The Autobiography Of Henry VIII

by Margaret George

  “The abbey is ready, Your Majesty. The workmen executed the necessary repairs and decorations. It gleams!”

  I was pleased. They would see I could build up as well as tear down. “Our nephew will be well received. He arrives when?”

  “He—he has not informed us.”

  “Not yet? But we ourselves were late. The dates I had originally proposed are past. Are there no letters? No messages?”

  “None, Your Majesty.”

  James must be coming. Only that would excuse his silence.

  “Very well, then,” I said lamely. “I shall await him. In the meantime, the ceremony distinguishing between the traitors and the true subjects must be carried out.” I was not looking forward to this, but it was a necessary part of statesmanship that things must be acted out.

  The next day, in the Great Hall of the Bishop’s Palace, the men of the region who had remained loyal to me throughout the unrest and rebellions were received and rewarded with ample favours. The others, who had wavered or had sympathized with the Pilgrims, were herded into another, rather shabby room, where they were directed to fall on their knees and then stretch themselves out upon the floor. In unison they recited, “We wretches, for lack of grace and of sincere and pure knowledge of the verity of God’s words, have most grievously, heinously, and wantonly offended Your Majesty in the unnatural and most odious and detestable offences of outrageous disobedience and traitorous rebellion.”

  I let them lie there like the abominable creatures they were. How many hours of anxiety had I suffered on their account, when they were but nameless, formless threats, far from my reach? It was these vermin who gave nightmares to us in the South. Catherine, standing beside me, looked uncomfortable. She could not understand the deep implications. She saw only a roomful of grovelling men, and soft as was her nature, she squirmed with sympathy for them.

  I reached over for her hand, and she jerked it away.

  Later, as we sat together at dinner, I tried to explain. But although she seemed to be listening, I could feel that she had hardened her heart against me.

  The autumn rains began, and the colourless skies stretched all the way to Scotland. As I waited for my nephew and his entourage, I passed time by hearing complaints against the Crown, as I had promised to do, for “any who found himself grieved for lack of justice.” There were quite a number, all involving money in some form or other. I was struck by the singular lack of religious complaints.

  One citizen said he spoke for many in his protest about raids from the Scots over the border.

  “They swoop down upon us, robbing us and taking our livestock. We have to take refuge in the peel-towers. That’s all very well for us, and saves our skins, but when it’s safe to come out we find our cottages ransacked and our livestock gone.”

  “Peel-towers?” I asked.

  “You’ve doubtless seen them on your journey here,” explained the Council President. “They are small square towers that are entered on the first floor. Our people built them to withstand raids from the Norsemen. Today they use them more than ever for the Scots.” He shook his head.

  “Tell me, these Scots—are they the wild men that come from the mountains?” (Like MacDonald’s father, only just now being civilized.)

  “No,” said the farmer. “They’re the Border scum. Just bands of bandits and murderers. There’s nothing romantic about them, except their music and poetry, which celebrates their blood-feuds.”

  “Their poetry!” said the President. “It can make your skin tingle. Their way with words is superb.

  ‘He is either a devil frae hell

  Or else his mother a witch maun be’—”

  he murmured in admiration. “Isn’t that beautiful?”

  “How can they be steeped in such sensitive language and yet be so bloodthirsty?” I wondered. “How far away do they raid from?”

  “They’ve taken the Roman Wall for their own. The Armstrongs have their hideout in a Roman fort there, at Housesteads. They’ve come a-raiding as far south as Alnwick and Penrith.”

  “Twenty miles and more,” the farmer nodded. “It isn’t only the Armstrongs. It’s the Maxwells, the Grahams, the Scotts—redundant name, eh?”

  “They’re clever, the Scots, as well as cruel. There’s only one thing they like as well as the sound of a line of well-turned poetry or the sight of blood covering them up to their forearms: the feel of money in their purses. So they’ve developed a way to combine both pleasures. They extract what they call ‘black-mail’ from us to spare us from their terrorizing.”

  “Mail?” I did not understand.

  “A Scots word meaning ‘rent.’ It’s aptly named: black rent. They charge a man for living in peace on his own property. Either way he chooses, they reap pleasure. He pays, and they can fondle money; he refuses, and they can spill blood. And write fine poetry about it afterwards.”

  I would put a stop to this. Let Norfolk have his fun with these dogs, then. “I shall quell these brutish men,” I promised him. I would take this matter to my nephew, the Scots King. Let him curb his subjects or I would do it for him.

  But there was no message from James V. By the sixth day it was becoming obvious that he did not intend to accept my solemn invitation or even explain his reasons.

  Theories were put forth: “He fears to leave Scotland because in his absence the Earl of Arran might take the throne.” (The Scots were divided into rabid parties and factions.) “He thinks this is a trick to take him prisoner.” (So he distrusted me—his own uncle?) “He does not wish to anger his French allies by consorting with the English.” (Absurd. Enemies can talk without compromising themselves, and civilized enemies always do.)

  Whatever his own dark reasons, he did not see fit to meet me in York, nor did he even have the courtesy to inform me of his intentions. I had been publicly jilted, as I waited like a deserted bride in the church.

  That night I had no stomach for the banquet and mummery, and afterward went directly to my chamber. It was a comforting place, solicitously prepared by my host, even down to stuffing every draughty crack with finest white wool. I was tired, and disheartened. It was time to stop waiting for James, conclude whatever business remained here in the desolate North, and return to London.

  I could not sleep, even though I took to my bed early and drank a sweet sleep-posset. At length I decided, late as it was, to come to Catherine.

  This involved a lengthy traverse through several chambers, across a gallery, and then again through the Queen’s chambers. Only the night-guards stood duty now, and the halls were deserted. A single torch burned in each area, the rest having been put out. The royal residence slept.

  As I approached the door to her apartments, a dark shape rose from a chair nearby, and glided toward me.

  A spirit . . . or at first I thought so. I was infected by the wild strangeness of this whole region. For it was a face I had thought never to see again: Jane Boleyn, George Boleyn’s wife. She who had betrayed her own husband and testified against him at that sordid time of Anne’s downfall.

  “Why, Jane—” I whispered.

  “Your Majesty.” She bowed low. It was truly she.

  She stood. A hood of the new fashion framed her face, but otherwise it was the same. An ugly face, with a long, bulbous nose and dark, shining, feral eyes too close on either side.

  It seemed that she was guarding the doors. But there were yeomen for that. It must be my own imagination, I remember thinking then.

  I tapped on the door, and Jane reached out a hand as if to restrain me. There was no response within; everyone must be dead asleep. Perhaps my Catherine was, as well? I produced the proper key (for we always carried our chamber locks with us to protect us from assassins who might have procured a key to the built-in lock), but Jane stayed my hand.

  “The Queen sleeps,” she said. “She asked me to keep watch in the outer chambers, lest she be disturbed.”

  “I will not disturb her,” I assured her. “I will sleep on a pall
et at her bed-foot, if need be. Her presence will aid me to sleep.”

  “Very well.” She nodded stiffly.

  The key worked well enough, but the door was barred from the inside as well. I could see the metal rod passing across the door-crack, and a great coffer pressed against the doors. I could not gain entrance without causing a great commotion.

  Disappointment flooded me. I had not realized until that moment how much I longed to be with her. I had wanted to tell her how proud I was of her, how my heart was near to bursting as I presented her as my Queen. These recalcitrant northerners had always loved Katherine of Aragon, and remained her partisans. But now there was a new Queen, another Catherine, whose gentle ways and pretty manners had charmed them, a Catherine who bore no taint of Protestantism such as Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, and Anne of Cleves had. She had reconciled me with my wayward subjects, as well as with myself.

  “She is afraid of assassins,” Jane, Lady Rochford, explained in a whisper. “These tales of bloody Scots have frightened her.”

  Poor, gentle child. I nodded. They were enough to frighten anyone. I understood her concern. “I would not disturb her,” I said. “Let her sleep, sweet Queen.”

  The next morning she was in my inner chamber, stammering and embarrassed at her makeshift defences. She covered me with kisses and swore that she, too, had been troubled with sleeplessness and would have relished a visit from me. Nothing else could truly calm her or rout her fears. She was chagrined that I had discovered the extent of her childish fear of the Scots. I assured her I was in sympathy, and loved her as much as ever, and no, I did not think less of her for taking those precautions.

  It was over. I resolved to wait no longer for the Scots King. Nine days was time enough. But I would exact my revenge at my leisure.

  The journey southward, retracing our steps, was orderly. I took the opportunity of travelling to Hull, on the great Humber estuary, to inspect my fortifications. I had spent hours studying the plans for building an experimental castle there, to be linked to two existing blockhouses, then wrestling money to pay for them. Now I would see the finished fort. It excited me to put plans on paper and see them translated into stone and metal. Preparing for war was a very satisfying thing; it both aroused and fulfilled a man.

  As we arrived at Windsor almost a month later, we were met by an ugly welcoming party. Edward lay ill, in spite of all my precautions to keep him safe. He suffered from quartrain ague, and the physicians thought him so “fat and unhealthy,” as they put it, that he was in danger of death.

  I sent the bulk of the courtiers and councillors home, and disbanded the Great Progress, as Windsor was our last stopping place. Final banquets and speeches had been planned, but that was unnecessary. We were all well sated with one another’s company by now.

  Standing by Edward’s high carved bed, I asked silently, “Why? Why? Why?” He was fat; he looked like a butterball, and his colour was almond-white, with red blotches all over. Did he get no exercise? Did he never play out of doors? In “protecting” him, had the fools of physicians robbed him of any natural mobility? He looked like one of those geese that cottagers keep chained to fatten their livers.

  “Open these windows,” I barked. The air in the chamber was so foul it made me cough. When only one of the casements was open, the crisp autumn air swept in with startling briskness, banishing the odours. “Give him the proper medicine,” I ordered. “Watch him carefully. But when this crisis is past, treat him as a prince, not a dowager. You speak true: he is too fat, and unhealthy. But that is your fault, not his!”

  I blustered most when I was most afraid.

  God was with Edward, and within a day he began to rally. His fever dropped, and his colouring improved. He became restless and intolerant of the bed confinement, a sure sign of returning health. After removing all the contaminating persons from his surroundings, I left him at Windsor and made for Hampton Court. There my journey would end.

  CVII

  Edward was spared. The northerners were loyal, and the progress had been successful. Catherine was fulfilling the ache in the realm for a true Queen. I felt the hand of God upon me, resting on my head, saying, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”

  On the morrow it was All Saints’ Day. I directed my confessor, the Bishop of Lincoln, to give public thanks at Mass in my name for the good life I was leading and trusted to continue to lead with Queen Catherine, after sundry troubles of mind which had happened to me by marriages. This he did; and his silken voice, saying the words, conveyed a peace and fulfillment I had thought never to attain.

  I received the Holy Bread, the Word made Flesh—and returning to kneel, I lost all sense of time. When I stirred, I found myself almost alone. Only Cranmer remained, discreetly waiting for me to break my reverie. A King must never be left unattended in a ceremonial stance.

  I genuflected and then walked slowly up the aisle, still in a daze of religious ecstasy.

  “Your Grace—my dear Lord—forgive me,” said Cranmer, thrusting a rolled letter into my hand. He looked ill.

  “What? No other greeting? I have missed you, Thomas, in our separation.

  “And I you, Your Majesty. Truly.”

  “I will plough through all the notes you took in my absence, I promise it, tonight. You did well.”

  “The letter—read it first, I beg you, I—” He looked so agitated I knew immediately that he suffered from rebellious bowels.

  “Go, Thomas,” I said. Still he stood with a hangdog look. “Yes, yes. I’ll read it straightway,” I assured him. He slunk away, as if in pain. Poor man.

  I seated myself on a wooden bench in the Long Gallery outside the Chapel and unfolded the letter, just to humour him.

  It was a joke. It reported the claims of a certain John Lassells that his sister, Mary Lassells Hall, had told him that Catherine Howard was a whore, that she had behaved wantonly from a young age with men of the Duchess’s household, giving herself to a “music master” when she was but thirteen and then living in open sin with a cousin until her departure for court.

  Who was this Mary Hall? I reread the letter carefully. She was, before her marriage, a servant at the Duchess’s Lambeth establishment. When her brother, who was a fervent Protestant, had asked her why she did not seek a position at court, as the other Lambeth servitors had done, she had replied with disdain, “I would not serve that woman! She is immoral, both in living and in conditions.” And then she had named “Manox, a music master” and “Dereham, a gentleman,” as Catherine’s lovers.

  Nonsense. It was nonsense. So the Protestants were on the move again. Since the head of the heretical serpent, Cromwell, had been severed, it writhed on its own, in meaningless thrashings. A flush of resentment spread through me. I had spent the summer quashing the pretensions of the Catholics, I thought, and now I must spend the winter curbing the Protestants. I was amused that Cranmer should have been taken in by this bait. But I had left my Protestants in charge in London, I reminded myself. Cranmer, Audley, Edward Seymour . . . they would be approachable by the extremists.

  Well, I would have this investigated, and have this Mary Hall silenced. She would regret ever having uttered this slander. Wearily I ordered William Fitzwilliam, the Lord Privy Seal, Anthony Browne, the Lord Admiral, and Thomas Wriothesley, Secretary of State, to round up Mary and John Lassells, and question Manox and Dereham. The slander must be stopped.

  In the meantime I enjoyed Catherine heartily, as if in defiance.

  Three days later my men returned, and in the privacy of my work chamber they said they had questioned the Protestant brother and sister, the music master, and Dereham, and had been unable to disprove the story. Quite the contrary.

  “I fail to believe this!” I muttered. “They must be lying. Oh, why do Protestants abandon their falsehoods only over the lighted fire? Damn their fanatacism! Very well, then—torture them! Force the truth from them!”

  Torture was illegal, except in cases of treason, sedition, or suspec
ted treason.

  Catherine had planned a supper and “amusement” for me that evening. But suddenly I was not amused; suddenly I did not want to see her or share an amusement. Abruptly I sent word that she must take to her quarters and await the King’s pleasure, that it was no more the time to dance.

  The King’s pleasure had been shattered, and nothing but a full retraction by those blackguards would restore it.

  I slept poorly that night, if at all. At my bed-foot pallet, Culpepper was likewise sleepless. I could hear it in his breathing. Ordinarily I could have passed time with him, lighted a taper and set up a chessboard. But a deadly fear had got hold of me, and I did not wish any company. So we passed the long night, each acutely aware of the other’s presence, but each alone in an absolute way.

  I was relieved when dawn came and it was time to go to Mass. I needed God; I needed some comfort. I dressed hurriedly and made my way down the Long Gallery to the Chapel Royal. There were few people about, as most preferred a later Mass on Sunday morning.

  Kneeling there, I poured out every incoherent thought and fear I had, and offered them up to God. The candles flickered on the altar and the Divine Service went smoothly, but I received no answers, no peace of mind.

  “—Thee, for that Thou dost vouchsafe to feed us who have duly received this holy mystery, with the spiritual food—” Outside the chapel doors there was a scraping, a scuffling. Then a shriek, piercing and like a banshee’s.

  “No! No!”

  “—of the most precious Body of Thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, and dost assure us thereby of Thy favour and goodness towards us; and—”

  “Henry! Henry! Henry!” screamed the voice, each naming of my name growing fainter, as from a greater distance.

  I shook, even ten feet from the altar and with the Body of Christ inside me.