Carew nodded and then shouted, “We have seen it!” and flourished his sword. He was drunk.
At last they were gone, and I turned and faced Katherine. We looked absurdly like two dolls propped up on pillows and attired in ceremonial embroidered nightclothes. There were peculiar scratchy things under the covers. I slid my hand under and pulled one out: a twig of some sort.
“It is betony, from Spain,” said Katherine. “To make the sheets smell sweet.” She slowly reached up and began to unpin her hair, which fell down heavily and spilled over her shoulders like thick honey.
Something in the action triggered my own response, and I reached out and touched the hair. It was cool and smooth, like new-made satin. And her shoulders under it were warm and smooth as well, and she seemed all the sweetness I had ever known, magically gathered into one being.
I leaned toward her and kissed her; her lips were warm and plump. Her body pressed hungrily against me; I could feel her breasts through the thin nightdress. She had extraordinarily large breasts for such a small, slight girl, I thought, from somewhere outside myself. There was still a part of me detachedly noting such things, but the main part of me was now unhinged, incoherent with excitement. Shyness was forgotten as my desire leaped full-grown into life. I pulled at the straps of her nightdress, impatiently. One of them broke. She grasped it, frowning. “My Lord—” she began.
“I’ll give you others!” I said harshly. “Take it off, then!”
“First you must put out the candle.”
“No. I want to see you! See your beauty,” I added awkwardly.
“No candles,” she said. “No lights. Please . . . Henry.” She said my name with great hesitation.
I swatted at the candle, and it went out. Then I threw off my own clothing and began tugging at hers. It was so rushed and impatient—but is there any desire, anywhere, as towering as a seventeen-year-old boy’s?
She pushed my hands away and carefully took off the nightdress herself, dropping it daintily on the floor. Then, unexpectedly, she turned in the bed and pressed herself against me. “Ah, Henry—” she murmured, sliding her arms up and around me, over my back. She kept kissing me, sighing and making little sounds. Had I died and gone straightway to a pagan paradise?
It was all so very easy, after all. In fact, it seemed to be prescribed: there was nothing else one could do effectively to ease that desire.
Katherine seemed to be a virgin. But then, it is hard for one virgin to be sure of another. Thus, years later, when the controversy raged about this very question, I kept a diplomatic silence, lest I betray myself.
XIV
WILL:
All of England went on a general holiday for approximately half a year—from old Henry’s death in April until the autumn winds blew. There was a great rejoicing among the people, from the lowest (with whom I consorted in those days) to (I assume) the highest. The mood pervaded everything at the time but is very difficult to describe now: a feeling of jubilation and expansiveness. They were ready to embrace Young Harry (as they called him), permit him anything, then forgive him for it. They almost longed for him to sin, so that they could show him their great acceptance.
But he did not sin. He behaved well, as if he were following a private code entitled “The Honour of a Prince.” Not only was he young and handsome and rich, but he attended five Masses a day, had honoured his youthful promise to make the Spanish princess his wife, and had turned the gloomy court of his father into a glittering pavilion of wisdom, wit, and talent. The people waited anxiously to see what sort of Coronation he would give them. He did not disappoint them.
HENRY VIII:
I chose Midsummer’s Day for our Coronation. Midsummer’s Day, 1509. Even today I cannot write those words without stirring the scent of green summer from the dry leaves of an old man’s memory. High summer almost forty years ago, still preserved like pressed flowers in a few withered minds. . . .
But that day there were thousands upon thousands who saw the young Henry and Katherine winding their way through the London streets to their Coronation in Westminster Abbey. They shrieked and held out their hands to us. I can still see those faces, healthy (perhaps slightly flushed with the wine I had ordered for the populace?) and filled with joy. They wanted me and I wanted them, and on both sides we believed we would live forever in this moment.
When we reached the Abbey, I dismounted while Katherine was helped from her litter by her ladies-in-waiting. She was wearing the costume of a virgin bride, all in white, with her golden-brown hair hanging loose. I held out my hand and took hers. Before us stretched a great white carpet over which we must walk before entering the Abbey. A thousand people lined the walkway.
Suddenly it was all very familiar. Once before, I had led Katherine over just such a walkway and into a great church. For a moment I had a chill, as if a raven had flown across the sun. Then it was gone, so that I could turn to her and whisper, “Do you remember another time when you walked beside me on a state occasion?”
She looked up at me (then, she had looked straight across). “Yes, my Lord. When you were but ten. But already then I sensed that you were—must be—”
She broke off as we reached the doors of the Abbey, where Archbishop Warham waited for us. Just then a great cry went up behind us, and I turned to see the people falling on the white carpet, attacking it with knives and shears. They would cut out pieces to be saved, to remember the day King Henry VIII was crowned, to be passed on to children and children’s children. (Where are those pieces now, I wonder?) It was a custom, I was told. Still, the sight of those flashing knives . . .
Within the Abbey, Katherine and I walked slowly down the great nave, with platforms and seats on either side which had been put up to enable the great lords and noble families present to witness the ceremony. Upon reaching the high altar, we separated, and I went to the ancient, scarred wooden throne-chair which had been used for Coronations for centuries. I remember thinking how crudely carved it was, how rough the wood. Then I took my place in it, and it fitted as though it had been constructed just for me.
The Archbishop faced the people and asked them in a clear, ringing voice whether they would have me for King. They shouted “aye” three times in succession, the last so loud it echoed off the great vault. I wondered (it is strange, the thoughts that come to one during such moments) whether it reached my sleeping family in their private chapel behind the high altar—Father, Mother, my deceased siblings Elizabeth and Edmund and the last baby, all interred there.
But this was a day for the living. Warham anointed me, and the oil was warm and pleasingly scented. Then, after my vows, he placed the heavy, jewel-encrusted crown on my head, and I prayed that I might be worthy of it, might preserve and defend it. When he said Mass, I vowed to do only good for England, upon peril of my immortal soul. I would serve her as a good and perfect knight.
Some theorists say a Coronation is but a ceremony, yet it changed me, subtly and forever: I never forgot those vows.
But shortly afterwards, as I looked back on the two months since my accession, I was surprised at how many changes had crept into my being. In April I had been a frightened seventeen-year-old; now (having had my eighteenth birthday, I considered myself much older) I was a crowned King. And nothing untoward had happened, none of the disasters I had feared: no one had challenged my right to the crown (although I had not taken Father’s advice about executing de la Pole; he was still healthy in the Tower). I had taken command of the Privy Council and the Board of Green Cloth. I had married. When Katherine told me, a month after the Coronation, that she was with child, I laughed outright. It was all so easy, this business of being King. What had I feared?
And through all those days there ran yet another shade of gold: the gold of my Katherine’s hair. Her hair as we spun in dances; her hair flying as we rode across cleared fields and sun-spotted forests; her hair falling over the pillows, her shoulders, my arms, in bed. I was happier than I had ever believed it possib
le for mortal man to be, so blissfully content I felt it sinful—as indeed it was.
XV
Then it ended—abruptly, as dreams do. It ended the day Wolsey (who had created a de facto position for himself as messenger between me and the Privy Council) came to tell me that “the French emissary had arrived.”
What French emissary? I wondered. Perhaps some catastrophe had overtaken King Louis XII? I must confess I half-hoped the old spider was dead.
In the past few years the French had suddenly embarked upon an aggressive policy. In the almost one hundred years since the glorious days of our own Henry V’s virtual conquest of France, they had recovered like a moribund man throwing off the plague. First they gained some little strength and rallied their own forces; then they pushed us back—out of Normandy, out of Aquitaine—until we clung only to Calais and a small neighbouring area. Then they began gobbling up surrounding territory: Burgundy, Brittany. Then, again, their appetite grew ever more ravenous, like that of a recovering plague-man. Not satisfied with recovering their own lost dominions, they wished to seize others: Italy in particular. No matter that they were sworn to “universal peace” by the Treaty of Cambrai, which they had signed along with the Emperor, the Spanish, and the Pope; they invaded northern Italy nonetheless, and began threatening Venice as well.
England was also formally bound to peace with France by a treaty concluded between Father and Louis. Yet upon Father’s death it became void, and I was not sure I wished to renew it. The Pope had been issuing distressed cries for help as he saw the French encroaching upon Italy; and I had not forgotten that Louis had honoured Edmund de la Pole at court, and even now was harbouring the younger de la Pole brother, Richard. So Louis’s death would solve many problems, or at least halt the voracious appetite of the French state for a little while.
I dressed (or rather, put on my “audience clothes”—this involved the ministrations of a good half-dozen men) and made my way to the Audience Chamber. Wolsey had hurriedly summoned the Privy Council to attend, so that they were awaiting me as I took my place on the Chair of Presence.
The French emissary was ushered in—a perfumed, dandified creature. He made a long-winded greeting, which I cut off, as his reeking person offended me. He stank worse than the rose incense in Father’s death-chamber. I demanded to know his business, and at length he disclosed it. He came bearing a letter from Louis in reply to the one I had purportedly written begging my brother the Most Christian King of France to live in peace with me. He handed me the letter. It stank as well—from proximity to its carrier?
As I unrolled the letter and read it rapidly, I could feel my face growing red, as it does in moments of stress, to my embarrassment.
“What?” I said slowly. “The King of France, who dares not look me in the face—let alone make war on me!—says I sue for peace?”
The phrase “dares not look me in the face” was, I admit, a trifle overblown, but I was stunned. Someone had written a cringing, demeaning letter in my name, forged my signature, and used the Royal Seal!
“Which of you has done this?” I asked, glaring at the line of councillors on either side of the dais.
Was it Warham, my Lord Chancellor? He looked up at me mournfully, like a sad old dog.
Ruthal, the Secretary? I stared into his blackberry-like eyes, which gave nothing back.
Fox, Lord Privy Seal? He smiled smugly, protected by his churchly vestments—or so he thought.
What of the others—Howard, Talbot, Somerset, Lovell? They smiled back, blandly. None of them had the wherewithal to have done it. It must have been one of the churchmen.
I turned and made to leave the room, shaking with anger, not trusting myself to speak further.
“Your Grace!” called Fox in a clear, imperious voice. “The emissary awaits your reply.”
I whirled. “Then give him one!” My voice rang in the large chamber, all freshly bedecked in Flemish tapestry and gilt. “You who are so adept at composing royal utterances—you may continue.” I left the room. Behind me I heard the buzz of voices—angry, bewildered.
Had I distressed them, embarrassed them? No matter. I had wanted to kill Fox, to choke his leathery neck, then fling him out into the courtyard and let the dogs fall on him. Yet I had restricted myself to the use of words alone. At least the foppish Frenchman could not report to Louis that the English King had bodily attacked one of his own ministers.
I leaned against the other side of the door and caught my breath. It was all clear now. Father meant to rule from the grave through his three faithful councillors. That was why he had appointed no Protector: this was surer and more secretive, both of which would appeal strongly to him. So now he could lie serenely in his magnificent tomb-monument—“dwelling more richly dead than alive,” as one court wit had put it—happy in the knowledge that his untrusted, wayward son would never actually rule.
He is insensitive and stupid. . . . Did he think me so stupid I would not object to others’ forging my signature or using the Royal Seal? This was treason. Did he suppose me insensitive even to treason?
Within the privacy of my Retiring Room, I poured out a large cup of wine. (I was free for the moment of the unwelcome ministrations of servers.) Anger and humiliation vied for control within me, both to be eventually replaced by a cold hardness. At length, it was not Fox I wished to punish. He had merely followed orders, remaining obedient to the King to whom he had long ago pledged loyalty. God send me such a servant!
I walked over to Father’s bed. I had stripped his drab hangings from it, replaced his straw mattress with one of down, had soft-woven woollen blankets put on. I had spent his money, destroyed his furniture, broken his marriage negotiations, negated his dowry correspondence, put logs in his barren fireplaces. I had done all this, yet I had not effaced his presence from my life. He was still King in his realm and council.
I flung myself out full length on the bed. What a fool I had been! (Was Father right, then? My mind shrank from that possibility.) So I thought being King was easy? So had it been planned to be, to lull me. . . .
I needed my own men. Or even one man. Someone not a stale remnant from Father’s reign, but entirely mine. Who? I lay staring distractedly at the carved underside of the wooden canopy, seeing cherubs and lover’s knots and hunting parties, but nothing came to my mind.
“Your Grace?” The door had opened quietly. I sat up, angry. I had not given permission. . . .
It was Wolsey. He bore a scroll of some sort.
“Not now,” I muttered, waving him away. I had no wish to read figures. “And I gave express orders I was not to be disturbed!” So I was not obeyed even in my own private quarters.
He bowed. “I know. Yet I was able to persuade your groom . . .”
Wolsey. Yes. Wolsey was my man. I was able to persuade your groom. Subtle, golden-tongued Wolsey. Why had I not thought of him? Because I was a little afraid of him, afraid of that awesome efficiency, that inexhaustible energy, coupled with that tireless, amoral mind. Yet I needed him; I must admit that. I was in desperate need of him.
These thoughts flashed through my mind so swiftly that there was no pause before I grunted, “What do you want?”
“To bring you a transcript of what happened after your departure.” He smiled. “ ’Twas quite humorous. I wish there was some way you could have beheld that Frenchman’s discomfiture. Fox said—”
But I was hardly listening, as I observed him critically. How clever to bring me the transcript. And his flattery was subtle. He did not praise my looks, my prowess, did not compare me to Hercules or the like. Rather, he went to the heart of the matter; he knew where I was weakest and sought to shore it up. Yes, Wolsey . . .
Wolsey soon took his place on the Privy Council, by my express command. I told Fox and Ruthal and Warham blandly that perhaps they would welcome another cleric to their ranks, to make an even balance with the laymen on the Council. They seemed pleased. The fools.
In spite of my preoccupation with
these matters, I did not wish to neglect Katherine. I arranged entertainments for her, so that she might pass her days serenely. In particular, I went out of my way to obtain good musicians for a season at court.
After a lengthy exchange of letters, I had finally acquired a musical coup: Friar Denis Memmo, the organist from St. Mark’s in Venice. It required a great deal of gold (everything did, I was learning) as well as a discreet defrocking and reinstatement as a royal priest in my employ. But it was done, and he had come to England, bringing with him from Venice a magnificent organ. I was anxious to examine it, as I was interested in the art and science of organ construction and how this affected its tone. Now the splendid organ was installed in Greenwich Palace, and Memmo was to perform for the entire court.
Wolsey (now in charge of such minute details as well as weightier ones) had assembled all the chairs from all the privy chambers in the palace, so that everyone could be comfortably seated. He had ordered a table of light refreshments to be laid along one wall, and placed fresh candles all about—large, fine ones which would certainly last the entire recital and not make foul smoke to damage Memmo’s instrument.
Katherine and I entered the room first and sat in the large royal chairs in front. It was November now, and Katherine’s gowns had had to be let out. Her movements were altered, and that made me proud. My heir lay beneath those green silken folds, growing toward his birth.
Memmo’s performance was dazzling. He played for almost three hours, and there was no stirring in the court audience. They were enthralled.
Afterwards, although it was not far from midnight, we gathered round the long tables, laid out with prawn jellies and custard and fritters with manchet. The dishes were still moist and fresh: Wolsey’s choices. Everyone was talking at once, and Memmo was surrounded by admirers. That pleased me. The well-prepared repast pleased me as well. I must commend Wolsey.