The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers (10 page)

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Authors: Margaret George

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“Return it,” said Brandon.
“We will,” they chorused. “But we only wanted you to see it. Look, the decorations—”
“I said return it!” bellowed Brandon.
Carew raised his eyes in appeal to me, as I had feared he would. Yet it was bound to happen, sooner or later....
“Yes. Return it,” I muttered. I hated being put in this position.
“Only if you promise to establish an armoury of your own when you become King. There should be one in England, after all.”
“Oh, go!” I said, embarrassed. They picked up the half-suit of armour and reluctantly took it back up the stairs.
Afterward, as we watched Compton and Bryan facing each other in hand-to-hand combat across the rush-padded mat, I leaned over to Brandon. “Thank you,” I said, “for telling them. I dared not.”
He shrugged. “Yet it was to you they turned. Best get used to that, Your Grace.”
A thud. Compton had been thrown, and Bryan was bending over him. Neville and another boy took their places. The air was rank now from the sweat and exertion, which mingled with the odours of last night’s dinner in the Hall.
Night was falling already. Someone had just come in to light the torches. Soon this must end, and I would have to go back to my solitary room.
I looked at the others around me. They were well-favoured and healthy and—young men. Some were betrothed, one was already married, and most had had women. They talked about it sometimes, casually, which meant it was not even new to them. Like the first time one takes the Sacrament, one anticipates it and thinks much about it afterwards. But as it becomes part of one’s life, -one says easily: “I have received my Maker.” Just so did Bryan and Compton and Carew talk of women.
WILL:
 
How like Harry to find a religious simile for the sexual act! The Sacrament, indeed!
HENRY VIII:
 
So I would think about Katherine alone. I was to be betrothed. I would not tell anyone yet. And I wondered: when was I to be married?
We were betrothed, formally, three months later, with the provision that the marriage would take place on my fourteenth birthday.
The ceremony of betrothal took place at the Bishop of Salisbury’s residenardeners claimed, and certainly the plants continued to bloom an extraordinarily long time.
Father and I and the lawyers were to meet Katherine and her Spanish lawyers directly at the Bishop’s. So we rode through London, but took separate routes, lest it appear that we were too familiar already.
In truth, I had not seen Katherine since she and Arthur had left court to go to Ludlow. She had been ill herself of the same fever that had killed Arthur, and had not even attended the funeral or been able to return to London for some time. When she did come, she had been settled in a riverside house on the great open Strand between the city and Westminster. It was called Durham House. There she lived, surrounded by her Spanish household, speaking Spanish, wearing only Spanish clothes, eating Spanish food. For a time everyone had waited to see if she might be carrying Arthur’s child, but that soon proved to be merely wishful thinking on the King’s part. Arthur was dead indeed.
And now I was to have his leavings. That rainy June day a little over a year since his death, I went to claim the first of them.
 
We took the royal barge to the water steps of Blackfriars monastery. Horses awaited us there, and we rode up a muddy lane that led away from the river and up to Fleet Street, itself a muddy little path connecting the Strand to the streets of London. We saw few people, as we were outside the main part of London the entire time. It was not a pretty journey, and on the way it began to drizzle, just to complete our discomfort.
At the Bishop’s house on that dismal little street, we were ushered into a small room where Katherine and her party awaited us. It stank of wet wool and too many bodies packed into a tight space. It seemed that the number of lawyers required as experts and witnesses had emptied the nearby Inns of Court. And they were all chattering away at once, like a great company of monkeys.
Katherine was somewhere in the midst of them, but it took a moment to see her. When the noise of learned talking and the scratching of pens on parchment was done, they led her out and bade us stand together.
She is so small, was my first thought. She had not grown, whereas I had.
She is so beautiful, was my second.
Katherine was now seventeen, and at her peak of beauty. She was seen by so few people in those days that there remains no legend, no popular memory of that beauty. She spent her young years almost cloistered, and by the time she emerged, some of it had already gone. But then ... O,
then!
We stood side by side, stiff and awkward. The King’s lawyer thrust a paper into the Bishop’s hand on one side, and that of the Spanish lawyer on the other. Then we repeated vows without once looking at each other, long vows in Latin. And signed our names on several pieces of paper.
That being done, we were immediately forced apart by our respective lawyers. We were not to speak to one another, apparently, until we found ourselves in bed together in two years’ time. We left the Bishop’s residence by separate doors, just as we had come in.
Father said nothing to me until we were safely on the big, clumsy royal barge, crossing the Thames on our way back to Greenwich. The water was a flat, ugly grey-brown, reflecting the overcast sky. Here and there a piece of garbage floated by. People along the banks seemed to consideer in and about London.” I saw a dead dog turn slowly over and sink from sight in the water. When I was King, I would see that something was done about the misuse of the river.
“You understand,” Father suddenly said in a low voice, so that the boatmen could not overhear, “that you must not see or communicate with the Princess in any way. Leave her to her Spaniards in her Spanish house.”
“But surely I should send her tokens, write—”
“You fool!” He set his mouth in anger. “Do you see yourself as a suitor?
Tokens!”
He spat out the word. “You will do nothing. Nothing. Leave her be.”
“But—why?”
“Because this betrothal is on paper only. I doubt that a wedding will ever take place.”
“Then why the ceremony? Why the arrangements?”
“It means nothing. What one ceremony does, another can undo. Surely you know
that!
It is nearly the first rule of kingship. The ceremony was merely to buy us some time with the Spaniards, to make a show of our good intentions.”
“Which are neither good nor honest nor kind.” Another dead animal swept past, churning in the foam. It stank. Everything seemed corrupted to me: the river, Father, myself. Everything except the Princess.
“The Spanish are deceiving us about the dowry. There has been much lying and misrepresentation in the matter. I do not think it will be satisfactorily settled. Therefore I. feel that a marriage between you and the Princess will not be feasible.”
“Does the Princess ... participate ... in these deceptions?”
“She knows nothing. She does as she is told. As you must.”
I gripped the carved railing so hard I hurt my hands.
I did not want to do as I was told.
IX
I
n the end, I had no recourse but to do precisely that. I could get no message widen played games and fished off the Bridge. They all seemed to know one another. That was the oddest thing to me. Here there were so many of them, such a great gathering of families, yet all so familiar.
It was not that way at court. There were many families at court, to be sure, and often the husband would be in the King’s household as an attendant in the Privy Chamber, for example, and his wife serve the Queen as lady-of-the-Bedchamber and his children be pages and maids of honour. They were entitled to lodgings at court, which they usually accepted, and so the Palace might house some two hundred families. But it was not a close group, and there never was such camaraderie as I saw that June night among the bridge-dwellers.
We wound through the streets in the very heart of London. Houses here were closely packed, and each must have sheltered twenty inhabitants, judging from the number pouring out into the street. They were celebrating the end of their working day, and for a few hours would revel in the fading violet light.
As we turned west and went past St. Paul’s and then left the city by the Ludgate, I suddenly knew where we were bound. We crossed the little bridge over the stinking, sluggish Fleet River and were soon there, at the Bishop of Salisbury’s house.
It was almost full dark now. Father dismounted and bade me do the same. Once we were standing side by side before the Bishop’s door, he gripped my arm and said harshly, “Now you will tell the Bishop you are here to make a solemn protestation against your betrothal to Princess Katherine. You will sign papers saying it troubles your conscience. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said dully. So Father meant to have it both ways: an open betrothal, a secret disclaimer. The dowry business had not been settled. I had heard it from Brandon. People talked freely before him, and he in turn told me what I needed to know.
Father gave me a shove and indicated that I was to knock for entrance. The Bishop opened promptly; it had clearly been arranged in advance.
“The Prince is sore troubled in his conscience about the betrothal to his brother’s widow,” said Father. “He is here to assuage that conscience.”
The Bishop murmured sympathetically and led us in. The papers were already spread out on his work table, neatly lettered, with a large space on the bottom for my signature.
“He is anguished,” said Father. He played his part well.
“Ah,” said the Bishop. “And what troubles you, my son?”
Father had not rehearsed this with me. I had no idea of what to say, except the truth. “The thought of the Princess in my brother’s bed torments me! I cannot bear it!”
Yes, that was true. The thought of her and Arthur together was repugnant to me. I wanted her entirely to myself, for myself. Yet she had lain with
him....
“Because it would be incestuous,” supplied the Bishop. “To uncover thy brother’s nakedness, as the Scriptures say.”

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