The Autobiography Of Henry VIII

by Margaret George

  Yes. I had read them. They were Henry Howard’s, part of a poem. I sent for him.

  It was the night before the funeral, and all Windsor was in mourning. My apartments were hung in black, and there was no music. In the Chapel of St. George, Brandon’s coffin lay on a catafalque, tapers flickering all around it. I would go down later, would keep vigil as a Knight of the Garter should do. But now there was still the poem to be attended to.

  Howard came upon the stroke of nine. He was dressed all in black: I had ordered the court into full mourning.

  “Did you bring your poems?” I asked him.

  He held out a portfolio of papers. “All I had,” he said. “As you requested.”

  “I wish to read a poem at the funeral,” I said. “I have tried to compose one of my own, but grief and exhaustion have, I fear, routed my Muse. Yet I found a phrase echoing through my mind, and I think it to be yours. It is ‘The fruitful ground, the quiet mind. . . .’ ”

  “Aye. ’Tis mine,” he said quickly. He must have been pleased, but like all artists he disdained to show it. “Here is the entire poem.” He plucked out a sheet and laid it down next to my candle.

  Yes! It was exactly what I wished to say. It expressed my own inner feelings.

  “It is—my own words,” I said, amazed.

  Now he blushed. “The highest award one can give a poet. We sit in our little rooms, composing for ourselves, but believing that all men must feel the same. We are alone, but united with every human being—if we are good. If we are bad, we are united with nothing, and no one. The frightening thing is that, sitting in the little room, one does not know to which category one belongs. One must sit there in faith.”

  “Yes, yes.” I did not wish to flatter him overmuch. “I dislike to use borrowed trappings, but I have no choice. My own words will not come, and yours are already there.”

  “They are to be used by others. I hope that in years to come, when I am no longer here to give permission, they may continue to serve man’s inner needs.”

  I looked at him. I believed his words to be true and heartfelt. As an artist he was noble. But as a man he was petty, unstable, and rancourous. How did the two intertwine?

  “I have reports of your difficulties in Boulogne,” I said at length, hating to break the spell—the spell that bound us as journeymen in the arts. Now we must revert to ruler and subject. “What seems to be the cause of this trouble?”

  “The city is a bastard child of England,” he said. “We retain it, but for how long? In Tournai, we were committed to incorporating it into England. Vast sums were assigned for its upkeep. Frenchmen, citizens of Tournai, were to take seats in Parliament. But everyone knows that Boulogne is but a war-pawn, to be returned to France for a ransom. So who shall bother with it? The men are restive, and order hard to keep.”

  I sighed. His words were true. Keeping Boulogne victualled and defended were enormous expenditures, and I no longer had the cash reserves I had had in 1513. The truth was that I could not afford Boulogne, as I had afforded Tournai.

  “Well, do your best,” I answered. I knew he was waiting for me to reveal my ultimate plan for Boulogne. And oh, yes, I had one: to unite it with Calais, to double the English holdings. But all that took funds, funds which I did not have. I owed the money-lenders of Antwerp huge sums, plus interest, for the taking of Boulogne.

  I was tired. “Thank you, my lad,” I told him. “You may go now.”

  He bowed, stiffly. He was displeased.

  “I call you ‘my lad’ because you were my son’s friend,” I said.

  He smiled somewhat. “There is a poem about our years at Windsor, in that sheaf you have. I still mourn him,” he said.

  “I also.” Now we were, again, two poets together. “Good night, Henry.”

  “Good night, Your Majesty.”

  Now I was alone in the room. The candles jumped and flickered, and I remembered yet another reason why I hated Windsor: my son had flowered here in his brief season. He had brought colour to the dead drab stones, a momentary life. But Windsor was death. Nothing survived here.

  I began rifling through the poems, looking for the one celebrating his life. Surrey’s portfolio was so fragile. Too fragile to entrust a reputation or memory to.

  So cruel a prison how could betide, alas?

  Surrey had written the poem in prison, then. His imprisonment had served to bring my son back to life for me, if only for an instant.

  I knew what I must do. Go to Brandon’s coffin, where it stood before the high altar. There I would say farewell to him, privately.

  The church was empty. The great catafalque stood, like a building itself, black and square, blocking the altar. All about it flickered tapers, lit hours ago and now burnt half down and guttering. They illuminated the coffin in a ghastly, pagan way, jumping like sacrificial maidens.

  I knelt on the stone steps. I closed my eyes and tried to see Charles, tried to conceive of his really being there. In my mind I knew his corpse rested somewhere within the great black-draped box, but in my heart I had no contact with him. Charles . . . what had been my last words with him?

  That night he had come on board Great Harry . . . what had we said as he took his leave? What was it, what was it?

  “It will be a long night,” I had said. “My thoughts go with you.”

  “To be alive is to fight the French. Remember, Your Grace, how we planned it all, at Sheen?”

  “Old men fight boys’ battles. Well, good night, Charles.”

  “Good night, Charles,” I repeated, and touched the mourning-cloth. “You spoke true. ‘Remember how we planned it all, at Sheen?’ And we lived it. To live a dream is life’s highest reward. Sleep well, my friend. I join you soon.”

  I started to rise, but now it all came rushing back upon me. His hand-grasp at Sheen, when he had caught me scrambling over the wall. His bedding of me after I had just wed Katherine of Aragon, and I such a frightened virgin. His acting as my champion throughout my madness with Nan, even enduring censure from his wife. His faithful support of me after Jane died. Suddenly I saw his face in all its ages, heard his laughter, felt his love; that love which had always been present, supporting me. The love which I had sought elsewhere, never realizing that I had had it all along.

  Now I was alone. The one person who had truly loved me, and known me throughout all my life, was gone. Brandon had loved me when I was yet the second son; had taken my side when Arthur still held favour and sway.

  I put my hand up along the great coffin. “I love you,” I said, as I had never said to any woman.

  As if sealing a pledge, I pressed my hand down upon the black velvet; kept it pressed there as long moments passed and I heard the discreet coughs in the rear of the cavernous chapel. The official watchers waited to take their assigned places by the catafalque and sit up all night. I was robbing them of their paid opportunity; it was already past two, and dawn would be coming up shortly.

  Dawn, and the day of Brandon’s funeral. I took away my hand and left him to his rest, as I would try to take mine in the short darkness yet remaining.

  CXXIX

  State funerals, like all other state formalities, were governed by protocol. My grandmother Margaret Beaufort had laid out the precise rules to be followed in childbed, marriage, burial. She felt that a divine mystery attended each of them, and that a certain ritual would tap that mystery and bring one the grace to endure the ensuing condition. Perhaps it did. In any case, I was content to abide by her rules and trust that God had guided them.

  The funeral was to begin at eight in the morning, a stately procession, followed by a Requiem Mass. All night, the passing bell had tolled for the Duke. Then began the Nine Tailors, nine strokes to signify that a man had died, followed by sixty strokes, one for each year of his age.

  I was chief mourner, and as such I had to array me all in black, a colour I detested.

  The coffin was moved outside the chapel, so that it might have a brief cortège and funeral jo
urney for the ceremony. The funeral car—the hearse and six black horses with Brandon’s ducal trappings—was to draw him down the long aisle of the chapel, escorted by flaming torches during the reciting of the Dirge.

  I had summoned the estate of England, and they were all present. I looked to both sides and saw that the entire Privy Council were assembled, as well as the prelates of the Church of England, with Cranmer at their head, ready to conduct the Requiem Mass. I took my seat, as chief mourner, beside the catafalque.

  Cranmer rose. The servers came forward, with their flaring torches, and took their appointed stations around the catafalque with its black hangings. The choir began to chant the Dirge.

  “ ‘I am the resurrection and the life,’ ” Cranmer proclaimed, from before the coffin. The mourners rose. “ ‘We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the Name of the Lord.’ ”

  “Amen,” the company answered.

  Cranmer lifted up his hands. “ ‘Lord, let me know mine end, and the number of my days: that I may be certified how long I have to live.

  “ ‘Behold, thou hast made my days as it were a span long: and mine age is even as nothing in respect to thee.

  “ ‘For man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain.

  “ ‘Hear my prayer, O Lord. For I am a stranger with thee: and a sojourner, as all my fathers were.

  “ ‘O spare me a little, that I may recover my strength: before I go hence, and be no more seen.’ ”

  All of us prayed thus, earnestly, all of us pitting ourselves against the little time left to us. I looked backward at Brandon’s children, at his young widow. No matter what, it is only a little that we are spared. Then the matter proceeds.

  Now the Requiem Mass began, and followed itself through to the Consecration, the Elevation, the Transubstantiation. The eternal life, Christ’s life, beside our puny things . . . the white wafer shining against the black death-pall.

  “ ‘Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower: he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one day.

  “ ‘In the midst of life we are in death: of whom may we seek for succour, but of thee, O Lord, who for our sins are justly displeased?’ ”

  Cranmer nodded at me. It was my time to give the eulogy. I left my kneeling-place and walked slowly to the choir steps before the coffin. I was swathed and hooded in the hot August forenoon, as custom demanded. The torches were yet flaring all around the bier, giving off great rolling volumes of smoke.

  “Dear friends,” I began, “and family.” In the front row were Brandon’s survivors: his widow Katherine, and his grown daughters Anne and Mary by his youthful marriages; Frances and Eleanor by my sister. Grandchildren were present, as well. All his daughters were married. Suddenly I caught a smile creeping about my mouth. Even in death, Brandon was attended by a flock of adoring ladies.

  “I am chief mourner because, as the Duke’s boyhood friend and brother-in-law, I am host for this state funeral. When his wife, my sister Mary Tudor, erstwhile Queen of France, died”—I saw Katherine Willoughby stiffen—“he expressly stated that he wished to be buried quietly at the College Church at Tattershall in Lincolnshire, ‘without any pomp or outward pride of the world.’ He was mindful of his creditors and the debts of his family, and wished to spare any untoward expense. That was the Duke’s way. He was ever mindful of others.”

  Before me I could see the entire Privy Council, like a row of black crows, unnaturally silent, no cawing or pecking amongst them.

  “The Duke was my friend. We had known one another since childhood.” I paused, to withdraw the poem I would read as an elegy. I was glad to have something written down, as my words were those of a seven-year-old boy; and indeed, that was his chief mourner—an unsure seven-year-old boy from Sheen Manor. I unwrapped Henry Howard’s poem, written for some other reason, but now mine.

  “ ‘Martial, the things that do attain

  The happy life, be these, I find:

  The riches left, not got with pain;

  The fruitful ground, the quiet mind:

  “ ‘The equal friend, no grudge, no strife;

  No charge of rule, nor governance;

  Without disease, the healthful life;

  The household of continuance:

  “ ‘The mean diet, no delicate fare;

  True wisdom joined with simpleness;

  The night discharged of all care,

  Where wine the wit may not oppress:

  “ ‘The faithful wife, without debate;

  Such sleeps as may beguile the night.

  Content thee with thine own estate;

  No wish for Death, nor fear his might.’ ”

  I paused, folded away the paper. More had done so, exactly so, reading for my mother at her funeral as I had stood, listening, a boy of eleven. It was then, hearing his words, that I had first formed that attachment to More which had so fatally bound me, and for which I still yearned in spite of myself. My boyhood self, young self, best self, had momentarily sprung to life at Brandon’s bier. Sprung to life—and been soon extinguished.

  “The Duke of Suffolk was a true knight,” I said, “the truest knight I ever knew. He never betrayed a friend or intentionally took unfair advantage of a foe.” I looked out at the Privy Councillors, an antagonistic lot: envious, backbiting, and venomous. Covered by the mourning-cowls (at royal expense) they looked peaceable, like idealized monks. But I knew them. Oh, did I know them!

  “Can any of you say the same?”

  I then went on to extol the Duke’s prowess in war, especially his campaign in France, alone, in 1522, in which he had come close to taking Paris itself. “Only winter and lack of support stopped him,” I said. “Like a true knight, he always obeyed his sovereign. Even when that sovereign”—I started to say “was wrong,” but that was not a proper sentiment here—“gave orders he did not understand. As a sworn knight, he was bound to uphold them. As a sworn knight, he did.”

  It was all a chain. Brandon owed loyalty to me, and must obey my confusing, contradictory orders (“Fight the French.” “No, abandon Paris, we have no funds.”) as I owed loyalty to God, whose orders were even more confusing and contradictory. No matter: we judge the knight on his loyalty and perseverance, not on his understanding.

  Cranmer was gesturing to me. My time was almost up.

  My time was almost up.

  I looked at the assembled mourners and suddenly I felt it: This was my funeral, and these were my mourners.

  Was I not to be interred in this very ground? Was it not a fact that my coffin would rest on the selfsame bier?

  This was a rehearsal for my own funeral. Where I stood now, someone else would stand. Otherwise, all was the same. The same Privy Council, disguised as mourners. The same Cranmer, hurrying along the service.

  By the coffin’s edge a censer smoked, sending up streams of Eastern odours, thick and mysterious.

  The same one would sit by my coffin.

  I stared at it. You will be here, I thought, and I not? You will see me dead, and I not see you? You will smoke, when I cannot breathe?

  To know it for an absolute fact was terrifying.

  Suddenly I could not bear to stand there, witnessing my own end. I was shaking as I placed Brandon’s jousting helmet on the cold stones—the helmet that had faced me a hundred times, the one he had worn when I had forgotten to close my visor. . . . Jesu, I could still see it, attached to that mighty body, thundering toward me. . . . The body lay cold and imprisoned now, and I held the helmet.

  “This helmet was dear to him. It was his Knight’s emblem. It will be mounted up on this stone pillar, to stay there forever. I decree it.”

  It would be there to see me lowered into a nearby grave-vault.

  No, no. I could not believe it. I could not comprehend it. . . .

  Cranmer motion
ed, and grave-attendants came forward to wheel the catafalque over to the great gaping grave opened for it. The paving stones had been removed and stacked neatly, and a deep dark shaft beckoned.

  Cranmer then walked twice round the coffin, first sprinkling it with holy water, and then censing it. Brandon’s coffin appeared like a summer’s morning—gleaming with dew and hidden behind mist.

  Neat devices detached the coffin itself from its trappings—all the velvet and flags and flowers—and took it to the hole’s edge. These men knew what to do. They were old hands. They knew about slipping the ropes under the coffin, so they would not tear off the gold leaf and ducal escutcheons, and how to lower it smoothly.

  “ ‘O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy and most merciful Saviour, deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal death.

  “ ‘Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts: shut not thy merciful ears to our prayer: but spare us, Lord most holy, Judge eternal, suffer us not, at our last hour, for any pains of death, to fall from Thee.’ ”

  Cranmer stood at the obscene grave-hole.

  “ ‘I am in fear and trembling at the judgment and the wrath that is to come.

  “ ‘That day will be a day of wrath, of misery, and of ruin: a day of grandeur and great horror.

  “ ‘Deliver me, O Lord, from everlasting death on that day of terror: when the heavens and the earth will be shaken.’ ”

  Brandon’s day had come. Even now he was being tried—or, having been tried, was serving his punishment. He was screaming in purgatory, begging for surcease, writhing in agony—while we, stupid as only mortal men can be, sat staring at the housing for his corpse.