The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers (7 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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I turned, guiltily, and saw the Queen.
“Henry, what are you doing here all alone?”
“I am planning my future.”
“Your Father has already done that.”
Yes. He thought to make a priest of me. Well, they would have to fit the chasubles and albs and cinctures to someone else. I would be sailing the high seas!
“You must not worry about your place,” she said, thinking to soothe me, “nor hide yourself from the festivities.”
“The festivities bore me,” I said grandly. “And the costumes for the masque were moth-eaten!” Somehow this one thing had greatly embarrassed me. I knew that the Spanish ambassador had seen, and laughed at us.
She nodded. “Yes, I know. They are so old—”
“Why doesn’t he get new ones, then?” I burst out. “Why?”
She ignored the question and all that lay behind it. “There will be dancing soon. Please come. You are such a talented dancer.”
“A talented dancer!” I said grumpily. “I must forget dancing—unless Arthur will permit the clergy to dance in their vestments. Do you think His Holiness might give us such a dispensation?” It was hopeless; it must be the sea for me, that was clear.
Suddenly the Queen bent toward me and touched my face lightly. “Dear Henry,” she said. “I disliked it, too. So much.”
So she knew, she understood. She had been the eldest, but only a daughter. Unable to be Queen in her own right. Unable. And waiting. Always waiting—to be assigned her secondary role.
I nodded. And obediently followed her down to the Great Hall.
The Hall was hot and crowded, with everyone dressed in satins, stiff jewelled brocades, and splendidly coloured velvets. I was only too aware of my plain clothes. I had been allowed only three new outfits for the wedding and Christmas festivities, and I had long since appeared in them.
Arthur and Katherine sat at one end of the Hall. Arthur was gotten up like a jewelled idol, and he looked frail and doll-like in the overpowering chair. He kept glancing nervously at Katherine. He and his new wife were to leave London as soon as the holidays were over, and go to a cold, horrid castle on the Welsh border to play King and Queen in training. This was entirely Father’s idea; he believed in toughening Arthur, tempering him.
Arthur clearly did not want to be tempered. Yet he was willing, because it was his duty. Arthur always obeyed his duty. He seemed to feel that was what distinguished a king, or even was the essence of kingship.
The minstrels took their assigned places in the stone gallery. There were fifteen of them—double the usual number. Their leader announced that they were honoured by the presence of a Venetian lutenist and a shawm player from Flanders. There was a murmur of appreciation. Then he added that a French musician, well versed in French court dances, would play, as well as another artist who had trained at the Spanish court.
Initially they played only English dances, and almost all the lords ansence of aalmain.
Arthur would not dance. He just sat, still and solemn, in his great chair, deliberately ignoring Katherine’s restlessness and tapping feet. She was longing to dance—it was evident in every line of her body.
Suddenly I was determined to satisfy that longing in her and in myself as well. We were both prisoners of our station: she, wed to a husband who refused to dance; I, a future priest. It was decreed that we must spend the remainder of our lifetimes without dancing. Perhaps so, but there was still a little time....
I made my way over to her and, bowing low before the dais, indicated that I wished her to join me in a Burgundian. She nodded hesitantly; I held out my hand and together we went to the middle of the floor.
I felt drunk. I had done what I longed to do, and in front of everyone! The exhilaration of it ... it was a taste I was never to lose, was to seek from then on.
I looked at Katherine. She smiled joyfully at having been rescued. And there was something else in her look ... she found me pleasing, found my person attractive. I felt her acceptance of me, her liking, and it was like the summer sun to me.
She was a stunning dancer and knew many intricate steps unfamiliar to us in England. I had to struggle to keep up with her. Her timing, her balance, her sense of the music were astounding. Gradually the others fell back and watched us as we progressed through a galliard, a dance du Roy, a quatre bransle, and a Spanish dance of the Alhambra that she showed me. When the musicians stopped, Katherine was breathless and her face flushed. The onlookers were silent for an awkward moment, then they began to cheer us.
Alone on the dais, Arthur glowered like a pale, angry child.
VI
F
our months later Arthur was dead—of consumption in that drafty Welsh castle—and Katherine was a widow.
And I was, suddenly, the heir—the only thing standing between the young Tudor dynasty and oblivion.
 
I was alone in my chamber when the news came. One of the pages brought me a brief note from the King, asking me to come to him right away.
“Immediately?” I asked, puzzled. The King never sent for me, and certainly not in the middle of the day, when I was supposed to be doing my studies.
“Yes, Your Grace,” he replied, and his voice was different from before. So markedly different that even a ten-year-old boy would take note of it. I looked over at him and found him staring at me.
All along the passageway it was the same. People gaped at me. I suddenly knew that something terrible was about to happen. Was I to be sent away to some remote monastery, ostensibly to study?
I reached the King’s Privy Chamber and pulled open the heavy wooden door. Inside it was dark and dismal, as always. Father never lit enough firewood, out of his perverted sense of frugality, unless he expected a high-ranking visitor. He normally kept his quarters so cold that the servants used to store perishable foods behind the screens. Butter kept especially well there, or so I was told.
He nodded, dully.
I had entered the King’s chamber a second son and future priest; I left it as heir apparent and future King. To say that everything changed thereafter is to say what any fool could know. By that they would assume I meant the externals: the clothes I wore and my living quarters and my education. Yet the greatest change was immediate, and in fact had already occurred.
As I left the chamber, one of the yeomen of the guard pulled back the door and bowed. He was a very tall man, and I barely reached his shoulder. As he straightened, I found his eyes riveted on me in a most disturbing fashion. It was only for an instant, but in that instant I perceived curiosity—and fear. He was afraid of me, this great, strong man, afraid of what I might prove to be. For he did not know me, and I was his future King.
No one at court knew me. I was to meet that selfsame look again and again. It said: Who is he? Shall we fear him? At length I developed the habit of never looking directly into anyone’s eyes lest I again meet that look of wariness coupled with apprehension. It was not a good or restful thing to know that merely by existing I threatened the ordered pattern of others’ lives.
They knew Father well and had duly observed Arthur for some fifteen years, grown used to him. But Henry was the unknown, the hidden-away one....
The man smiled, falsely. “Your Grace,” he said.
The smile was worse than the look in his eyes, although they went hand in hand. I made some stiff little motion with my hand and turned away.
No one would ever be candid or open with me again.
That was the great change in my life.
 
There were other changes as well, of course. I must now live at court with the King; I must exchange my priest-tutor for a retired ambassador. There were good changes: I was now allowed to practise dancing and even had a French dance-master to demonstrate the fashions in that court, where everything was elegant and perfect (to hear him tell it). I had my own band of minstrels and a new music teacher who taught me theory and composition, and even imported an Italian organ for me to use. Being constantly at court, I began to meet other boys of my own age, noblemen’s sons, and so I had friends for the first time in my life.
The bad things: I was not to engage in any “dangerous” activities, such as hunting or even jousting, as my person now had to be guarded against the remotest mishap. As a result, I had to stay indoors and watch my friends at play, or join them outside merely to stand about watching, which was worse.
I had to live in a room that connected to the King‘s, so that I could go nowhere, and no one come to me, without passing through his chamber first. In that way he isolated me as effectively as one of those maidens in the
Morte d’Arthur,
imprisoned in a turret by her father. The only difference was that as long as my father lived, no one could rescue me or even approach me.
And how long would my father live? He was only forty-five, and seemed healthy. He might live anota retiredo from young to old, beggar to king. It is simple: for a King, do like a King.”
He sat down beside me, glancing toward the door. “And now I fear the King will come in and see that we are somewhat behind.” He seemed embarrassed at what he had just said, as if he wished me to forget it as quickly as possible.
“Have you learned the things I told you?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied. I glanced over at the fireplace. I wished I could add another log to the fire, as my fingers were chilled. But there were no more there. Father allowed only six logs per day until after New Year’s, no matter how foul the weather. I blew on my fingers. “First, France. There are sixteen million Frenchmen. They are the most powerful country in Europe. As late as my father’s exile, Brittany was an independent duchy. But when King Charles VIII married Anne of Brittany in 1491, it became part of France. The French are our enemies. Our great King Henry V conquered nearly all of France—”
“Not all, Your Grace,” admonished Farr.
“Nearly half, then,” I conceded. “And his son was crowned King of France in Paris! And I shall recapture those lands!”
He smiled indulgently. “And how many Englishmen live in the realm?”
“Three million. Three and a
half million!”
“And sixteen million in France, Your Grace.”
“What matter the numbers? An Englishman is worth twenty Frenchmen! They are terrified of us. Why, French mothers frighten their children with threats of
les Anglais!”
“And English mothers frighten their children with cries of bogymen.”
“We still have Calais,” I persisted.
“For how long? It is an unnatural outpost.”
“It is part of
England
. No, I mean to pursue my heritage! To recapture France.”
“Have you been reading those Froissart things again, Your Grace?”
“No!” I said. But it was not true, and he knew it. I loved those chronicles of knights and their ladies and warfare, and read them late at night, often when I should have been sleeping. “Well—perhaps a little.”
“A little is too much. Don’t fill your head with such things. They are silly and what is worse, dangerous and outmoded. Any English King who attempts to recapture France now would risk his life, his treasury—and being ridiculed. A King can perhaps survive the first two. But the third, never. Now, then, have you memorized the general map of Europe?”
“Yes. The French have swallowed up Brittany and gorged themselves on Burgundy. And Maximilian, Emperor—”
“Of what?”
“The Holy Roman Empire.”
“Which is neither holy nor Roman nor an empire,” he said happily.
“No. It is merely a conglomerate of German duchies yoked with the Low Countries.”
“But Maximilian has some twenty million nominal subjects.”
“United on notroted.
“Exactly.” He was pleased. “And Spain?”
“Ferdinand and Isabella have driven the Moors out, and Spain is Christian once more. They have eight million subjects.”
“Very good, Prince Henry. I believe you have been studying—in between Froissart.” He reached out and cuffed me playfully. “Next we will discuss Ferdinand’s schemes, and the history of the Papacy. Pope Julius is very much a part of all this, you know. He seems to be personally trying to demonstrate Christ’s statement: ‘I came not to bring peace, but a sword.’ Read further in the notes I gave you and read all the dispatches in the red bag. They cover the correspondence during my years in France.” He stood up stiffly. He was pretending we had come to the end of our lesson, but I could tell it was because he was so uncomfortable in that room. The fire was nearly out, and our breath was visible.

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