The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers (53 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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“Be at peace. Fisher shall not face that,” I assured her.
 
Indeed, Fisher was led out onto a tidy scaffold at Tower Hill, just outside the Tower walls. He had always been ascetic and gaunt, but his fourteen months in the Tower had turned him into a “death’s-head,” est shirt, as it was the garment with which he would enter Paradise.
 
That should have been that. But it was the beginning of a set of different challenges to my reign.
Fisher’s severed head was parboiled, as was the custom, and set up on London Bridge. The midsummer weather was hot and stagnant; foul odours rose from the Thames, which sloshed back and forth in an enervated fashion. Fisher’s head (minus its Cardinal’s hat—that would have been too macabre a touch) should have rotted and turned into a horror. But it did not. Instead, it seemed to glow and become more lifelike every day. People began to gather on the bridge to pay homage to it, to tell it their troubles....
To ask it to intercede for them.
Fisher was on the way to becoming a saint.
I ordered this ended. In the night my servants took down the head and threw it into the river.
Fisher, the incipient saint, was checked in his progress. But the weather, and the mood, continued ugly. There were pestilential vapours about, infecting the entire populace. It was best to do More now, and have the whole business finished. Then, that being done, I could go out on progress, ride out amongst the people, talk with them, soothe them. They needed me.
An unhappy languor had fallen over the court, as in one of those tales of enchantment wherein a witch has put everyone under a spell. Anne seemed particularly affected, alternately nervous and apathetic. Others moved about as though their brains had flown, or were held for ransom.
Then Anne told me her news, and that broke my spell.
“I am with child.” Magic words. Words that called to action.
“Praised be God!” I exclaimed. All would be right: out of these present troubles and hideous upheavals, the original purpose of which I had all but forgotten, a Prince would come.
I clasped her to me, feeling her slender supple body, all encased in silk. “Praised be God.”
More’s execution was to be July sixth, a fortnight after Fisher’s. I granted his daughter Margaret permission to witness the actual execution. He bequeathed her his hair shirt (yes, he had continued to wear it all through his captivity), and hearsay is that it has been preserved in the family as a relic to this day. He sent no message to his wife.
It was an oppressive summer day, not columbine-fresh as some can be, but lowering and heavy. The humours in the air hung waiting, malevolent.
Anne, in her characteristic, brave fashion, had attempted to mock it by staging a “Pope Julius” party in her apartments. She had had a number of boards painted up for the game that had been invented in the summer of 1529 featuring Pope Julius (he who had granted the original dispensation in 1503), with stops called Intrigue, Matrimony, War, and Divorce. She had set up tables with rounds to determine which players should be matched, culminating in a Master Board with a grand prize. The “tournament” was to beginased in breezes. Rose-scented incense supplied the sweetness that was lacking in the reeking outside air. As we were at Greenwich, there was the blessing of some slight breezes, borne inland from the sea. It was undoubtedly worse in the other palaces.
The entire court was assembled for Anne’s “tournament,” from the Privy Council through the ladies-in-waiting. Crum was there, looking eager for the gambling; the Seymour brothers, Edward and Tom, back from a fruitless diplomatic mission in Paris; Norfolk, Anne’s uncle; and ... as I have said, everyone.
Anne, looking almost as yellow as her gown in the oppressive heat and her condition, flitted about explaining the rules of both the game and her tournament to everyone. At the tinkle of a bell, all began. I was seated at table with Thomas Audley, Richard Riche, the Solicitor-General, and Jane Seymour, Edward and Tom’s younger sister, whom I had not seen before.
They were all people of velvet: Audley so yielding and cautious; Riche so smooth and pleasing; Mistress Seymour, so soft and comforting. They played according to character, and as a result I won the game easily, being the only one to play boldly and abrasively.
Pope Julius. It was a clever game, but belonged to simpler times. The truth was that Pope Julius was dead, and there had been three Popes since. My enemy, Pope Clement (or had he been my friend? Certainly I could never have had a more apathetic foe) was now dead, succeeded by a much more hardheaded gentleman, Alessandro Farnese, called Paul III. Rumour had it that Paul intended to implement what Clement had only threatened: a Holy War against me. The Roman Catholic Church was on the offensive at last, having gathered its forces after being stunned by the initial successes of Martin Luther. Pope Julius was simple to understand and manipulate; he made a fitting board game.
I was vaguely disappointed when the game ended, although it ended under my own aggressive bidding. I had enjoyed my partners, enjoyed especially Mistress Seymour and the way she held her cards and pushed her token about the board. I cannot explain why observing the hand and arm motions of a graceful woman should prove so appealing, like a ceremony of sorts, a dance.
The bell was rung; we must change tables. Outside I saw the heat waves reflected in the light coming in the windows, rising from the river.
Noon. More was being led out.
 
Going up the scaffold, he turned to the Lieutenant of the Tower. “I pray you, Master Lieutenant, see me safe up and, for my coming down, let me shift for myself. ”
 
“Now you come to this game with points already,” explained Anne. “You may keep them, only demerits will subtract from the total score—”
 
He put his head down on the block and made a joke with the executioner. In the Tower he had not shaved, but had grown a long beard. He smoothed it neatly down and asked the headsman not to strike it, as “it has done no treason.”
 
We played a second round. At my table were those who had already won—Cromwell, Norfolk, and Edward Seymour. This game was more difficult. My opponents did not hold back and kept strategies in their heads the entire time, not merely one or two plays, but contingency plans as well.
The air grew stifling. Sweat gathered about my neck, wilting my fair linen collar.
I asked. He laughed (a smug, hateful laugh) and waved a gloved hand. The walls crashed and turned to water, and bubbled up under the chair I was sitting in. I was carried away, spinning, my arms frantically clasping the chair arms, my legs on the rungs, carried down a dark watery chute....
 
I awoke. The sound of water was a deluge around me. It was beating against the windows, and I could hear trickles. Somewhere it had found an entrance, had nosed open a little crack between stones or through a piece of loose mortar.
My mind cleared. Rain. There could be no rain tonight. It was impossible. The sky had been absolutely clear at sunset. The soaked fields had been granted respite. The crops would recover, and the harvest be normal. That was what the clear sky had promised.
The downpour, which had penetrated even into my sleeping mind, continued to soak the already waterlogged earth outside.
It has not stopped raining since More died,
the common people were saying. On the night of July sixth it had begun to rain, and it had continued, intermittently, for the six weeks since. The vegetable crops had already been drowned, rotted. The grains—oats, barley, wheat—by far the most important, as yet were salvageable. But if they were lost!
Damn this rain! I leapt from my bed and went over to the window. It was not a sweet, soft rain. Ugly, hard thrusts of water were striking against the glass.
Henry Norris stirred on his pallet and rolled over. He no longer slept at the foot of my bed, as it was too close to the outer, waterlogged wall and invited mildew. Instead he had moved to an inside wall.
It was raining on More’s head, which had turned black impaled on Tower Bridge (so they told me). At least it was not growing into an object of veneration and superstition like Fisher’s. I myself had not seen it, nor did I intend to.
This whole business disgusted me, sickened me. Only let this summer be over, let a year’s cycle come round, so that every vicissitude of weather (all normal, all normal) was not converted into an “omen” or a “judgment.” This time next year there would be an heir to the throne; Anne’s boy would be born. Then see how they would remember More—not at all! They were fickle, shallow creatures, the people. Anne’s son would give them instant
lethe,
instant forgetfulness, on the subject of More, Fisher, the Oaths.
One thing cancelled out the other—did it not? There could be no gains without payments. And these things were my payment for Anne.
The rain hissed at me.
Do your worst,
I dared it.
Do your worst, and I shall yet prevail.
I badly needed to make a summer progress about the realm, to reassure my people and to take readings on their minds. Yet, because of Anne’s pregnancy, I dared not risk her travelling, even in the comparative comfort of a litter, at this time; and I myself would stay with her, watching over her and taking care of her.
She was difficult during this pregnancy, hard to please. She had fancies, one of which was that as long as Katherine and Mary lived, she could not bear a living son. She needed music to soothe her, and therefore Mark Smeaton mus221; She needed entertainments to amuse her, and therefore I brought the Oxford players to court, and bade them write and perform some “fantastical history of times past,” so as to entertain the Queen.
They did so, writing a history of Dr. Faustus and performing it most grandiosely, with red-tinted smoke and demons dragging the damned Faustus down to hell. Anne was delighted with it and showed lively interest in the red smoke and sudden apparitions of the Devil, since she had attempted a similar effect in “Cardinal Wolsey Descending to Hell.” Hell always interested people from an artistic standpoint.
She exhibited none of the behaviour I had come to expect from a pregnant woman: the happiness, the contentment, the interest in the coming child. She was restless and self-absorbed, with glittering, feverish eyes. Yet that was of no moment, as long as the child was healthy. Anne was like no other woman in the world; her pregnancy was as singular and disturbing as she herself.
 
The cursed rain kept up all through the remainder of the summer. There were occasional fair days, as if to tease us, like a beautiful woman who has no intention of yielding her favours but continues to make promises. The first grain crop was now ruined, and the flooding of the fields made it impossible for a second to be sown. This winter there would be hardship at the least and starvation at the worst.
The people had stepped up their visits to shrines, imploring Our Lady, Thomas a Becket, and all the others to hear them. The monasteries reaped a tidy profit from all this, as Crum never failed to remind me. I had allowed him to appoint inspectors to compile records of the assets and holdings of all the clergy in England, to be summarized in a
Valor Ecclesiasticus.
They had fanned out eagerly over the realm to get their information.
Crum liked the fact that offerings were pouring into the shrines’ coffers all across the land. I found it ominous. More’s head had disappeared from London Bridge. Who had taken it, and why? Were they setting up a shrine to him, too?
 
I had no one to confide these apprehensions to. Crum was not a man to tolerate apprehensions, either in himself or in others. He would discuss only the realities of a situation, not its intangibles. Cranmer, close as I was to him in many ways, had so many apprehensions himself that I did not wish to encourage them.
As for Anne, she had isolated herself completely in that court world where she whiled away her time. What happened beyond the doors of the Queen’s apartments was not of the remotest interest to her. As her spirits alternated between high-pitched nervousness and melancholia, I let her suit herself. Anything to keep her happy and to protect the pregnancy. Except dancing, which was too vigorous. I forbade her to dance.
 
Thus it was with stunned disbelief that I beheld her dancing with great abandon late one evening after she had ostensibly retired. We had had supper together, a quiet one, as I had given leave in August to all the courtiers who wished to return home for visits. Court was always closed during the summer hunting season, and I was usually on progress. Anne had kept on the men in her retinue, but given the women leave to go. As we dined, I could hear Mark Smeaton playing plaintive love songs in the next room; the incessant rain muffled the actual melodies.
Anne picked at her fo/div>
Satan is a murderer. Jesus said so.
He was a murderer from the beginning.
From the very beginning: Anne had cursed Wolsey, and he had fallen from power and died mysteriously. I had thought of poison, but self-administered.
How blind I had been!
Warham had suddenly died, just when Anne needed him to.
Percy, who had abandoned her under duress from his father and Wolsey, had been unable to perform with his wife, and was now dying of an unspecified wasting disease.
My sister Mary had openly criticized my passion for Anne and supported Katherine, had refused to attend Anne’s coronation. Mary had become mysteriously “ill,” wasting away and dying at the age of thirty-five.
Someone had tried to poison Bishop Fisher at a dinner at his home. Two servants had died, but Fisher, though ill, had survived. Survived, to be more surely destroyed through me, for denouncing the lies, the forged signature. ...
Under your correction, My Lord, there is no thing more untrue.
My gut contracted. I felt ill myself—poisoned. Could it be?
Yes, she had struck at me, too. The mysterious leg-ulcer, appearing from nowhere, disappearing on the instant that I had done that which Anne wished —humiliated Mary, sent her to serve Princess Elizabeth, turned her home over to Anne’s precious brother George ... her
creature.
My impotence ... had it been a curse from her, or just the natural revulsion of my flesh from joining itself to hers, even though I knew not why? But she had overcome it, lifted it away, so as to bind me more closely to herself.
I had begun dying, both in body and certainly in spirit. Like Fisher, I was not an easy victim, but the decline had begun. Anne’s slender little hands were guiding me on the sloping path leading to the grave.
Her hands!
I was violently ill; vomit rushed up into my mouth and I spat it into the basin on my sideboard.
Anne’s sixth finger.
She had a sixth finger on her left hand, a clawlike nub that branched off from her little finger. She wore long sleeves to cover it and was skilful past reason at concealing it. I had only glimpsed it once or twice, and such was her magic, and my resulting blindness and confusion in her presence, that I saw it, but did not see it.
A witch’s mark.
I was sick again, vomiting up green bile, bile that dotted the sides of the basin in mocking imitation of the emeralds thereon.
She could read my thoughts. Even now, she knew what I was thinking. I remembered her knowledge of my substitute Oath for More, one I had never committed to paper.
No. Her powers were not that strong, they could not penetrate even here. I was safe as long as I was not in her actual presence.
Yet the confusion, the roar in my head, persisted. She could stir my thoughts, muddy them from afar, but not control or read them.
She must be contained. I would order her aparorning. When it grew light.

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