The Autobiography Of Henry VIII

by Margaret George

  XCVII

  The entire Twelve Days, in retrospect, all blend into one mass of music, colour, and festivity. From the moment we returned with the boar, until the final masked ball, ordinary clothes were cast aside, ordinary manners replaced by elaborate behaviour, and frugality banished. Fires burned for the entire twenty-four hours; candles were not rationed, and the servants had leave to heap their baskets full with them from the buttery, and take as many as they could carry; the ale barrels were to be refilled every two hours, and no one to count the number of pitchers taken away. Individual consorts of viols, recorders, and rebecs roamed the galleries and passageways, playing whatever tunes they fancied or were requested of them. Mary, Elizabeth, and Edward all asked to be allowed to join the groups of musicians, and I happily gave consent. All three of my children loved music and were talented. Mary chose to play the vielle and perform with a standing group in the Great Hall; Elizabeth dressed as a boy and played the flute with a group of “Italians”; little Edward, who could at least play the drum, went round as an accompanist with the children choristers.

  On the twenty-third of December I called for the three of them, for a special consultation. It was to be held in the council chamber, a snug oak-panelled room just off the upper gallery.

  Elizabeth was the first to arrive, and she came alone, without her nurse, Mrs. Ashley. I complimented her: she looked most businesslike in a plain brown dress, her bright hair pulled back and hidden beneath a cap; a sprightly seven-year-old. She carried a pen and portfolio of papers. Mary came directly after, apologizing for being a trifle late. Edward, plump and rosy in his blue velvet suit, was carried in by his nurse. He was now three.

  “Now seat you all,” I said happily. Just seeing them all before me—my children!—I felt a great leap of pride. “I need your valuable opinions as to the games to be planned for Christmas Eve.”

  Both Mary and Elizabeth looked disappointed. Had they expected me to consult them about Parliament, then?

  “I do not play games,” said Mary, faintly.

  “Indeed you do,” said Elizabeth. “You love cards, and betting.”

  Betting? Mary gambled? I had no idea.

  “That is why she is always out of pocket,” continued Elizabeth. “And in my debt.”

  Mary scowled. “I shall never borrow from you again,” she muttered. “As soon as I have repaid—”

  “Which will not be until Christmas, else you shall have to refrain for all the Twelve Days, and with all the interesting players from the kingdom here, too. You will never be able to,” predicted Elizabeth brightly.

  Mary shrugged.

  “So you dice and bet?” I teased. “One would never suspect it, with your sombre clothes. Mary, for my sake—wear something this Christmastide besides purple and black. You look like a spinster.”

  She stiffened, and Elizabeth shot a glance at me. Mary was acutely aware of her unmarried status and, more than I realized, she feared she would never be wed. She was twenty-four and accounted a bastard internationally. No Protestant prince wanted her, and no Catholic would accept her without recognizing Katherine of Aragon as my wife. Perhaps I should pressure an English peer into marrying her. Yes. I must attend to that.

  “I shall order you a scarlet gown,” I promised. “The seamstress can measure you by midday, and by working all night—yes, you shall be all in red by Christmas Eve.”

  She smiled tightly. In truth, she did not know how to smile. She was not unpretty, but her manner would not attract men. I sighed. Her mother had been more appealing, more feminine, at least at the age of twenty-four. What would Mary be like at fifty?

  “What games do you propose for the court, Father?” asked Elizabeth briskly.

  “Dicing and gaming at boards will keep some busy. But for the rest—those who want lively activity—we must seek other entertainment.” I analysed her while appearing to think of games. Not pretty. Clever. But clever enough to hide it. And challenging. Exciting. Just like . . . her mother. Those sharp, appraising eyes. Swift, slender fingers.

  “Group games,” I said. “Not taxing. Things that enable men and women, boys and girls, to pass time, to meet, to show off their best clothing. What of Blind Man’s Buff?”

  “Oh, that, of course,” she said. “I like Bee-in-the-Middle. One attempts to avoid being stung, or identified.”

  “Oh! Oh!” said Edward, clapping his hands.

  “Can he play it as well?” I asked.

  “All ages can play,” she assured me. “All the way up to an ancient like Sir Anthony Browne. And Brandon.”

  Brandon? An ancient? He was in his fifties. Yes, old.

  “And my uncle Norfolk. And”—she burst into laughter—“my step-grandmother, the Duchess of Norfolk!”

  “That old crone?” scoffed Mary. “I’d like to see her in a corner with her former husband. She’d beat him, as she beat his mistress two years ago!”

  “Nay, her husband would sit on her again, as he did the time she spat blood.”

  How did they know all this about Norfolk and his love-triangle?

  “We need another game,” I said prissily. “What about Hunt-the-Slipper?” This was one I remembered from my earliest Christmases.

  “A nursery game?” laughed Elizabeth.

  “We are all children at Christmas.”

  “Children at their best,” she returned. “Children who lose games without a show of temper; who are allowed up past bedtime, as there is no bedtime; who can stuff themselves with cakes and sweets with no reprimand. And who never, never fight—for who fights when he is permitted all?” She sounded like an old man reminiscing.

  “I like children,” said Mary wistfully, reaching over to ruffle Edward’s hair. He pushed her away.

  There was a discreet knock upon the council chamber door. Petre, Secretary of the Privy Council, entered apologetically.

  “The Laird of the Western Isles has arrived,” he said, “and his train is causing a—a disturbance.”

  I rose wearily. As I stood I felt it—a slight pain, a warmth in my left thigh. No, no! Not the leg-sore again! It had healed, it did not exist any longer. It had been born of the Witch’s poison, which had finally spent itself. . . .

  There. It had been my imagining. I felt relief flooding through me like warm honey. Truly I could not bear it, could not endure it if the thing itself endured.

  “I must leave you,” I said to the children. “You see how it is. My thanks for your consultation.”

  Mary nodded, tight-lipped: a gesture I had seen Katherine make when, in later years, some condition displeased her. Elizabeth, impatient herself, looked ready to fly the chamber. As I myself had been in my youth. Why, that was how Wolsey had first ingratiated himself to me—by being my proxy in stuffy council chambers.

  XCVIII

  The Twelve Days began in solemn splendour with midnight Mass, celebrated privately in the Chapel Royal. It was more glittering and ritualistic than anything in the Vatican, of that I was sure. As incense wafted to the blue and gold ceiling, I felt a sense of triumph against all those who would throw me into the Reformers’ camp. One could be anti-Papalist without necessarily being anti-tradition. There were those who sought to use me and label me for their own purposes. What fools they were! I used labels and factions, they did not use me.

  The Christmas festivities proved a great success. The activities and games we had planned entertained and enthralled the crowds. Catherine seemed delighted, her recent loss forgotten.

  I had not danced, exhibition-style, for years. Not since Black Nan. . . . But it was time to reclaim that skill, as I was reclaiming so many others. And so I would dance, on Ninth Night, for the first planned full evening of ensembles and suites. I practised in my chamber, rehearsing old steps and mastering new ones.

  O! I had missed dancing, in those dead, hollow years, as I had missed so much, so much that I had not allowed myself to dwell on, or even to recall. I thought I had liked being dead.

  There! that was it
, the proper turn of the galliard. They called it a “shocking” dance, but the younglings loved it. . . .

  My leg seemed submissive, although it had, all during the past fortnight, been sending out ominous tingles. What that betokened, I did not know. Perhaps nothing. I intended to regard it as nothing.

  The Great Hall was cleared, and my finest consort-ensemble gathered together, with their woodwinds—recorders, crumhorns, and shawms—and their stringed instruments—viols, lutes, and harps. I had instructed them to begin with popular measures, so that everyone present might join in; only gradually were they to progress to the more demanding dances. I myself would refrain from joining until the saltarello near the end. My entrance would take the company by surprise, as I had long, long ago. . . .

  I chatted, and circulated among the celebrants, pretending I had nothing more on my mind, pretending that I planned to stay swathed in my heavy robes, presiding like an old man.

  “Yes, yes!” I nodded and clapped. The rondo was ending.

  Next was my dance. I unfastened my cloak, laid it by. I readied myself, enjoying the pretence of talking, all the while flexing my calves and rising up and down on the balls of my feet, pointing my toe.

  The first beat . . . I moved, thrusting out my leg. And felt excruciating pain in the thigh, suddenly, like a thunderclap. I was frozen with a paroxysm of pain.

  The ensemble played on. One would never know that I had missed my entrance cue. Frantically I massaged my leg—the cursed traitor! With each touch I felt fluid ooze up, as if I were pressing on a sponge. Was my leg, then, become a sponge? A sponge of disease? I was wearing black tights, so the stain did not show. Very well. As I formed the words in my mind, a hatred greater than any I had ever felt flamed through me. This was an enemy! An enemy like Anne Boleyn, like Cardinal Pole, like the Duke of Buckingham. It was sent by Satan, like them, to destroy me. But this was more subtle: it would attack from within, rot me out from the inside.

  I would dance, despite it. The ensemble reached the entrance point again, and I leapt out on the floor. As I landed, a nail of pain ran up my thigh and into my groin. People backed off to make room for me, to watch the King dance.

  And dance he would. And did. I spun and leapt as athletically as a stag, executed all the steps of the galliard perfectly, with a precision usually reserved for clockworks and sword-masters. This particular dance demanded the grace and dexterity of a hummingbird. In this I did not fail.

  After the first few beats, I took a mad, savage pleasure in the pain that fought back at me. It was a gladiatorial contest, and I, armed with net and trident, had ensnared and humiliated pain.

  The moment the music ended, I was encircled by men and women extolling my skill. They were surprised, oh, yes, they were. The last time anyone had beheld me dance athletically was a decade ago, and many of those faces were gone.

  “Dancing is a sport,” exclaimed Henry Howard, “and it has seen its champion today.”

  “Some day this sort of dancing—with leaps and perfect posture and special shoes—will have to be professionally performed, by a permanent troupe,” said Wyatt. “But to find some ten or twenty men who dance as your equal . . . there are none such in England, Your Majesty.” He said it straight and plain, no flattery in the words. I know flattery and I can hear it in a murmur. He spoke true; he admired me.

  But the seepage was bound to be noticed. I felt ooze in my dancing-slipper sticking to the sole of my foot. The discharge had run down inside my hose, then. I must withdraw, and quickly.

  “And now to my chamber,” I said, with a stage wink. “The reward awaits me there!” I gestured toward Catherine, who was politely talking to Culpepper. For God’s sake, come with me, help me in this play-acting, I longed to say. But I could not, because I could never admit to the one person I most wanted to impress that I was, in truth, play-acting. My wife was in many ways the person I was most distanced from, and for whom I wore the most complicated masks. Now she was to help me make this retreat, to save face, but would never be permitted to join me in the inmost chamber.

  Together we bowed, smiling. Then we took our dignified, measured steps toward the royal apartments, where the physician would be waiting, help at the ready.

  “Come, Catherine.” I squeezed her hand in mine. I felt resistance. She did not want to leave. “Do as I say,” I muttered, jerking her along in my wake. I hated myself for each separate motion, item piled on item: for having an infected leg to begin with; for being too proud to yield to it; and finally for the pathetic need to use my wife as a camouflage for my own weakness.

  Once inside the private suites of the royal apartments, I gestured to her to sit in the withdrawing chamber and keep still. She was clearly angry at this peremptory order, and that forced me to shout at her and demand compliance. I had no time for soft words or persuasion. Another moment and she would see the mess sopping into my shoe.

  “I said stay here and wait!”

  “You made me leave the young people and the dancing, for nothing! To sit and wait, like a child upon its father—”

  Truly, Satan was trying me. The words pierced me like javelins: young people . . . father . . . I had taken her from her playmates. . . .

  “Silence!” I thundered, glaring at her. Then I stamped away. Did I leave prints with the wet shoe on the polished wood floor?

  Safely inside my private close-room, the smallest of all the royal rooms and the one to which no one else was granted access, I slumped on a stool and perched my affected leg up on a cushion. Now that the limb was stretched out horizontal, the fluid dripped straight down off the middle of the calf. It was yellowish-white.

  Dr. Butts came in, his long face set like a gargoyle, and stony-coloured as well. Shaking his head, he produced silver scissors from his bag, and began cutting away the hose. Slowly and carefully he lifted off the covering piece of material, as afraid as I to see what lay beneath.

  A great reddened area was there, as if the flesh were angry and had grown affronted. And in its midst, a small ulcer.

  “So small,” I said in surprise.

  “Aye.” He touched the flesh around it, which was tender and throbbing. “But the sickness has already spread to here and staked its claim. This flesh is not normal. It is in the process of being converted.” He moved his fingers slowly outward. “Not until this point does the flesh become like the rest. This area in between”—he indicated the red, hot ring—“is the battleground. The illness seeks to capture it, and your body seeks to save it.”

  “But what is it? What caused it to flare up like this?”

  He shook his head. “I know not.”

  “You must know! If you do not, then who does? Have you seen its like before?”

  “Skin lesions, yes. But this is more than a mere skin lesion. It erupts by itself and seems to have a life of its own. Evidently it can slumber within your body for years, and then suddenly awake.”

  “But why? Why?” By God, I must know.

  “It is characteristic of those with weakness in their veins. The blood is carried, as you know, in little tubes running all over the body. When there is a weakness in the tubes, then they break down, gush, form ulcers. Where they heal up, they have a tendency to break open again, for the true weakness is still there.”

  “But why is it weak?”

  “Something inherent in the walls of the vessels. Look you, Your Majesty, we know that a man inherits his constitution from his ancestors. Now, forgive me, but it seems clear enough to me that the weakness of the Tudors lies, normally, in their lungs. That is the system which carries them off. As they say, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and the chain of the Tudors has been snapped over and over by lung-rot, consumption: Prince Arthur, the late King your father, your own son Henry Fitzroy. That weakness which was meant for your lungs was, by God’s mercy, transferred to your legs instead. So that, instead of murdering you before your time, it merely forces you to sit upon a cushioned bench whilst others dance. Praise be to Go
d, who has spared you!”

  I looked down at my festering leg, and felt a shudder go through me as I tried to imagine this mess inside my lungs. “But is there nothing you can do?”

  “I have a new salve,” he said, “made of several alchemist’s metals. But there is nothing that can work while you continue to use the leg. It must be kept quiet and without any weight upon it. Bed rest, Your Majesty.”

  “Then everyone will know!” I yelped. “If I take to my bed in the midst of the festivities—no! You must devise some means of keeping me on my feet.”

  “A bandage will be bulky and apparent,” he protested. “No, there is no way to hide your secret, and so you would be angering the wound for nothing.”

  “I shall wear costumes and cloaks. It is only three more days until Twelfth Night. Only a little longer! If you dress the wound every morning and every evening, apply the salve . . . ?”

  He looked disapproving. “It is not what I recommend in the best interests of the wound,” he said stubbornly.

  “Is the wound paramount? What of my best interests? What of England’s? No, the word must not get out that I, the King, have an affliction. There are those who would rejoice—who would say it is a punishment.”

  “Very well.” He acquiesced. “But the sore must be dressed.”

  He laid his instruments and dressings out on the flat surface of the window-seat. The first thing he selected was a small sponge, which he applied to the open wound. It stung sharply for an instant, then grew numb. “The pain you feel is the cleansing effect of alcohol. The numbness is from mandragora juice. If you inhaled it, it would put you to sleep.”

  Mandrake root. An evil thing that shrieked when it was pulled from the ground, that had two legs and a man’s pudenda. So it beguiled one’s brain, numbed one’s flesh . . .

  “There is, of course, its association with witches and the Evil One. But sometimes we can turn evil to our own uses, as in sleeping potions and wound-quieters.”