The Autobiography Of Henry VIII

by Margaret George

  Another scream, muffled now.

  “—that we are very members incorporate in the mystical Body—”

  Was I dreaming? Was I the only one who had heard the bloodcurdling calls? The priest mumbled on, the worshippers mouthed the responses.

  When I stepped out, the passageway was empty.

  There was to be a Privy Council meeting at Bishop Gardiner’s residence in Southwark that evening. I called it that afternoon, as Fitzwilliam came to me with still more evidence and depositions. From a field outside Hampton, where I had gone on a pretext of hunting, but in reality to be alone, I issued a command to all the councillors to return to London to attend this emergency meeting. It was to be kept secret, and so I went directly to the royal barge without ever returning to the palace. Rumour had infested Hampton, and now everyone knew something was amiss. Catherine was confined to her apartments, on my orders.

  Sitting before me in Gardiner’s fine Council Chamber were Audley, the Lord Chancellor; Thomas Howard, ordered back to London for the occasion, looking pleased and important; William Petre, the Principal Secretary; Brandon, Cranmer. . . .

  I ticked off their names. Yes, they were all present. I cleared my throat.

  “Gentlemen,” I began, “you are called here at this inconvenient hour”—I faltered, then plunged ahead—“to consider certain things, evil charged against the Queen.” I rattled a paper before my face, the original deposition of the informers. “Whilst we were away, the Lord Archbishop and the Council in absentia”—I nodded toward Cranmer, Audley, and Seymour—“were apprised of alleged misdeeds of my . . . wife. These were sufficiently grave that the Archbishop saw fit to report them to me in writing. Since then, we have investigated further. But these matters are confusing, and so, before proceeding further, we would lay the entire matter before you. The witnesses—defendants—shall speak openly where all can hear.”

  It was unorthodox. I could scarcely credit my own words. Since this frightful business had begun, it was like a fantasy, and everything seemed like a sleepwalk.

  “We shall retrace each step,” I said. “John Lassells, speak first.”

  They led in an elderly man, who seemed the very soul of reason.

  “State your name and title.”

  He bowed. “I am John Lassells, resident of London.”

  “State your occupation.”

  “I know what you aim for, so let us be honest and disclose it straightway,” he blustered. “I spoke of what my sister Mary, who had served as a nurse in the Duchess of Norfolk’s household, told me when I asked her why she did not seek a position at court. It seemed to me that anyone who had known the Queen came requesting a place. There was Joan Bulmer, writing all the way from York; Katherine Tilney, who became her chamberer. Why not my Mary?”

  I rapped upon the table before me. “Continue.”

  “She replied, ‘I would not serve the Queen. Rather, I pity her.’ I questioned why, and she said, ‘Marry, because she is light, both in living and in conditions.’ ”

  I glanced round. The faces were stunned.

  “And what did she mean? Did you probe further?” I asked detachedly.

  “Aye. And she said”—he hesitated, his voice winding down like a toy doll’s—“that there was a music master, Manox, who bragged that he used to feel her body, knew of a private mark on her secret parts—”

  The little ladder-mark on her uppermost thigh, a gash stitched together when she was but a child. I used to climb that ladder, it was a game we played, my lips mimicking feet, going rung by rung until they nibbled on the gates of her private parts.

  “—and then he was sent away by the Duchess, who found them fondling one another when they were shut up together with the virginals.”

  Music . . . a music master . . . Mark Smeaton . . . The pain, which I had thought gone forever, now tore my body apart.

  Mary Lassells Hall was now brought in. She was as I had envisioned: tall, hard, plain. She quickly told her story.

  “After the music master was banished, there came another. A Francis Dereham, some sort of cousin, a gentleman-pensioner of the Duke of Norfolk. He quickly joined the revels in the girls’ attic sleeping quarters, became a popular visitor.”

  Catherine’s summer secretary! The pirate-cousin! O Jesu, O Jesu—!

  “Pray explain yourself.” Norfolk squeezed each painful word out. He was frightened.

  “The young maidens were to sleep in a dormitory at night. The Duchess ordered that they be locked in at eight o’clock. But she slept in another wing, and was half deaf, besides. As soon as she’d retired, what a picnic! Every lust-ridden male in the county converged on that ‘maidens’ chamber.’ They climbed in the windows, and brought strawberries and wine, and then spent their lust on the woman of their choice. Their only concession to modesty was to draw the curtains round the bed itself whilst they sported themselves.”

  “Disgusting,” muttered Norfolk.

  “Your cousin Sir William Howard had his own key,” she said stiffly. “Now this Manox, when he found himself barred from these pagan indulgences, wrote the Duchess a tattling note about them. The Lord William Howard was dismayed, lest he be caught by his wife. He had enjoyed his fifteen-year-old hussy, indeed he had! He scolded Manox and Dereham, saying, ‘What, you mad wretches! Could you not be merry but you must fall out amongst yourselves?’ His game was spoilt, and he regretted it.”

  I waved my hand. “Enough.” I did not care what Lord William Howard had done. My heart did not break on account of him. “You say others from the Duchess’s establishment requested positions from the Queen?”

  “Yes. Joan Bulmer, who was her confidante in the old days, now serves as her privy chamberer; Katherine Tilney, as her bed-maid; Margaret Mortimer, as her wardrobe supervisor. They feathered their berths well, to assure their future.”

  So. She had brought foul reminders of her past life with her. To aid her evil plans. But perhaps it was not her choice, perhaps she had been threatened by them. . . .

  “Edward Manox,” I called. He came forward and stood before me. I had not expected him to be so handsome.

  I repeated the testimony against him. “What say you to these reports?”

  “They are true, but it is not as it appears! I was the son of a neighbouring nobleman, brought into the Duchess’s household to teach her charges music. Catherine Howard was just thirteen at that time, a very . . . forward virgin. She had genuine talent in music”—yes, I knew that, I had rejoiced in that talent, cherished it—“but she was wayward, wanton—and beautiful. She promised her maidenhead to me, but before I could make good that promise, the Duchess caught us kissing on the stairs. She screamed and boxed Catherine’s ears. She said she was a fool to waste herself on me, that I was unworthy of her. Then the Duchess dismissed me.” He hesitated. “Before I was sent away, Catherine walked with me in the orchard. She said she loved me and would always be true.”

  I hated the words, hated seeing him, so straight and young and honest.

  “I make my living as a musician,” he said. “I was living in Chertsey when I was brought here to ‘answer certain charges.’ Please, my lords. When I knew her she was but Catherine Howard, a girl in the Duchess’s household, and I did nothing wrong. She may have promised me her maidenhead, but I never took it. And I have never mentioned to anyone, since she became Queen, that I knew her. It is my own secret.”

  Oh, get him away! He sickened me. He had shared Catherine, had possessed her in some way that I could not. He had been her first love.

  They led him away and dragged Dereham in. Handsome, cocky Dereham.

  He, too, was read the accusation and called upon to clear himself.

  “The Queen is my wife,” he said boldly. “She was promised to me two years ago. We lived as husband and wife, and then she went to court and I to Ireland—both to make our fortunes, that was the plan. Well, I had some success in ventures there”—yes, piracy, I remembered—“but imagine my surprise to find, upon my retur
n, that my little wife is now styled Queen of England. Naturally I hurried to reclaim her, and she was most amenable to appointing me her secretary. But, alas, I found I had been replaced in her affections . . . by a Thomas Culpepper.”

  No. No.

  “You say you ‘lived as husband and wife,’ ” said Cranmer dryly. “In what precise sense?”

  “In that we coupled often, and had intentions to marry.”

  Coupled often. I looked at the long-legged pirate, imagining him lying on my Catherine, quivering above her, searching out her secret parts and then depositing his seed within her.

  The stone. The stone in her womb . . . that was what it was for. . . . It was Catherine herself who had sought out a practitioner to put it there, to protect herself from her own sexual indulgences.

  I felt vomit in my throat.

  “Did she promise herself to you?” asked Cranmer reasonably.

  “We called one another ‘husband’ and ‘wife.’ I entrusted my money to her while I went to Ireland. I remember holding her whilst she said, in tears, ‘Thou wilt never live to say to me, “thou hast swerved.” ’ ”

  But she had, she had. O God—why did not the pain stop? Why could I not feel anger? Come, clean anger, sweep this agony away!

  “Look to Tom Culpepper if you want more!” he cried, as he was taken from the chamber.

  Culpepper.

  A dozen eyes blinked back at me. I thought my heart would break, I thought myself torn into shreds, as I whispered, “Arrest Culpepper. Question him.” A stirring, and my servants went to carry out my bidding.

  It was all coming now, the recall, in brutal and torturous detail. Her pretend-chastity, which I had been so loth to violate that I rushed forward the marriage in such haste; her lewd behaviour on our wedding night, appropriate to a jade who was long past sweetness; Dereham’s Syrian love-cream; Culpepper and Catherine’s absence during my illness, and her skittishness; my attributing her high colouring on those mornings to her religious experiences at Mass; the locked doors on the great Northern Progress, with the trumped-up story about the Scottish assassins, and her kisses and assurances the next morning. O God!

  I wept, putting my head down on the Council table. My hat rolled off, revealing my balding scalp. I was naked as I had never been, and I cared not, so great was my grief. I had loved Catherine, had believed her chaste and loving. It was all a lie. She was a whore, a scheming whore, who had gone to court “to make her fortune.”

  I swayed up and screamed, “A sword! A sword!”

  No one stirred.

  “Get me a sword!” I commanded. “I shall kill her, kill her—she’ll not have had such pleasure in her debauchery as she’ll have agony in her death!” I looked round. “I want her to suffer, friends. To suffer! One feels the ecstasy of love in every part of one’s body, is that not so? Well, I want pain to pervade her every part, now.” It was so simple. Why could they not understand? Pain like that which filled me—that was what I would give her.

  “Are you deaf? I said a sword!” Ah, but I could not kill her myself, I lacked the dexterity. “A swordsman, then!”

  Cranmer flung his arms about me. He, too, was weeping. But there was weeping and weeping, and mine came from my depths. It was unstoppable. The more the pain filled me, the more it welled up.

  “Stop it! Stop it!” I could bear no more. I clutched at Cranmer. I screamed, as if to turn my insides out, to rid myself of myself.

  Betrayed. I had been betrayed. I could not bear it; the pain was searing. My life was a lie, my love was a lie, everything was not as it seemed, it was its exact opposite. . . .

  I vomited on the table, and watched in revulsion as the stuff dripped down on the Turkish rug. My life was like this vomit; it was myself splattered out and stinking with foul, unrecognizable things.

  Someone got me to bed. I was raving, quite mad. Before they led me away, I called for Will and asked them to bring him to me.

  I was in bed for two full days, and all that time I lay in a draped room that admitted no daylight. My hands were bound with silken cords, lest I do damage to myself. I wept and raged continuously, with no sleeping. Memory after memory presented itself to me, each one uniquely painful, so that banishing one did not bring surcease. Sleep brought horrible dreams. I was violent, wishing only to be out of my own prison of mind.

  It did not subside, only at length I became exhausted, and passed into a state of motionlessness.

  CVIII

  I came awake to a sorrowing face: Cranmer’s. He was standing at the foot of my bed. How long had he been there? What did he want?

  “Your Grace—my beloved King—” he began, moving toward me.

  Beloved. Only an old man would say those words to me from henceforth, and I could believe them only from an old man.

  Had they feared for me, then? Feared for my sanity, or for my life? Alas, neither had fled, neither had turned tail and deserted me. I was here, fixed, leaden—utterly sane. There was to be no respite from my pain, and my awareness.

  “Cranmer.” I acknowledged him, bade him come closer.

  “We have found this in Culpepper’s letter-box—whilst he was out a-hawking merrily—and we searched his rooms. He is arrested—”

  He handed me the letter, as embarrassed as if he had written it himself.

  Master Culpepper,

  I heartily recommend me unto you, praying you to send me word how that you do. It was showed me that you was sick, the which thing troubled me very much till such time that I hear from you, praying you to send me word how that you do. For I never longed so much for a thing as I do to see you and to speak with you, the which I trust shall be shortly now.

  The which doth comfort me very much when I think of it, and when I think again that you shall depart from me again it makes my heart to die to think what fortune I have that I cannot be always in your company.

  My trust is always in you that you will be as you have promised me, and in that hope I trust still, praying you then that you will come when my Lady Rochford is here, for then I shall be best at leisure to be at your commandment.

  I thank you for promising to be so good unto that poor fellow, my man, which is one of the griefs that I do feel to depart from him, for then I do know no one that I dare trust to send to you, and therefore I pray you take him to be with you, that I may sometime hear from you one thing.

  I pray you to give me a horse for my man, for I have much ado to get one and therefore I pray send me one by him and in so doing I am as I said afore, and thus I take my leave of you, trusting to see you shortly again and I would you were with me now, that you might see what pain I take in writing you.

  yours as long as life endures

  Catherine

  One thing I had forgotten and that is to instruct my man to tarry here with me still, for he says whatsoever you bid him he will do it.

  Catherine. Her frantic, muddle-headed “arrangements.” This could be no forgery, for it reflected all too perfectly her personality.

  It makes my heart to die to think what fortune I have that I cannot be always in your company. . . .

  The “fortune” that kept them apart, that “made her heart to die” was me, my existence, my presence.

  Oh, why did it stab me so hotly to realize it, to savour the full meaning? Why did not the full meaning—she was an adulteress, a traitress—cancel out the pain of the little, petty particulars? Yet it was these little things that had the sharpest barbs. . . .

  For I never longed so much for a thing as I do to see you and speak with you. . . .

  As I had written Anne so long ago, almost the same words—what was it I had said?—“her absence having given me the greatest pain at heart that neither tongue nor pen can express”?

  Catherine had had the same madness for Culpepper, then.

  No, with her it was not so enduring. It was mere lust, not bewitchment.

  Yours as long as life endures, Catherine. . . .

  She had never written me a single l
etter.

  “Thank you, Cranmer,” I said slowly. “I think it best that you go to her, take her confession now.”

  It was the next day, while I was awaiting word from Cranmer, that Will received a message from Lady Baynton, Catherine’s married sister.

  “Dereham did what he did by force,” she said, albeit in more elaborate language. The disclaimer had arrived ahead of the original statement it sought to modify.

  How like Catherine, I thought. She said one thing and now wishes to retract it, like a child choosing trinkets at a summer’s fair. “I like this—no, I’ll have this instead.” But it was no more the time to dance.

  At length Cranmer came, so nervous he was trembling. “ ’Tis done,” he murmured. “She has given a confession. Take it.” He thrust it to me, the odious task performed.

  “What . . . state was she in?” Oh, tell me something of her, what she wore, how she looked—Sweet Jesu, did I still love her, then? I all but spat.

  “In a frenzy of lamentation and heaviness.”

  Play-acting! As she had play-acted all along. But what if she were changed? No, impossible. “What said she of Dereham?”

  Cranmer reluctantly opened the page of his personal notes. “Of Dereham she said, ‘He had divers times lain with me, sometimes in his doublet and hose, and two or three times naked, but not so naked that he had nothing upon him, for he had always at least his doublet and as I do think, his hose also, but I mean naked when his hose were put down.’ ”

  She remembered every detail, she cherished them! O dear God! And the doublet still on—I remembered our wedding night, when she had had me do the same . . . it excited her. . . .

  I thought the top of agony had been reached, but each day brought new heights, and this confession most of all. I would read it, then, read it and die. And be done with death, as I was already done with living.

  It was addressed to me. So she wrote me a letter at last.

  I, Your Grace’s most sorrowful subject and most vile wretch in the world, not worthy to make any recommendation unto your most excellent Majesty, do only make my most humble submission and confession of my faults.