The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers (87 page)

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Authors: Margaret George

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No. Holbein was consigned to just such a trench-interment, where he decayed cheek-by-jowl with a tavernkeeper or a wet-nurse, and their dust is now mingled.
The plague brought about moral dislocations in every aspect of life. Neighbourliness evaporated, as everyone fled from the sick and refused to touch them, leaving only extortionists, whose greed exceeded their fear, to tend the dying.
The plague, and fear of it, reduced people to such terror that they forgot themselves and let their true natures reign. The Seven Deadly Sins stood revealed, glaring and gigantic, in every man, woman, and child.
Pride? There were groups who withdrew from the plague-ridden people around them and, shutting themselves off completely, thought themselves safe if they embraced “moderation” and “tranquillity.” They ate the most delicate viands and drank the finest wines, listened to sweet music, and admitted no one to their quarters, although neighbours were beating on their doors, begging for help. Not only did they refuse entrance to other people, they even refused any news of what was happening beyond their immediate quarters, in London or the realm itself.
Pride wears many hats: another is bravado, as when Charles, Duc D’Orleans, Francis’s favourite son (for the plague raged in France as well) rushed into a plague-stricken house and punctured the feather mattresses with his sword, shouting, “Never yet has a son of France died of plague,” and died of plague on schedule three days later. Then there was the pride of
not
fleeing, of standing at one’s post stalwartly, as Wolsey had done.
Avarice bared its face boldly, with all fear of reprisal and castigation gone. The scavengers, as Hal described, picking over the bloated victims; the extortionistic rates charged for the simplest services; the “pickmen” who appeared, like ghouls, to charge for carrying biers to a burial place, all “respectable” people having fled. Avarice propelled men forward to grasp at positions and possessions abandoned by their rightful owners.
Envy and anger joined hands in letting inferiors wear their masters’ clothes and exercise their masters’ offices, like evil children let loose to romp in cultivated fields. The anger of the underlings expressed itself in the glee they took in tossing their masters into unmarked graves or in leaving them to decay in public view: the ultimate shame and degradation. Squire Holmes, who had once worn los erstwhile servants.
Gluttony, even in this poisonous time, managed to find a niche for itself. Since one might be dead tomorrow, should not one die with a surfeit in one’s belly, one’s lips still sticky with spiced wine? There were those who declared that they would as lief die of overindulgence as plague and, in fact, thought they would cheat the plague thereby. So they caroused, eating and drinking continuously, feasting on dead men’s stores, going from house to house scavenging, not for gold, but for meat and drink. They passed their last days in an oblivion of wine and pastries.
Others, of course, embraced lust as their answer to plague, preferring to die by an onslaught of Venus. They made their impending release from the moral code their excuse for violating it. They abandoned themselves to licentiousness, setting up orgy-rooms in death-emptied houses, where they indulged in every Roman and French vice known to man. Even respectable women were pawns of lust-inflamed men who came to “minister” to them as they lay incoherent and weak with plague. They were “examined” and exposed and then sported with ... and left to die.
The law foundered. Lawyers and priests were dying along with those they served, and there were few to administer the law or the Sacraments. Whenever a lone remaining priest appeared to perform a funeral, he would find many other biers falling in behind the original one, as people watched eagerly for any sign of a legitimate funeral, and attached themselves to it. So few remained to enforce civil or sacred law that no one had a mind to observe it, and so there was, in effect, almost no authority at all.
Sloth—that slouching, lurking sin that underlies so many of the others—came into its own, as people declined to tend even to that which they could, such as clearing the streets, removing piles of offal, or gathering in the harvest. They were on a grotesque holiday.
The plague was enough to make a moralist out of me, if not a true Christian. For man’s true nature was so ugly, so heinous, that any system, no matter how odious, that modified its evil was to be sought and embraced.
At least until the plague abated.
HENRY VIII:
 
I had neglected Holbein. I had not cared for his mortal remains, and in so doing, I had behaved as barbarously as any fear-crazed apprentice. The plague had made a heathen of me—I, the Supreme Head of the Church in England. I prayed as I passed the corpse-pile,
Grant them eternal peace.
Then,
God forgive me for my failings, my lacks, my blindness.
The more I knew, the more I understood, so it seemed, but thereby my sins multiplied.
 
Once outside the city walls, the dwellings grew farther apart. But if I thought that the plague was incapable of leaping separated households, I was wrong. Workers had died right in the fields, and their families in their farm-steads had succumbed at the same time. Livestock of all sorts—cows, pigs, sheep, goats—wandered the roads, starving and dazed. Dogs ran loose, reverting to beasts of prey, crouching and growling as we passed. Everywhere the fields were untended, the crops growing as best they could, but with no one to gather them in. Country gluttony manifested itself in people snat beasts16;these hands are destined for orbs and sceptres, not distaffs and spindles.’ ”
Perhaps what starts out as a retort, a dream, turns into a drive, takes on a reality of its own. Is that not another cousin to destiny?
“Everyone dreams of becoming royal, even the maids and chimney-sweeps. ’Tis a common fantasy,” was my answer.
“When is it to be?” Will indeed sounded tired, whereas I was filled with energy.
“When the plague abates and we return to London,” I said. “No, I shall not find a lone country priest and go secretly to him ... although it would be romantic,” I added. A small parish church ... nuptials in the early summer morning, a walk through the fields, picking wildnowers.... “But it is important that this be no hole-and-corner affair. Gardiner or Cranmer must officiate. Pray God they are safe. I have not had word in five days from those in Suffolk. Edward Seymour and Paget, they are well in Gloucestireshire, as of two days ago.... Nay, I want them all present.”
But the cool secret chapel, the procession through the fields ... forbidden to me, no need to dwell on it.
“Well, I wish you joy,” Will said. “You have had little enough in your weddings.”
CXXI
T
he table was laid in the courtyard, the long wooden one about which we gathered every noon, set up under the spreading hazel tree, as there was no shade from the long wings of the house at this time of day. Jugs of wine were set out on the table, and bunches of flowers, freshly gathered by Dr. Butts, Edward, and Kate.
We all seated ourselves and waited for the cooks to bring out today’s fare. I would make the announcement in a moment.
I looked at Kate, seated as always next to Edward. I tried to catch her gaze, but she did not look at me. Rather she looked only at Edward.
The cooks brought out the first course, spring lamb and larks, prepared with scallions and chervil.
After everyone’s plate was filled, I took the jug of red wine, thin and sour, but sweetened with honey, and filled my cup. “Fill yours, all,” I ordered. When that was done, I took a sip and then raised my cup. “I wish to share with you my great joy this day. England is to have a Queen, and I a wife.” I looked at Kate, inclined my head toward her.
Look at me, woman!
I ordered her silently, as she continued to study her plate.
“It is our sweet, kind Lady Latimer who will become my wife, and your Queen.”
Still she kept her eyes down.
“A modest Queen!” I jested, reaching my cup over to her and touching her vessel with mine. The clunk made her look up.
The company broke into smiles. Kate smiled too, shyly.
“The King has honoured me greatly,” she said softly. “I pray that I may ever be a good, kind, loyal, and true wife to His Majesty.”
“Nay, you make it sound like a funeral, Lady Latimer,” said Tom Seymour. He was sitting at the foot of the table, his accustomed place. He grinned, his elbows on the table, the great sleeves of his whing ” I said, “they leave us alone to do as lovers do.” It seemed humourous, as we did not do what lovers do. I patted my basket. “How we shall disappoint them when we return with our baskets overflowing!”
She turned and gave me a smile, but a sad one. As if to say,
What a pity.
All about us nature was rampantly growing, reproducing, making an abundance of new green stalks, weeds, creepers, and climbers. And here we were in their midst, sterile and restricted.
But it was my time of life. I was autumn now, late autumn. In autumn all these fields and forests would be like me, we would be at one in our cycle. Now November passing through June fields was an outrage, an insult; then we would blend together and I would belong, where today I was but a visitor, a foreigner.
We found the strawberries, mixed in with weeds and self-sown rye. Picking them out was a job, a job I disliked. Bending over was so difficult for me that I was forced to kneel down; but that was also difficult, because the pressure on my weak leg caused it to start throbbing. Disturbing it in any way meant possibly causing it to revert to its festering stage. At length I devised a sort of half-kneeling position to use.
We picked, silently. In truth I had no extra strength to carry on a conversation while bent down in an uncomfortable position. The sun on my hat was rapidly making me overheat, but—last vestige of vanity!—I could never remove it and reveal my baldness.
Sweat began popping out all over my face; then gathered in little streams, running down the troughs and wrinkles of my skin. The red strawberries gleamed and shimmered before my eyes, pulsating like stars. Then everything swirled, and I fell into the patch of meadow, face downward. I felt a strawberry crush against my cheek, and its sweet yielded juice was overwhelming in my nostrils.
 
I looked up at Kate’s face. I was lying on my back in her lap, and she was fanning me with my hat. My hat ... then she had seen my baldness! Oh, the shame of it!
“The sun made me grow dizzy,” I murmured. I was so humiliated, so mortified, that I hated her for seeing this. I would never marry her now. I could not have a wife who looked down upon my weakness, who considered herself superior to me. My legs were forked out. I lay like a helpless frog in her sight.
I sat up, retrieved the hat, clapped it on my head. I must leave this site, her presence, her shaming presence. I struggled to my feet, pushing away her “helping” hands. Her mocking hands, more like!
“Edward does the same,” she said, in a natural voice. “He overheats in direct sunlight. It must be the Tudor complexion, for I believe Elizabeth avoids the sun for that reason. Although her white skin is her pride, I know.”
I felt a rush of relief. My pride had been spared. But no, this would not do. “Kate,” I said, “you have seen, now, what I would have kept from you at all costs. I am not what I was. The truth is, the sun has never bothered me before. The truth is, I have many infirmities. My leg periodically goes on a rampage, crippling me. I have had trouble, of late, with my bladder ... and with raging headaches that leave me spent and weak. And with sick fancies, with shapes that come and talk to me, that stand in corners and run down corridors, shrieking. I am an old, sick man.” There, I had said it. Now I would dismiss her, release her from the betrothal, on the understandownwmunication from his master. It seemed that Charles had had a successful campaign already, and had scored some notable triumphs in Luxembourg and Navarre. He looked to continue the war on the northern front, but would pass the coming fortnight at Landrecies, directing the siege there. If I wished to enter the campaign after that date ... ?
“No, no,” I said. “It is too late in the season, and we cannot ready an army now, with midsummer already past.” Not to mention the plague. “Next season, next season, we shall join him. How long does he plan to campaign?”

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