The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers (46 page)

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Authors: Margaret George

BOOK: The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers
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Proudly she had gone to Ludlow Castle to practise for the court life she would lead, out from under my shadow. And at her leaving, I had felt the same pang of coming loss that any parent does. Not so soon, my little one, not so soon.... But I had Anne by then, and my love-madness to blunt what it meant to be losing Mary. And like every parent, I thought, there’s Christmas, she’ll be back for that.... How was I to know that she would never come back? There was an emptiness there that no Anne, no son, and certainly no Elizabeth could ever fill.
I picked up the parchment with the harsh, stilted words of my estranged daughter. Had it hurt her as much to write them as it hurt me to read them?
 
Anne’s recovery took place overnight. It seemed, even then, unnaturally swift. She informed Cranmer that she was prepared to undergo the ancient ceremony of the “churching of women.”
“Yes, Thomas,” I answered his unspoken question. “We will retain that ceremony. You may proceed with it.”
He looked as if there were a stone in his shoe. “I—I have been studying the origins of this ceremony,” he finally said, “and it appears to me to be pagan. Even its common name, ‘purification of women after childbirth,’ sounds heathen. Would not a ‘thanksgiving of women after childbirth’ be more appropriate to these timations at court by now, and none reflected this change better than the Howards themselves.
The older Howards—Thomas, the Duke of Norfolk, and his mother Agnes, his wife Elizabeth, and all eleven of his siblings—were conservative, stiff, unimaginative Catholics. The men fought and the women served as chatelaines on their great northern estates. That was all they knew, and all they cared to know.
Their offspring, the network of young cousins—Henry, Earl of Surrey, his sister Mary; the Boleyns, and all eight of Edmund Howard’s children—were at best modern and liberal court-creatures, at worst dissolute. The King was left on his own to discover first-hand which were which.
HENRY VIII:
 
So it was that on the last day of January an odd assortment of pilgrims left Richmond Palace and set out for the shrine of Our Lady of Wrexford.
We turned east, heading into the rising sun, riding along the same route I had taken to London that first morning I had arisen as King of England so long ago. Then the breezes had been scented and I had felt stronger than any man among the thousands lining the path. It was no longer a slender path now, but a wide, well-trodden road, and I had a special pad on the side of my saddle to ease my troublesome leg. Before leaving, I had smeared the leg with ointment and bound it in luxurious thick layers of gauze, knowing they would be undetectable beneath my bulky winter travelling cloak. How much better it felt to be swathed so protectively. Now if no one jostled me—
“Magnificent, Your Grace.” Chapuys came perilously near, his sparkling eyes seeking any idiosyncrasy that might betray a person’s weakness. I reined in a little to the right, keeping him well away from my leg, laughing nonchalantly all the while. “I am impressed by your devoutness. To make a pilgrimage in January is highly unusual—and must betoken a need of some sort.”
I felt anger burst in me like sparks from a dry log. He
knew!
No, impossible. He merely tried me, probing to see where my weakness lay. “I go to inspect the ‘holy’ site before deciding its fate. I would be loth to condemn anything without a hearing.”
“As you did the Queen? Riding away that July morning and never seeing her in person again?”
I sighed. Our little round-robin concerning “the Queen” was to begin again. It had a number of set lines:
I:
I assure you, I left no Queen behind at Windsor.
Chapuys:
I assure you, you did. A grieving Queen who loves you sore.
I:
I do not understand. Oh—you are referring, perhaps, to the Princess Dowager?
Chapuys:
Nay, to the Queen.
And so on. The exchange had once been mildly amusing. Now, like so many other things, it had become tedious and irritating to me. Perhaps we should have the lines copied out on two cards such as actors use, so the next time we met we could merely exchange them and be done with it.
I cut off his amiable baiting. “You will see her dwidth=h in the presence of witnesses. The scroll would not list their reasons, merely their names.
What would I do with those heaps of scrolls? For I did not delude myself that they would be returned to the palace blank.
The sky was clear, the sun small and shrunken, like a withered apple. Nothing was alive on the land; there was no movement anywhere. How easy to believe that this reflected the state of the kingdom: silent and suspended. It did; but by May all would be altered.
Chapuys moved close to me again. “My knee feels a sudden ache,” he said. “There will be a change in the weather, I fear.”
How womanish southerners were! Coming from a land of pomegranates and soft breezes, they could not endure the shift of a breeze. Or was this a trick, an excuse to gallop ahead to Beaulieu House, to speak with Mary in private? How transparent he was.
I patted my silver flask, filled with a blood-warming drink from Ireland called
uisgebeatha.
I handed it to Chapuys. “Drink this. It will stifle your knee.”
He took a draught and wheezed. “ ’Tis poison!”
“Not to the Irish, so I am told.”
Chapuys shook his head. “My knee—I beg you, it tells the truth. I suggest we seek shelter—”
The sky was ringing clear. “What, in broad daylight? We have another five hours of good riding ahead of us,” I assured him.
On we went, stopping for a brief rest and refreshment, then continuing, to make the most of the short winter day. The sun swung over and behind us, throwing long shadows before us.
And then the shadows faded, although the sun had not set. Exactly when this happened I know not—only that I suddenly became aware that we had been shadowless for some time, heading into a blue twilight. Then I turned and saw it: a great woolly blanket of clouds swathing the sun, and the wind running before it, stinging cold. And hanging from the cloud like a weighty grey curtain was the snow, moving faster than any horse could gallop. It would catch us in less than an hour.
My hands shook, and I felt colder inside than the wind on my face. There was nothing around us—no village, no manor house, not even a peasants’ dwelling. I had exulted in the stark open spaces we had passed through since noon, bare fields lying exposed to the sky, but now they were more threatening than any enemy fortress.
“How far to Thaningsford?” I called, signalling for my men to halt. I kept my voice cheerful.
“Two hours’ ride,” answered Brereton. “I know; my father had tenants—”
“Due north there’s a hamlet, called something ‘Grange,’ ” said Carew. “I think it may be closer.”
“Are you sure of its location?” I shouted. No time now for his bumblings. He had always been slipshod about details.
“Yes—no—” The wind whipped his cap off, and he snatched it back in midair. “I think—”
Obviously he did not know. I looked round at the others. Ct size="3">Only now did I look about. The forest was deep and dark, and the terrain rough with fallen logs and rocks. Dangerous ground for horses. Should we lead them but a little way into the gloom, then stop and make our shelter, or take a chance of riding farther in hopes of finding better protection or even, possibly, an abandoned shelter? As soon as the choices had presented themselves, I knew the answer: the one with the greatest risk, but the greatest possible reward. We would ride deeper in.
When I announced this, the men protested. I silenced them, and they had to obey.
With the snow still a distance away from the line of trees, I turned my back on it and urged my horse forward into the unknown terrain. Within five minutes the overcast sky and high trees made a murkiness so oppressive it seemed almost to be a living thing. The thick branches overhead moved over us, a writhing roof over an evil, still chamber strewn with traps.
And all the while there was this otherworldly cold, a cold that seemed a creature in its own right. I looked about. There was plenty of wood, but it would be so cold it would be difficult to light. Brittle old oak leaves carpeted the ground; these would serve as tinder, but now they effectively concealed treacherous holes where a horse could easily break his leg. There was no sign of a ridge or protection of any sort.
“Your Grace! We must stop!” shouted Will—the only one who would have dared to tell me what to do. “It is about to catch up to us, and we will have no time to construct anything. We must stop now and hold our ground!”
“No, Will! Farther in! Farther in!” My voice, loud and sure, hung in the air between us. The others were all of Will’s mind, and we were all reduced to animals seeking our own survival.
Then tradition and habit took command, made them disobey their own animal promptings to obey their crowned and anointed King; and that King, secure in the belief that he obeyed
his
King, led them on.
WILL:
We thought he was quite mad at this point. It was clearly folly to continue into the forest. But he seemed so absolutely certain of himself. Is that the secret of commanding unquestioning obedience?
HENRY VIII:
 
Now the storm caught up to us, hitting us from behind. The trees caught a great deal of it, but there was still enough blinding, swirling snow filtering through to disorient us. There was no north, no south, no east or west, almost no up or down or sideways. We were lost in an enormous cloud of white butterflies, their millions of wings beating frantically, soundlessly, icily. I could almost have stood still amidst their swirling, frigid whiteness, and let them blanket me until death. The temptation was there, the lure of a beautiful, still death....
Shuddering violently, I dismounted and began to lead my horse. Keep moving, keep the blood warm, do not let the ice-death goddess take hold. ... I could not see more than ten paces before me, and could only hope my men had not become separated. “Stay close! Each man right behind the next!” I cried.
A ridge ahead: jagg just a glimmer—a slit, a dim opening, a crevice in the cliffilde. Perhaps we could squeeze in there, huddle together? One hand out in front of me, I stumbled toward it, feeling my way along. The rough rocks tore at my hands, which were so numb I felt nothing and was surprised to see bloodstains on the stones. Suddenly my arm plunged into darkness. I thrust the other one after it, all the way to my shoulders. But the space around them was greater still. A cave.

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