The Autobiography Of Henry VIII

by Margaret George

  “Not from Your Majesty, but that others, antagonistic Scots who oppose him, they would take advantage of his absence.”

  “Who exactly are these antagonistic Scots? I keep hearing their names invoked, like a charm. There are Lowland Scots and Highland Scots, and chieftains, and Lords of the Western Isles. What sort of country is this?”

  “A divided, unhappy country, Your Majesty. The Highland Scots, as you call them, are great families that own certain tracts of land, and have done so since time out of mind. They reside in their little valleys and glens and seek primarily to be left alone. The Border Scots are another matter entirely. They are bandits and extortionists, betraying the English for the Scots, and vice versa, at the same time. Then, the Isles—ah, they are something yet again. They are part Norse, settled by the Norsemen, and don’t see themselves as part of any country. They live on those barren, cold rocks out in the Irish Sea, and claim to be Christian, yet . . .” He spread his hands as if to say, How could they be?

  I held MacDonald, son of the chieftain of the Isle of Rum. I might as well hold the wind hostage, from what this man said. “In such a topsy-turvy country, how came there to be an ambassador selected? What, and whom, does he represent?”

  “I am a cousin of King James, albeit from the wrong side of the blanket. I believe I can speak for him. I know his mind.”

  “But does he have a mind?” I barked. “And is it consistent? You knew his mind when you set forth from Edinburgh. Do you know it now?”

  “I believe I do. I understand its workings.”

  “Its turnings, you mean. Very well, then, how turns it in regard to me, his English brother, his uncle?”

  “He wishes peace.”

  I stifled a laugh. That outworn old phrase! One might as well say an Ave Maria, for all it meant in real terms. “I know a way to peace,” I declared. “Unite the countries. It is unnatural that one island should contain two realms. Let us combine. Through a marriage, at first. Then the two Parliaments would unite—”

  “A marriage has been tried, Your Majesty. The Princess Margaret Tudor of England and King James IV of Scotland, in 1503.”

  “It failed due to the persons involved. My sister Margaret was”—she was lust-ridden, shortsighted, unimaginative—“unequal to the high calling before her. She was but a child when she came to Scotland.” And was still a child, at fifty-three. “How does she?” I asked.

  He looked dismayed. Margaret was an embarrassment. Betrayed by her lust, her impulses . . . they were all played out now, and no one wanted her. She had many indifferent custodians. Even her son regarded her as a burden—like an old pet that soiled carpets and slept all the time in the sun, its owners just waiting for it to die.

  “She is . . . recuperating. At Methven Castle. She suffered a—a—something in her head.”

  “What of her husband—her so-called husband—Lord Methven?” She had divorced Angus thirteen years ago to marry him, and now sought to divorce him to remarry Angus. The foolish, lustful woman!

  “He . . . remains behind, at Stirling.”

  “The truth is, he has left her,” I said brusquely. “He has more important things to attend to than a dying, powerless old woman.” I snapped my fingers. The Scot’s attention had wandered.

  “Your sister,” he demurred.

  “Aye. My elder sister. Well, I was speaking of a marriage between Scotland and England, one that would do what my father’s experiment failed to do.”

  “Your sister,” he insisted.

  “What, am I supposed to mourn for her? I wrote her in 1528, the year of the Sweating Sickness, when first I heard of her folly in divorcing Angus to marry that fop, Methven. Did she heed me? No! Is it any surprise this has befallen her?” Margaret had been stupid. I hated stupidity. I could forgive any sin, any shortcoming, but that.

  He blinked. “It is true, then, the way they paint you.”

  “Save your rehearsed observations about my cruelty, my lack of human kindness, in which undoubtedly you were tutored by your master, the straightforward James V! If to call a sister by her true name, and to fail to be swayed by sentimentality for a fool, constitutes cruelty, then I embrace the title.”

  “You are a monster!” He arranged his face in the proper drained, blank manner prescribed for staring at a monster.

  “Is that your worst thunderbolt? Come, come!” I taunted him.

  “Even the laughter is monstrous,” he muttered.

  “Now that we understand one another”—oh, that was what audiences were for, the first half hour of them always wasted in this fencing—“let us state it plain. Here is what I wish: that Scotland and England unite, preferably through marriage. That we cease these hostilities, which are nonsensical, if you consult a map; for we are one country. All else flows from that.”

  “Now you understand me,” he said, and his voice was burred and edgy. “I care not what your maps say, or what your ‘logic’ tells you. We Scots are a different people, entirely different from you. That you understand us not is of no concern to us. We are people of our land, and our land is as different from yours as is Spain.”

  Spain! Why did he choose that country?

  “We are people of the sea, of the islands, of the long nights and long days. There is nothing balanced about us. Some of us still speak a different tongue—’tis called Gaelic, and is similar to that on the Isle of Man, the coast of Wales, of Brittany, of all the other rocky, bitter places on the edge of your fat, velvety countries. We cling there, and we thrive there, and we have no need of you!”

  “Yes, you do! For without peace, you cannot survive in the world, you’ll be crushed, and your Celtic stuff sucked out like an oyster’s—”

  “You frighten me not!” he snarled. Yes, snarled: like some northern wolf. I had never heard a sound like it from a human throat. Before I could grant him leave, he was gone, his capes all aswirl.

  He was right. I knew it deep inside. Scotland was another realm entirely, one so alien to our English way of thought that we could never even comprehend one another.

  What was it he had said about his Celtic cousins? Wales, Brittany, Ireland, the Isle of Man? I was Welsh, or partially Welsh. I had spoken their tongue—as a lad, anyway. Was I barred from understanding their minds? Did I share nothing of that?

  I knew poetry sometimes made my skin tingle. I knew music transported me to another world, and that my gift for it seemed something external to myself. Was this a corner of what it meant to be a Celt? That corner illuminated, softened, heightened all the rest of me. But what if it were not a corner, but the whole? Suddenly I thought I knew what it was to be Scots, and part of me was drawn to it; the other part recognized it as implacable enemy, one with which I could not coexist.

  I had a quarter-hour before the Papal envoy was to appear. I must get myself in hand. My head-pounding had lessened, but not disappeared entirely. I looked at the green syrup. I had had quite enough of that. I did not reach out for the bottle.

  I must have a clear head for the Papal nuncio. What was it I wished to hear of him, and wished him to hear of me?

  The Papal presence in England reduced to this one little foreigner . . . ah, how impossible it would have seemed a mere decade ago! Then the Papacy was everywhere, dictating, lecturing, controlling. Or attempting to. Now the Pope was gone from my realm, only permitted to retain an inconspicuous presence by my express permission.

  “Giuseppe Dominici, the nuncio from the Holy See.”

  “Let him come forward.” I gestured. I was settled now, with all my robes of state about me. It was important to wear them when meeting a Papal envoy.

  The doors swung open, and a tiny man appeared. My first thought was, How could the Pope have selected such a small man to represent him? But close on its heels came admiration. Only a man utterly secure in himself could select an unprepossessing envoy to be his voice in a land hostile to him.

  The man bowed. “I am Giuseppe Dominici, ambassador of His Holiness, Paul III.” He had the
sort of ugly and open face one associated with the most simple-minded.

  I waited for him to speak. He waited for me. Silence prevailed.

  “Tell me of your journey here,” I began.

  “It was a year ago,” he said. “But it took many months. I had to pass through certain areas of the Lowlands I would fain not traverse again. My habit seemed to incite them, and in Amsterdam I was stoned.”

  “Is it that serious, then?” I asked.

  “There are whole parts of the Netherlands that are not safe for anyone in black.”

  “Even widows?”

  “Even widows,” he laughed. “Extreme Protestants do not mourn, you know.”

  Had they discarded that, as well? Fie! “Turbulent times,” I said. A safe remark.

  “England is more polite.”

  “They have a ruler.” I never permitted discourtesy to a foreigner. “It is the duty of rulers to tend kindly to their subjects.”

  “Even to their beliefs?”

  There, now we got to it. “Christian rulers are responsible for maintaining truth and Scripture in their realms.”

  He cocked one eyebrow. “My master, Paul III, His Holiness, would relieve you of that duty.”

  He was even more direct than I!

  “That is the blessed calling of the Holy Father,” he continued. “Our Lord foresaw that Christian princes must needs direct their efforts elsewhere, and so, in His glorious mercy, He provided a Blessed Father specifically for—”

  “Meddling,” I finished for him. “My spiritual duties do not drain my secular resources.”

  “But it is impossible to maintain both equally,” he said smoothly. “No man can serve two masters. You, Your Majesty, are trying to serve both Mammon and God. You are foredoomed to failure.”

  “I know not the meaning of the word.”

  “But you will. I tell you, it is impossible. Our Lord said so. I refer to Him, not to any earthly being.”

  “Then your master, the Pope, is a prime example of misdirection. For he has always tried to do both, and failed in both. His spiritual leadership was at such a low ebb that even common men repudiated it. His worldly leadership has been so misdirected that half the countries of Europe fight against him. Let him heed his alleged Master’s words himself!”

  “His alleged Master’s?”

  “He claims Christ for his master. Yet do we see Christ in him?”

  “No man can see into another’s soul, Your Majesty.”

  I had meant a smart retort. But he spoke true. I could not see into Pope Paul’s soul; he could not see into mine. “Only God can see,” I finally said. “And we must leave it at that.”

  “Aye.” He bowed, then crossed himself. When he stood erect again, we faced each other in silence, as if the interview had just begun.

  “The excommunication still stands?” I finally asked. Someone had to speak.

  “He cannot retract it!” The voice of the little man was astonishingly deep, and rich. “There has been too much. The dissolution of the monasteries; the harassment of Princess Mary; the execution of Cardinal Fisher; the burnings of the Carthusians.”

  I caressed the carved knobs at the end of the throne-arms. Yes, too much to let pass. I would not let it pass. Nor would any man who called himself such. “I understand.”

  “There is to be a General Council.”

  “Nine years late. I begged the Pope for one in 1533. My plea was ignored.”

  “There is to be one now. In Mantua, outside the Emperor’s reach. It was an inspired idea to hold one, and surely the Holy Father will recognize your farsightedness. There is so much to be deliberated upon. . . .”

  “Yes, how to halt the slide of Europe into Protestantism! But it is too late.”

  “You will be in a position to name your terms.” His voice was crisp and unemotional. “You are not rebellious in doctrine, only in title. A reconciliation between you and the Holy Father would be worth a great deal to him. He needs allies.”

  “He has Francis, and Charles.” I deflected the thrust of this offer, for offer it was.

  And, oh! I was tempted by it. To be recognized by Rome, to wear my hard-won titles by consent. . . .

  “Inconstant, fluctuating fools,” he sneered. “They are not the men you were, to stand firm amidst temptations from all sides. No, they are men of the hour, of the day. . . .”

  “Not men of the Light? I fear none of us can claim that title. Nay, nay . . . if Rome and I embrace again, your master and I must agree on several things, none of which has been solved by need or the moment. I will not tolerate meddling, and your master will not tolerate insubordination, and therein we disagree, and disagree mightily. Tell him I’ll serve him, if he recognizes my sovereignty over all aspects of England.”

  That he would never allow. Less I would never agree to. There it lay. The envoy bowed and took his leave.

  That night, as I sat morosely slumped before the fire, my lampreys not faring at all well in my stomach, I wondered about what the Scots envoy had said.

  Was it true that the two countries would never be united? I had always assumed that someday they would be. It seemed natural. In the back of my mind I had already married one of my children to one of James’s. But my father had followed the same scheme, and it had come to naught.

  What constituted a country, then? That its inhabitants were of like natures? But the Normans and the Saxons were not of like natures. By that criterion they should have never melded to form England. The Celts—were they as unabsorbable as their spokesman made out? Would Wales never become truly a part of England? And what of the Irish? I meant eventually to absorb that island as well.

  If ever I felt decent . . . if this cursed leg would ever heal. . . .

  But did one wait to do things until one felt “decent”? Did one order one’s life upon a leg? Or did one go ahead anyway, regardless of his personal feelings?

  My head-throbbing had returned, and along with it, confusion. . . .

  I hated the confusion, hated it worse than any pain I might endure. The confusion was my enemy, the real enemy. It unhorsed me like a challenger in a tournament. . . .

  But I would fight it. Or, at the very least, disguise it. None must know.

  Now I would take myself to bed. I would call no groom, no servitor. They might sniff out my weakness, hear me call for a candle when I meant for a fur.

  CXV

  Throughout the spring my remorse decreased and my confusion increased. The ghosts died away. No more did I hear the shrieking outside my chamber; no more food ran red blood and clots. Mercifully, my memory of Catherine, her true physical being, began to recede and fade. I was thankful that I had never commissioned the portrait to be made that I had longed for. Holbein—whom I had forgiven for his Cleves portrait when he explained it was customary to omit pockmarks—had been occupied at the time in executing sketches for a mural for my Privy Chamber, a dynastic one that included my father, myself, and my children. Now there was nothing remaining to recall Catherine’s exact features to me.

  But I thought of her often. In some way I longed for her—for what she was, had been, to me. And hated myself for it.

  All that was human, controllable. But the confusion, the transposing of events and order—I knew now it was not madness. Madness meant not knowing the real from the unreal. Was Wolsey dead, or was he not? No, that was not my affliction. Rather it lay in remembering whether I had put my hand on his shoulder at Grafton, the last time we had met? I hoped I had. But hoping was not the same as knowing.

  It continued thus, all the months following the executions. I remember it as a time of continually fighting the adversary, my confusion. Boredom, loneliness, remorse—all these took second place to the urgent need to reestablish some control over my mind, although (pray God!) it was not readily apparent.

  WILL:

  No, it was not. In fact, I was astonished to read here of his struggles. Outwardly he dressed well, took an interest in diplomatic dispatches, and fol
lowed the growing rift between Charles and Francis with his usual alert sarcasm. I was also pleased that he seemed, at last, to be delivered from his dependence on love and women. He showed no interest in romantic matters, either his own or others’. I concluded that the King had come of age at last.

  HENRY VIII:

  I let the Howards go, all those I had had arrested and locked up in the Tower. My rage against them had cooled, and it seemed foolish, pitiable, to punish them any further, even though they had been sentenced to forfeit all their possessions and suffer perpetual imprisonment. The old Dowager Duchess; Lord William Howard and his wife, Margaret; Catherine’s aunt, Lady Bridgewater; Catherine’s brother’s wife, Anne Howard: in truth, I did not have the energy to hate with the white-hot hate of which I had been capable in my youth. So they went free, out into the summer air, and pray God they enjoyed it more than I.

  No, I did not particularly enjoy it. May Day came, and with it no memories, either good or bad. It was just another day, and a chilly one at that. I saw, from my windows, moving branches that signified the return of the May-revellers, who had gotten up at dawn to gather greens and blooming things. I had no desire to be among them, nor did I denigrate them for doing the thing. I had lost my power to hate, as I said, and that, in its own way, was worse than losing my power to love.

  I stayed mostly indoors, taking a sullen sort of pleasure in doing the opposite of what would be “good” for me. My physicians urged me outside, so instead I sat in a close-aired chamber and read dispatches. I saw apple blossoms one morning and closed the curtains.

  The dispatches were a devilish mixture of information and lies. From Scotland, it was said my sister had died, of a burst blood vessel in her head. But had she? And if so, had she made a will? She had ceased to matter politically years ago, and personally to me, even further back than that. Yet she was the last of my family, and now I would be survived by no one. I had outlived them all. All those people at Sheen that Christmas of 1498, the Christmas it burnt . . . all gone, as vanished as the rooms they had moved in. Only I moved yet, a shade myself, or near so.