The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers (38 page)

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Authors: Margaret George

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Later, in her apartments, Anne broke down and sobbed. She flung herself against me and begged me to hold her, in a manner I had never seen before.
“Now, now, sweetheart,” I said. “If you are to be Queen, you must learn composure. You must not let every little thing any fool says upset you so. He was but a self-appointed prophet.someone answer him from the same pulpit; you’ll see. Cheer up, sweetheart. Look. I have brought you—”
“There’s more—more—I did not want to tell you—it would worry you —but I must—”
She was babbling. Clearly the Scriptural references had upset her. Gently I took her hand and led her over to the fireplace, where we seated ourselves. Then I poured out a cup of wine for each of us and handed it to her. She took it with trembling hands.
“Now, what possible stock can you put in what he said? He was a fanatic, wishing to frighten us. Like that absurd ‘Holy Maid of Kent’ with all her ‘prophecies’ who has been wandering round the countryside, proclaiming our doom.”
“They hate me,” she said. “They hate me, they hate me—oh, it was dreadful!”
“Not so dreadful. I have heard worse.”
“No. Not the sermon. The ... incident. They tried to kill me.”
“Who?”
“A mob of women. Last week. I was alone for supper in one of the small royal river-houses near the Tower. Then one of the house-servers came and told me there was a mob of seven or eight thousand women coming, armed with sticks and stones. They meant to set upon me as I left and kill me!
“I looked out the window and saw them approaching. It was true! I rushed to my boatmen and got across the Thames just as they arrived. They set up a great howling and threw stones after me, screaming and cursing me!” She shuddered. “Everyone curses me. With so many curses, how can I hope to escape them all?”
“Why did you not tell me this?”
“Because... I did not wish to add to your worries. And because, in a peculiar way, until I told you, I could believe that it did not truly happen. Now it is real.”
“A mob of demented women, nothing more. The kingdom is full of them. Remember that one out of every ten men is probably half-mad, and there are more than three million men in England. That makes for many madmen. It means nothing,” I assured us both. “It means nothing.”
XLIV
B
ut of course it did. What she said was true. The people did not like her. This was partly because they were still so loyal to Katherine, and partly because they disliked for a King to marry his subject. My grandfather Edward IV had done so, and there was great resentment over it, even though he had not had to put aside another wife to do so. Yet such was my love and determination that that did not deter me.
Meanwhile, the
ménage à trois
was growing ever more unbearable. On hunting trips and progresses I must be with Katherine, leaving Anne behind. Yet at York Place—Wolsey’s vacated London palace—Anne and I lived without Katherine, as there were no Queen’s quarters there, it being a former ecclesiastical dwelling. There Anne and I could pretend she was my wife and Queen; she could preside over banquets and entertainments by my side. But by next day, it would be over. There was always some ambassadorial reception for which I must repair to Westminster and the stolid Katherine.
The aggravating situation reached its peak during the summer of 1531. It was nruly happolsey had called his “secret” tribunal to hear my case, and two since the ill-fated legatine court with Campeggio and Wolsey. I had just reached my fortieth birthday and was feeling more than usually melancholy about it. I had begotten my first child at eighteen; yet here I was, forty and without a legitimate heir.
The summer months were to be spent at Windsor. Katherine seemed determined to dog my footsteps. If I went to the garden to walk alone, she followed, a bulky black figure in the bright sunshine. If I walked the gallery during a sudden thundershower, when rain fell like javelins on the hollyhocks and roses beneath the windows, I could be sure that she would appear from a door and walk behind me, like a detached shadow.
Not only did she attempt to attach herself to me like the sticky substance glaziers use to hold glass onto leaded panes, she also tried to keep Anne away from me by forcing her to play cards hour after hour. As long as Anne had to sit and play ruff-and-honours with Katherine, she could not walk with me by the river or in the garden. All the time Katherine maintained an outward sweetness; all the time she was writing treasonous letters to the Pope and Emperor. Only once did she reveal her true feelings toward Anne. During one of their interminable card games, Anne happened to hold a king.
Katherine said, “You have good hap to stop at a king, Lady Anne. But you are not like the others. You will have all, or none.”
 
This could not go on. I could bear no more. The very sight of Katherine made me shake with suppressed anger. I knew I had to leave, and the only way to do so was simply—to do so.
I told Anne to make herself ready, and that we would leave early in the morning for a hunting expedition and progress.
That night I felt an immense sense of freedom and exhilaration. One by one I was cutting the ties that bound me to a dead past and made me helpless and angry—Wolsey, the Pope, Katherine. Eagerly, I packed for the progress.
WILL:
Henry has been accused of cowardice for his habit of never seeing his so-called victim after he had made up his mind to rid himself of that person. He sneaked out of Windsor Castle at dawn without ever telling Katherine good-bye; he avoided seeing Wolsey at the end; he stalked away from the May Day joust when Anne dropped a handkerchief to someone Henry thought had been her lover, and never saw her again; he refused to see Catherine Howard or Cromwell after he learned of their “crimes.”
But knowing the man as I did, I think it was rather prudence that made him act as he did. Both Katherine and Wolsey repeatedly said that if they could have had just an hour in his presence they could have persuaded him to change his mind. Well, he knew that and chose to absent himself, lest he falter. At bottom, he was rather sentimental and easily moved. Yet he knew what he must do, painful as it might be, and did not want to be dissuaded.
HENRY VIII:
 
It was July, and even the dawn was warm. I had been dressed for what seemed like hours, and as I stood in the courtyard ready for the horses to be brought out, I waited for the sky to lighten—and for Anne to appear. Eventually she did, wearing a grey h reclike me, she had slept well.
The small party—just myself, Anne, her brother George and cousin Francis Bryan, and five grooms—left the cobbled courtyard as the sky began to lighten in the east. The sound of the horses’ hooves seemed unnaturally loud to my ears. I suppose that deep inside I was afraid of Katherine hearing.
After the castle was far in the background, I breathed easier. By this time the sun was coming up and shone with all the promise of a high summer day. Anne rode beside me, as I had been aching for her to do on my summer progresses for the past four years. The others rode discreetly behind.
As we passed under the green boughs, heavy now with their full growth of leaves, I looked over at her, marvelling at how well grey became her. There was not one colour that did not suit her—an unusual thing in a woman.
As our horses came close together on one narrow path, I leaned over toward her.
“We are not going back,” I said.
She looked puzzled, then ill at ease. I could tell she was thinking of her possessions, clothes, jewellery, books, all still in her apartments at Windsor.
“We can send for your things later. Certainly I have left more behind than you!” Then my voice changed. “Yes, I have left more behind than you have. I have left Katherine behind. Forever.”
She stared at me in disbelief. Recklessly, I went on. “I shall never see her again! I hate her! She has done everything within her power to bring about my ruin. And yet she still poses as my solicitous wife. Nay, I shall never see her again!”
Anne smiled. “And where are we bound tonight, my love?”
“Deerfield. To the royal hunting lodge there.”
 
Deerfield was a rather tumble-down, ramshackle building that had been a great favourite of my grandfather Edward’s. I liked it because it was so different from the formal palaces. There were only ten rooms, all of them roughly planked, with low-beamed ceilings. The floors slanted, as the old supporting beams underneath had begun to sag. Downstairs a large room with a stone fireplace functioned as a dining hall, as a warming area, and as a place simply to gather and talk.
It gave me the illusion whenever I was there that I was just an ordinary man, a man who went hunting, walked through the woods, ate a simple supper of venison, and sat before the fire with a cup of wine and his beloved beside him. Tonight I was that man, and more.
Anne was beautiful, with the fire playing upon her face. I sat beside her and merely watched her in amazement that such a creature could exist. I thought of the snug bedroom upstairs and the wide, if hard, bed within it. Could not she give herself to me now? I had cast Katherine aside.
We were alone. I reached out for her and kissed her—at first sweetly, then more urgently. Soon I was so aroused I could hardly restrain myself. I fumbled at the strings of her bodice and was surprised when she passively let me undo them and caress her breasts, then kiss them. The fire made strange shadows on her face and body, but that only enhanced the experience. At length I stumbled to my feet and pulled her up. Without a word, we ascended the ed it. As I took Anne’s hand to bring her inside, I felt a resistance. She stood planted firmly outside the threshold.
“No—I must not,” she said.
I felt near explosion. “God’s blood! Come inside!”
“No. And if I do, I am lost.” She gently pulled me back out toward her, looking at me imploringly all the while. “I want you so,” she said. “But I cannot. Our child must be lawfully born. Else all this is for nothing, and I am indeed what the people call me—the King’s Great Whore.”
Before I could say anything further, she slipped away from my grasp and ran down the corridor to her own quarters.
I spent another sleepless night.
The days, nonetheless, were pleasant ones. Hunting from sunup to sundown, with a fine huntsman’s supper each night, lute-playing and games by the fire, and camaraderie.

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