The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers (54 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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LXV
I
waited for that light with a fervency I thought I had lost forever. It belonged to childhood, to that time when the dark was an enemy, and only the light was friendly. A daytime moon was called a children’s moon because we preferred seeing it in the light....
Dawn came and released me. In the clear light my revelations about Anne did not seem absurd, as is usually the case the next morning. Instead they seemed even more obvious and certain.
Anne was a witch. She was tainted with evil and practised evil, nurtured evil and harnessed it for her own worldly advancement.
Last night was her time. This morning was mine. And before night fell again, I must be far away.
 
I had not hunted in a year. The season for stag and roe, my favourite game, had opened while Anne’s “pregnancy” kept me close at hand. I would go hunting, have clean sport in the daylight.
The nearest forest where such game abounded was the Savernake in Wiltshire, three long days’ ride west of London. Sir John Seymour, my old companion-at-arms, had retired to his manor there several years ago, and was warden of the royal hunting preserve at Savernake.
I would go there, pass some days at Wolf Hall, and wrestle with the terrifying revelations that had been thrust upon me. I would go alone. There were no companions whose company I wished. Nay, I needed one, for safety’s sake. Someone I loved, who was quiet. I would ask ...
I heard rustling outside my door. I had not slept in my own bed—indeed, had not slept at all—and Henry Norris was searching for me. Henry Norris would be the one. Discreet. Silent. Committed to me.
I opened my door to him. “Make yourself ready,” I said briskly. “I leave today to hunt in the West Country, and I wish you to accompany me.” To his surprised expression, I said, “It is for a few days only.”
I must give no hint of haste, or of fleeing. Yet Anne must be contained, prevented from stirring. I knew not what to do with her, or what was required. I could not think. I was numb with what I now knew. It changed everything, but now it was I who must wear a mask. I needed time, time to think and recover myself and, yes, time to grieve. I was bereaved. I had lost a wife, and my own innocence.
 
I rode in silence to the West. The setting sun warmed and consoled me, drawing me toward a resting place. I was tired, and longed for some respite.
That first night, we stopped near Wokingham. The brothers of Reading Abbey were gracious (unlike those of St. Osweth’s!). We were given quarters that were snug and comfortable and told that we could join them for Compline in their chapel. We did so, and it was with profound relief that I joined in the prayers. They asked me to lead them, but I declined. I was in no spiritual condition to lead others in prayer.
Night had fallen in the small priory. The monks filed away, silently, to bed. The Prior, Richard Frost, motioned us to follow him, and at our quarters he blessed us. Then, after lighting our candles, he bowed and was gone.
A single candle on a bare table. That was my light, and I lay down on the cot where I would spend the night, and pulled the is left. They seated him kindly.
He did not look different. He was the same John Seymour who had fought with me in France, had shared my dining table. His features were yet intact, his eyes the very same. Outwardly, all is as it should be; therefore the rest is preserved as well. So we think.
His blue eyes rested on me. They looked at my hair, my face, my costume.
“Who is this?” he asked querulously.
“It is the King, Father,” said Edward. “He has come to hunt with us.”
“The King?”
He had known me, joked with me, ridden with me.
“King Henry. Henry the Eighth.”
He nodded, but there was no understanding in his eyes. I wanted to say,
Remember the Battle of the Spurs, you rode right behind the French that day. Remember how they ran!
He smiled, an idiot’s smile. It was all gone. But no, it could not be. Behind that face, it was there yet. He lived, he nodded, he ate—how could Sir John be vanished? He was there yet, we just did not know how to call him forth.
“Oh, ’twas merry!” he said. “Merry, merry ... no one’s merry. Not now.” He pushed his spoon about his plate.
An infant. He had become an infant; his clock had run backward. But it was against nature. Either we were killed or we expired in weakness. We did not turn back into infants.
“Now, Father.” A gentle voice, and two hands caressing him, arranging his plate. The vegetables—carrots and parsnips—separated from the mutton. He smiled and patted her hand.
I looked to see who this was. At first I could discern nothing beyond the dull brown costume of a maidservant with a white headdress. I caught her hand.
“You are kind, mistress,” I said. She was so unobtrusive, yet so competent.
She pulled back from me, not demurely, but in insult.
“It is hardly a kindness to minister to one’s own father,” she said, extricating herself from my grasp..
“Jane?” I asked, but she was gone.
“The French are foul,” said Sir John. “They lie in wait for us. They have not improved. But the Pope is worse. This new one ... he is much harder than Clement.” He shook his head, seemingly all alert and involved in politics, as he once had been. “They say he sucks his toes.” He cackled, fiendishly.
Edward and Thomas continued eating.
“They say he sucks his toes!” insisted Sir John, so loudly that the ancient timbers above us absorbed it. “And furthermore, the north tower needs repair!”
As soon as was decently possible, I left the hall. Servants got Sir John to bed, and I sought mine. The bed was narrow, hard, and musty. Morning Mass in the nearby parish church was at six. I would attend. Meanwhile I fell asleep with my prayers—for Sir John, for Anne, for myself.
 
We all attended Mass—the entire Seymour household, save Sir John. It was quick and unembellished. The priest mumbling his Latin was as colourless as the grey stones surrounding him. He mustwaiready been plucked bare.
“A fine crop of pears this year,” said Cromwell, once again picking up my own unspoken thoughts. “The warm, clear May when they flowered, followed by all the rain, was just what a pear tree wants.”
A good thing that something wanted More and Fisher’s wretched rain and storms. Certainly the grain crops hadn’t, nor had the people.
“Try some of its elixir,” said Cromwell, handing me a small silver cup of perry—a fermented drink made from pears. Saluting one another, we sipped. The liquid was smooth and delicate.
“Yes, the rain did them well.”
He put down his cup and looked at me, waiting, his black eyes deep and understanding.
“Crum, I have been hunting in the West for the past fortnight.” I knew he knew that—undoubtedly one of his spies had found his way to Wolf Hall —but it was courteous to volunteer it.
He smiled. “And was the hunting good?”
“Indeed. Hares, stag, roe—we dined to bursting on game every night. I had forgotten how very much I enjoy being a hunter. You hunt, do you not, Crum?”
“With hawks, yes.”
“I’m told you have a fine collection of hawks. Where are your mews?” Not here in London, surely.
“In Stepney.”
“We must hawk together soon.”
“I would be pleased.”
Pause. Enough pleasantries. “We must hawk together indoors first. There is one who flies at too high a pitch, one who never should have been empowered to fly at all—one who must be brought down and sent away,” I said. “Her feathers must be plucked, and she must be sent away, out of the royal mews.”
Was there the smallest hint of a twitch in his lip, a suppressed smile? “The Queen does fly high,” he said, slowly but boldly.
“It is in my power to lower her as surely as I raised her up. I would be rid of her, Crum, I would be rid of her. She is no wife to me.” More than that I would not say; it was not meet. Crum should be privy only to my conclusion, not the reasons behind it.
“You would send her away, or un-wife her? Which is your wish?”
“To un-wife her. That, above all!”
Crum stood up—with my leave—and began to walk a bit. Up and down, up and down, upon the fine polished wood floor of his chamber. He stood by the window and placed his fingertips squarely on a large globe he had mounted on carved legs, and twirled it. The world spun, a glossy pattern of coloured countries and seas.
“If there is a fault with the marriage that invalidates it, the world will consider the Princess Dowager vindicated and restored to her rightful place.”
Katherine. Here in London she seemed nonexistent, vanished into the mists of the fens. Certainly she had ceased to exist for me. But to the Emperor and the Pope, all of England was the same, London no less remote than Kimbolton.
“You will m">
The Seventh Commandment: Thou shalt not steal.
She had stolen the throne, had stolen the rites and anointing appropriate to a true Queen.
The Eighth Commandment: Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
It forbids lies, rash judgment, detraction, calumny, and the telling of secrets we are bound to keep. She did not
tell
lies, she
was
a lie! The Father of Lies had lain with her....
The Ninth Commandment: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife.
She coveted others’ husbands. Me, in the beginning; then Thomas Wyatt, Francis Weston, even her brother George. All were married, yet she demanded that they pay court to her.
The Tenth Commandment: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s goods.
Greedily, Anne had always looked to the possessions of others, wanting them to spite their owners. I remembered the insistence on depriving Katherine of the christening gown, of the royal jewels, on taking over Wolsey’s York Place. She desired the things only because they were treasured by an enemy.
“Thoughts lead to deeds,” I said. “Must we wait for a murderer to murder?”
“We must, as God Himself must. Besides, in the eyes of the
law,
he is not a murderer until then. Your Majesty ... can you not clarify the problem regarding the Queen? I could help you so much better if I knew your meaning exactly.”
No. To let him be privy to my knowledge might endanger his life. The Witch would know.
“No. It is enough for you to know that I must be rid of her, divorced from her. Find means to effect this! Use all your subtleties, use all your powers, but bring it about!” The same instructions I had once given Wolsey about Katherine, and he had failed. “Fail me not; it is a desperate situation!” Crum was not bound by his own glory and reputation; he was much freer to act than Wolsey had ever been. His own ambitions did not hobble him from serving his King. Our self-interests were perfectly in harmony.
“I will need time,” he said. “It would perhaps be beneficial if I were to attend the Queen’s Michaelmas festivities to observe. If you could secure me an invitation?”
So Anne was planning yet another of her fetes. “Yes, of course. Is it to be a large one?”
“The entire court, so they say. I did not receive an invitation. The Queen has never ... cared for me.”
“How ungrateful, considering that you masterminded the great revolution which she now uses as her throne.”
He shrugged in mock humility. “I have not exhausted my capacity to mastermind, and nothing is secure forever.” His eyes were alight, like those of a small boy given a great wooden puzzle. His ingenuity was being challenged and given a chance to fly, hunt, and bring down prey—like one of his beloved hawks.
I had received an invitation from Anne regarding the fete in honour of Saint Michael the Archangel and All Angels, to be given by Her Majesty the Queen, the time, the particulars, all interwoven with a curious pattern of black and white, in which gradually the design changed from one to the othersterde Solicitor-General, was standing between Chancellor Audley and his wife. His utterly featureless, forgettable face smiled blandly, blankly. His lips moved, saying nothing. Yet his testimony had helped to convict More.

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