The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers (78 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 hated the words, hated seeing him, so straight and young and honest.
“I make my living as a musician,” he said. “I was living in Chertsey when I was brought here to ‘answer certain charges.’ Please, my lords. When I knew her she was but Catherine Howard, a girl in the Duchess’s household, and I did nothing wrong. She may have promised me her maidenhead, but I never took it. And I have never mentioned to anyone, sincsor.
They led him away and dragged Dereham in. Handsome, cocky Dereham.
He, too, was read the accusation and called upon to clear himself.
“The Queen is my wife,” he said boldly. “She was promised to me two years ago. We lived as husband and wife, and then she went to court and I to Ireland—both to make our fortunes, that was the plan. Well, I had some success in ventures there”—yes, piracy, I remembered—“but imagine my surprise to find, upon my return, that my little wife is now styled Queen of England. Naturally I hurried to reclaim her, and she was most amenable to appointing me her secretary. But, alas, I found I had been replaced in her affections ... by a Thomas Culpepper.”
No. No.
“You say you ‘lived as husband and wife,’ ” said Cranmer dryly. “In what precise sense?”
“In that we coupled often, and had intentions to marry.”
Coupled often. I looked at the long-legged pirate, imagining him lying on my Catherine, quivering above her, searching out her secret parts and then depositing his seed within her.
The stone. The stone in her womb ... that was what it was for.... It was Catherine herself who had sought out a practitioner to put it there, to protect herself from her own sexual indulgences.
I felt vomit in my throat.
“Did she promise herself to you?” asked Cranmer reasonably.
“We called one another ‘husband’ and ‘wife.’ I entrusted my money to her while I went to Ireland. I remember holding her whilst she said, in tears, ‘Thou wilt never live to say to me, “thou hast swerved.”’”
But she had, she had. O God—why did not the pain stop? Why could I not feel anger? Come, clean anger, sweep this agony away!
“Look to Tom Culpepper if you want more!” he cried, as he was taken from the chamber.
Culpepper.
A dozen eyes blinked back at me. I thought my heart would break, I thought myself torn into shreds, as I whispered, “Arrest Culpepper. Question him.” A stirring, and my servants went to carry out my bidding.
It was all coming now, the recall, in brutal and torturous detail. Her pretend-chastity, which I had been so loth to violate that I rushed forward the marriage in such haste; her lewd behaviour on our wedding night, appropriate to a jade who was long past sweetness; Dereham’s Syrian love-cream; Culpepper and Catherine’s absence during my illness, and her skittishness; my attributing her high colouring on those mornings to her religious experiences at Mass; the locked doors on the great Northern Progress, with the trumped-up story about the Scottish assassins, and her kisses and assurances the next morning. O God!
I wept, putting my head down on the Council table. My hat rolled off, revealing my balding scalp. I was naked as I had never been, and I cared not, so great was my grief. I had loved Catherine, had believed her chaste and loving. It was all a lie. She was a whore, a scheming whore, who had gone to court “to make her fortune.”
I swayed up and screamed, “A sword! A sword!”
No one shorhow that you do. For I never longed so much for a thing as I do to see you and to speak with you, the which I trust shall be shortly now.
The which doth comfort me very much when I think of it, and when I think again that you shall depart from me again it makes my heart to die to think what fortune I have that I cannot be always in your company.
My trust is always in you that you will be as you have promised me, and in that hope I trust still, praying you then that you will come when my Lady Rochford is here, for then I shall be best at leisure to be at your commandment.
I thank you for promising to be so good unto that poor fellow, my man, which is one of the griefs that I do feel to depart from him, for then I do know no one that I dare trust to send to you, and therefore I pray you take him to be with you, that I may sometime hear from you one thing.
I pray you to give me a horse for my man, for I have much ado to get one and therefore I pray send me one by him and in so doing I am as I said afore, and thus I take my leave of you, trusting to see you shortly again and I would you were with me now, that you might see what pain I take in writing you.
yours as long as life endures
Catherine
 
One thing I had forgotten and that is to instruct my man to tarry here with me still, for he says whatsoever you bid him he will do it.
Catherine. Her frantic, muddle-headed “arrangements.” This could be no forgery, for it reflected all too perfectly her personality.
It makes my heart to die to think what fortune I have that I cannot be always in your company....
The “fortune” that kept them apart, that “made her heart to die” was me, my existence, my presence.
Oh, why did it stab me so hotly to realize it, to savour the full meaning? Why did not the full meaning—she was an adulteress, a traitress—cancel out the pain of the little, petty particulars? Yet it was these little things that had the sharpest barbs....
For I never longed so much for a thing as I do to see you and speak with you....
As I had written Anne so long ago, almost the same words-what was it I had said? “her absence having given me the greatest pain at heart that neither tongue nor pen can express”?
Catherine had had the same madness for Culpepper, then.
No, with her it was not so enduring. It was mere lust, not bewitchment.
Yours as long as life endures, Catherine....
She had never written me a single letter.
“Thank you, Cranmer,” I said slowly. “I think it best that you go to her, take her confession now.”
It was the next day, while I was awaiting word from Cranmer, that Will received a message from Lady Baynton, Catherine’s married sister.
“Dereham did what he did by force,” div width="1em">
How like Catherine, I thought. She said one thing and now wishes to retract it, like a child choosing trinkets at a summer’s fair. “I like this—no, I’ll have this instead.”
But it was no more the time to dance.
 
At length Cranmer came, so nervous he was trembling. “ ’Tis done,” he murmured. “She has given a confession. Take it.” He thrust it to me, the odious task performed.
“What ... state was she in?” Oh, tell me something of her, what she wore, how she looked—Sweet Jesu, did I still love her, then? I all but spat.
“In a frenzy of -lamentation and heaviness.”
Play-acting! As she had play-acted all along. But what if she
were
changed? No, impossible. “What said she of Dereham?”
Cranmer reluctantly opened the page of his personal notes. “Of Dereham she said, ‘He had divers times lain with me, sometimes in his doublet and hose, and two or three times naked, but not so naked that he had nothing upon him, for he had always at least his doublet and as I do think, his hose also, but I mean naked when his hose were put down.’ ”
She remembered every detail, she cherished them! Odear God! And the doublet still on—I remembered our wedding night, when she had had me do the same ... it excited her....
I thought the top of agony had been reached, but each day brought new heights, and this confession most of all. I would read it, then, read it and die. And be done with death, as I was already done with living.
It was addressed to me. So she wrote me a letter at last.
I, Your Grace’s most sorrowful subject and most vile wretch in the world, not worthy to make any recommendation unto your most excellent Majesty, do only make my most humble submission and confession of my faults.
Whereas no cause of mercy is deserved upon my part, yet of your most accustomed mercy extended unto all other men undeserved, most humbly on my hands and knees I do desire one particle thereof to be extended unto me, although of all other creatures I am most unworthy to be called either your wife or your subject.
My sorrow I can by no writing express, nevertheless I trust your most benign nature will have some respect unto my youth, my ignorance, my frailness, my humble confession of my faults, and plain declaration of the same referring me wholly unto Your Grace’s pity and mercy.
First at the flattering and fair persuasions of Manox, being but a young girl, I suffered him at sundry times to handle and touch the secret parts of my body which neither became me with honesty to permit nor him to
require.
Also, Francis Dereham by many persuasions procured me to his vicious purpose and obtained first to lie upon my bed with his doublet and hose and after within the bed and finally he lay with me naked, and used me in such sort as a man doth his wife many and sundry times, but how often I know not.
Our company ended almost a year before the King’sMajesty was married to my Lady Anne of Cleves and continued not past one quarter of a year or a litignorance and frailness of young women.
I was so desirous to be taken unto Your Grace’s favour, and so blinded with the desire of worldly glory that I could not, nor had grace, to consider how great a fault it was to conceal my former faults from Your Majesty, considering that I intended ever during my life to be faithful and true unto Your Majesty ever after.
Nevertheless the sorrow of my offences was ever before mine eyes, considering the infinite goodness of Your Majesty toward me which was ever increasing and not diminishing.
Now I refer the judgment of all mine offences with my life and death wholly unto your most benign and merciful grace, to be considered by no justice of Your Majesty’s laws but only by your infinite goodness, pity, compassion, and mercy—without the which I acknowledge myself worthy of the most extreme punishment.
She lied! She lied even here, even in her “honest” confession, she lied. Where was Culpepper in this, eh? “I intended ever during my life to be faithful and true unto Your Majesty.” The effrontery, the brazen deceit, in her very crawling phrases revealed that she did not know yet that Culpepper was taken. Her duplicity was stunning.
All my love for her ceased upon that instant. I saw her entire, for what she was.
I nodded to Cranmer, who was standing by, near to whimpering.
“Thank you. You have done well,” I said. “A faithful servant is not one who leaps to attend to joyful tasks, but one who takes it upon himself to shoulder the doleful ones. There are many to serve the bridegroom, but no one to lay out a corpse.”
“I am grieved for you, and wish only to help.”
“You have proved yourself over and over, but at no time more than now. I had so many to help me marry the Princess of Cleves. Where are they now?”
“The chief one is dead, Your Grace.”
So he was brave as well as true, I thought. Not one in a thousand would have voiced that, although all would have thought it.
“Cromwell.” I laughed a mirthless laugh. “Oh, how he would have relished these days, to have seen his enemies, the Howards, brought low. To have seen me shamed by that slut! My just reward for having chosen her over Cromwell’s Lady Anne.” Cromwell must be laughing—if one can laugh in hell. I know that demons cackle and jeer, but the damned?
“No one with any heart or goodness could laugh at these circumstances,” Cranmer insisted. Because he was good himself, he could not imagine its absence in others.
“They must be brought to trial,” I said, my mind leaving Cromwell in his shroud. “First the men, then Catherine. See how she feels when Culpepper denies her. As he will. He will swear he loved her not. How will she like that, to be denied publicly by the lover for whom she is giving up everything? That will hurt her worse than the sword which is to follow. He
will
deny her, you know. He will deny her and throw himself on my mercy.”

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