The Autobiography Of Henry VIII

by Margaret George

  They gathered about and took their places on the cushioned benches, which were meant to encourage intimacy and lolling about. There were no set places, no protocol. One could move about, too, as one wished.

  This was so far from the set masquing, the elaborate formal gatherings I had favoured in my youth. This felt comfortable, a great loosening of the belt—which I had come more and more to appreciate. Now I regretted all the times I had been so blind to the needs of others to do so. For there had been fat old men then, as now—men with stiff joints and expanded bellies, who must have found my “entertainments” a torture.

  “Welcome to the banqueting house.” I stood up and gestured. “Such a fine day, and such a fine company, complement one another. We have strawberries from William Paulet’s garden, as well as from the fields lying above the city wall, in the area called Holborn. We have Verney, and Osney wine, from Alsace—”

  “Shall we drink a French wine?” Thomas Seymour rose abruptly, his thick chestnut-coloured hair gleaming. “Would it not shame us to do so? The French have sealed an heretical alliance with the Turk. Shall we, then, drink their wine? I say no!” He turned his goblet and poured the offending wine on the ground. The soil gulped it down greedily.

  Shamefacedly, the rest of the company looked to me. Seymour remained standing.

  “Seat yourself, Thomas.” I nodded toward him. Then I turned to the rest. “He speaks true. I would not have politics becloud this afternoon’s pleasure, but it seems we are wrapped in it, like it or not. The Turk has sent us a crocodile, as a welcome-us-to-Europe gesture. The French have helped transport the gift. What say you to this? Shall we drink their wines?”

  To a person, they poured their French wines on the ground. In unison it sounded like a company of archers pissing.

  “I have my consensus. But now you shall go dry,” I laughed.

  “English water,” said Seymour, “shall quench my thirst readily enough.”

  “Aye,” thundered the rest.

  Oh, how heartily they mouthed it! Animosity was pleasant in green arbours, where the deeds were yet to do.

  “And would you fight against this unholy alliance?” I asked. “For it may prove necessary.”

  “Aye! Aye!”

  They longed for a war, as I had supposed, longed to spend and sport themselves in some great cause. And it must be great, no petty land boundaries, no religious factions. The Turk was the answer to their Christian prayers.

  “Then I shall count you all, when the time comes to cross to France. There, that is done. Now, eat strawberries.” I motioned to them.

  Their consciences salved, adventure hanging in the future, breathing in their ears, they fell to enjoying the afternoon at hand.

  Not all, though. There were many about me who did not wish war with France; they saw it as a foolish waste of time and money, the chasing of an outdated dream. There was a time, they said, when England and France were intertwined, when it was feasible to think in terms of winning large portions of France. But that was when the duchies were independent, when Brittany and Burgundy and Aquitaine did not owe especial allegiance to the French crown.

  “—just as in the days when Northumberland and the Palatine of Durham were little kingdoms of their own, before they had to bow to you,” said William Paget, who was seated near me. Mr. Secretary, as he was known, was a mild-mannered sort, the exact type of “New Man” so detested by traditionalists. He boasted no glorious ancestors, no knightly accomplishments, and indeed had nothing to recommend him for his high position but decency and common sense. As he had not been brought up on tales of chivalry, he did not see a war with France as anything but a nuisance.

  “Practicality is all,” chimed in Thomas Wriothesley, Bishop Gardiner’s toady. “And a war is impractical for us at this point. What can we possibly hope to gain?”

  “To give the French bloody teeth for breakfast!” quivered Henry Howard. He was violent these days; he had changed since the time he and my lost son had lived, jousted, loved, made ballads together at Windsor. Now he was rash and unbalanced, striking men within the palace precincts and challenging them to duels. His hotheadedness had been sent to cool in Fleet Prison already. That it had not cooled much was evident. Perhaps a French gun-ball would ventilate him. “Do you wish to spare France to honour your new-coined name, Risky?”

  Thus Howard made fun of the Frenchified version of the councillor’s plain English name. It was an old story; Risley had become Wriothesley as the Bullens had become the Boleyns. When would we stop thinking that to sound French, feel French, or look French was better? Fie, it was a sickness with us. That, then, was the true French Disease!

  Risley/Wriothesley was too clever to rise to the blatant bait. Indeed, Henry Howard, for all his knowledge of Greek and blank verse, was a simple-ton in dealing with men. “I wish not to spare the French,” Wriothesley said smoothly, “but to spare foolish lives like yours. We need a pet poet or two about, someone to dabble in architecture, someone to ape the French in effeteness—if only for a bad example.”

  Howard’s face flushed, and he made as if to grab his sword.

  “It is the Scots we should fight,” said Bishop Gardiner. “It is the Scots, and they alone, who bar you from your rightful title of Emperor of Great Britain. You have Wales, Cornwall, and Ireland. Only Scotland remains; and I should like to see it crushed—like this.” He suddenly picked a tick off Henry Howard’s doublet, where it was dazedly wandering after a full meal, and smashed it on the table, sending a squirt of ruby-red blood bubbling out from under his palm. He smiled blandly. “A war against the Scots is a practical war.”

  Gardiner. He was the most intelligent man on my Council, the most ruthless, but curiously lacking in any distinctive personal quirks, so that I find it difficult to describe him. He also was not refined; I could scarcely imagine Wolsey or Cranmer smashing ticks on a table.

  “It would be more practical to defeat France first and thereby castrate Scotland forever,” I observed, and motioned to a servitor to clean the bloody spot.

  “ ‘He that intendeth France to win, with Scotland let him begin,’ ” quoted Wriothesley. “I agree with Bishop Gardiner.” The ingratiating Wriothesley was always quoting others and agreeing—never initiating anything on his own.

  Sir George Blagge, one of the men of my Privy Chamber, had written a hateful poem about Wriothesley:

  From vile estate, of base and low degree,

  By false deceit, by craft, and subtle ways:

  Of mischief mould, and key of cruelty

  Was crept full high, borne up by sundry stayes.

  There was more, accusing him of treason, and so on. But the truth was that Blagge’s portrait was flattering; Wriothesley simply did not have the imagination to be so brilliantly evil.

  The blood . . . it seemed to be spreading out, growing thicker. . . .

  “Have we forgotten that the French have betrayed Christendom? That he who makes a pact with the Infidel is himself to be regarded as an Infidel? That is the true issue!” snapped Howard. “As if we had a choice about fighting him!”

  “But one always has a choice about whom one fights,” I reminded him. “If you believe otherwise, why, then you deserve your nickname of ‘the most foolish proud boy that is in England.’ ”

  The smell of the blood, the fresh blood still warm from Howard’s body, just sucked out, now gleaming on the table . . . the smell was rancid, putrefying . . . where was the servitor? I felt sick. Then I saw it: the place on Howard’s neck where the thing had lately fastened itself, and it was oozing, a great globe of blood gathering, ready to drip. . . .

  How much blood was in him? How many ticks would it take to drain it all out? If he were covered with ticks, would that do it? Blood, blood. There were those who said I “feasted on blood,” was “bloodthirsty.” They could not know how I hated blood, hated the smell and colour of it.

  Outside the leaf-shaded gallery there were cool breezes. But inside, now, it was starting for me
again, the blood-haunting. The strawberries before me, gushing red from all their pores, leaving red all over my fingers. . . . I fought down the panic.

  “Honour chooses my battlefield,” insisted Howard. He moved as he spoke; indeed, he trembled, and the drop fell directly on his sheer linen summer-shirt, making a bright red blossom.

  “Then follow your father to Scotland, attend him in the autumn when we thrash King Jamie,” I commanded. Such statements from me were to be regarded as commands.

  A serving-fellow with a rose-scented cloth wiped up the blood. The gagging feeling in my throat receded; I felt it go, like a tide ebbing, first leaving my throat, then my chest, then my arms. I slumped weakly in my chair. These attacks always left me limp and wrung out. I needed wine.

  French wine was not the only wine. There was Germanic wine, from the Rhine valley. I called for that. And yes, they brought it, a pretty goblet of straw-coloured liquid with a flowery taste.

  “Let us drink the wine from the vineyards of the Lady of Cleves,” I said. “Your offer to drink English water is patriotic, but I fear it may lead you into the flux.” Indeed, no one who wished to live drank water.

  The flagons of Rhenish wine were passed round the table, and soon everyone had poured a goblet; the women, too.

  A pretty picture they all made, faces in shadow against the background of bright green haze; light summer dresses the colour of flowers. Women. But they affected me not. I felt no stirring of longing for them, no desire. Below the waist I was ashes, and in my heart I was numb, and in my mind I was bitter. How foolish I had ever been to spend myself on them, and I disgusted myself even in remembering it. I would not dwell on it, no, it was a foul and nasty place to dwell. . . .

  “A riddle. I have a riddle!” cried John Dudley.

  The Rhenish was at work when men ceased to talk of honour and began to talk of riddles.

  “Tell it, then,” urged Anthony Denny.

  Denny and Dudley were a pair as close as two yolks in an egg, and even their wives bore the same first name, Joan.

  “A vessel I have

  That is round like a pear,

  Moist in the middle,

  Surrounded by hair,

  And often it happens

  That water flows there.”

  His voice rose higher as he went along. Shrieks greeted each line.

  “ ’Tis not from Colchester?” guffawed Tom Seymour.

  “Oysters have no hair,” retorted Dudley. “Whatever can you be thinking of?”

  “I know,” bragged Richard Riche. “One of Wolsey’s great sewers beneath Hampton Court. ’Tis round—’tis a vessel—certainly ’tis moist in the middle—water flows there—and the long weeds growing in it are like hairs—”

  “It does not say it has things ‘like’ hairs, it says it has hair,” maintained Dudley.

  Other guesses were made, as it invited more comments, lewd analogies, and the like. The last thing they wished was for the correct answer to be revealed.

  But the correct answer had been revealed, for it is true, true above all other things, that women-parts are a sewer, are dark and filled with garbage and slime, and are loathsome areas of contagion. Beneath their pretty clean dresses are stinking sewers, where their legs join their bodies. . . .

  “The answer is right on your faces,” pronounced Dudley. “Your eyes.”

  The company groaned.

  “I have another,” offered Wriothesley.

  “Long legs, crooked thighs,

  Little head, and no eyes.”

  This turned out to be a pair of tongs.

  Tom Seymour proclaimed,

  “As round as an apple

  As deep as a pail,

  It never cries out

  Till it’s caught by the tail.

  “Now guess this—if you be men.” He sat back down, a smug look on his face, implying, “men like me.”

  “An eel?” suggested Cranmer timidly.

  “Well, you have the correct shape,” said the riddler.

  “Eels love music,” persisted Cranmer. “They swim straight into the nets of singing fishermen.”

  “I did not say the thing craved music,” retorted Seymour.

  Old Anthony Browne stood up. “I say ’tis a bell.”

  “Aye,” said Seymour, irritated. He had thought his riddle so clever.

  Sir Francis Bryan stood up, swaying. Already drunk on the Rhenish, I noted.

  “Around the rick,

  Around the rick,

  And there I found my Uncle Dick.

  I screwed his neck,

  I sucked his blood,

  And left his body lying.”

  He bowed all around, thinking himself cute.

  “Uncle Dick. Now what could that be?” mused Dudley.

  Round and round the obscenities went, but for me the phrases rang: I screwed his neck, I sucked his blood, and left his body lying. I knew it was aimed at me, meant to tell me what ‘they’ thought of me.

  “Enough!” I interrupted them. “I forbid this!”

  “ ’Tis but a bottle of wine,” demurred Bryan.

  “Your humour is offensive,” I said. “And I shall have no more of this sort.” The traitorous fools. I was surrounded by them.

  “Shall I present a different sort, Your Majesty?” asked Gardiner. Before I could give an opinion, he said smoothly,

  “What God never sees,

  What the King seldom sees,

  What we see every day;

  Read my riddle, I pray.”

  “A stinking privy,” said Francis Bryan.

  “A task one is unequal to,” said Edward Seymour, the conscientious courtier. Although there were few tasks he was unequal to, he approached all with wary respect.

  “An unearned tribute,” said William Paget, my diplomat.

  “The answer is, ‘an equal,’ ” said Bishop Gardiner. Oh, it was flattery time indeed!

  John Russell—well named, for he was a rustling sort of man, the new Lord Privy Seal, and his hair was russet-coloured—waved his hand.

  “Highty, tighty, paradighty,

  Clothed all in green,

  The King could not read it,

  No more could the Queen;

  They sent for the wise men

  From out of the East,

  Who said it had horns,

  But was not a beast”

  The King . . . the Queen . . . horns . . . horned beas . . . oh, how could he mock me so? Did no one respect or fear their King?

  “I marvel at your scurvy wit!” I snapped. “And we shall have no more riddles!”

  “ ’Twas an oak tree!” he blurted out, trying to absolve himself.

  Oaks. They are my favourite trees. Oh, foul, foul! That day in the little chamber . . . oaks would forever be ugly for me, soiled by the Howard whore.

  “I think we all tire of riddles,” said Thomas Wyatt. “Let us turn to poetry instead. Shall we try a rhyming round? I will begin with a verse, then someone else shall add to it, until we have a complete story in verse.” He looked round, a great poet himself, but an equally great diplomat. I had sent him on many missions abroad.

  I nodded assent. The mood had grown ugly; I hoped this would sweeten it. He began,

  “Within this tower

  There lives a flower

  That hath my heart,”

  Francis Bryan continued easily,

  “Within the hour

  She pissed foul sour

  And let a fart.”

  There were ladies present! Genuine, honest ladies like Joan Dudley, Joan Denny, Katherine Brandon, Anne Seymour—no unwholesomeness amongst them.

  This was enough. I stood up slowly, and let the full force of my displeasure rest on him. “Be gone,” I said. “Come no more to my table. And look for no more favours at my hand.”

  He knew enough not to argue, or attempt to excuse himself. He nodded and quit the bower.

  Once his small-minded, obscene presence was gone, it was once more a fair summer’s da
y. We sang songs: “Death and Burial of Cock Robin”; “Mouse and Mouser”; “The Milk Maid”; “The Carrion Crow.”

  “Bessy Bell and Mary Gray

  They were two bonnie lasses,”

  sang Elizabeth in a thin little voice. I had almost forgotten she was there, at the farthest end of the table.

  “Bessy kept the garden gate,

  And Mary kept the pantry;

  Bessy always had to wait

  While Mary lived in plenty.”

  I was stunned. That Elizabeth would challenge me so publicly about her rights, accuse me before the entire court of withholding her due as a Princess. When all the world knew she was not a Princess at all, but a bastard, the daughter of a witch, who was only given the title “Lady” by my courtesy and kindness! So this was how she repaid me?

  “You may keep your garden gate at Hatfield House,” I said softly, “by returning there by the morrow. I am grieved that you have not proved fit for the royal bowers at Hampton.”

  No one else, up and down the long table, murmured a sound. It was only Elizabeth and myself, some fifty feet apart.

  “May I take Robert?” she asked. “To take turns with me waiting upon the garden gate?”

  I looked at young Robert Dudley, a comely lad, a blue ribbon tying up his pretty brown hair.

  “No,” I said. “For that would make it play, not work.”

  His face fell, but hers betrayed no sign of disappointment. So they meant something to one another. Good. Then not seeing each other would hurt.

  “Very well,” she said. “I am saddened that I must miss tending to the crocodile. For exile from one’s source of life and those in sympathy is hard. Nonetheless I shall pray for his survival. May his thick hide and craftiness protect him from all evil-wishers.”