The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers (85 page)

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I nodded assent. The mood had grown ugly; I hoped this would sweeten it. He began,
“Within this tower
There lives a flower
That hath my heart,”
Francis Bryan continued easily,
“Within the hour
She pissed foul sour
And let a fart.”
There were ladies present! Genuine, honest ladies like Joan Dudley, Joan Denny, Katherine Brandon, Anne Seymour—no unwholesomeness amongst them.
This was enough. I stood up slowly, and let the full force of my displeasure rest on him. “Be gone,” I said. “Come no more to my table. And look for no more favours at my hand.”
He knew enough not to argue, or attempt to excuse himself. He nodded and quit the bower.
Once his small-minded, obscene presence was gone, it was once more a fair summer’s day. We sang songs: “Death and Burial of Cock Robin”; “Mouse and Mouser”; “The Milk Maid”; “The Carrion Crow.”
“Bessy Bell and Mary Gray
They were two bonnie lasses,”
sang Elizabeth in a thin little voice. I had almost forgotten she was there, at the farthest end of the table.
“Bessy kept the garden gate,
And Mary kept the pantry;
Bessy always had to wait
While Mary lived in plenty.”
I was stunned. That Elizabeth would challenge me so publicly about her rights, accuse me before the entire court of withholding her due as a Princess. When all the world knew she was may keep your garden gate at Hatfield House,” I said softly, “by returning there by the morrow. I am grieved that you have not proved fit for the royal bowers at Hampton.”
No one else, up and down the long table, murmured a sound. It was only Elizabeth and myself, some fifty feet apart.
“May I take Robert?” she asked. “To take turns with me waiting upon the garden gate?”
I looked at young Robert Dudley, a comely lad, a blue ribbon tying up his pretty brown hair.
“No,” I said. “For that would make it play, not work.”
His face fell, but hers betrayed no sign of disappointment. So they meant something to one another. Good. Then not seeing each other would hurt.
“Very well,” she said. “I am saddened that I must miss tending to the crocodile. For exile from one’s source of life and those in sympathy is hard. Nonetheless I shall pray for his survival. May his thick hide and craftiness protect him from all evil-wishers.”
By God, she pushed me too far! She was no child; no, she was as political and dangerous as any Pretender of three times her years. As such, she was a danger to my Edward. “You are excused,” I said. “No further leave-taking is necessary.”
Yet my heart ached to see her go. Who can explain the human heart? Mary was my firstborn, my only child for so long, and nothing could ever alter that. Edward was the gift I had prayed for, so long withheld. Elizabeth? She was a disappointment from the first, she was naught, she was the wrong sex, from the wrong woman, and in the wrong order of birth. Nevertheless she was the most intriguing to me, and I could not fathom why. Perhaps because she was the only one of the three children not afraid of me. As indeed why should she be? She alone, perhaps, of all persons in the realm, was untouchable by my wrath. I could never execute her; I had already illegitimized her, but I would never disclaim her; in short, I had already done to her the worst of what I could do, and she knew that. And I knew that.
All the guests were looking intently at their strawberries. Domestic quarrels are always embarrassing when they spill over into public, but royal ones especially so. No rhyming or Rhenish could rescue this fading afternoon. Best that it end now.
CXVI
T
he summer dragged to its weary, wilted conclusion. By late August here were droughts in Warwickshire and Northamptonshire, and certain priests wanted to form “Mary processions,” as they had done in times past, imploring the Virgin’s intercession. Should I forbid them or not? Were they Popish or not? Cranmer and I conferred and reached the decision that a procession in Mary’s honour was permissible, while one in any saint’s name was not. After all, Christ Himself had honoured Mary from the cross.
“And how is your
Book of Common Prayer
progressing?” I asked him. He had been working on it for so long.
“It progresses. It progresses. And your
Primer?”
I had set my hand to composing prayers to be said in the vernacular—or, if the person felt more at home in it, in Latin—and I would issue it with my own Imprima="3">“It is almost done,” I said. “I think next year it shall be printed.”
Cranmer shook his head. “Your industry and speed are truly gifts. Ones that I envy.”
“As I envy yours, Thomas.” I spoke true. For his way with words and his purity of heart were rare things.
Others envied Cranmer, not only his gifts but his friendship with me. They sought to bring him down, out of sheer spite and malice. Others saw him as a danger, a gangplank leading to rampant Protestantism. They thought if they tossed that gangplank down into the sea, no radical would ever board the secure ship of England. But Cranmer, who was so naive about the Original Sin in men’s natures (although he described it poetically in his
Book of Common Prayer),
never thought to be on guard against his enemies, or even acknowledged that he
had
enemies.
“I have but one garden to tend, the Church. You have many. How can you oversee the coming war with the French and write prayer books and education books at the selfsame time?”
He referred to my
ABC’s as Set Forth by the King’s Majesty,
a little reading-instruction book I had prepared.
I could not answer him honestly, for I knew not how I was able to think and attend to many things at once. Only that one gave surcease to the other, and while I laboured on Englishmen’s prayers I did not think of how many tents would be needed for a European campaign. “I know not,” I admitted. “But it is fortunate I can, else England would need six kings.”
Six kings. A council of kings. That is what I was forced to consider, for Edward’s minority. My pang of fear with Elizabeth had made me face the worry that had been lurking for some time: Would I live until 1555, when Edward would be eighteen, the same age I had been when I became King? He was only five years old now. And Mary and Elizabeth were tall, rooted plants that threatened my Edward. Mary was a grown woman and could yet be made much of in Catholic circles, in spite of her formal capitulation to me. Elizabeth was clearly clever and winsome, and might harbour secret ambitions for herself. Edward was not safe; no, he was not safe.
I must protect him, must make sure that, even in my absence, he could grow to maturity unmolested. There was no denying that the “New Men,” the gentlemen of learning and service whom I had honoured and titled, leaned toward Protestantism. Certainly Edward would have to understand the new ways, the New Learning, in order to deal with those men. And so, with some misgivings but with resignation, I appointed Dr. Richard Cox and John Cheke—Humanistic scholars—to be his tutors.
I also began secretly to draw up a list of those I would appoint as councillors to govern for and with Edward, until he was a man. I knew already that I must leave no Lord Protector, such as Richard Plantagenet had been, for I knew what fate Protectors dealt out to those they “protected.” My Council would be composed of equals. My will would insist on that. My will ...
The idea of my not surviving another thirteen years was chilling to consider. I did not like it, did not care for the queasy, weak sensation it aroused in me. I told myself that making these provisions was the prudent thing to do, that it did not mean I was acquiescing in my own death. Young kings had died in battle, and I myself might yet venture forth in battle—“hazard my person,” as they say....
Dare I confess it? I wished to take the field again3™vst Francis, to do again what I had done so long ago, but this time do it as I wished, and not be balked and cheated of my spoils by a Ferdinand or a Maximilian. No, I was my own master now, and I would return to that place which had hung, unresolved and insulting to me, for thirty years. I would take the cities in Picardy I craved, add them to Calais, and expand the English holdings into a strip extending along the Channel coast.
I confided this to no one. I would wait for things to roll that way, as roll they would. I enjoyed the power it gave me, keeping my thoughts and plans to myself.
 
In the meantime, preparations for our chastisement of Scotland went ahead. That was no secret. We would wait until their grain was gathered in, until their livestock was wintered, and then we would strike.
In August I had sent troops across the Border, and they had been beaten at Haddon Rig, near Berwick. Nearly six hundred prisoners had been taken, including the commander, Sir Robert Bowes. This was, I must confess, a surprise. The Scots were ever full of surprises. Every time one thought they were quiet, quiescent, beaten—they struck and stung, like an adder.
In retaliation I dispatched Norfolk to persecute them. It was the first communication I had had with him, the first assignment I had given him, since the disgrace of—I cannot write her name again—his niece. He, and his hothead son Henry, managed to burn the lowland towns of Kelso and Roxburgh and about thirty others. But it was an inconclusive, womanish reprisal. I was most displeased. I had given them orders to
defeat
the Scot, not pinch his toe or tweak his nose.
But Jamie, for his own reasons, took the burnings as a call to arms. His honour must be satisfied. He gathered an army, but the nobility would not fight willingly for a King who excluded them from his councils; the Border lords, barons like Argyll and Moray, were smarting from harsh treatment from the unstable, fickle Jamie; and the outcome was that his army refused to march farther south than Lauder, where it disbanded itself.
Another army must be raised, and the industrious Cardinal Beaton managed to gather a force of ten thousand men in only three weeks. Oh, the Cardinal, the Scots Cardinal! He had been commissioned by Pope Paul III to publish the Papal bull excommunicating me, in Scotland. How I despised him! Cardinals, I believe, were created by Rome expressly to torment me in this life.
This Cardinal’s army was to be led by Oliver Sinclair, King Jamie’s “favourite.” He loved him more than he had ever loved any woman, thereby incurring the disdain and derision of his subjects. The hated Sinclair was no soldier. At the edge of the Solway River, in southwest Scotland, Jamie suddenly decided to leave his troops, declaring that he would cross into England from Lachmaben, when the tide ebbed. So that Sinclair could have the battle to himself, and thereby acquit himself? Who knew what he was thinking?
Across the Solway I had three thousand Englishmen, hastily drawn up under the command of the Deputy Warden of the Marches, Sir Wharton. Although outnumbered, Sir Wharton led boldly and scattered the Scots, driving them into the bog, where his men killed them with spear and sword, or left them to be sucked into the muck or drowned in the river. Twelve hundred were captured, including Oliver Sinclair. The Borderers—who had largely composed the Scots force—took a perverted pleasure in punishing their King by surrendering to us witht God had still a greater one reserved for us. When he heard of the defeat, King Jamie wilted and died. “Fie, fled Oliver?” he said. “Is Oliver taken? All is lost!”
He drooped at Falkland Palace whence he had crawled in abject defeat. His wife was in her last days of pregnancy, but that held out no hope for him. His other sons had died, and any child born at this hour would be foredoomed.
It was a girl, in any case. When he heard of her birth, he said, “Is it even so? The Stuarts began with a lass, and they shall end with a lass.” Then he turned his face to the wall, and said, “The de‘il take it. The de’il take it,” and died. Jamie was thirty-one years old. He left a week-old baby girl, christened Mary, called Queen of Scots, as his heir.
CXVII
W
hat a windfall! What extraordinary fortune! I could scarce credit it, other than that at long last I enjoyed God’s favour and basked in His rewards!
Scotland was mine, and for the price of a border skirmish! Sir Wharton and his three thousand men, with no elaborate war machinery, no field provisions, had delivered Scotland squarely into my hands, as if by divine edict.
I was suzerain of Scotland. I was grand-uncle of its infant Queen. I would marry her to my Edward. It was perfect; it was all part of a Divine Plan, I could see it now. Before, it had all been masked in murkiness, and I had floundered like a man in a mist, but still trying to discern the will of God, still trying to follow it when I received no external sighting, relying only on the steerings of my conscience. Now I had my reward, now all the mists were cleared away, and I had steered true. I found myself in a marvellous place.
Scotland and England would be one. Edward would be Emperor of Great Britain: ruler of Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and England. I, who as a child had had to take refuge in the Tower against a rebellion by Cornishmen—I would leave my son a throne that incorporated three other realms. In one generation the Tudors had gone from local kings to emperors. Because of me.

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