The Autobiography Of Henry VIII

by Margaret George

  In that very tent? When I first saw Katherine, and loved her? I was angry, and I knew not why. Why had they survived? They should have perished, along with all those things of that world.

  “That was ten thousand years ago.”

  “Aye.” His grin faded.

  “What did I do last night? What did I do and say? And what truly happened? I know you will tell me.”

  “There was a Valentine’s banquet. All was as it should be, all dishes served in order, the colours red and white, the Valentine’s box distributed and sweethearts allotted, the red-coloured courses served.”

  “But?”

  “But it was the day after an execution. No ordinary execution. The Queen, my Lord—you executed the Queen. And so the Valentine’s feast was a funeral feast. At least, those attending felt it so. There was no merriment, save to please you.”

  “But what of my . . . my behaviour?”

  “You started and stared, and talked to the air.”

  “I saw Catherine. She was sitting in her seat, with a thornless rose before her golden platter.”

  “No one else saw her. She was for your eyes alone.”

  “Did the guests . . . know I saw her?”

  “They knew you saw something.”

  “So they assume I am mad.” I jerked out the words. I had paraded my obsession, my hauntings, in front of the company.

  “They assume you were conscience-stricken.” His deep brown eyes, the only youthful feature in his lined face, gazed directly into mine. “How you act from today forward will determine whether they judge you as mad.”

  “I am not conscience-stricken!” I muttered. “She deserved to die.”

  “That—or mad,” said Brandon calmly. “Those are the only two explanations they will allow you. People are simplistic, my Lord.”

  “You know I am not mad,” I began.

  “Too strong a strain, for too long, can drive anyone mad.” He was cautious.

  “I have never been mad, and I never shall be mad! But you are right, it was foolish to plan such a festivity following an execution. Better just to grieve, and admit one’s grieving. I should have locked myself up in my chambers and wept all day. Then I would feel clean, not more besmirched than ever.”

  “Death does not cleanse. Sometimes the loved one—or the hated one—never leaves one’s side. I still miss Mary. Katherine is no comfort. I, too, was a fool.”

  I embraced him. “I misjudged you.”

  “As others will misjudge you,” he said. “Unless you are careful.”

  At once it was important that I tell him all of it. “I was not alone in my chamber. I heard shriekings outside, in the Long Gallery. And then, in the back of the room, there were monks. Whispering together, huddling, pointing, judging.”

  He started and looked uneasy. “Shrieks? As of a woman? In the Long Gallery, you say?” Suddenly he flung himself up out of the Spanish chair. “Do you remember when you heard Mass at Hampton Court, in the same Chapel Royal, when the first news of Catherine was coming out?”

  “Yes.”

  “No one would tell you, then, as they acted on their own authority and feared your anger. When you were at your prayers, Catherine escaped from her guard and sought to find you at Mass. She eluded her watchers and came down the Long Gallery at Hampton. She reached the very doors of the chapel, where she meant to throw herself on your mercy. But just as she was turning the great door-fastener, she was apprehended. Then—”

  “She called for me,” I said slowly.

  “Trusting that you would hear her. She was so bold she even used your first name, the one forbidden even to me. She dared all. But failed in her attempt. She was dragged away before she could open the doors and intrude on your worship.”

  “Was she wearing white?” I asked, dully.

  “Aye.”

  “She was dressed, then, as a maiden.”

  So she would appear, for all eternity. The virgin-whore. I had seen true.

  “She attempted to appeal to your sense of sentimentality.”

  So my “sentimentality” was well known, a weakness for users to play upon. Was there nothing of a king that others did not seek to use? From my “sentimentality” to my time on the evacuation-stool after dinner?

  “I will always see her as a maiden.” That was true, that was the aching of it. But what of the ghost? Had others seen it?

  “I was visited by this sight last night,” I confessed. “The same shrieks, the same calling of my name. This time I opened the door, and looked down the gallery myself. I saw it.”

  Brandon frowned. “Were there any other witnesses?”

  “None.”

  “Set a watch, then. Else you will go mad, and she’ll have done what she set out to do.”

  I nodded.

  “She hates you,” Brandon said. “She wishes you to come to ruin. Remember that. Thwart her.”

  “But why Catherine?” I burst out. “Why not anyone else? I swear, no one else has risen to walk!” I dared not name them, lest that call them forth. Buckingham. Anne. George Boleyn. More. Fisher. Aske. Smeaton. Weston. Norris. Brereton. Dudley. Empson. Neville. Carew. Cromwell. De la Pole. Margaret Pole.

  “They were not possessed of the Evil One,” he said smoothly. “Only the Evil One gives power beyond the grave.”

  “Anne—”

  He could not answer. “Perhaps her soul reincarnated in her cousin Catherine.”

  I shook so profoundly I could not stop. Brandon encircled me with his great, heavy arm. “Your list of regrets is no longer than that of any other man,” he said slowly. “We live with them. We do not go mad, or sink into melancholy.” Still my shaking went on, gathering force. “Regrets. No one sets out to have a list of regrets. It is a mortal condition.”

  Father, amongst his bloodied handkerchiefs—how I had despised him.

  “What now?” I shook my head wildly. “So I now find myself where ordinary men do. But what does a king do?”

  “A king spits on the regrets,” laughed Brandon.

  Then I, too, began to laugh, and the trembling stopped.

  I set six unimaginative Kentish soldiers to stand guard in the Long Gallery. I especially noted how dull of wit and irreligious they were, and posted them with the simple instructions that they were to keep watch all night, relieving one another at two-hour intervals. On no account were they to sleep, and they were to report to me any noises or stirrings they even suspected.

  “For it has been said that this cold winter has forced an unusual number of rats to seek haven in the spaces beneath the gallery here. If so, I must know, so that appropriate poisons can be set out before they breed in spring. Do you understand?”

  They nodded.

  “Any unusual stirring,” I repeated.

  They nodded. Did they truly understand?

  I thought my story quite clever. No madman could be so clever. It sounded quite logical and would net me the information I sought.

  On the second night I heard the ghost. Its shriekings were quite clear. I cracked open the great doors and looked . . . and saw the apparition, like Catherine but not Catherine. It merely used her externals. The guardsmen were flailing at it; one stabbed at the air as if to pierce her breast. The other just leapt about like a dazed frog.

  I closed the doors. Others had seen it walk. I was not alone. I was not mad.

  The next morning the guards claimed they had seen nothing, heard nothing, and had passed a tranquil night.

  Liars. Liars. I was surrounded by liars, cowards, enemies who painted every aspect of life false. To what end?

  I thanked them and bade them remain on duty for yet another week, just to be sure.

  “For if there be rats, we must exterminate them.”

  They agreed. “One quiet night does not guarantee that they are not present.” I looked into their eyes. There was no reluctance there to pass another night on the gallery. Where had this generation got such hardened hearts?

  Every night I heard the
ghost. Every morning the guards reported an uneventful night. At the end of the eighth day I paid them, thanked them for their honesty and perseverance, and let them go.

  “No poisons, then,” I said merrily.

  “Nothing to poison,” they agreed.

  No. One cannot poison a ghost. One can only poison others’ opinions, and my behaviour at the Valentine’s banquet had done that. Well, no matter. I would set about sweetening them. People’s minds were like wells. First they run clear, then become polluted—but one can always counteract the pollution. Just throw something else in.

  I had had a Valentine’s gift for my Valentine, and had promised to give it her. I must follow through, must try to behave as normally as possible. So I sent a note to the widow Parr, asking her to join me for Mass in the morning and for dinner afterward. I knew she still resided at court. Catherine’s household remained intact, a body without a head (like Catherine herself, their mistress), awaiting my orders to disband.

  The widow Parr appeared promptly, a quarter-hour before the Mass was to begin. I noted she still wore her plain black mourning headdress, in memory of her deceased Lord.

  “You are early,” I remarked, as my gentlemen ushers brought her into my presence in the Privy Chamber.

  “I did not know how long beforehand Your Majesty wished to spend in meditations. I would accompany you, and would not disrupt your pattern of devotion.”

  “Aye, aye.” Suddenly these servers and observers about me were a nuisance. “Come, then. We shall go straightway.” I smiled—or rather forced my face to simulate a smile—and held out my hand to her.

  Together we entered the Chapel Royal. But instead of going directly to our devotions, I bade her stay and wait until her eyes accustomed themselves to the dimness. Overhead there were great gold stars, all painted in glory on the deep blue firmament.

  “This is so dark it is like a Turkish den,” she said unexpectedly. “Murky and messed.”

  Stale incense yet lingered from the previous day’s celebration.

  “One should come to Jesus in light as clear as Mary did in the early dawn of Easter,” she said.

  She did not apologize, she did not whittle down her own strength of words. Nor did she steal away to a statue of the Virgin—as I longed to—and fall to her knees in private devotion. Instead, she bent her head down and tried to read from a book she carried in her hand. In the dim light, this was impossible.

  Embarrassed, I went over to the private prayer-niche reserved before the Virgin. When Cranmer and his servers appeared, ready to begin Mass, I heaved myself up from the prayer-stool and came once again to Katherine. I took her hand and brought her into the royal box.

  She followed all that I did during the Mass. Knelt when I knelt, genuflected when I genuflected, and even received the host. But I was unable to see her face, deep within the widow’s bonnet.

  Mass ended. Cranmer embraced us at the chapel doors and conferred blessings on us. I dipped my fingers in the holy water set out; she did not.

  Silently we walked side by side down the Long Gallery. Her head was down, and all I could see was the long black tubular bonnet. Her skirts made noises as they dragged along the polished floor.

  “God be with you, Katherine,” I finally said.

  “And with you,” she said, but not rotely. She truly meant it.

  “Did the Mass speak to you?” I asked. “You could not read your devotional book, and you said the chapel was too dark. Yet your late husband was a devout Pope-Catholic.”

  Pope-Catholic. That was my new term for those who thought no orthodoxy was possible outside of Rome.

  “I am not my husband.” Her voice was so low I could scarcely hear her radical words. “The Lord Jesus said”—suddenly her face was upturned, and looking fully at mine—“that households shall be divided. For His sake.”

  Her face glowed. Her plain little face, which had no real beauty of its own, was infused with spiritual beauty.

  I stopped where I was. I had never seen this before. I, who had been privileged to behold beauty in many forms, had never seen that entity called spiritual beauty. In fact I had always thought it a metaphor. Now it made me speechless.

  “Aye,” I said. “Kate.” I reached out and pushed away the ugly widow’s bonnet. The sun, coming through the gallery windows, hit her thick red-gold hair, all flattened and combed back. “You must no longer wear mourning,” I said. “For you are not in mourning, but are rejoicing with the Risen Lord.”

  Obediently, she removed the bonnet.

  The dinner was awaiting us in the Privy Chamber, laid out on my private dining table. A fair white linen cloth had been spread, and all my gold plate set out.

  “This time of year there is little to choose from.” Before the meal even appeared, I was issuing disclaimers for it.

  “Five loaves and two fishes?” she laughed.

  “About that,” I admitted.

  The bread, made from late-winter rye, was thick and heavy. The drink, made from the same, was nourishing. And yes, there was carp: universal late-winter dish.

  “Who minds the carp pools now that the monasteries are abandoned?” she asked, matter-of-factly. It was the monks who had developed elaborate fish hatcheries, and made carp a standard part of the winter diet.

  “Villagers. But we are not so dependent on carp any longer, now that there is less fasting.”

  “A foolish Popish custom,” she said briskly. “I am happy that you abolished much of that, my Lord.”

  “But I have not abolished enough?” I chose my words carefully.

  She chose hers with equal prudence. “Things are progressing. True things must build on a foundation.”

  “What were you reading?” I asked abruptly. “Or, rather, attempting to read?” I indicated her book.

  “Private devotions,” she said, handing me the book. “Some of the meditations were—I composed some of them myself.”

  I glanced at it. Key words—“faith,” “Scripture,” “blood,” “justification”—branded it Protestant. “Have a care, Kate,” I warned gently, handing it back to her.

  She winced at the name. “No one has ever called me Kate,” she said stiffly.

  “No? But it is a happy name, as you are happy. A young name, as you are young.” Was I the only one to have ever seen that side of her? “But if you prefer, I shall return to ‘Lady Parr.’ ”

  She did not contradict me. “You invited me, Your Majesty, because you had something for me?”

  The Valentine’s present: a section of Ovid, and his treatise on love. I had thought she would enjoy translating it. I saw now how utterly inappropriate it would be, how boorish.

  “You are my Valentine,” I said, thinking as quickly as I could. “We should exchange tokens, and I was remiss in withholding mine.”

  “You were ill, my Lord,” she quickly reminded me.

  “Yes, yes. Well, I have here”—sweet Jesu, what did I have?—“a jewel. A ruby ring.” Red. Valentine’s. Yes, it would do.

  “I am in mourning,” she said.

  “We had agreed, as Christians, you were not.” I delved into the leather pouch I kept in my private chest, my fingers searching for the ruby. “Here.”

  Reluctantly she took it. “This is not from a shrine?”

  “It is not Becket’s ruby, if that is what you fear! A ruby cannot be divided and retain its roundness. Surely you knew that? No, if you must know its origins—this is the girlhood ring of my dear sister Mary. Take it, and wear it in innocence, as she did.”

  Before she knew men: a brother who married her off for politics; a slavering old first husband, a greedy second husband who remarried before the trees in bloom at her funeral bore fruit. Ruby of childhood and hopes. Odd that a grown woman, twice widowed, should be the one woman I knew who was suited to wear it. Even little Elizabeth was too “old.”

  “Thank you,” she said, putting it on her finger. “It was kind of you to remember the token.”

  And kind of you to
forget that you had to comfort me on that horrible night, I thought. Forgetting is an act of charity—one much neglected.

  The widow Parr—nay, Kate—was charity, and love, and light.

  But she was a Protestant!

  Just before she took her leave of me, she fumbled in her gown pocket and brought out a tiny volume of Psalms.

  “I wish you to have this,” she said earnestly. On her face was that transformed look, the one I wanted never to lose sight of. “Read it,” she insisted, pressing it in my hand. “I trust, and hope, my translation is correct.”

  Then she was gone, and all I had was that little black leather book of Psalms.

  Only Protestants made their own translations!

  As I sat thumbing through the Psalter, I realized that I had not thought about my “madness” for the past six hours. Her serene sanity had banished it, had made it an absurdity.

  CXIV

  That afternoon I had scheduled audiences with all the foreign ambassadors. It was time we understood one another. I had been particularly annoyed by a certain Spaniard who, evidently trading on his acquaintance or influence with Chapuys, had witnessed Catherine’s execution and then presumed to write a “chronicle” of it, telling of Catherine and Culpepper’s romance, of my cruelty, and so on. Already a hundred or so copies had been printed and were circulating, both about London and abroad. They did me a great disservice, painting me as mad, vicious, besotted.

  I would have each ambassador visit me upon the stroke of an hour: Chapuys at two o’clock, Marillac at three, the Scots envoy, a Stuart bastard, at four, and the Papal creature at five. Thereafter I would retire to my chamber with a large portion of wine and have baked lampreys for supper. I had already put in my request with the chief cook, as lampreys were tedious to prepare—all those bones to be removed. . . .

  I changed into my audience costume. It was necessary, always, to appear as a King, to do as a King. Hence the heavy jewel-encrusted doublet, the cloth-of-gold cape. Over it all, my furred robes of state, much like the ones in fashion when my father reigned. They were now the mark of an older man, a man who, for health reasons, needed extra warmth. So be it. That was true. I had, for so long, refused to put them on. But I needed them, and no longer felt it important that others not know I needed them. I had even allowed Holbein to begin a portrait of me in them, clasping that signature of an old man: a stave. A lovely carved one, presented me by Niall Mor’s father. The Irish . . . I must speak to the envoy from Ireland. How could I have forgotten? I had thought of it Thursday last, and made a note—where was the note? Truly this was unacceptable, this misplacing of things, this forgetting. . . .