The Autobiography Of Henry VIII

by Margaret George

  I nodded. The softer way was often, in the long run, the crueller.

  He bowed and took his leave.

  Brandon. I could rely on him. For half a century now, or almost that, he had been my right arm. But when he failed, as my voice had—what then?

  The frost on my windowpanes was melting as the sun rose higher. The days had lengthened noticeably since Christmas, although not enough to put winter to rout. And in the North it would be bitter, icy, and locked in darkness and cold until April. Brandon, the old soldier, would have difficulty penetrating the area. Curses upon the ungracious traitors, to call out my dearest friend, whom as King I could not spare from England’s service.

  I began to scratch off the obscuring frost with my fingernail. I felt impaired all round, but this one thing I could correct. I could at least see out of my window.

  It needed a cloth to wipe away the frost-shavings and watery melt. “A cloth,” I muttered, and the page stuck one in my hand. I wiped vigorously at the messy pane, until it glistened free and showed me the white world outside as clear as though I were seeing it through my unobstructed eye.

  “Ah,” I said. Then I started.

  I had spoken, and been heard. My voice was freed.

  “Thank you,” I said quite naturally to the page. He nodded. “ ’Tis lovely.” I could hear my own voice, as if it were another’s. “You may go now.” He bowed and obeyed.

  Alone, I blinked in stunned excitement. It was back, my voice was back. I crossed myself and whispered, “Thank You. You have answered my prayers.” I crossed over to my prie-dieu and looked up at Jesus on the cross. I looked directly into his eyes, and they seemed to smile at me.

  Why had God capriciously decided to restore my voice over such an unimportant command? A cloth to wipe off a frosty window: he had loosened my voice for that.

  God frightened me. I understood Him so much less than I had always thought I understood Him.

  The page told everyone that I had spoken, and I was soon dislodged from my praying station.

  Now that I was able-bodied again, my councillors presented me with all the ugly details of the northern rebellion. The traitorous statements—“the King is the Devil’s agent”; “the King is an Anabaptist”; “the King is haunted by the souls of the monks he killed”—bordered on the blasphemous. What sort of people did I rule?

  “I have an evil people to rule!” I shouted in answer to myself. “An unhappy people who harbour sedition in their hearts.” I looked round at all the smug faces surrounding me. What of them? What secret malice lay in their hearts? “I’ll soon make them so poor they’ll no longer have the time or energy to indulge their disobedience!” And you, too, I thought. Any one of you youngsters, if your youth and health give you fancy ideas, I’ll put a stop to that. It’s Brandon and I who are in control, the old soldiers who know how to rule.

  “They’ll die for their treason, and we’ll go up in the summer to comfort their widows. The grass won’t even have grown on their graves yet! But their sons will welcome us with adulation, whatever else lies coiled in their secret hearts. They’ll—”

  “Your Majesty!” Dr. Butts entered and looked betrayed, His royal patient was up off the sickbed and behaving as normal. “I had heard of your recovery. Why did you not send for me?” He looked hurt. I had insulted him by calling upon him in my need, clutching to him in fear, and then jettisoning him once I recovered. As men do to God.

  “I apologize,” I said. “Come, let us be alone.” The others took their leave, with relief.

  “I could hear your voice halfway down the gallery,” he admonished me.

  “God restored me.”

  “So it would seem. And in full volume. Is it wise to run a horse at full gallop who has lain ill and languished in his stall a fortnight? Gradual, and by degrees—that is the way to sound health.”

  He checked my throat, my chest, my leg. The wound had all but disappeared. Drained and healed over, it looked so inculpable and innocuous. The rotten traitor! Traitor no less than my northern subjects!

  “Your heart started up suddenly,” he said in alarm. “You must avoid exciting thoughts.” He put away his listening tube. And smiled. “But I must say, the Lord in His mercy appears to have healed you.”

  With a few more instructions regarding my food, drink, and rest, he was gone. I was free of my body-bondage once more.

  By the time Brandon reached Cambridge, word came that the rebellion had burnt out, having consumed its own fuel. There was no need for him to apply the stern measure of the law, and so he returned by Easter, when spring was breaking on the court.

  CV

  Spring and Easter were enveloped, for me, in a web of preparations for our northern progress. As the grass brightened and exploded in green, and the bare branches of every tree and bush suddenly turned into feathery brushes, it was hard to believe that there were places in the realm of England where winter still held the land and reigned. Children shrieked and played out of doors—I could hear them from the opened casements—at marbles, skip-rope, and pace-egging, where they cracked their Easter eggs together. Their cries rose lean and eager, like a wild animal kept too long indoors and now celebrating its freedom. Before nightfall there would be skinned knees and lost scarves. That, too, was part of the celebration.

  By day I studied dispatches and made up orderly lists of supplies and courtiers for the journey. There was so much protocol to be observed. There must, of course, be a striking difference between how the remnants of the traitorous rebels were received and how the loyal men. It must be a dazzling difference, to strike awe and shame into their hearts, and make forever clear the difference between the two sorts of subjects.

  There was also the problem of my cousin, the King of Scots: young James Stuart, the son of my sister Margaret. He had lately married a French Princess (Marie de Longueville, whom I had briefly considered before the Flemish Mare), and she had borne him two sons forthwith. But now, within a week either way of Easter, they had suddenly died, and he was childless and bereft, as he should be, and, I hoped, needful to establish ties with his uncle to the South. It made no sense for Scotland to remain a separate nation. All signs pointed to our union.

  My sister Margaret . . . she still lived, and intrigued, and attempted to lead a tumultuous life. Only, as will happen, her looks had fled and left her stranded on the beach of boredom. Pity. Just lately she had complained to Ralph Sadler, my ambassador, that “I take it unkindly that I have had no letter from the King your master, for it is a small matter to spend ink and paper upon me. I should be better regarded here, if it was seen that my brother regarded me.”

  Well, now she should have her wish. I wrote inviting her, her son James V, and other Scots noblemen to meet me in York in early autumn. There we would all come together at last, and I would see my sister for the first time in twenty-five years, and come to know my nephew the Scots King. The journey for them would be short. I would refurbish St. Mary’s Abbey for our meeting. Nothing would be too fine for this momentous greeting. I dispatched master carpenters and masons to the church straightway, so that they could have the five good warm months to work.

  Who was to stay behind in London? Who could be trusted? Who would prefer to be spared the sight of the unruly North and its dogged loyalty to the Old Religion? Best to leave Cranmer behind, and to help him, Chancellor Thomas Audley and Edward Seymour. The rest of the court hummed with excitement, like a hive about to swarm. It was an adventure to them. My eyes had not turned abroad since first they were transfixed by the Witch. It was over twenty years since the Field of Cloth of Gold. The younglings had heard of that meeting in the Val d’Or; it had become legendary, but was fading. Now they would go on a greater progress than that, and it would be so glittering and sumptuous that they would have no need to envy their elders.

  When Robert Aske had knelt before me during the Pilgrimage of Grace, one of the promises I had given him was that I would come North and have Jane crowned in York Minster. Only a f
ew months later Jane was dead. But the promise of a Queen’s Coronation in the North hung over me like a bad debt. Should I have Catherine crowned in York?

  I meant to have her crowned, did I not? I was having St. Mary’s Abbey grandly refitted for James V. Why not dedicate it with the Coronation? The Scots would surely attend that, and it could be a face-saving reunion for us all, and an incomparable gift of devotion to Catherine.

  Why not, then? It was all logical, it fitted like a babe sucking on its mother’s breast, forming a perfect union. Why, then, did I balk at it? At length I justified my reluctance to myself by stressing that in the past I had found trying to combine events a disaster. The French visit in 1532, with Anne all bedecked in Katherine’s jewels . . . no, one thing at a time.

  No one at court was urging me about the Coronation, either. Perhaps, like weddings, they lose their urgency and charm after the first. It is not seemly to repeat important ceremonies too often. So I assured myself. But what was the real reason?

  May and June were passed in preparations for the Great Northern Progress, as it was coming to be called. I felt fully restored to health, as if those horrible days in March had never occurred. The leg was behaving itself. Because I was so busy and knew there would be much riding and hunting on the progress itself, I refrained from resuming any strenuous exercise for the moment.

  WILL:

  One of the preparations for the progress involved another “spring cleaning of the Tower.” It seemed that the King did not like to travel far afield while leaving traitorous prisoners behind at home. Thus it was that Margaret Pole, the old Countess of Salisbury, followed her son Henry, Lord Montague, to the executioner’s block. She did not meekly put her head down upon it, however. She refused on principle, for “only traitors do so, and I am no traitor!” she claimed, and made the poor headsman chase her round the scaffold, chopping madly, like a farmer pursuing a chicken around the barnyard.

  HENRY VIII:

  I did not see Catherine as much as I would have liked. Duties kept us apart, and she seemed distant and distracted. I could sense it, although she denied it. I knew it was because she was apprehensive about this royal journey, where she would be on display to so many. Seeing this, I was glad I had decided against a Coronation at this time. It would have been too much for her.

  In the tangle of activities and demands, I had scarcely noticed the advancing season. My only concern was to be ready for departure in time. Outside, a succession of flowers had come into bloom, then faded. I saw them not.

  Then one day Culpepper announced that there was someone in the Audience Chamber, requesting to speak to me. “He’s dressed in poor estate,” he said. “And carries a burlap sack.”

  A poor petitioner? I grunted. But the burlap sack—did it hide a knife? Assassins were everywhere, or might be. “Admit him. But stay at my side.”

  Shortly Culpepper returned with the old master gardener at his side. The man, it is true, was wearing his work-clothes. He must have come straight from his plant-house.

  “I have it here, Your Grace!” His voice trembled with delight. “I did not think it would bloom, not so soon!” From out of his bag he delivered a rose. Pure red it was, and blooming on a thornless stem.

  “The plant is as yet small. But it looks hardy.”

  “Astounding!” I murmured. The bud, just opening (like Catherine herself, my sweet Catherine), emerged from a smooth and faultless stem. I would present it to her this evening, after Vespers.

  I rewarded the old gardener well for his efforts.

  I loved this moment best of all—the moment when, daytime things done, Catherine and I played music together. Tonight she played the virginal while I accompanied on the lute. Sitting behind her, I could dote on the exquisite curve of her neck, as she had put her hair up. My soul was at peace. Not until she grew restless did I break the spell and say, “I have something for you. A gift.”

  She turned round, eagerly. She never tired of gifts. I must have given her a full coffer, by now, of jewels. And of course she had received Jane Seymour’s lands. And Cromwell’s.

  “Here.” I handed her the rose, the unique, commissioned rose.

  “Yes?” She took it without looking and smiled, still eagerly.

  “You hold it.”

  Only then did she examine the rose, exclaim over it. When I explained its symbolism, she wept.

  CVI

  Departure day was to be July first. God thought otherwise and sent deluges from the skies. All told, it was three weeks before the rains stopped and the roads dried sufficiently to permit travel. That gave the Scots extra time to decide how to respond to my invitation to a parley, and gave us longer to ready the great abbey hall of St. Mary’s in York to receive them.

  I shall not recount the long journey in tedious detail. With so many of us travelling—there were one thousand retainers, officers, and companions—our lodging was of the greatest importance. Even the wealthiest nobles did not have accommodations for so great a company, so we provided two hundred of our own luxurious tents to make up the difference. Yes, the journey itself, the protocol, the lodgings, the obligatory entertainments (which should be renamed “borements”) were dull. But the countryside!

  Oh, why had I not seen all of England before? I was captivated by the landscape itself, yes. But more by the people. Each population retained the stamp of its origin and past. As we travelled northward, the people became taller and fairer. On the border of Norfolk, their eyes were as blue as a clear October day, almost to a person. “Dane blood,” said Dr. Butts, who made a hobby of studying this sort of thing. “This is the side of England where the Danes settled, where Norsemen raided. From the Danes you get the blue eyes, from the raiders the red hair.” He pointed to a fiery-haired lad perched on a market cross to glimpse us as we passed. “Sweet child, to bear the marks of such a brutal past.”

  They talked differently, too. At times I could not make out certain words in the courteous little speeches the locals gave us.

  As we passed farther north, settlements fell away and we rode through longer and longer stretches of forest. The days lengthened, too. Twilight seemed almost as long as the afternoon.

  “The farther north, the longer the day,” said Wyatt, who was fascinated by oddities of geography. “At the highest latitudes, as in very northern Scotland and the Orkney and Shetland Isles, there is no night at all in June. Just a sort of purple twilight.”

  Wilder and wilder it became. There was so much game that after the first novelty of it, we did not bother to hunt. Besides, the surrounding forest was so dark and extensive it seemed unwise to chase far into it. We were near Robin Hood territory, and now the sheriff of Nottingham’s reluctance to pursue Robin Hood and his merrie men into the fastness of Sherwood made perfect sense. I would have let the outlaw roam, too.

  Lincolnshire, which I had once called “one of the most brute and beastly shires of the whole realm,” was the beginning of the territory of traitors. It had taken us forty days to reach it from London, travelling at our slow ceremonial pace, it was so remote. Small wonder Lincolnshiremen considered themselves beyond our grasp, a feudal kingdom of their own.

  We were welcomed effusively at the Lincoln city gates by the citizens, and the mayor, who presented me with the sword and mace of the city as symbols of submission. So. I beheld at last one of the nests of treachery, all prettied up for the occasion and perfumed with protocol. I could not shake the feeling that here in these northern shires, cities were just floating islands, mock centres of civilization on a great ocean of barbarism and malevolence. It was the land of wolves. I could hear their calls even from the centre of Lincoln itself.

  My Rose Without a Thorn—how plump and soft she looked here, and what puzzled and envious stares she elicited! But the very wildness of the land seemed to bring an answer from her. She became more and more Gypsy-like, her cheeks brighter and her hair darker and her eyes more slanting and enticing, the farther north we travelled.

  Onward t
o York, where what passed as roads were just rutted muddy paths. Between Lincoln and York there were a great many former monastic establishments—at Torksey, Willoughton, Selby. Some had been stripped of their lead roofs and had their stones plundered, so that in this green time of year they stood like ruined brides, white and vulnerable. It was the sight of these wronged ladies that had so moved the northerners to righteous anger. And they were striking: a plea for the beauty and order of the Old Religion.

  Pure sentimentality, though. They had never been as serene and gracious during their lifetimes as they were now in their dissolution. Under those now-vanished roofs had flourished every wickedness.

  In all this time on the road, I had not yet encountered a single one of the “indigent monks” of whom so much was made and who were, purportedly, a great problem in the countryside hereabout. These homeless monks and friars were allegedly roaming the kingdom, eating everything before them like locusts, and causing local disruption.

  York, at last. The city rose before us, very large, and it was easy to see why it dominated the North as London dominated the South. It was its own kingdom; and I knew now why, for Wolsey, it was tantamount to banishment to another country.

  We had turned a former abbey to good use here: it would house the court. Within the walls of the priory, reconstructed and refurbished for royal apartments, we would live. Two hundred golden tents were to be pitched among the ruins, so that all could be accommodated comfortably.

  The Lord President of the Council of the North had published my intentions to hear any man with a complaint against the Crown, and he assured me that many had responded to it and were awaiting their chance to talk. And as for the reception of loyalists and the ceremonial penitence service for traitors, that had all been arranged. He prattled on and on, until I was forced to ask directly, “The Scots King? When is he to arrive? I trust St. Mary’s is ready.”