The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers (30 page)

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Authors: Margaret George

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WILL:
One which she did not receive, alas. What Henry most feared has come to pass. The Spanish King Philip II saw Mary only as an opportunity to make England an appendage of Spain. He married her, pretending love; when she refused to put the entire English treasury and navy at his disposal, he left her and returned to Spain. She weeps and pines daily for him. She is the most unhappy of women.
XXXII
HENRY VIII:
 
There would be a formal investiture ceremony. Along with my son, I would elevate others: my cousin Henry Courtenay would become Marquis of Exeter; my nephew Henry Brandon, Charles and Mary’s nine-year-old son, would become Earl of Lincoln. I would make Henry, Lord Clifford, Earl of Cumberland; Sir Robert Radcliffe would become Viscount Fitzwalter, and Sir Thomas Boleyn, Viscount Rochford. (There are those who snicker at this last appointment, assuming it was made on Mary Boleyn’s merit. This is blatantly untrue—Sir Thomas had served me faithfully on many delicate diplomatic missions.)
WILL:
However skilled a diplomat he may have been, he cou, aststanding example. The man was quite clearly a sycophant, willing to sell his children for the highest title.
HENRY VIII:
 
It was held in June, 1525, at Wolsey’s magnificent palace, Hampton Court. Yes, it was finished at last, sitting on its banks of the river twenty miles upstream—a good six hours’ row—from London. Here the Thames had shrunk to a friendly, smaller stream, with only a slight rising and falling due to the tide. All around was green: green meadows, trees, flowering shrubs. The air seemed clear and purified ... like Eden itself?
HENRY VIII:
 
He dismounted, sliding off his beast like an ungainly sack of meal, and walked—waddled—slowly toward me.
“Your Majesty,” he said, bending as low as his girth would permit, “Hampton Court is yours.” He straightened and smiled, and I smiled back. All was proceeding according to form. I motioned to my men. But before I could do anything further, Wolsey held up his hands—great white things, like a fish’s underbelly.
“No, Your Majesty. What I said, I said truly. Hampton Court is yours.” He fumbled in his bosom, and all the while the morning sun glinted off the folds of his satin. At length he stopped and pulled out a scroll.
“It is yours, Your Majesty.” He came up to me and put it into my outstretched hand, making a great arc out of the motion.
It was a deed to Hampton Court. Affixed to it was an affidavit, signed and witnessed by two lawyers, that he was offering it as a gift to his sovereign.
I looked about me. All this—a gift? The strengthening sun hit the new red bricks, and already a heat was growing on them. They flamed against the clear June sky. Inside the compound were more apartments, two stories high, circling two inner courtyards. Wolsey’s triumph-piece. How could he give it away?
I was embarrassed. To refuse was an insult, to accept was to cause Wolsey great pain.
I lifted my head and tried to look at the throbbingly blue sky overhead, tried to think. But I got no further in my head-lifting than the row of elaborately decorated chimneys I glimpsed, tantalizingly, just beyond the outer courtyard.
I wanted this place!
“Thank you, Wolsey,” I heard myself saying. “We accept your gift, with great thanks.”
His face did not change, nor betray any emotion: in that instant, my admiration of him leapt tenfold. A consummate master of dissimulation!
WILL:
A very bad example for Henry, and worse yet that he admired it. At that time, when Henry was presented with Hampton Court, his face was a looking-glass; all men could read by its reflection what passed in his mind. Within a few years he became the man who said, “Three may keep counsel, if two be away. And if I thought my cap knew my thinking, I would cast it into the fire.” By the end of his life, he could pass a pleasant evening with his wife, knowing he had just signed a warrant for her arrest the next day. Wolsey gave him his first instructions in the art of subterfuge, deceit, and acting—and as always, Henry soon surpassed his teacher.
HENRY VIII:
 
I tuife, reached out her hand to the boy and laid it on his little shoulder. She was still beautiful, and had that contented look one wears when one is cherished and in turn cherishes the cherisher. So she was happy with Brandon. Good.
In the front row of court personages I glimpsed Bessie Blount Tailboys, witnessing her son‘s—
our
son’s—triumph. She was still pretty, and her masses of blonde curls accentuated her healthy complexion. I looked at her and smiled. She returned the smile. There was nothing between us, nothing. How had we gotten this son? A miracle!
Now the others must come. Henry Brandon, my nine-year-old nephew, to be made Earl of Lincoln. He was big and boisterous and clumsy, like his father. I glanced once again at my son, standing so still and apart from the others, his face so grave ... no, Henry Brandon was different, cousins though they might be.
Then came Henry Courtenay, my first cousin. I elevated him from Earl of Devon to Marquis of Exeter. True, there had been suspicion of his family’s loyalty, at one time. But he had been guileless and eager for friendship. I remember his clear blue eyes; they looked straight into mine as I pronounced the words that changed his status. They were the color of a faded blue gown, and utterly without malice. I was to remember them years later, they were to haunt my sleep, when he was found to be a traitor. In my dreams they were always looking at me, and at the same time the sun beating down on my head, making rivulets of sweat trickle down my face. His face was clear and one would have thought him at Ultima Thule, so cool was he.
I wanted this over now. I was hot, uncomfortable, and hungry. I must confess I also looked forward to the sumptuous banquet I knew Wolsey would have prepared. His banquets were legendary, and each time he tried to surpass his last effort. Most important, it would be cool inside. The sun was a torch overhead.
There were only a few more. Henry, Lord Clifford, became Earl of Cumberland. Sir Thomas Manners, Lord Roos, became Earl of Rutland. The lowest-ranking ones were last: Robert Radcliffe, to become Viscount Fitzwalter, and Sir Thomas Boleyn, to become Viscount Rochford. As Sir Thomas came forward, I was conscious only of a deep relief that the ceremony was ending. As he approached, I glanced briefly toward his family assembled on the platform.
And then I saw her. I saw Anne.
She was standing a little apart from her mother and her sister Mary. She wore a gown of yellow satin and her black hair fell down over her bodice—thick and lustrous and (I somehow knew) with a perfume of its own. Her face was long, with a pale cast, and her body slender.
She was not beautiful. All the official ambassadorial dispatches, all the puzzled letters later written describing her, agree on that. She had nothing of the beauty I had come to expect of court women, none of the light, plump prettiness that honeyed one’s hours. She was wild and dark and strange, and my first awareness of her was that she was staring at me. As I looked back at her, sternly, she did not drop her eyes, as all good subjects are taught to do. Instead she continued staring, and there was odd malice in her eyes. I felt unreasoning fear, and then something else....
I was forced to attend to the ceremonious words and procedure transforming her father Thomas into a viscount, and then it was over, and we could retire to Wolsey’s Great Hall for the celebratory banquet.
Katherine said nothing and kept her eyes averted. It had been humiliating for her, I realized—v width="1em">
“But I—”
“Clear the tables, Wolsey. More food will only make us stuporous when we once again face the heat.” I hoped that sounded reasonably logical.

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