The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers (44 page)

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Authors: Margaret George

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“I will come with you and light a torch,” I said.
I pushed the warped wooden door open into the echoing interior. A single flame flickered on the altar, signifying the sacred Presence of the consecrated Host.
I lighted a large floor-candle near the door, and reached out to touch Anne’s shoulder. “Pray in peace,” I said.
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for not smiling at me.” I knew what she meant; to express a genuine urge to piety is to risk ridicule.
“Pray for me,” I asked.
 
June first. In the middle of the night, enchanted May had given way to high summer and the political reality of Anne’s procession through the streets of London. Would the city welcome her? Yesterday’s show on the water had been pretty, but the string-music and cannonfire and fireworks had masked any jeering, and the malcontents had not bothered to venture out on boats.
The streets were different: freshly widened, gravelled, and lined with scaffolding, with a great “display” at every corner-an open invitation to troublemakers. True, the Lord Mayor had been warned, and he had certainly put on a brave show yesterday, but even he could not control the rabble; he knew that, and so did I, in spite of my threats about “traitors.” The idea that two hundred royal constables could keep any sort of discipline over a hundred thousand Londoners was absurd. Today Anne must ride forth, trusting in their goodwill—and God’s.
I glanced up at the sun, already a bright hot ball in a clean sky. That, at least, was auspicious. Ascending to the highest ramparts of the square White Tower, I could see westward all across London, whence Anne must cross to Westminster Abbey. Already the streets were choked with people, some of whom must have been there all night.
I myself intended to watch the procession from a window in Baynard’s Castle, and it was time I set out, before the crowd thickened.
Cromwell, having no part in the procession, awaited me in the appointed room at Baynard’s Castle, actually not a castle at all but a decrepit old royal dwelling that happened to be situated along Anne’s route. He had arranged for comfortable viewing-chairs, deep cushions, and music to amuse us as we waited.
“We are quite without a part in today’s show,” I commiserated with Cromwell. “Which I find consummately amusing, since we are the ones who arranged it all.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “The Lady Anne-that is, the Queen-also played a part.”
“Not as bigbes and titles, while the true power stays out of sight.”
“It was ever thus,” he shrugged, presenting me with a covered silver bowl. I took it; it was icy cold. Curious, I removed the top.
“Sherbet, Your Majesty. They have it in Persia to cool themselves on hot days like today.” Cromwell nodded. “I can have it made in other flavours, but mint is my personal favourite.”
I tasted it; it was a splendid fillip on the tongue. “Marvellous! Crum, you are marvellous!” How did the man find such ingenious ways of making everything pleasant-and feasible? Not only the coronation of an unthought-of Queen, but the sherbet to pleasure it.
 
By noon I could hear the trumpets sounding from the Tower, and I knew Anne had set out. It took an entire hour for the front part of the procession to pass by. It was led by twelve Frenchmen, all dressed in blue velvet, both they and their horses, signifying Francis’s goodwill; after them came squires, knights, and judges in ceremonial robes; the new-made Knights of the Bath in purple gowns; then the peerage: dukes, earls, marquises, barons, abbots, and bishops in crimson velvet. In their steps followed the officers of rank in England-archbishops, ambassadors, the lord mayors of London and other cities, the Garter Knight of Arms....
Finally, Anne. She was borne through the streets like a precious jewel, sitting in an open litter of white cloth-of-gold, borne by two white-caparisoned horses, a canopy of gold shielding her from the rude stare of the sun.
But not from the rude stares and sullen silence of the crowd-nothing could shield her from that, except she bury herself in walls of stone two feet thick.
Her head was held high, the chin lifted insolently, like a swan’s. Around her thin curved neck, like a great collar, was a circlet of unnaturally huge pearls. All in white, dazzling—with that long black hair hanging loose down her back. Pregnant, she was dressed as a virgin, all in white with unbound hair. Scorned, she held her head as proud as Alexander the Great.
My will seemed to me a living thing, as I pitied her and
willed
the onlookers to welcome her, give her some sign of affection. If desire could have moved them, every person would have cheered.
Anne’s fool, scampering along behind her, attempted to move them to shame and goodwill. “I fear you all have scurvy, and dare not uncover your heads!” he shouted, snatching off his own cap by way of example—an example they did not follow.
As Anne passed on, followed by all her royal household-her Chamberlain, Master of the Horse, ladies in velvet, chariots of peeresses, the gentle-women, and finally the King’s Guard—the people spontaneously began to cheer. The insult could not have been greater.
Beside me, I saw Cromwell’s expressionless eyes upon me. “Pity,” he said, and I saw that to him it was but another political fact, to be used as suited our purposes best. “More sherbet?”
 
Anne was shaking with anger when I came to her at Westminster Palace that evening. “The crowds were silent! The common people all but spat on me, and the German merchants of the Hanseatic League-oh, they think the Emperor will protect them, just as Katherine I want wit and music and poetry about me. You give me that. Mmade expressly for
our
child? You can cover it with pearls. It will become a treasure, to be admired for generations. Instead you covet something old that belongs to another woman.”
Like myself? As Katherine’s husband, I had had value. As her own, was I diminished?
“I want the gown,” she insisted. “And I will have it.”
A few days later a furious letter came from Katherine, refusing to give up the gown with all the moral righteousness at her command.
Anne was irate over her rival’s stubbornness and hauteur.
“Make
her surrender the gown!” she shrieked at me, snapping the letter up and down and beating the air with it.
“I cannot,” I replied. “The gown is not Crown property, as were the royal jewels. Katherine is within her rights to keep it.” The fact that Katherine treasured it pleased me.
“Her
rights?
What rights does she have?”
I was shocked. “The same rights as any English subject. Amongst them, the right to own personal property.”
“She deserves no rights! She refuses to acknowledge me as Queen! That makes her a traitor!”
“There is no law saying all citizens must formally acknowledge you as Queen. At this time we rely on the old precedent that ‘silence gives consent.’ ”
“You will have to change that law soon enough,” she taunted. “There are many different kinds of silences, and soon—very soon!-it will be important to differentiate between them. You will be forced to do so, for your son’s sake. Then the executions will begin!” Her eyes narrowed. “Executions. All traitors will be executed, Harry-Katherine and Mary, and that stupid Thomas More. You will have no choice!” Her voice rose to a crescendo.
“Anne!” I grabbed her shoulders and shook her, hard. It was like breaking a demoniac spell. She changed before my eyes, melting from a vituperative fiend to a confused, honest creature.
“You excite yourself,” I said lightly. “It is not good for the child. Come, I shall show you the great bed of which I spoke. It has, as I remember, the most delicate carvings....” I spoke soothingly, thus calming her.
 
Alone in my bed that night (as the physicians had forbidden Anne and me to come together again as husband and wife until after the child’s birth), I was thankful that I had been able to quell her rising hysteria so quickly. Time enough later to reflect on her accusations about Katherine and Mary and her predictions about the measures that might be needed to combat their continuing popularity.
Popular they were. Just the previous week the villagers at Buckden had surrounded the little palace and cried out to Katherine, “God save the Queen! We are ready to die for you. How can we serve you? Confusion to your enemies!” Whenever Mary was glimpsed, people shouted similar things to her. It was quite clear where the populace stood.
 
The next week I had an edict printed and proclaquickly. sherbet (Crum had presented her with the recipe), with which she was planning to surprise her guests. It was cherry-flavoured, and she had spent hours perfecting the taste. I myself had helped with it; now I must give an offhanded excuse and hurry away. Anne was disturbed, and was not fooled; she sensed that something important had happened.
 
It took four hours to reach Crowley, a rudely furnished hunting lodge used by my grandfather Edward as a favourite place to relax after a day’s excursion with his brothers, Clarence and Richard. I had always liked it, in spite of its unsettling associations from the wars. It was comfortable there; it was the sort of place where a man could take off his boots and snore by the fire. And it was here, too, that Anne and I had passed those heated days during the progress of 1531, when she almost let me into her chamber time and again, but always barred me at the last moment. Was that truly only two years ago?
Now I came to meet a different challenge, in the person of Clement’s representative. I strode into the lodge, happy to have arrived first, as that gave me a subtle advantage. I looked round. How different it looked by day, when I had no fire in my blood, no desires I sought to have satisfied. Those who compare victories in war with victories in love are fools, and probably have experienced neither.
I had time enough to become bored before a glint of sun on a helmet far down the road to the east signalled the approach of Clement’s proxy.
A foreign power on English soil, trudging along to exert its jurisdiction—this was the last time such an anachronism would be seen, I thought. Never again. I had banished such pretensions from Continental minds and made them unacceptable for any patriotic Englishman.
Even in my own boyhood, things foreign were seen as “better” than things English. Arthur must have a foreign bride; the Tudor dynasty would not be confirmed as “royal” until a European royal family condescended to marry into it. And so Katherine had come, and yokels had cheered the Spaniards and stood in awe of them as they passed along muddy paths. And because of that curious journey more than thirty years ago, another band of foreigners was snaking along another muddy path in another attempt to meddle in English affairs.
I grinned. I could hear the rapid Italian in the distance. This was 1533, not 1501. Their time had passed. I was an English king and my wife was pure English as well, and we ruled a nation proud to be counted “mere English.”
The tittering Popish popinjays drew up to the lodge’s entrance and sat, brown and slight and sly, waiting to be received.
As they were shown in to stand before me, I appraised them. What had begun with antagonism on my part ended in bafflement. Was it these men of whom I had, for so long, stood in awe? What a fool I had been!
Their leader, travel-soiled and tired beyond the point of nervousness, merely handed me the Papal scroll, as unceremoniously as a farmer passing on a sausage. Doubtless he had been instructed otherwise, but the lulling informality of the lodge and the lack of court witnesses made it too easy to skip the ceremonial.
I took it just as carelessly, and made a show of unrolling it and reading it without emotion.
It should not have disturbed me. I knew-or, rather, decreed that I knew—that Clement (born Giulio de’ Medici) was not the Vicar of Christ, but just a misguided bishop. He had no power to pronounce spiritual judgment on me. Npower ... I had staked my kingdom, my soul, on that belief. Why, then, did I stagger, even for a moment, under it?
Wherefore in the name of God the All-powerful, Fathes, Son, and Holy Ghost, of the Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and of all the Saints, in virtue of the power which has been given us of binding and loosing in Heaven and on earth, we deprive Henricus Rex himself and all his accomplices and all his abettors of the Communion of the Body and Blood of Our Lord, we separate him from the society of all Christians, we exclude him from the bosom of our Holy Mother the Church in Heaven and on earth, we declare him excommunicated and we judge him condemned to eternal fire with Satan and his angels and all the reprobate, so long as he will not burst the fetters of the demon, do penance and satisfy the Church; we deliver him to Satan to mortify his body, that his soul may be saved on the day of judgment.
He who dares to despise our decision, let him be damned at the coming of the Lord, may he have his place with Judas Iscariot, he and his companions. Amen.

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