The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers (14 page)

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Authors: Margaret George

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WILL:
 
So the tender-hearted youth, who so shrank from “political” executions, could be roused by “moral” crimes? He would not execute for a title, but for a soul....
HENRY VIII:
 
Of the seven remaining councillors, three were churchmen: Archbishop Warham, the Chancellor; Bishop Fox, Lord Privy Seal; Bishop Ruthal, Secretary. For the laymen, there were Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, Lord Treasurer; George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, Lord High Steward; Charles Somerset, Lord Herbert of Raglan, Lord Chamberlain; Sir Thomas Lovell, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Constable of the Tower.
They met at half-noon every day, regardless of the amount of business at hand. The meetings were exceptionally boring: the first one I attended directed itself to an hour-long debate as to whether the expense for the late King’s coffin should be deducted from the Crown’s privy purse or from general household expenses.
 
Yet money was important, I realized that. What I did not realize was the extent of the fortune I had inherited, because the Councilmen tried to obscure this information and did everything to keep it from “the youngling,” lest he squander it. In the end it was Wolsey who secured the exact figures and presented them to me, totted up in his neat writing.
As I read them, I tried to keep my expression blank. It was a Herculean task—for the figures were so large they were, simply, unbelievable.
“Are these correct?” I questioned Wolsey, evenly.
“Indeed,” he replied. “I got them from three separate sources, each one entirely trustworthy. And I have checked them myself four times.”
“I see.” I put down the small, dangerous paper. It sany King of England had ever been—richer, most likely, than any king in the world. (Except the Infidel Sultan, about whose finances even Wolsey was ignorant.) I was numb. “Thank you,” I said, finally.
I hardly noticed Wolsey as he turned and exited.
Rich; I was rich. Correction: the
Crown
was rich. Whatever the King desired, he could have. An army? Done, and outfitted with the latest weapons. New palaces? As many as I liked. And people ... I could buy them, use them to adorn my court, just as I would select jewels.
So whenever I think back upon those first, halcyon days of my reign, I see but a single colour: gold. Shining gold, dull gold, burnished gold, glittering gold. Cloth-of-gold and golden rings and golden trumpets.
I struck Father’s treasure chests like Moses striking the rock in the wilderness, and a dazzling river of gold poured forth. The Crown was staggeringly wealthy, as Wolsey had indicated. Wealthy enough that I could invite any subject with a contested debt, an unredressed grievance, or merely a complaint against the Crown to come forward.
We were overwhelmed by the response; hundreds of people came, and I had to appoint extra lawyers just to attend to their claims, most stemming from the cruel extractions made by Empson and Dudley.
The majority of the claims were decided in favor of the plaintiffs, and the Crown paidoldhind. She, who had vowed that she would die in England rather than return to Spain unmarried, was about to break her vow.
If she stood ready to break her vow, I did not. She was pledged to me, and I was bound to her. I summoned her to come to the Privy Chamber next day.
She arrived exactly on time. I felt a flicker of disappointment as I saw her, small and poorly dressed, coming toward me across the great floor. She looked much older, and less pretty, than I had remembered. But I had not seen her in full light for almost six years, while I had gone from boy to man. Still, this was my betrothed....
“Katherine,” I said, coming to her and holding out my hands. I towered over her. She was ... squat. No, petite, I corrected myself. “My wife.”
She looked confused. “No. You are to marry a Habsburg. De Puebla has begun transferring my dowry to Bruges.”
“To hell with the dowry!” I said. “I have been left a fortune, the like of which no English King has ever been bequeathed. I do not need your dowry; I do not want it. It stinks of negotiations, subterfuge, lies, bargains. I want you, Katherine, not your dowry.”
She merely stared at me. I had a sudden dread: perhaps she still knew little English? I started toward her, and she drew away.
“Please, ne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, or Catherine Howard took place remains a mystery to most people.
HENRY VIII:
 
It was the third time I had stood beside Katherine to recite marriage vows in one form or another. The first time I was ten, the second time twelve, and now I was seventeen.
I try hard to remember that day, as what we later became blots it out. I was proud, and insisted that Katherine wear my wedding gift to her: a necklace of gigantic pearls, each one as big as a marble. I did not know then that pearls are the symbols of tears, and that the common people say that for each pearl the bride wears, her husband will give her cause for weeping. Nor would I have believed it, then. As we stepped out onto the church porch, silvery drops began to fall: a sun-shower. Another omen, pointing the same way ... you will shed a tear for each raindrop that falls on your wedding day. But to us it felt like the sprinkling of holy water, a special benediction and blessing. Laughing, we clasped hands and ran across the courtyard to Greenwich Palace, where we would have our private wedding feast.
Poor Katherine had no family in England, but no matter, so I thought; I was to be her family now. My grandmother Beaufort was there, although she was ailing, and my eleven-year-old cousin Henry Courtenay, Earl of Devon. There was my quasi-uncle, Arthur Plantagenet, the natural son of Edward IV and one of his mistresses. He was some nine years older than I. Other members of my family were noticeable by their absence: my cousin Edmund de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, still imprisoned in the Tower, and his brother Richard, fled abroad to France. It was a small feast.
But it was a merry one. There was almost visible relief on Grandmother Beaufort’s face. Her grandson was safely King and had taken a wife, and the future of the family was no longer in jeopardy. She could die now, and she did, just three weeks later.
While I sat beside Katherine, I could not stop staring at her, in disbelief that she was to be mine. Nor could she keep from looking at me—at the ten-year-old boy who had been her friend, now a boy no longer, but a King.
Yet looking at her (all the while the minstrels were playing and the seemingly endless procession of dishes was presented) only made me more anxious and preoccupied. I wished the feast to be over; I wished it to go on forever.
Shall I confess it? I was a virgin. Unlike my companions of the tiltyard and the exercise field, I had never had a woman. How could I, guarded and sequestered as I was, and constantly watched by the King? Oh, there had been the customary invitations from the serving girls. But I had no desire for them—perhaps because they offered themselves so freely. Or perhaps because I was embarrassed to reveal my virginal state, which I assumed would be obvious, and then they would laugh at me in the kitchens and the laundry. In the beginning it was simply that I was too young, and was frightened; then, later, ironically, I was too old.
And now I must take Katherine to bed. The young King, proclaimed a second Hector, another Lancelot, and so on, was as inexperienced as his older, sickly brother had been before him. And with the same woman. I remembered how, with the blithe ignorance of a ten-year-old, I had disdained his timidity and lack of self-assurance.
 
We were alone in the Retiring Room. The entire humiliating court ritual of “putting the couple to bed” had been duly observed. Oua bto be prescribed: there was nothing else one
could
do effectively to ease that desire.
Katherine seemed to be a virgin. But then, it is hard for one virgin to be sure of another. Thus, years later, when the controversy raged about this very question, I kept a diplomatic silence, lest I betray myself.
XIV
WILL:
All of England went on a general holiday for approximately half a year—from old Henry’s death in April until the autumn winds blew. There was a great rejoicing among the people, from the lowest (with whom I consorted in those days) to (I assume) the highest. The mood pervaded everything at the time but is very difficult to describe now: a feeling of jubilation and expansiveness. They were ready to embrace Young Harry (as they called him), permit him anything, then forgive him for it. They almost longed for him to sin, so that they could show him their great acceptance.
But he did not sin. He behaved well, as if he were following a private code entitled “The Honour of a Prince.” Not only was he young and handsome and rich, but he attended five Masses a day, had honoured his youthful promise to make the Spanish princess his wife, and had turned the gloomy court of his father into a glittering pavilion of wisdom, wit, and talent. The people waited anxiously to see what sort of Coronation he would give them. He did not disappoint them.

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