I waited, but nothing followed. In the dim light I could perceive his quiet breathing. He was asleep.
I hurriedly left the chamber. Stepping out into the bright indoor light in the adjoining room, free from the clouds of incense and perfume, was dizzying. A number of servants were waiting in what was in effect an anteroom for the death-chamber. A priest stood ever ready in case of sudden need. Today it was Thomas Wolsey, the King’s almoner (whose name I had appropriated to lure Katherine into the confessional). He was reading quietly on a small bench near the window. He nodded at me gravely as I passed through.
I returned to my own chamber, still shaken by Father’s order. To execute my cousin de la Pole . . . I went to my work table and took out my writing materials. I found a scrap of paper upon which I had earlier been composing a letter in Latin. I dipped the pen in ink and wrote, for the first time, Henry Rex. My hand shook and made a blot. I tried again, then again. By the third time the hesitation was gone, and there were no blots. Henry Rex.
The winter passed; an early spring was promised. By late March the skies were blue, and there were bright yellow wildflowers by the banks of the Thames. But in the death-chamber there was no spring; the pulled curtains resolutely kept it away. When the apple trees in the orchard beneath his windows burst into bloom, Father could not see or smell them.
As he became weaker, more attendants clustered about, and we had less opportunity for private talk. Father had left until too late all the things he should have told me. Now we were both bound in the web of court ritual, which extended even into the death-chamber and effectively prevented any confidences between us. Yet at the same time I was expected to be continually present, from the early hour when Wolsey first celebrated Mass, to the evening when the grooms of the bedchamber went through the elaborate sequence of steps in readying the King’s bed for the night (such as rolling on the mattress to search for knives, and sprinkling holy water on the coverlet), to the final, surreptitious removal of the day’s pile of blood-soaked linens. Then Wolsey came in to say evening prayers, and my day was done.
One night I was not able to leave him before midnight, as he was in pain and could not sleep until his physician administered a poppy-syrup which soothed him. Rather than returning to my own chambers, I felt a great need for cold, fresh air. I descended the small staircase to the door leading outside and found myself in the palace orchard. The trees were in full bloom, and a bloated moon—not quite full—illuminated them. They looked like rows of ghostly maidens, sweet and young. Below me the Thames flowed swiftly with the new spring-water, sparkling in the moonlight as it rushed past.
It was the first time since dawn that I had been alone, and I felt a shuddering relief. Day after day in that death-chamber . . .
I walked slowly through the ghostly orchard. The shadows were peculiarly sharp, and the moonlight almost blue. I cast a long shadow, one that moved silently between the crooked, still ones of the trees.
“—dead soon. He can’t last.”
I stopped at the unexpected sound of voices. They seemed unnaturally clear and hard in the open night air.
“How old is he, anyway?”
“Not so old. Fifty-two, I believe.”
The voices were closer. They were two boatmen who had just tied up their boat at the landing and were walking toward the palace.
“He has not been a bad King.”
“Not if you remember Richard.”
“Not many care to.” They laughed.
“What of the new King?”
There was a pause. “He’s a youngling. It is said he cares for nothing but sport.”
“And women?”
“No, not women. Not yet! He is but seventeen.”
“Time enough if one is disposed that way.”
“Aye, but he’s not.”
They were almost level with me now. If they turned they would see me. But they did not and continued trudging toward the servants’ entrance of the palace.
“How much longer, think you?”
The other man made a noise indicating lack of knowledge or interest.
My heart was pounding. In that instant I resolved never to allow myself to overhear talk about myself again. They had said nothing of importance, and yet it had distressed me. The way they spoke so offhandedly about Father’s life and my character . . . as though they knew us, had proprietary rights over us.
WILL:
It was a resolve Henry seemed singularly unable to keep—not to listen in on conversations. (Happily for me, as this penchant of his is what led to our meeting.)
HENRY VIII:
For them, Father’s passing was of little consequence, as they assumed that it did not presage another bloodbath or upheaval.
But to me? I did not want him to die and leave me . . . leave me alone. I loved him. I hated him. I had not known until that moment just how much I relied on his presence, on his being the prow of the boat upon which I rode, protected from the spray and all other discomforts inherent in the voyage. Once he was gone, it would all break upon me.
The men were past. I stood up and continued to walk. I can remember the odd, damp smell of early spring, a sort of musty-earth odour. And the utter stillness of the blossoming branches. In the hard cold light, they looked carved, as though they were made of marble and nothing could shatter them.
I reached up and shook one of the branches, expecting a shower of petals to fall on me. But it did not happen; the flowers had only just opened and were still firmly attached. It was not yet their time to fall. And when it was, they would shower profusely, let go of their branch with an ease I envied.
I was seventeen, and about to be shaken, and fall elsewhere, but I feared I would not do it with ease, or gracefully.
I was no longer afraid. That had passed, replaced by resignation. What must be, must be. In my churchly training I had been told that the great Saint Augustine had asked God to make him pure, “but not yet.” God honoured his request, making him holy late in life. My unspoken wish was similar—to be King, but not yet. God had denied my petition. I was to be King before I was ready. I waited for it like a condemned man awaiting the executioner’s strike.
But when the blow that severed me from my past came, it came softly and from behind.
I returned to Father’s Privy Chamber early the next morning, and the next, and the next. In truth it was no longer a privy chamber; it was swarming with all those whose business it was to attend a dying monarch. Linacre and two other physicians must be constantly by the King’s side; two priests must be on the other side, one to hear his last confession and the other to administer extreme unction, while a third intoned Mass at the altar at the far end of the chamber. Lawyers hovered about to consult the King about the usual general pardon for all non-felonious prisoners in the realm, and nurses and servers came in a steady stream like columns of ants marching to and fro, carrying food and medicines and linens. Even his Florentine sculptor, Torrigiano, came to consult about the tomb monument that Father had commissioned for his vault in Westminster Abbey, where his private burial chapel had been under construction for several years. Father was thorough to the end.
There was much left unsaid between us, and doubtless he had meant, in his usual orderly fashion, to leave it to the last. Having never died before, he did not realize that there would be no time, no privacy. As it was, Mary and I (Margaret had married the Scots King James IV six years before and was now in the far north) stood about awkwardly, out of place. The King spent a great deal of time looking at Mary, and I think he was seeing her mother in her. Mary was thirteen then, and a slender, fair girl.
On the fourth day he worsened and could scarcely draw his breath. He lay back on the great mounds of pillows, which were heaped to form an eerie facsimile of a throne, and looked whiter than the bleached linens surrounding him. Clouds of rose-petal smoke rose from a censer nearby, but he no longer coughed in response. It was all I could do to keep from gagging, so pungent was the odour.
&n
bsp; He indicated that he wished to say something to me, and I bent near him. “I forgot,” he whispered. His breath was foul. “Promise to fight the Infidel.” A pause. “No friends. You must have no friends.”
When I made no reply, he went on, slowly. “You know about de la Pole. You know the danger. But friends can also be the door through which treason enters. Have no friends. A King has no friends.”
I felt great pity for him. His strange vagabond life had precluded any opportunity to have normal boyhood friends, to make those bonds that last for life. I was deeply grateful that I had been given friends such as Carew, Neville, and Henry Courtenay, and I felt privileged, as they were precious to me. I remember the thought, which came to me vividly and insistently. (How honest I am to record it, in light of their subsequent treason. How much more wise I would have myself appear!)
“I would not be a hermit,” was all I answered.
“Then you would not be King,” he replied softly. “And I see now that you are singularly unsuited to be anything else. You were right—it is God’s doing. And you must—” He was interrupted by a fit of coughing so violent that blood flew out of his mouth and splattered on the floor. “A priest—” he whispered, when it had stopped. “Wolsey.”
I rushed away from his bedside, seeking Wolsey. In the dim chamber, made more so by the clouds of smoke, I could not see him. Was he at the altar? I ran to it, but did not find him. He must be in the anteroom beyond. I ran at the heavy doors, bursting them open, and stood panting on the other side. Wolsey was sitting on a bench, calmly reading a Psalter. Even at that confused moment, I was struck by his almost unnatural composure.
“My fa—”—I corrected myself—“the King calls you.”
Wolsey rose, and together we entered the Privy Chamber.
“Go to him!” I almost pushed Wolsey toward Father’s bed. But he did not move toward him. Instead he dropped to his knees by my side.
“Your Highness,” he said.
I looked about me. No one was facing Father; they were all turned toward me. Wolsey had seen it, whereas I had been blind.
“The King is dead,” said Linacre, coming toward me slowly. I saw Father lying still on the cushions, his mouth gaping open.
“Long live the King!” someone shouted from the back of the chamber, obscenely loud. Then someone else ripped asunder the closed velvet window hangings and wrenched open the casement windows. A flood of sunlight and wind rushed in, dispersing the clouds of sickroom incense.
“Long live the King!” Others took up the cry, until the chamber resounded with it as Father lay unhearing, forgotten.
My sister Mary came to me. I reached out to put my arm around her, to share our strange grief at being orphans. Instead she, too, fell to her knees in homage.
“Your Highness,” she said, taking my hand and kissing it.
“Mary! You must not—”
“You are my King, to whom I owe all obedience,” she said, turning her shining young face up to mine.
Shaking, I pulled my hand away. I pushed past Wolsey and confusedly sought a little-known door from the anteroom, which led directly to the orchard where I had stood only a few nights ago. I sought it as though it had some magic, some comfort for me.
I pushed open the heavy, studded door and came outside, dazzled by the intense April green. The trees were in full bloom, the soft petals loose now, scattering in the wind and showering over me. At once everything seemed clear, sharp, remote, as if I were seeing through a prism. From far away I heard the herald at the palace gates proclaiming me “Henry VIII by the grace of God King of England and France and Lord of Ireland.” His voice floated along in the flower-scented air, a disembodied ghost.
In a few minutes the peculiar otherworldliness passed away, and I was merely standing in a palace orchard I had known since childhood. There was nothing remotely supernatural about the orchard itself, but there was no denying the magic present that afternoon: there is always an element of magic in the making of a King.
XII
I stood there a long time, savouring the illusion of solitude, until voices broke into my thoughts—the voices of a great crowd of ground workers and servants who were converging on the orchard, trapping me.
I turned in surprised dismay and was greeted with a rising shout. “Long live the King!” a large, red-faced gardener yelled. He raised his hands. “Long live King Harry!”
I winced inwardly at the familiarity. Did they see me, then, only as Little Harry? There was no majesty, no dread in that. Just a plaything . . .
“Pretty Hal!” an old woman called. Again I shuddered, remembering another woman’s call for Edward’s pretty face.
I wanted them to be gone, to stop mocking me. I came toward them, wanting only to get past them and back into the palace. How had they found me so quickly?
Then, as I came closer to them, they began cheering wildly. And rather than fearing them, something changed inside me, and I reached out for them. Another voice than mine (although it came from my own mouth) was saying, “I thank you. I have only one wish: while I am King, may you always be as happy as you are today.” The words sprang from within me, unbidden.
“Wine!” I called, to no one in particular, knowing, somehow, that the order would be obeyed. “Wine for all!”
This set them cheering and distracted them so that I could make my way back into the palace. I closed the door behind me, thankfully. I could still hear their shouts outside.
Yet another knot of people—pages and servers and turnspits this time—was waiting on the other side of the door. They instantly fell to their knees and pledged loyalty to me, saluting me as their blessed King. Awkwardly I thanked them and continued on my way back to Father’s apartments. All along the passages it was the same: lines of people falling on their knees. How had they heard so swiftly? (I did not know then that within palace walls, news travels faster than the speed of the winged god—some say even before it happens. All I could think was: Will I never be alone again?)
At length (it seemed forever) I reached the guardroom, the outermost of the royal apartments. I wrenched open the heavy door, expecting to find blessed solitude beyond it. And I was not disappointed: the vast room, hung with faded tapestries and outmoded armour, appeared empty. This was where men customarily awaited an audience with the King. The thought crossed my mind that Father had made it as dismal and comfortless as possible to discourage most petitioners before their turns came. Even in late April, the room was chilly.
At the far end was the door leading to the Presence Chamber, the throne room. As I strode toward it, I saw a movement: a priest detached himself from the shadows and made toward the door. It was Wolsey.
“Your Grace,” he said. “I stand ready to help you. As the late King’s almoner, I am well acquainted—”
Already the self-seekers were at me. “I myself am well acquainted with the late King,” I cut him off.
“You misunderstand me, Your Grace. I meant with the . . . distressing business that is attendant upon a royal death. The obsequies, the funeral, the interment—”
“Father has already arranged for that.” I pulled at the door, but somehow he prevented me.
“Of course, with the final details,” he persisted. He was extremely persistent, this Wolsey. “The magnificent tomb he has commissioned from Torrigiano, the dazzling chapel in the Abbey, already near completed. But the personal details, such unhappy things as the embalming, the lying-in-state, the funeral effigy—”
“Minor things,” I said, trying once more to detach myself.
“Distasteful things,” he said pointedly. “Things dealing with ugliness, when your mind should be engaged elsewhere. You have much to attend to, have you not? Where is the son who could joyfully oversee his father’s funeral? And you must be joyful, Your Grace: you must rejoice, even as the Kingdom does. No gloominess, lest you remind them of—” He broke off tactfully. A rehearsed break. Yet he had touched me on vital matters.
“Then se
e to it!” I cried in frustration.
He bowed serenely in compliance as I wrenched open the door and at last found myself in the Presence Chamber, alone.
I walked across that large area, strangely plain in spite of the dais with the carved throne-chair upon it. It was situated so that the petitioner must cross the entire length of the room before seeing the King’s face. It was effective, no doubt, yet the overwhelming feeling of the room was of greyness, bleakness, which no amount of royal presence could overcome.
And from there I passed into Father’s private apartments, where he actually lived. But he was dead, I reminded myself. . . .
The great Privy Chamber, so lately turned into a dying chamber, was already changed. The incense burners were gone, the curtains opened. And the bed was empty.
“Where have you taken him?” I cried.
“The cry of Mary Magdalen,” said a voice behind me. I whirled around and saw Wolsey. Again, Wolsey. He must have followed me. “ ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.’ ”
“Do you seek to impress me with your knowledge of Scripture?” I said blandly. “All priests know such; I as well. I asked where you have taken him.”
Wolsey looked apologetic. “There were things to be attended to immediately. I regret I did anticipate my commission. They have taken him to do the death-mask, then to disembowel and embalm him.”
“I see.” It was sickening. I looked around, feeling a great need of wine. Then I felt a cup pushed into my hand, like a wish fulfilled. Wolsey again. I drank deeply, hoping to dispel the strange sense of inertia and otherworldliness that seemed to have gripped me.
Wolsey vanished, but was replaced by a young red-haired page. It was magic. I almost laughed. It was all magic. I took another draught of wine. Ambrosia. I was immortal now, like a god. No, not immortal, I corrected myself. Kings die. Yet they are gods while they live. . . .