The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers (90 page)

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Authors: Margaret George

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“Perhaps,” I said. “But I will watch him. I like him not. I regret that I invited him to join us.”
“I do not. It was a kind thing to do, and you are ever kind.” She put her arm about my waist, boldly. She had never done this before. “So kind, I think that I have never shown you how my heart warms to your great love.” She was pressed up against me, resting her face on my chest. I bent to kiss her, and she did not pull away; indeed, she returned the kiss, deeply.
There was a royal chamber below decks, where I had quartered on my passing to Calais. It was large, well appointed, and completely private. It was held in readiness for me at all times, and afforded a blissful retreat. “Kate—” I murmured, as I made my way toward the steps leading below, with her clinging to me. “Kate, wife—”
 
In that wooden chamber, well belowdecks, with its stout door and no window at all save a round porthole, Kate became my wife at last. I was gentle with her and she with me, and as it was a prize I had thought never to win, I received it with awe and gratitude and wonderment. I can say no more; to do so is to desecrate it. I will not insult her body by describing it, nor our actions by narrating them.
CXXVI
I
t was dawn now, and I stood alone at the rail of the ship. I had come out here on deck, in that darkest time of night, to wait for sunrise.
There was a holiness about “watching in the night.” The early monks had known this when they set their first worship hour at midnight. And indeed it did possess its own benediction. I prayed as I stood there, prayed for England, and it seemed my prayers might be better heard for the sky being hushed and empty.
I prayed that we would withstand this assault, the largest ever launched against England. It was my fault that this had come to pass; it was my mishandling of our affairs with France. I had done the worst thing one can do in hunting: I had injured the beast without killing him, thereby maddening him, driving him to fight for revenge.
I had done the same with Scotland, I saw that now. “It was not the marriage so much as the wooing,” a Scots noble had protested. I had behaved stupidly and rashly in Scotland; so anxious was I to ,achieve the union almost within my grasp that I had let my impatience gain the upper hand, had insulted and bullied them until they had no choice but to turm">
But I knew in my heart that I
was
the realm, and the brunt of my shortsightedness and whatever ineptitude still remained in me after all these years must be paid by common Kentish soldiers, by the sailors on these hundred-odd vessels assembled here in the bay.
My hours with Kate were forgotten as I stood there in agony. With her I had been a man, but in this battle and invasion I was a king; and as a king I bore the guilt of having brought my country to this pass.
Deliver us, 0 Lord, from the hands of our enemies.
 
Now the sky was growing light, and I could see the horizon, a faint flat line with nothing on it. The French were not yet in sight. The wind always dropped at sunrise and sunset, and soon would pick up. I knew today was the day we could expect them. I knew it would be today.
The sailors changed watch, traditionally, at four o’clock. Now the morning watchman came out on deck, and I heard him speaking to his fellow, who had stood from midnight until four. They both sounded sleepy.
The sun came up over the eastern rim of the horizon, over land, and struck the tallest gathered sails, touching their puckers and pouches. Men were stirring. I smelt coals being lighted in the galley. My private hour was gone, and I was given back into the hands of the world.
 
A breakfast was served to Kate and me, and our captain and first mate, on the selfsame table as the night before. This time the table was spread with brownish homespun cloth and pewter plates, and we were surrounded by shouting men. We ate “sailors’ fare”—hardtack and salted meat and heated ale—so we could see what provisions our men subsisted on. They were dismal. The hardtack almost broke my front teeth.
“ ’Tis said if one rolls off a table, it will kill anyone who might be sitting beneath,” the server said, a skinny lad of about sixteen. He laughed in a neighing way.
“The salted meat will make us thirsty in two hours,” said Kate. “What do you do upon the high seas to combat that, since you cannot drink sea water? If you must drink on account of your food, does that not add problems in your provisioning? Should you not carry something else?”
“Meat untreated with salt cannot keep,” said the first mate. “Carrying live meat in the form of chickens and cattle is even more of a problem than carrying extra barrels of water.”
“Why carry meat at all?”
“The sailors cannot work without it. They subsist on bread well enough for a while, but when it comes to doing any strenuous tasks”—he shrugged—“they have no strength on just bread.”
“Man does not live by bread alone,” bellowed the captain, thinking himself witty.
“Evidently,” replied Kate, in her most queenly manner. Those who quoted Scripture to make jokes irritated her.
“So the sailors live on just this?” I asked. It was quite remarkable.
“On long voyages, yes. Pity the Spaniards on those ships to New Spain. It takes weeks to get there, and when they do, half the crews are dead,” said the captain. “We are all thankful that Your Majesty, in his wisdom, has shown no interest in this so-called New World.”
The New World, with its painted savages and stone cities, had niv wrtune upon a fighting vessel for its relatives to look upon it whilst under sail. Perhaps you should—”
“Aaaaah!” She gave a choking noise and began clutching at her throat with one hand, whilst pointing hysterically with the other. She
was
tedious; no wonder women were not permitted on board ships. Annoyed, I turned away from her and looked for
Mary Rose
myself.
She was ... not there. She was gone, sinking. Even as I watched, she turned on her starboard side and slid out of sight beneath the grey waters of the Solent, whilst the most pitiable, hideous cries rose from below decks. Rose—and were drowned. The high-pitched shrieking, which carried across the water like the death-squeaks of rats, turned into a grotesque gurgle, as the entire ship slid as neatly under the water as my portcullis had into its housing. Only two masts remained above water, and frantic men clung to them, gesturing and crying.
Mary Rose
was lost; lost in a moment.
“What happened?” I cried. I had had my head turned toward Mary Carew, had been conversing with her. Yet that had been scarcely two minutes.
“The ship—listed,” said Kate. “It seemed to be pushed over. The balance was bad; it tipped on the instant—”
“But by
what?”
The wind had been very light.
“It seems—by
itself,”
she said, confused. “I could see nothing that would have pushed it thus. It was almost like a drunken man, losing his balance. A drunken man falls, not for that he is pushed, but because he is drunk. Thus seemed it with the ship.”
“A ship does not founder upon nothing!”
“This ship did,” she insisted.
“God! God! God!” screamed Mary Carew, seeming to hear her husband’s cries from the lost ship.
“He is safe,” I assured her. “Only those belowdecks will have—will have—” I could not finish. “Those who could jump clear are swimming. I see them now. Rescue boats will pick them up.”
“George cannot swim!” she cried. “He hated water, hated being in it—”
I reached out to hold her, as now I could say nothing to comfort her. Unless the Vice-Admiral were one of the men clinging to the masts, he was lost, if he truly could not swim. Already there were dots surrounding the site of the wreck. Dead men? Or swimmers?
Hysterical, she tried to fling herself over the wall. I pulled her back, and she began to beat on me, pulling at my clothes and clawing at my face.
“Why should you live?” she shrieked. “Why should he”—she pointed at the militia-captain—“and she”—she gestured at Kate—“and even
he”
—she threw a pebble at a lazy circling gull—“and my George not?”
I gestured to the guards. “Take her away. She is a danger to herself. Confine her.”
Two huge Hampshiremen encircled her and led her away, making a cage of their arms.
I, too, wished to shriek and cry.
Mary Rose,
with six hundred men, lost. And for no reason, no apparent reason, save—Divine will. God’s finger had reached out and touched my pride, my beautUl8ingiful ship, and sunk her. As punishment? As warning?
The way Kate laid her fingers on my arm, I knew she was thinking the same thing. The masts of the ship pointed at me like the handwriting on Belshazzar’s wall. But what did it say? I could not read it clear. O, I was weary of these hateful, muffled messages from Him....
Great Harry
swung about, executing her turn perfectly. The fault lay not in the lack of wind, then, or in the captain’s skill, but in the very design of
Mary Rose.
But what? She had proved seaworthy for thirty years. What had happened to her now? Truly it
was
the handwriting....
The nettlesome French galleys provoked
Great
Harry,
emboldened by the shocking sinking of the man-of-war
Mary Rose.
Now our English row-barges, a counterpart to their galleys, streamed out to engage them. I had thought row-barges, combining both sail and oars, to be transitional vessels that we soon would not need. But here they carried the day, and did what the great warships could not: chased the French away. Now the French fleet lay outside our Solent waters, waiting to pounce.
Night fell, and the action ceased. Our vessels were anchored in the Solent, and the French were around the spit, invisible. The rescue boats had saved thirty-five men from
Mary Rose
, and they had all been on the open top deck, and swept directly into the sea. They were for the most part seamen, unschooled, superstitious, and hard—unable to describe what had happened to them or their ship. They were of no help at all in reconstructing the tragedy. Sir Gawen Carew, George’s uncle, aboard
Matthew Gonnson,
had passed near
Mary Rose
just as she had begun to tack; he claimed that George had cried out, “I have the sort of knaves I cannot rule!” Had they mutinied?
Thirty-five out of six hundred. I sat in my quarters in the granite bowels of Southsea Castle and pondered that fact. Kate was with me, sitting glumly at my side, tracing meaningless patterns with my walking stave on the floor.
“They will attempt a landing during the early hours of dawn,” I said. “On the Isle of Wight. Their plans are to establish a camp there, and then take Portsmouth—in reprisal for Boulogne.”
“How do you know this?” she asked.
It was obvious. “As an old soldier, I know.”
“And you must lead the militia here of twenty-five thousand men, when they land?”
“Yes.”
“They have landed no other place?”
“No.” The signal fires had not been lighted. The French were, thus far, confined to our area.
“So they concentrate their fury upon you?”
“Yes.” Good that it should be so. I worried about Boulogne. Had they left it alone? Or were they harrying it as well? If they did, could Henry Howard and his garrison hold it?
“The ship—” she began, hesitantly.
“Was a great loss,” I finished. I did not wish to discuss it, even with her.
 
Dawn, at five o’clock. I had barely slept. The French were ashore oidth="1em">
Outside Basingstoke I found Sandys’s house—“The Vynes,” a sign announced at its entrance. I looked down its long entranceway, bordered on each side by young lime trees. Someday they would grow giant and sheltering, but for now they were as yet tender and easily felled. They bespoke newness, yet they had already outlived their planter.
Our little party came down the mile-long avenue of struggling trees, and faced the great mansion. It was all of red brick, clean-edged and new. It was beautiful; beautiful as most of my palaces never were, for they were so large, or else built by other men....
Kate pulled up beside me. “Sandys has built a magnificent home.” She paused. “Pity he could not live to see this moment.” I must have made a depreciating gesture, for she continued, “The moment his sovereign came to visit. Think you not the ‘H’ was intended for this? Think you not that whatever chamber you lodge in tonight will be designated the King’s Chamber, and kept as a shrine forevermore?”
She looked so fierce! “Ah, Kate—”
“Can you not understand?” She sounded angry. “You bring the people joy. They will build an entire house on the hope that someday you might see it, visit it!”
She spoke true. Yet I had seldom allowed myself to consider it enough, to luxuriate in my subjects who revered me so. Instead; I had addressed myself to foreign potentates and powers: Francis, Charles, the Pope. They would never honour or keep a single thing that I had done.
We halted at the end of the brave tree-bordered drive. I sent a groom to the door to announce our presence. It opened; then the groom was left to wait for a quarter-hour whilst confusion erupted within.

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