The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers (81 page)

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Authors: Margaret George

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Catherine had been led forth onto the scaffold just before dawn. She had worn no mantle against the chilled air. The audience assembled was, for the most part, indifferent. Catherine had had no partisans, no champions.
That in itself was curious. There was none of my Queens who had gone undefended. Katherine of Aragon had had her violent defenders, churchmen who had been willing to die for her, the northern men who had fought on her behalf. Anne Boleyn (due to her witchcraft) had had those who willingly sacrificed their lives and political careers for her. Jane was mourned by the entire realm. Even Anne of Cleves had inspired loyalty and become beloved in certain circles.
(black-mailing her?); now they swam away with equal alacrity.
But why go over this so intellectually? Yes, it was telling and surprising that Catherine was left naked of supporters at the scaffold, but ...
The scaffold. She had mounted it, helped up by others. This is the part I delayed recounting, this is the grisly part. To omit it would be dishonest, yet ... oh, would God it had not occurred!
She stood still in the frosty air, all in black.
(All bewept in black and poor estate.)
About the scaffold were all the court, and foreign ambassadors. She had everyone’s ear, and every word she uttered would be remembered and whispered and repeated abroad.
Before her was the block upon which she had practised the night before. (Curious that she had not asked for a special swordsman, as had been granted her cousin Anne. But then, she had practised upon the block. Both Queens sought to turn a state execution into a showcase for themselves—to make themselves legends.)
She said, clearly, so that all might hear: “I die a Queen, but I would rather die the wife of Culpepper. God have mercy on my soul. Good people, I beg you, pray for me.”
Then she put her head on the block—expertly—and the axe severed it. It rolled but a little way in the hay. Functionaries gathered it up, and spread a black cloth over the body trunk, still kneeling in the black dress beside the block. Blood was gushing from the severed neck, but the cold air quickly congealed it. They lifted her body away, but did not put it in the coffin yet. Let the blood drain out first, else it would foul the coffin.
Two pages scrubbed off the block, to cleanse it of Catherine’s mess. The space beside it was rinsed with steaming water from pitchers. I was told that the smell of the water mingling with blood made many bystanders ill.
Then Jane Boleyn, Lady Rochford, was pulled toward the scrubbed-up block. She was allowed to speak, in accordance with custom.
“Good Christians,” she said, “God has permitted me to suffer this shameful doom, as a punishment for having contributed to my husband’s death. I falsely accused him of loving in incestuous manner his sister, Queen Anne Boleyn. For this I deserve to die. But I am guilty of no other crime.” Seeing Catherine’s black-covered lump, she began to scream. Then, shaking, she laid her head and submitted to the axe.
After all the blood had run out of her, they put Catherine in the coffin, and buried it in the Chapel of St. Peter-ad-Vincula within the Tower, only a few feet from her cousin Anne Boleyn.
And it was done. Her corpse lay in a box, neatly covered over.
Mercifully I did not hear their scaffold statements until nightfall, when the children had gone. Then I heard them. Then I lay in bed (not warm, merely pretending to be) and heard them.
I die a Queen, but I would rather die the wife of Culpepper.
She had said that. She had actually said that. Was it true? I hurried past that, which was beyond understanding, since her bloodless form now lay buried. I could never ask her, could never wring from her an explanation: Why did you in"3">“No! No!”
The wood registered the vibrations. Only a few inches between us—
I flung open the chamber door, opening on the darkened Privy Chamber.
“No! No!”
The voice was behind yet another set of doors. I opened the Privy Chamber doors, leading to the Audience Chamber, but it was empty, vast, alien.
“Henry!”
It came from the gallery, the Long Gallery connecting the royal apartments with the Chapel Royal.
I fumbled at the door latch. It was carved and heavy, to impress petitioners with the gravity of majesty. The doors themselves were great panels, the height of three men. Pulling them open required considerable strength; I felt my belly muscles tighten at the strain.
The passageway outside was deserted. Then I saw it ... the white figure, being dragged backwards, receding before my eyes. Mournful cries came from it, sorrow beyond telling....
There was nothing there. It had quite vanished, and all its presence with it.
I returned to my bed. Since Culpepper, I had had no intimate of the bedchamber, and I slept quite alone and unattended. In one sense I savoured it. It was tiresome always to consider another’s needs in the night, not to dare to light a candle for fear of waking him.
The ghost—for ghost it was, and I might as well name it as such—shrieked and cried in a way no mortal ever had. Would others see it? Or was it meant only for me? I settled the covers about me. I would not sleep, that I knew. But I expected to pass the night in solitary meditation.
It was in the very darkest part of night, when the sun is gone and thinks never to return, that I first saw the monks. They were standing in the shadows of the far reaches of the chamber. I could see straightway that their habits were varied, and that they belonged to different orders. On the left was the light-coloured habit of the Cistercians. I had not dealt kindly with them, that I knew. They were a strict order, living isolated, arduous lives, and a good order, in the beginning. Well, we are all of us good in the beginning. But we must be judged on what we become.
Next to him, a dark habit. Surely a Dominican. This was a hard order to love, just as many in Jesus’ time must have found it hard to love a disciple. They were too astute, too caustic, too clever.
Standing a little to the side was a grey-habited figure. Greyfriars, the people called the Observant Franciscans: they had had a priory right outside the palace gates at Greenwich. Once they were my friends; then they became my enemies. Well, I had destroyed that obstructionist order.
Then, in the middle, a dun-coloured habit. Oh, those Carthusians! I had had to take sternest measures against them. They had proved most recalcitrant to my enlightenment. Therefore I was not surprised when the tan-habited one came toward me.
How did I see him? It was dark. His habit did not glow, as country folk would claim. Yet I saw him.
He nodded gravely toward me. I could not see his face, yet I believe it was that of John Houghton, the London abbot whom I had hanged for refusal to take the Oath.
“Henry,” he intoned—no, whispered. “You were wrong in what you did. The monks were good="3">“They were evil, did evil.” Did I speak these words or merely think them?
“No.” The sound was soft. So soft I could not quite discover whether it was true or my imagining.
The monks shimmered. Their habits waved and seemed to change colour. Then the sun—only a tiny ray—shone into the chamber. There were no monks.
There were no monks. There was no Catherine. (Yes, there was, only it was a corpse, a corpse without a head. If I bade diggers to dig her up, she would be there, two days rotted now. In winter it is slower. She might yet be beautiful. Her face, that is, printed upon the severed head.) I had fancied it all, in my sick fantasy. “Fantasy” ... what a powerful word.
The King did cast a fantasy
to
Catherine Howard....
CXIII
S
oon they would be coming into the chamber-the attendants, the doctors—having heard about my behaviour the night before. (Was it only the night before, when I had confronted the Fiend in all his degrees?) What exactly had happened? Was there any man who would dare to tell me?
The breakfast over, the shaving over, the reading of the daily dispatches over, now the day must begin.
Brandon came to me in my sunny work chamber.
“My behaviour last night,” I said straightway. “Describe it as you would if under oath.”
“Well ...” He fidgeted, shifted back and forth on his feet. He had become portly of late.
“Pray seat yourself.” I gestured toward a chair, one of two against the wall.
He brought it over, closer to me. “Your Grace.” He smiled. “Do you not think it meet that these chairs come to this use?”
I was silent. I did not remember the chairs. Collapsible U-shaped wooden things, inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Some gift from the Patriarch of Jerusalem?
“They were in the Spaniards’ tents when the Princess of Aragon first came to England. When your father was not allowed admittance.”
In that very tent? When I first saw Katherine, and loved her? I was angry, and I knew not why. Why had they survived? They should have perished, along with all those things of that world.
“That was ten thousand years ago.”
“Aye.” His grin faded.
“What did I do last night? What did I do and say? And what truly happened? I know you will tell me.”
“There was a Valentine’s banquet. All was as it should be, all dishes served in order, the colours red and white, the Valentine’s box distributed and sweet-hearts allotted, the red-coloured courses served.”
“But?”
“But it was the day after an execution. No ordinary execution. The Queen, my Lord—you executed the Queen. And so the Valentine’s feast was a funeral feast. At least, those attending felt it so. Theont size="3">“I saw Catherine. She was sitting in her seat, with a thornless rose before her golden platter.”
“No one else saw her. She was for your eyes alone.”
“Did the guests ...
know
I saw her?”
“They knew you saw
something.
”
“So they assume I am mad.” I jerked out the words. I had paraded my obsession, my hauntings, in front of the company.
“They assume you were conscience-stricken.” His deep brown eyes, the only youthful feature in his lined face, gazed directly into mine. “How you act from today forward will determine whether they judge you as mad.”
“I am not conscience-stricken!” I muttered. “She deserved to die.”
“That—or mad,” said Brandon calmly. “Those are the only two explanations they will allow you. People are simplistic, my Lord.”
“You know I am not mad,” I began.
“Too strong a strain, for too long, can drive anyone mad.” He was cautious.
“I have never been mad, and I never shall be mad! But you are right, it was foolish to plan such a festivity following an execution. Better just to grieve, and admit one’s grieving. I should have locked myself up in my chambers and wept all day. Then I would feel clean, not more besmirched than ever.”
“Death does not cleanse. Sometimes the loved one—or the hated one—never leaves one’s side. I still miss Mary. Katherine is no comfort. I, too, was a fool.”
I embraced him. “I misjudged you.”
“As others will misjudge
you,”
he said. “Unless you are careful.”
At once it was important that I tell him all of it. “I was not alone in my chamber. I heard shriekings outside, in the Long Gallery. And then, in the back of the room, there were monks. Whispering together, huddling, pointing, judging.”
He started and looked uneasy. “Shrieks? As of a woman? In the Long Gallery, you say?” Suddenly he flung himself up out of the Spanish chair. “Do you remember when you heard Mass at Hampton Court, in the same Chapel Royal, when the first news of Catherine was coming out?”
“Yes.”
“No one would tell you, then, as they acted on their own authority and feared your anger. When you were at your prayers, Catherine escaped from her guard and sought to find you at Mass. She eluded her watchers and came down the Long Gallery at Hampton. She reached the very doors of the chapel, where she meant to throw herself on your mercy. But just as she was turning the great door-fastener, she was apprehended. Then—”
“She called for me,” I said slowly.
“Trusting that you would hear her. She was so bold she even used your first name, the one forbidden even to me. She dared all. But failed in her attempt. She was dragged away before she could open the doors and intrude on your worship.”
“Was she wearing maiden.”
So she would appear, for all eternity. The virgin-whore. I had seen true.
“She attempted to appeal to your sense of sentimentality.”
So my “sentimentality” was well known, a weakness for users to play upon. Was there nothing of a king that others did not seek to use? From my “sentimentality” to my time on the evacuation-stool after dinner?
“I will always see her as a maiden.” That was true, that was the aching of it. But what of the ghost? Had others seen it?
“I was visited by this sight last night,” I confessed. “The same shrieks, the same calling of my name. This time I opened the door, and looked down the gallery myself.
I saw it.”

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