The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers (26 page)

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Authors: Margaret George

BOOK: The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers
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We passed out through the Bishopsgate of the city walls, and directly into the countryside. It was still in that darkest time of night, even at midsummer. I could not see what lay before me. Only Richard, motioning me on, guided me. He knew this road well. It was well worn between the Priory of St. Lawrence and the house of Wolsey, its protector and patron.
Dawn came up early in the eastern skies to our right as we rode. I had tried, all the way and in silence, to banish the picture in my mind of the malevolent child my true wife had borne me. The darkness could not lend itself to this. I could bear to think about it in daylight, no other time. The curse was buried now, safely.
Up came the sun. The countryside about us was fresh. The sun licked all the growing furrows of the fields, encouraging them as children. The intense greenness seemed a promise of explosion into fertility and, beyond that, ripeness. A green goddess r,” he said. His very words made me sure that they disapproved. “They think it will be soon.”
Very well. I turned my back, indicating that he should depart from me. I looked out over the grounds of St. Lawrence’s, delighting in the order, the simplicity, the production. That was what I longed for in my realm.
I thought of going to the church, which I could see blocked out before me, a great grey building. But I was afraid of missing the end of Bessie’s time, and also ... I was too confused, I cannot write it clearly. But I felt that even cleansed as I was, it was presumptuous to visit the altar of the Lord....
“Your Majesty!” A young novice came to the chamber doors. “Mistress Blount has a fair son!”
A son.
“She calls for you.” He smiled. No condemnation there. (Was he too young? Too close to the source of temptation?)
“I come.”
I followed the young man through the doors of the waiting room, through the Prior’s receiving room, and into the inner guest chamber. I noted, even in my distracted state, that it was lavishly appointed.
A midwife, accompanied by a nurse, came toward me, like a priest elevating a Host.
“Your son,” they said, almost in unison. They presented a bundle to me. I peered into it.
It was
his
face. Prince Henry’s. Exactly the same.
Jesu! I wanted to cross myself. The dead child brought back to life again, in another child, one who could never inherit the throne—whilst the child of the Queen was born a thing accursed.
“Henry,” I murmured, in recognition.
“Henry!” they cried, all the onlookers.
The wrapped bundle felt as heavy and vigorous as the other one. God had returned him to me. But not by Katherine.
Now I shook. I could not think on it. I knew not what it meant.
The midwife indicated that I should follow her. “In this chamber, Your Majesty, she awaits.” How delicately she phrased it.
I passed through an adjoining room to find Bessie all bathed, perfumed, coiffed, and awaiting my attendance. Curiously, I did not find her beautiful, but false. Women after childbirth should not resemble perfumed courtesans.
“Bessie,” I said, coming to her side. The morning light was streaming in through windows on the right side of the room. Motes danced in the sunlight. The casements were cranked wide open, and the mixed, heady smell of the infirmarians’ herb garden below was rolling into the chamber. I fancied that the odour made me drowsy. For I was suddenly and overwhelmingly sleepy.
“We have a son,” she said.
“Yes. We have a son. I have seen him.” My head was swirling, muddled. “He is ... perfect.” Such a stupid word. Such a word that said everything.
“He looks like you.” She smiled, touched e droe gently nudged.
“Fitzroy. A traditional way of saying ‘son of a King.’ ” She smiled. “For this has happened before.” She stopped smiling.
 
The infant had been bathed, swathed, and put in his cradle. I stood looking over him for a long while. His resemblance to my lost Prince Henry was unsettling.
My wife had had a monster. My mistress had had a healthy son.
Clearly, God was giving me a message. One too blatant for even me to ignore.
 
I spent the remainder of the long summer’s day at the Priory. Bessie fell asleep, sleeping the sleep of the young and healthy, undisturbed by conscience, worn out by natural physicality.
 
The Priory was a neat little community. It nestled in the slightly rolling foothills of Essex, which looked like green knolls. Everything seemed ordered and elevated into more than the everyday. I walked through the stables, the kitchen garden of herbs, the greater vegetable garden. Everything was kept in the most transcendent order, as though the Lord might appear at any moment and puto’s just to placate him and entice him to France. Ha! Now he was out his money, out of Leonardo’s services, and stuck with the dark painting of the half-smiling woman that everyone agreed was ugly.
“And I am showing my good intentions on my face,” I said, fingering my new beard. Francis had proposed that neither of us shave until the meeting, as a token of good faith. I was not sure I liked myself with a beard. Certainly it changed my face.
WILL:
As it turned out, Katherine hated the beard and begged him to cut it, “for her sake.” Still trying not to cross her, still half hoping for an heir, Henry succumbed and shaved the beard. This provoked a diplomatic crisis, as Francis was thereby offended, and Henry’s ambassadors had to explain the circumstances. Francis’s “dear mother” Louise hastened to assure them that “men’s love is shown not in their beards but in their hearts,” and the incident was smoothed over.
Then, belatedly, Henry started growing the beard again just prior to his departure. Thereby it was not long enough to offend Katherine, but could serve as a token of goodwill toward Francis. Such are the weighty considerations that diplomats must deal with.
HENRY VIII:
 
June, 1520. I stood on the castle deck of
Great Harry
in the fairest winds God ever sent mortal man. We skimmed across the Channel—nay, we
,flew.
The great sails, painted to look like cloth-of-gold
(trompe-l’oeil,
the French say—oh, they have a word for everything!), billowed out and did their duty. We were bound for Calais, to undertake the great meeting between the French and English courts. It had all come about, despite the deep reservations of everyone on both sides.
Including—perhaps most of all?—Katherine, who mounted the steps up to the forecastle to stand, now, by my side. Part of me noted how slowly, how painfully she moved. Her arthritis had made stair-climbing difficult for her in the past two years. The other part of me welcomed her presence as a companion.
“Look, see! There is Calais!” I had sighted it only once before, but took an authority’s pleasure in pointing it out to her.
Before us was France and the cupped, fine landing beaches of her northern coast. Behind us, equally visible, were the high white cliffs of England.
“It looks so harmless,” she said.
“It
is
harmless. For the land you see is England, the Pale of Calais.”
Why did even my wife, the Queen, forget that I was King of part of France?
The plans had been settled to the last detail. I, and all my company, were to land in the Pale of Calais, and thereafter, Francis and I would meet—and all our courts with us—just at the border of the two jurisdictions. Afterwards, each would entertain the other on his own land, and on his own territory. Special cities—temporary, splendid, as those can be only when permanency is not a factor—had been could not resist asking. I was young, remember.
“The Kings move?” He looked bewildered.
I felt a rough hand on my shoulder, and turned to see the angry face of the building master. He gave me a shove. “Stop talking to my workmen!” He suddenly moved and grabbed the other man by the shoulder. “What was he asking you? Dimensions, designs, secrets?”
“He wanted to know about the hill,” the man said slowly.
“Cursed Frenchman!” The master builder looked around wildly for something to throw at me, and found a large dirt clod. He heaved it in my direction. “Go tell Francis he has no hope of bettering us! Go tell your master
that!”
I would learn no more, and I had seen enough. So I left and continued walking in the direction of Ardres, the first town outside the Pale of Calais. From a hill nearby I watched an identical swarm of workmen building similar structures for the French King. I opened my square of cloth and took out my bread and cheese and last year’s softening apple, and ate. I started to laugh at them, but somehow could not. As a child I had promised myself always to answer my own questions and to hold nothing back from myself. Are they not fools? Are they not simpletons? The French King will come, and the English King will come, and then they will go. In ten years they will not even remember the glass in the palace windows. But why should that disturb me?
Because it is wasteful, I answered myself. Because no man should be happy to serve another with no hope of recognition. Because all is temporary, and this reminder of the passing nature of things saddens me.
A blacksmith in my village, reputedly stupid, had once speculated as to why Father’s mare had lost her new shoe so unexpectedly. (I had been sent to complain, as Father suspected shoddy work.) “Well now,” the smith said slowly, “there’s always the reason. And then there’s the
real
reason.”
I found many reasons for my peevishness and sense of outrage about the royal enclaves being built, but the real one was this: I wanted to be there, and there I could not be.
It would be simplistic to say that my detachment from such things began that day, but certainly I began to distance myself from that world. Everyone wants to feel special in some small way, and mine was to see myself as an aloof observer perched on a wall, watching the parade of human folly—royal and common—passing beneath me. Eventually I convinced myself that I had freely elected that stance.
 
The day came, in June. The King was arriving, and we must welcome him, every last resident of Calais.
I was there, upon the docks, as my master had directed me. I had dutifully helped him tidy the shop and festoon it properly with Tudor green and white, and flags, and mottoes for the royal visit. For three days street-sweepers had been busy gathering up the trash and offal from the main thoroughfares (it was hoped the King would not take it into his head to go down any others). The populace was anxious to see its King again and to see its Queen for the first time. Deep in everyone’s mind was the (futile) hope that if the French and English Kings met in friendship, the peculiar status of Calais would be resolved and the contradictions of our everyday life disappear.

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