VIII (23 page)

With a window-shattering boom, the great guns
of the Tower fire, greeting the arrival of the water procession. The Thames is a riot of noise and colour as far downstream as the eye can see.

A huge model dragon, terrifying as a pagan god, rears up from one barge, surging along in juddering bursts as the oarsmen pull their blades through the water. Its head swings from side to side, its mammoth jaw drops open, spews out flames and sparks, and then snaps shut again.

In another barge monsters with bulbous eyes, grotesque limbs and lolling tongues spit more fireworks, while hideous wildmen in suits of straggling fur roar and snarl beside them.

A third barge carries a floating craggy mountain, topped by a golden tree stump. On this, a great white falcon has landed. The bird – moulting a scattering of real feathers as a stray streamer slaps it on the wing – wears a crown on its head, and where its claws grip the gilded wood, flowers are sprouting: red and white roses, in fertile abundance.

In amongst these monstrosities the wherries nip and weave, the silk- and tapestry-clad barges of the City guilds plough in formation (their on-board musicians labouring valiantly against the din), while the lords and bishops, in their own barges, vie for attention by the ostentation of their display. And all about, flags and bell-tipped pennants snap and jingle, and the sunshine flashes where it can on the odd inch of free water.

I, meanwhile, am waiting.

From this chaos Anne emerges at last, climbing up the wharf steps from her own barge, like the sun creeping over the horizon. She is a golden creature emerging from the filth of the Thames – a phoenix of renewed hope, rising from my blighted past.

The wharf is packed with people. Down a corridor of spectators I see her; she comes towards me, stepping carefully on her dainty, golden-slippered feet.

Her cloth-of-gold mantle trails behind her, wiping away the old ashy lies and untruths, the blasphemies and superstitions. Her strange, elfin face is a shining vision of triumph and certainty.

I have met her challenge.

I have broken free of the Pope, broken with a thousand years of mistaken tradition, and asserted God’s truth: that I am the Supreme Head of the Church in my kingdom, and that no one has power over me but God Himself.

Old Warham has died; by my permission my new Archbishop of Canterbury has judged the case, and declared that Catherine and I were never truly married in the eyes of God. And so at last, I have a wife: I have married Anne.

She was right (as she so often is): Wolsey was no help. And now he is dead, too. Taken by illness, he breathed his last on the way to the Traitors’ Gate of this very fortress,
whispering to his friends that Anne was a night crow who haunted me like an evil spirit.

But the evil was in his own heart only, and here’s the proof: look at her now.

Her slight frame is swollen by the child in her belly: my son.

I am standing on the drawbridge that links the wharf to the Tower. This is Anne’s formal reception into the Tower as my queen – in three days’ time she will be crowned in Westminster Abbey. Before me stands a greeting party: my Lord Chamberlain, my Lieutenant and Constable of the Tower, and those noblemen and bishops not already on the river.

Behind me stands the monstrous edifice of the Tower itself, the fortress I once saw as a swallowing beast, a gate to hell, a place of horrors. Today, Anne will shine a light in its darkness that will burn away the evil: that light is my son, in her belly.

I think of the child I once saw in a dream, the little boy walking down beams of light towards me from a bright black sun. Now I feel as if it is my son coming down the beams of light towards me, as I stand here in the darkness – the darkness of the Tower, the darkness of my years of struggle. He will stretch out his small hand to me. And I will take it and step into the light. He is my bloodline, my future, the beginning of my glorious dynasty that will live on for ever.

Anne walks past the bowing lords and bishops. She reaches me, and her black eyes shine brighter than her golden robes.

In a ringing voice that all can hear I say, “Welcome, my adored wife and true queen.” I take her shoulders and kiss her; more quietly I add, “Welcome Anne.”

And, turning, I take her hand and lead her under the
shadowy gateway, and on, into the dark Tower itself.

The required feats have been performed; I have won the hand of the golden maiden. Now my destiny stretches before me, as the prophecy made in this very place, all those long years ago, foretold:

Oh blessed ruler… you are the one so welcome that many acts will smooth your way. You will extend your wings in every place; your glory will live down the ages
.

Now, at last, the waiting is ended.

Empire and sons.

It is three months since Anne’s coronation:
it is September and it is squally. The wind whines around the gardens and courtyards here at Greenwich, seeming unsure of the way out, buffeting the heraldic beasts on their poles and stirring the waters of the fountains. Inside my thick robes I shiver.

September, for months, has been my goal. By now, I was to have been deliriously happy. Because by now, the child would have been born.

And it
is
born. Anne has been delivered safely. She and the child are both alive. It is a fine-looking infant. Healthy, robust.

But it is a girl.

When the news was brought to me I took in a sharp breath. Now, five days later, I feel as if I have not yet breathed out again.

This
I never expected.

Not this, not this, not this.

It is unthinkable.

The river today looks cold and grey in the flat north light. I am standing in a bay window, staring out; someone behind me speaks. It is a bishop, one of my councillors. In his hand he holds a dispatch: begging Your Grace’s pardon, but there is an urgent question regarding the matter of the ships from Lübeck…

I snatch the paper: I can read it for myself. The bishop makes a nervous little prance towards me and back, urging me to let him summarise – in scanning the paper I soon see why. Not just news of ships and mercantile quarrels: there is news from our man in Flanders of rumours, too. Rumours circulating that Anne has been delivered of a monster – or else a child that is dead; and that if I do not take back Catherine as my wife the Pope will summon all Christian princes to make war on England by Easter next. Oh yes and, to cap it all, these Flemings liken the King of England to Count Baldwin of Flanders, who was plagued by diabolic illusions…

I crush the paper – tight, tight into a ball – and take it to the fireplace and throw it in the flames. As it catches light it begins to unfurl; the edges flare brightly as they burn.

Behind me the bishop’s voice patters on anxiously, bland and soothing: what ordure it is, sir, but it is as well to know what is said on the streets, what is said anywhere in fact; it’s astonishing of course how evil the slander can be, nevertheless we can circulate counter-rumours, even as far afield as Flanders; and now perhaps we can come on to the matter of those ships from Lübeck?

I don’t turn; I stare into the flames as they curl around the blackened remnants of the paper. These last few nights I have dreamed of monstrous births myself. Such events have genuinely happened in certain German and Italian cities –
I have seen woodcuts of the things born. One woman produced a creature with bird’s wings and a single leg ending in a clawed foot. Another had a child with bat’s wings and two legs, one bearing a devil’s hoof, the other an eye at the knee. I have dreamed of Anne bringing forth a serpent, with a scaly hide and great tearing claws.

Each time, I have woken to find Anne lying beside me in the dark: this astonishing being sent me by God, as ready for battle as if she wore armour. And I have wondered how I can dream such things. She has given me a healthy girl. Next it will be a fine warrior son.

So Anne tells me – and she is right. She is as defiant and determined as in those dark years of struggle over the annulment of my marriage to Catherine, and she is delighted with our daughter, too – whom I have named Elizabeth, after my mother. She is delighted with Elizabeth’s strong limbs and her vigorous cry, her dark Boleyn eyes and her tuft of red-gold Tudor hair.

When I look at the child, I am also proud. But as soon as she is taken away, the feeling fades. I think: the boy Anne was carrying when she climbed the wharf steps at the Tower, the boy who shone his brilliant light in that place of dark horrors – where has he gone? He existed; I knew him. I put my hand on her belly and I felt him move and kick.

Behind me, the bishop has paused now; he is waiting for a response, though I have no idea of the question. I tell him I will deal with the matter later and I leave him, walking through my Privy Chamber and my Presence Chamber and a short gallery to my private closet on the first-floor balcony of the Chapel Royal.

Norris has followed me. At the chapel door I tell him to remain outside. As I enter, I see the Dean and one of the chaplains below me, standing near the dark-wood choir stalls;
I dismiss them. I want to be alone. When they have gone I descend the spiral stair that leads into the main body of the chapel, approach the altar and kneel.

What is it I want to say to my God? That waiting a single moment longer for my son is an agony: that I have done too much waiting these last twenty years: that I am pulled taut, as if I am lashed to a wheel, or on the rack. I waited so long to marry Anne. Marrying her meant the end of waiting – I thought.

I know God has a plan for me but I do not understand why it should require this. Perhaps, then, I am praying for strength. Perhaps I am asking God to reveal to me His reasons…

The chapel is a cold and empty chamber. Candles are lit at the altar and beneath the stern-faced statues; from time to time a wick sizzles. Gradually, I become aware of the stillness of the space behind me. It seems eerily like a presence; like something waiting.

I look over my shoulder. The balcony is dark and seems unoccupied; beneath it, there is no movement in the shadows.

I turn back and bow my head. But now I can hear something: an indistinct brushing or scraping. I think of nesting birds. I think of rats. I try to block it out – to focus on my prayer. I hope the sound will stop. I don’t want to see what makes it.

But the sound doesn’t stop. And I feel compelled to find its source.

In front of anyone else, I would never move like this, would never edge towards a sound, which I now sense comes from behind the pulpit to my right. I don’t want to see but I must see; I am already clammy inside my clothes.

Peering slowly, inch by inch, round the edge of the pulpit, I spot a sliver of something dark, down near the floor. The
sliver shifts in sudden jerks – it is part of something active; I am not alone.

I cringe against the pulpit’s wooden panelling – then force myself to look. The sliver I saw was the edge of a doublet: dark fabric. Its wearer is kneeling on the floor; the soft scraping sound I heard is made by his fingernails as he drags them in great tearing sweeps along his skin. The scratching is violent and brutal. Unlaced at the wrists, his sleeves are pushed back – red tracks are raised on the surface of his forearms, intermittently speckled with blood.

As I watch he bends his head, puts his hands – like bony rakes – beneath the straw-coloured hair at the nape of his neck and drags them downwards around the curve of his throat, leaving fork-tracks of red. The effort pulls from him a gutteral grunt – the effort and perhaps the pain.

The sight is contemptible, disgusting; I lean against the side of the pulpit, then stumble up its short staircase and lunge for the Bible as for a talisman that will ward him off.

The great book is lying open on the lectern. It takes me a moment to focus on the words. To drown out the sound of him – the thing,
the boy
– I read loudly the first sentence my eye falls on: “
Be sober and watch, for your adversary the Devil as a roaring lion walketh about, seeking whom he may devour
…”

I can still hear him; still louder I read, declaiming the words as if to a congregation: “
The God of all grace, which called you unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, shall his own self, after ye have suffered a little affliction, make you perfect; shall settle, strengthen and establish you. To him be glory and dominion for ever, and while the world endureth. Amen
.”

“Sir?” At the back of the chapel Norris has put his head around the door: his mild brown eyes are puzzled and concerned. He could hear me outside, no doubt, and must have wondered at me shouting in an empty space.

I have stopped shouting now. The scraping sound has stopped, too; I know, without looking, that the boy has gone.

My hands are on the open book; I am breathing hard, as if I have just fought a bout. Why do I suffer this? Is it part of God’s purpose? Does He show me this hideous apparition – this ghost or whatever it may be – to remind me that there is evil in the world that I must fight too?

I don’t need to look far for it. Plenty of my own subjects wish me ill. There have been predictions – some would call them prophecies, but I do not grace them with that name. A monk declared last year that if I married Anne the dogs would lick my blood as they licked Ahab’s. And a nun who claimed to see visions foretold that I should not remain king one month after the marriage.

When I hear such things I am ready to lick the blood of the traitors that circulate this filth. But look: the months have passed and none of it has come true. It is more than half a year since Anne and I were married and I am still king.

As I move among my smiling courtiers these days, though, I wonder: how many in their secret hearts believe I deserve death – for breaking with the Pope, for heresy; how many of them hope my grave is gaping for me even now?

“Norris,” I say, coming down from the pulpit, “call in all keys – the master keys and the by-keys. And send for my locksmith. I want a new set of locks made. Larger and more complex. More secure. Perhaps I will design them myself.”

“New locks for the royal apartments, sir?”

“For all the rooms in the palace, Norris,” I say, passing him. I head towards the spiral staircase that leads back to my apartments. “In
every
palace.”