The Autobiography Of Henry VIII Read online

  At ten, of course, I did not know all this, but I sensed it. I saw how reluctant the Spanish were actually to send their daughter here, in spite of the signed treaties promising to do so. I saw that the French King or the Holy Roman Emperor never met Father, never came to his court or invited him to theirs. I saw that the ambassadors who were here seemed to be old and badly dressed, and that some countries sent no ambassadors at all.

  It would be different in Arthur’s reign, I hoped. I wanted him to be that old Arthur come again—to be a mighty King, so filled with honour and strength and a sort of shining that it would change everything. As I was trying desperately to shape myself for a churchman, I saw his reign as bringing a new Golden Age to the Church as well. Under Arthur, the monasteries would blossom forth in learning, the priests rededicate themselves to the Saviour . . . and so on. Yes, I tried hard to hew myself into a cleric. I have always felt that whatever the station to which one is called, one must embrace it wholeheartedly. Although the religious life had been chosen for me, I believed that it was meant to be. Was not Samuel the Prophet promised to God before he was born? God had chosen me: God must have special work for me to do. And it was true, although not in the way I had first thought. Have I not done God’s work as King? Defended the true faith and saved the English Church from the errors of Popery? And could I have done it, would I have been equipped to do it, had I not spent my childhood in holy studies? Nothing is wasted, nothing is pointless. God directs all. All, I say.

  WILL:

  Have you ever heard such nonsense? Harry was always so tiresome when he got wound up on one of his religious huffs-and-puffs. This is a perfect example. Worse, he really believed himself.

  HENRY VIII:

  I should have hated Arthur, but I did not. Even envy was forbidden me: if Arthur was to be King, it was God’s will, and I must not wrestle with God. Jacob had, but that was long ago, and he had been duly punished. When I studied Genesis I knew that.

  Arthur was hailed as a paradigm of princehood: handsome, brilliant, promising. His graces were admired, his looks, his studies. The sicknesses, the painful shyness, the lack of any physical prowess (this in the son of a King who had won his crown in battle!) were ignored. A King-to-be is always a prodigy, a phenomenon, a reincarnation of Alexander the Great.

  So, as the years passed and I grew taller and stronger than Arthur, and caught up with him in his studies (he used to ask me secretly to do his Latin translations for him), it was politely ignored, and I was ignored as well.

  Only Arthur himself did not flinch from me. He was fond of me and, in a strange way, envious. He thought me free.

  “You are so lucky, Henry,” he said quietly one day after the King had been to see us—praising Arthur and nodding perfunctorily at the rest of us. “They don’t see you. They don’t care what you do.”

  And for that he calls me lucky, I thought sourly.

  “You can do what you like,” he continued. “You can be whatever you like, do whatever your fancy tells you.”

  “No,” I finally said. “It’s you who can do that. Because whatever you do, they say it’s right. Whatever I do, they say it’s wrong.”

  “But don’t you see? That’s the freedom—to be wrong! How I wish—” Suddenly embarrassed, he stopped and changed the subject, that early spring day when he was fifteen and I was ten. “I want you to help me, Henry,” he blurted out.

  “How?” I was taken aback by the sudden, candid request.

  “You’re so good—such a skilled horseman,” he finally said. “You know I’ve never . . . liked horses. And now I’ll have to ride with Father to meet Katherine, my betrothed.”

  “You’ll be twenty before that happens,” I scoffed. Like everyone else, I knew that the betrothal to Katherine had been stalemated once again.

  “No. She’s to arrive this autumn. And we’re to be married right after. I know the Spanish prize horsemanship. Katherine’s own mother rode into battle when she was with child! I—well, I—”

  “You don’t want to fall off in front of Katherine,” I finished. “But, Arthur, you’ve ridden for years, had innumerable teachers. What can I do that they could not?” You hate horses and have no feel for them, I thought to myself, and no teacher can make up for that.

  “I don’t know,” he said miserably. “But if only—”

  “I’ll try to help you,” I said. “But if you aren’t a good horseman, why don’t you avoid horses in front of Katherine? Do something else. Sing. Dance.”

  “I can’t sing, and I’m a clumsy dancer,” he said, his face set. “You can sing, and you can dance, but I can’t.”

  “Recite verse, then.”

  “I hate verse.”

  What can you do, then? I wondered. “Then you must let others make fools of themselves dancing and singing and reciting, and look on with amusement.”

  “And there’s something else! The—the wedding night!” His voice sounded higher than usual.

  “Oh. That,” I said nonchalantly, trying to appear wise.

  He smiled wanly. “At least I can’t ask your help in that,” he attempted to joke—a joke that was to haunt me, literally, for years.

  So it was to happen at last. Arthur was to be married straightway, and the Spanish Princess was already en route to England. The voyage would take two months at least. But she was coming! And there would be a royal wedding and festivities, after years of nothing. Father would be forced to spend money as all the eyes of Europe would be focused on the English Court, watching and judging. There must be great banquets and elaborate allegorical arches and statues and pageants in the streets to celebrate the marriage, and the public conduits would have to run with red and white wine all day. (Already my confessor had pointed out that I had an inordinate fascination for the glitter and pomp of this world, as he put it.) Most important to me, I would have new clothes.

  I hated Father’s miserliness. I hated being in moth-eaten cloaks and wearing shirts whose worn sleeves ended halfway to my wrists. I was now just as tall as Arthur, yet I was put into the clothes of someone many sizes smaller. When I bent, the breeches cut into my backside; when I reached, the shoulders strained.

  “You’re your grandfather all over,” Nurse Luke kept saying. She could not see how I winced at that. “He was outsized, and you will be, too. He was six feet and four inches.”

  “Handsome, too.” I could not resist that.

  “Yes,” she said tartly. “Perhaps too much so, for his own good.”

  “One can never be too handsome for one’s own good,” I teased.

  “No? He was. Anyway, handsomeness is wasted on a priest. If you’re too handsome, you make people nervous. No one will confess to you.”

  “But the things I’ll have to confess!” I laughed.

  “Henry!” she snorted. “You should not plan your badness in advance.”

  “You are right, Mistress Luke. I shall just sin spontaneously.”

  I enjoyed seeing the look on her face as she bustled away. In truth, I hardly knew what sort of sin I was likely to commit, although evidently some of the court serving girls did: I had caught them looking at me with peculiar expressions.

  Katherine did not land at Dover, as had been expected. A storm blew her ship off course, and the Spanish were forced to land at Plymouth instead—a long, wet, and muddy ride from London.

  Protocol demanded, nevertheless, that Father go to meet her officially and welcome her to England. Arthur could not accompany him, that was plain. He had lately been ill with a racking cough. He must stay indoors, near fires, to conserve whatever strength he had to face the coming ordeal of his wedding. So it was that I was told to go with Father to bring Katherine to her new home.

  It was late autumn, foggy and cold. The leaves were already off the trees, and the countryside was brown and bleak, wreathed in ground mists. The ride promised to be long and clammy. Yet I did not care; I was excited to be out beyond the confines of the palace walls. I was wide-eyed and gaping at everything w
e passed: the cheering crowds, the muddy-pathed villages, the great yellow open fields, the dark forests.

  It took days to reach the place where the Spanish had landed. It was a dismal little huddle of tents; rain dripped off the proud corners of the middle tent, the royal one. The royal standard hung drenched and pathetic on the flagstaff.

  It was almost evening, the bone-chilling end of the day when the cold wraps around you and the chill seeps in underneath your cloak. I was glad to be within minutes of sheltering inside a warm, dry tent. I dismounted and sloshed along behind Father, who strode up to the door of the tent.

  And was promptly turned away. The King—turned away! He laughed, unbelieving. It seemed that the Spanish custom was that the bride must not be seen before her wedding day by any man outside her family.

  Father stopped, stock-still. Then, in deceptively quiet tones, he said, “I am King in this land, and in England there is no such law. Spanish law has no force here.”

  He pushed his way toward the tent-flap, shoving aside the protesting guard. “Do the Spanish think me a fool?” he muttered. “To marry my heir to someone I’ve never even seen—who might be pockmarked or deformed? I will see her for myself!”

  The remaining guard made a halfhearted attempt to keep him out, but he pushed past him and plunged into the tent. I followed.

  We found ourselves in a harem. It was clearly a woman’s tent, with women’s clothes and toilet articles scattered about, and several ill-at-ease serving maids. We felt very large and mud-splattered and clumsy, standing there surrounded by scarves and cushions and perfumes.

  Now there was a commotion in the veiled inner part of the tent: the Princess was told that we had blundered into her private quarters. Doubtless she would come out and chastise us. I could already picture her: thin and fussy and tight-lipped—a perfect bride for Arthur.

  I heard her voice before I saw her, and it was a low voice, and sweet, not scolding and shrewish. Then she emerged in her dressing gown, her hair still unarranged and free of any headdress; it fell, in thick, golden-brown waves, over her shoulders.

  She was beautiful—like a maiden in the Morte d’Arthur, like the fair Elaine, the lovely Enid. Or Andromeda, chained to a rock, awaiting rescue by Perseus in the myth I had been dutifully translating. All the heroines of literature came to life for me as I stared at Katherine.

  What can I say? I loved her, then and there. Doubtless you will say I was only a boy, a ten-year-old boy, and that I had not even spoken to her, and that it was therefore impossible for me to love her. But I did. I did! I loved her with a sudden burst of devotion that took me quite by surprise. I stood gaping at her, gripped by yet another unknown emotion: intense jealousy of Arthur, who would have her for himself.

  And now the betrothal ceremony must be arranged. I was to represent Arthur and be his proxy in the ceremony promising them to one another, and I thought I could not bear it.

  But I did. Early the next day we stood side by side and recited dull vows in Latin before a priest in her tent. Although Katherine was already fifteen, she was no taller than I. I could turn my eye just a little and meet hers on the same level.

  I found her continually looking at me, and it made me uncomfortable. But then I caught her expression and realized what she was seeing. Misled by my early height and thick chest, she looked at the second son and saw what no one else, thus far, had seen: a man. She saw me as a man, and she was the first to do it. And I loved her for that too.

  But she was Arthur’s. She would be his wife, and he would be King. I accepted it without question—or so I thought. Can secret wishes, so secret they are not admitted even to the self, come true? Even as I ask the question, I do not want to know the answer.

  The wedding was to take place on November fourteenth, and Arthur was expected to produce an heir within a year. The King never said so, but I overheard the jests and jokes among the servants (they always spoke freely in front of me, as if I were already a priest). They all wanted a baby by Christmas of the following year; indeed, they thought it their due.

  For someone charged with such prodigious responsibilities, Arthur was oddly unenthusiastic. As his wedding day approached, he became more and more listless. He shrank; he dwindled; clearly he did not want to be married. One day he came to my chambers, ostensibly to ask my help in trying on his new clothes, but in reality to cry and confess he didn’t want it—any of it.

  “I don’t want to go through a marriage ceremony before thousands of people,” he said in a tremulous voice, standing before a half-length mirror and looking pensively at his reflection, swathed in his white velvet cape. Three years later, he had finally grown into it.

  “Well, you must, that’s all,” I said, grabbing his plumed hat off his head and plopping it on my own, making faces at myself in the mirror. “Think about afterwards.” I knew something about that business—in a confused sort of way.

  “That’s the part I don’t want to think about,” he said quietly.

  “Then don’t. Perhaps it’s better that way.” I turned and observed how I looked in the hat. I didn’t like the curled brim.

  “You don’t know . . .” He paused, then muttered, “. . . anything.”

  Suddenly I was angry. “I know that you are afraid. About what it doesn’t matter. And if other people can see you are afraid, then it will be bad for you. It mustn’t show, Arthur. You mustn’t let it show.”

  “Aren’t you ever afraid? No, I don’t believe you are. . . .”

  I had to turn away then, lest I answer him: Yes. I am often afraid. Still, I had learned early to mask fear, to stamp it down. I could not help what it did inside me. But I was pleased that Arthur thought I was never afraid. It meant that others could not see what I really felt.

  With studied casualness, I tossed the hat across to Arthur, aiming at his head. It landed square on him, ringing his head perfectly. I heard myself laugh, and heard him join in.

  He believed me happy. That was enough for me: a minor triumph in the midst of his general victory. It tasted sweet as honey, almost as good as full-bodied wine. Which I was supposed to be too young to drink . . . just as I was supposed to be too young to love Princess Katherine.

  November fourteenth was clear and warm—it fell within St. Martin’s Summer, the last burst of sun before the drab winter. The warmth would bring the crowds to their height, I thought, surprised at how experienced that made me sound. In truth, I had not appeared before London crowds since I was made Duke of York seven years earlier.

  I must escort Katherine from her lodgings at Westminster Palace east into London to St. Paul’s, where she would wed Arthur. She must not see him until they met in the Cathedral; to do so was considered unlucky. Thus it came about that I would ride beside her through London and hear the shouts meant for Arthur.

  I had a new white velvet suit for the occasion. Both Katherine and I were to ride white horses, and she would be attired in white and cloth-of-silver, as befitted a virgin bride. Together we would make a white spot in the streets, easily seen a hundred yards away even by someone with poor eyesight.

  As she was led out on a fine white mare and we met in the Palace courtyard, I reached out to her, caught her hand. She was even more beautiful than I had remembered, and on her pale cheeks glowed two bright spots. Excitement, or fear? I grasped her hand and she tightened the grip. Her hand was cold. So it was fear.

  Then the Palace gates swung open. Beyond stretched a seeming sea of people, some of them having waited since daybreak. They broke into cheers as we rode out, throwing late-blooming flowers upon us. I saw Katherine shrink back, but I was exhilarated, felt a strange stirring in my loins. I loved the stares, the people, the cheers, and wanted the ride to last forever. I was thankful that the way to St. Paul’s was long.

  There were more than a hundred thousand London citizens, according to Father’s ever-diligent census-takers. I believe they were all out that day, watching us. Truly, I had never imagined people in such numbers. And all cheerin
g . . .

  The road to St. Paul’s followed the unpaved Strand running beside the Thames. To our right were the large houses of the nobility and high-ranking prelates, with long, narrow gardens running down to the river where the watergates and boat-landings were. I could see clear across the river to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s palace at Lambeth, its weathering bricks looking pink in the midday sun. It stood alone, yet not far away I could make out scattered dwellings and shops. This area was called Southwark, and I knew (from Skelton) that taverns and hostelries and pleasure gardens and houses of prostitution thrived here in the very shadow of the Archbishop’s palace and the dwellings of other bishops. In fact the Bishop of Winchester’s house was so close to one of the larger bawdy houses that the women there were nicknamed “Winchester geese.” Evidently the south side of the river was undecided as to whether its true nature was holy or profane.

  At length we approached Ludgate and were abruptly in the thick of the city. It was but a short way up Ludgate Hill to St. Paul’s. A raised wooden walkway had been constructed before the Cathedral’s entrance and covered with a white carpet which we must walk over all the way down the great aisle to the altar where I was to hand Katherine over to Arthur.

  It was dim inside, and after the bright sun I could barely see. The Cathedral seemed to be a great cavern with a gleam of gold and flickering lights somewhere far in the distance. That must be the altar. I reached out to take Katherine’s hand and found it cold as death. I looked into her eyes and saw only fear there. Beneath her veiled white headdress her face was blanched.

  I longed to be able to speak to her and ease her fear, but her rudimentary English and my equally rudimentary Spanish could not meet. I put both my hands over hers and smiled. Just as she smiled in return, a silver blare of trumpets announced the beginning of the procession. We must walk to the altar, and I must yield her to Arthur. He waited, also attired in white, a pale moth in the vastness of the great nave.