A soft sound turned me round to see a server with a tray laden with food. I took it and sat at my small work table and ate. The cheese was exceptionally good, golden and mellow, and not hard as the cheese had been recently. The ale was dark and cold. I finished it all. No matter how much I ate, I never seemed to grow wider, only taller. I was hungry all the time, and at night sometimes my bones seemed to hurt. Linacre, one of the King’s physicians, said it was caused by my rapid growth. He said the bones were aching from being stretched. In the past year I had grown almost five inches. I was now taller than the King; I lacked only a little of the six-foot mark.
My favourite time of day approached: the late afternoon, when the boys and young men at court gathered in the enclosed exercise area (yet another innovation) or in the Great Hall for martial exercises. Since it was not dangerous, the King grudgingly allowed me to participate.
From November until March the boys at court were confined indoors. Their only release came during these exercises, which were rowdy, loud, and undisciplined. I was the youngest; most of the others were between fourteen and nineteen. Because of my size and natural ability I was by no means at a disadvantage by age, but because of who I was. At first they had been wary of me, inhibited, but, as always among young people, that wore off as we came to know one another. I was their future King; but I think that was overlooked as we (I can think of no better word) played. I certainly never felt anything except the usual striving the youngest feels to prove himself to his older companions.
WILL:
HENRY VIII:
There were a dozen or so of us. The oldest was Charles Brandon, the youth I had first met at Sheen. He was nineteen, but our age difference did not loom so large now. Unlike the others, he had not come to court with his father. His father was dead—killed in the same battle on Bosworth Field where Father had won his crown, singled out by Richard himself because he had held the Tudor dragon standard. Because he could not reward the dead man, the new King honoured his son instead, and brought him to live at court. Thus we were bound to one another by family ties as well as personal affinity.
Nicholas Carew was sixteen. He was very handsome and took a great interest in fashion, saying it was very important to be au courant in the French mode. He was betrothed to the sister of Francis Bryan, his best friend and companion, an equally avid follower of French fashions. They were always discussing their wardrobes and what sort of feathers might eventually replace fur on caps. Their hearts were more in the banquet hall than on the playing field, and perhaps that is why Francis Bryan was later to lose an eye in a joust. He simply ran right into a lance. Afterwards he commissioned a jewelled eye patch to be made.
Edward Neville, also sixteen, was a member of one of the most powerful families of the north country and had a more robust appetite for the outdoors than Bryan or Carew. There was an extraordinary physical resemblance between Neville and myself, so that from a middling distance it was difficult to tell us apart. This gave rise, in later years, to an absurd rumour that he was my illegitimate son. Quite an interesting thought, considering that he was about five years older than I.
Henry Guildford, William Compton—they were fifteen, and cared for nothing but reading battle stories and dreaming of invading France. And Thomas Wyatt, son of one of the King’s councillors, was even younger than I, and was there only to watch. He was from Kent and, like me, had spent his earliest years in the country. Even at that age he liked to write poetry, although he never showed any of it to me.
WILL:
For which you should have been thankful. One of Wyatt’s later pastoral pursuits in Kent was being his neighbour Anne Boleyn’s lover ... perhaps the first? A signal honour, that. Later he wrote a number of indiscreet poems about her, which he wisely refrained from showing to Harry.
HENRY VIII:
When I descended the steps into the Hall that afternoon, most of my friends were already there and trying on their padded doublets. So they intended to use the swords this afternoon, and perhaps do a bit of hand-to-hand combat as well.
Bryan and Carew came in behind me, carrying a large black object, which 7;s the new Italian armour!”
Quickly everyone rushed over to see it. Everyone except Brandon. He just stood, his large arms crossed. “Where did you get this?” he asked.
“We stole it,” said Carew.
“No,” amended Bryan. “We borrowed it. From a knight who came to petition the King. He left it in the guard room when he went in for his audience.”
“Return it,” said Brandon.
“We will,” they chorused. “But we only wanted you to see it. Look, the decorations—”
“I said return it!” bellowed Brandon.
Carew raised his eyes in appeal to me, as I had feared he would. Yet it was bound to happen, sooner or later....
“Yes. Return it,” I muttered. I hated being put in this position.
“Only if you promise to establish an armoury of your own when you become King. There should be one in England, after all.”
“Oh, go!” I said, embarrassed. They picked up the half-suit of armour and reluctantly took it back up the stairs.
Afterward, as we watched Compton and Bryan facing each other in hand-to-hand combat across the rush-padded mat, I leaned over to Brandon. “Thank you,” I said, “for telling them. I dared not.”
He shrugged. “Yet it was to you they turned. Best get used to that, Your Grace.”
A thud. Compton had been thrown, and Bryan was bending over him. Neville and another boy took their places. The air was rank now from the sweat and exertion, which mingled with the odours of last night’s dinner in the Hall.
Night was falling already. Someone had just come in to light the torches. Soon this must end, and I would have to go back to my solitary room.
I looked at the others around me. They were well-favoured and healthy and—young men. Some were betrothed, one was already married, and most had had women. They talked about it sometimes, casually, which meant it was not even new to them. Like the first time one takes the Sacrament, one anticipates it and thinks much about it afterwards. But as it becomes part of one’s life, -one says easily: “I have received my Maker.” Just so did Bryan and Compton and Carew talk of women.
WILL:
How like Harry to find a religious simile for the sexual act! The Sacrament, indeed!
HENRY VIII:
So I would think about Katherine alone. I was to be betrothed. I would not tell anyone yet. And I wondered: when was I to be married?
We were betrothed, formally, three months later, with the provision that the marriage would take place on my fourteenth birthday.
The ceremony of betrothal took place at the Bishop of Salisbury’s residenardeners claimed, and certainly the plants continued to bloom an extraordinarily long time.
Father and I and the lawyers were to meet Katherine and her Spanish lawyers directly at the Bishop’s. So we rode through London, but took separate routes, lest it appear that we were too familiar already.
In truth, I had not seen Katherine since she and Arthur had left court to go to Ludlow. She had been ill herself of the same fever that had killed Arthur, and had not even attended the funeral or been able to return to London for some time. When she did come, she had been settled in a riverside house on the great open Strand between the city and Westminster. It was called Durham House. There she lived, surrounded by her Spanish household, speaking Spanish, wearing only Spanish clothes, eating Spanish food. For a time everyone had waited to see if she might be carrying Arthur’s child, but that soon proved to be merely wishful thinking on the King’s part. Arthur was dead indeed.
And now I was to have his leavings. That rainy June day a little over a year since his death, I went to claim the first of them.
We took the royal barge to the water steps of Blackfriars monastery. Horses awaited us there, and we rode up a muddy lane that led away from the river and up to Fleet Street, itself a muddy little path connecting th
e Strand to the streets of London. We saw few people, as we were outside the main part of London the entire time. It was not a pretty journey, and on the way it began to drizzle, just to complete our discomfort.
At the Bishop’s house on that dismal little street, we were ushered into a small room where Katherine and her party awaited us. It stank of wet wool and too many bodies packed into a tight space. It seemed that the number of lawyers required as experts and witnesses had emptied the nearby Inns of Court. And they were all chattering away at once, like a great company of monkeys.
Katherine was somewhere in the midst of them, but it took a moment to see her. When the noise of learned talking and the scratching of pens on parchment was done, they led her out and bade us stand together.
She is so small, was my first thought. She had not grown, whereas I had.
She is so beautiful, was my second.
Katherine was now seventeen, and at her peak of beauty. She was seen by so few people in those days that there remains no legend, no popular memory of that beauty. She spent her young years almost cloistered, and by the time she emerged, some of it had already gone. But then ... O, then!
We stood side by side, stiff and awkward. The King’s lawyer thrust a paper into the Bishop’s hand on one side, and that of the Spanish lawyer on the other. Then we repeated vows without once looking at each other, long vows in Latin. And signed our names on several pieces of paper.
That being done, we were immediately forced apart by our respective lawyers. We were not to speak to one another, apparently, until we found ourselves in bed together in two years’ time. We left the Bishop’s residence by separate doors, just as we had come in.
Father said nothing to me until we were safely on the big, clumsy royal barge, crossing the Thames on our way back to Greenwich. The water was a flat, ugly grey-brown, reflecting the overcast sky. Here and there a piece of garbage floated by. People along the banks seemed to consideer in and about London.” I saw a dead dog turn slowly over and sink from sight in the water. When I was King, I would see that something was done about the misuse of the river.
“You understand,” Father suddenly said in a low voice, so that the boatmen could not overhear, “that you must not see or communicate with the Princess in any way. Leave her to her Spaniards in her Spanish house.”
“But surely I should send her tokens, write—”
“You fool!” He set his mouth in anger. “Do you see yourself as a suitor? Tokens!” He spat out the word. “You will do nothing. Nothing. Leave her be.”
“But—why?”
“Because this betrothal is on paper only. I doubt that a wedding will ever take place.”
“Then why the ceremony? Why the arrangements?”
“It means nothing. What one ceremony does, another can undo. Surely you know that! It is nearly the first rule of kingship. The ceremony was merely to buy us some time with the Spaniards, to make a show of our good intentions.”
“Which are neither good nor honest nor kind.” Another dead animal swept past, churning in the foam. It stank. Everything seemed corrupted to me: the river, Father, myself. Everything except the Princess.
“The Spanish are deceiving us about the dowry. There has been much lying and misrepresentation in the matter. I do not think it will be satisfactorily settled. Therefore I. feel that a marriage between you and the Princess will not be feasible.”
“Does the Princess ... participate ... in these deceptions?”
“She knows nothing. She does as she is told. As you must.”
I gripped the carved railing so hard I hurt my hands.
I did not want to do as I was told.
IX
In the end, I had no recourse but to do precisely that. I could get no message widen played games and fished off the Bridge. They all seemed to know one another. That was the oddest thing to me. Here there were so many of them, such a great gathering of families, yet all so familiar.
It was not that way at court. There were many families at court, to be sure, and often the husband would be in the King’s household as an attendant in the Privy Chamber, for example, and his wife serve the Queen as lady-of-the-Bedchamber and his children be pages and maids of honour. They were entitled to lodgings at court, which they usually accepted, and so the Palace might house some two hundred families. But it was not a close group, and there never was such camaraderie as I saw that June night among the bridge-dwellers.
We wound through the streets in the very heart of London. Houses here were closely packed, and each must have sheltered twenty inhabitants, judging from the number pouring out into the street. They were celebrating the end of their working day, and for a few hours would revel in the fading violet light.
As we turned west and went past St. Paul’s and then left the city by the Ludgate, I suddenly knew where we were bound. We crossed the little bridge over the stinking, sluggish Fleet River and were soon there, at the Bishop of Salisbury’s house.
It was almost full dark now. Father dismounted and bade me do the same. Once we were standing side by side before the Bishop’s door, he gripped my arm and said harshly, “Now you will tell the Bishop you are here to make a solemn protestation against your betrothal to Princess Katherine. You will sign papers saying it troubles your conscience. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said dully. So Father meant to have it both ways: an open betrothal, a secret disclaimer. The dowry business had not been settled. I had heard it from Brandon. People talked freely before him, and he in turn told me what I needed to know.
Father gave me a shove and indicated that I was to knock for entrance. The Bishop opened promptly; it had clearly been arranged in advance.
“The Prince is sore troubled in his conscience about the betrothal to his brother’s widow,” said Father. “He is here to assuage that conscience.”
The Bishop murmured sympathetically and led us in. The papers were already spread out on his work table, neatly lettered, with a large space on the bottom for my signature.
“He is anguished,” said Father. He played his part well.
“Ah,” said the Bishop. “And what troubles you, my son?”
Father had not rehearsed this with me. I had no idea of what to say, except the truth. “The thought of the Princess in my brother’s bed torments me! I cannot bear it!”
Yes, that was true. The thought of her and Arthur together was repugnant to me. I wanted her entirely to myself, for myself. Yet she had lain with him....
“Because it would be incestuous,” supplied the Bishop. “To uncover thy brother’s nakedness, as the Scriptures say.”
“No ...” I wanted to tell him it was not so much because Arthur was my brother as that he was—had been—a man. I would have felt the same no matter who iShe looked horrified. I could make out a pale face and the great, open O of her mouth. “Henry!” she whispered. “It is a sacrilege—”
“I meant no disrespect for the Sacrament. But oh, Katherine, I had to see you!” I reached my hand out and grasped hers. “Three years! Three years they haven’t let me see you, or speak to you, or—”
“I ... know.” Her voice was soft and her accent heavy. Possibly she had understood very few of my words.
“And you are my betrothed! I am—I am responsible for you.” Where I had gotten that notion I cannot say—certainly not from Father. It must have been from the knightly tales I still doted on. “It distresses me that you are alone, and have so little.”
She flared. “And who told you that?” Spanish pride—my first glimpse of it.
“It is well known. Everybody says—”
“I have no need for pity!”
“Of course not. But for love, my dearest Katherine—” My other hand sought hers. “I love you!”
She looked discomfited, as well she might. “We must go back,” was all she finally said.
“No one will find us here. Not for another hour,” I insisted. “Oh, stay a little! Talk with me. Tell me—tell me what you d
o, how you spend your hours.”
She leaned forward. Our faces were only a few inches away in the close, warm darkness. “I—I pray. And read. And do needlework. And write the King my father. And”—this so low I had to strain to hear it—“I think of you, my Lord.”
I was so excited I could hardly refrain from embracing her. “Is that true? And I think of you, my Lady.” If only I had had my lute and been some other place, I could have sung to her, sung of my love. I had already composed several ballads to that effect, and practised them well. “I will wed you, Kate,” I promised, with absolutely no authority to do so. “I swear it! As soon as possible.”
“You promised to wed me on your fourteenth birthday. That was a year ago,” she said slowly.
“I—” I could not tell her of the hideous “denial” I had made—been forced to make. “I know,” I said. “But I mean to, and soon. The King—”
“The King does not mean you to wed me. That is clear. I am twenty years old, and no child—as others may be.”
That seemed unnecessarily cruel to say to her only champion and protector. “I cannot help my age, my Lady. I was not free to choose the day of my birth. But I am not so young as you and others may think.” With those cryptic words (I had no idea then, and have none today, precisely what I meant by them), I squeezed her hand once more. “You shall see!” Then I whispered, “We had best leave. Priests will about be soon.”
She rose hastily and gathered her skirts. A light lemon scent came to me, floating over the stale incense. Then she was gone.
A moment later I stepped out of the confessional alcove, well pleased with my successful intrigue. I knetisfied that the scurrilous rumors about Fra Diego were lies. She had been too distressed by the thought of my desecrating the confessional by my innocent rendezvous. She was clearly a deeply religious, pious woman.