifteen hundred men and women with nothing to do. If we did not, the Devil would.

  By mid-December they began arriving. The first to come were so curious about the palace and one another that that in itself served to occupy them. Daily the numbers swelled, until on December twentieth, I could look out the windows of my Retiring Chamber and see every chimney of Hampton Court smoking. From all around the inner court the plumes of smoke rose, all in a row like soldiers; and other regiments were represented high in the air from flanking courtyards.

  “Tomorrow it all begins,” I murmured to Catherine, beautiful Catherine, lounging upon my bed. Her silvery satin nightgown reflected the leaping flames in my private fireplace, which burned only the most fragrant logs.

  “A royal Christmas,” she said drowsily. “What will you give me?”

  What a child she was! But I would not disappoint her. I had a gift for her that would make the realm gasp. “Patience, my sweeting.” I enjoyed teasing her. I often forced patience upon her in bed, making her wait, suspended, for her ultimate, explosive release. Not until I allowed it did she experience the final shudder. She was greedy for it from the first.

  She pouted. “Can you not hint?”

  “Gladly. It blooms.”

  She had no interest in horticulture, so she ceased questioning.

  “Tomorrow I take them on a grand hunt. Ladies, too. So prepare to enjoy the Arab horse presented you as a wedding present by the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem.” A last, desperate bid for my mercy before they were dissolved in England. I liked not to think upon that.

  “What do we hunt for?”

  “Boar.”

  “Upon St. Thomas’ Day? Fear you not the Wild Hunt?”

  A branch snapped and spat red in the fire-grate.

  “’Tis but a legend,” I said.

  “To hunt . . . on the shortest day of the year . . . in the twilight . . .” She sounded genuinely distressed.

  “What happens in the twilight?” Perhaps she knew something I did not.

  “If you should go near a churchyard, as it’s growing dark . . . Saint Thomas himself will come, driving in a fiery chariot. And then he calls on all dead men named Thomas who are buried there, and they rise from their graves, and go with him to the churchyard cross, which glows deeply and strangely red. . . .”

  As she spoke, her face took on an otherworldly look, and it was as if I held a seer, a prophetess. “And sometimes one is compelled to go with the saint, forever, on a ghostly hunt. Or with the other Thomases. . . . Think, O my dear Lord, on the Thomases in your life, the dead Thomases. . . . They take possession—”

  I felt fear go through me, as sharp and cold as a rapier that has lain out all through a January night. The dead Thomases in my life: Thomas Wolsey, Thomas More, Thomas Cromwell. Wh
at if they should rise from their graves and confront me, take possession of my person, hold a trial of me in some distant secluded churchyard? Wolsey’s ghost, all shrunken and broken; More, without his head, festering in reproach and self-righteousness; Cromwell, his neck-stump still bleeding, bitter and filled with vicious hatred . . . their rotten shrouds mingling with the mists, tangling me, tripping me, and—

  “No!” I snapped. At that exact moment the fire snapped, too, underscoring my thoughts. “It is a country legend, ’tis naught to do with me.”

  “Culpepper has seen it,” she whispered. “He told me once.”

  “He’s a Thomas, too. Most like he made it up to entertain you. And impress you with his bravery. I take it he escaped from their threatening, grasping, bony fingers?”

  She turned away sulkily. “You do not believe me. Very well, then, go on the hunt tomorrow. Flout Saint Thomas and all the other Thomases.”

  O Jesu! Only now as I write the words do I realize: it was Thomas, a living one, who made sport of me that day while I was out hunting, leaving my fair wife behind. He came from no grave, but directly from his pallet at the foot of my bed . . . and straightway into my wife’s. As I grew breathless and panting with the hunt out of doors, so too did she, coupling with her cousin Thomas in my royal bedchamber. As I thrust the spear home into the bristly boar, so did he spit my wife.

  Or was the assignation already arranged, and her desperate tale of the ghostly Thomases her last feeble attempt to avert it and preserve what little remained of her virtue? If I had heeded, would that have made a difference? The hunt was a good one. . . .

  As we clattered over the courtyard stones, the three stags and one magnificent boar slung along the carrying poles, a great company leaned out of the inner courtyard windows and cheered. Christmas had begun.