The Autobiography Of Henry VIII Read online

  The wedding banquet following the ceremony was splendid. Enormous tables ran down the entire length of the Hall at Westminster, heavy with gold plate and extravagant dishes—three-tiered castles, pheasants, gilded swans, replicas of lakes—all created by the King’s clever pastry artists. The Spanish ambassador looked it all over critically. I saw him pacing up and down, pretending he was deciding upon a dish, but in reality inventorying the whole for his report to Ferdinand. He caught my eye once and smiled. He did not have to fear my opinion of him, as I was negligible, a nonentity—so he thought. The French ambassador and the Imperial one also took mental notes. I saw Father observing them from the royal dais. He was pleased that this expenditure would serve him so well in diplomatic reports.

  At the conclusion of the wedding feast, servers took away the dishes and removed the tables, clearing the hall for dancing.

  Although I had not been formally trained in it, I loved dancing and had managed to teach myself a great deal in the privacy of my chamber. Now I could try my skill with real musicians and real partners, and I prayed not to appear foolish.

  My prayers were answered; my self-taught steps served me well, and although I learned moment by moment with the help of my partners, I found I knew much already. I danced a pavane, a basse dance, and even a Burgundian, a difficult step. Soon I had to remove my jacket, I was so hot. I tossed it into a corner, and was surprised to hear cheers.

  “Young Lord Henry!” someone called. “Dance on!”

  And so I did, until sweat was pouring off me and I panted for breath. Exhausted, I made my way to a corner where I slumped against the wall. I could feel sweat trickling down my face and back, soaking into my shirt.

  “D’you want yer fortune?” a voice suddenly whispered into my ear. I turned and saw a well-dressed woman standing beside me. But she had an odd expression in her eye, and she leaned over in a conspiratorial manner, “I ain’t supposed to be here. If they find me, I’m gone. But I come to all the royal weddings. I was at the King’s, now”—she jerked her head to indicate Father—“as well as at poor Richard’s; and Edward’s . . . aye, not that one, since he married her secretly—if he married her at all, that witch!”

  She was talking about my other grandmother, Elizabeth Woodville. Still I sat stiffly and did not say anything.

  “So you are not curious?” she said, as if I had wronged her. Slowly she picked herself up and prepared to go elsewhere. As she stood up, one of the King’s guard recognized her.

  “That woman!” he choked, hurriedly coming over. “She’s a Welsh fortune-teller! A sorceress!” He apprehended her, hustled her toward the door, and shoved her out. He shook his head apologetically in my direction. “They cluster around like flies! I cannot keep them all out!”

  That night Arthur took Katherine into his bed. Alone in mine, I thought about what that Welsh woman had said about my grandmother being a witch, to keep myself from thinking what Arthur was—or was not—doing. Strange to think that in years to come that very question was to be debated by scores of learned men.

  V

  The next morning Arthur called for courtiers to attend him in his bedchamber. He demanded cups of wine and was full of boasts about how marriage was thirsty work, and so on. He kept repeating this all day. It was the first thing he said to me as he emerged from his room and saw me. He even attempted a manful chuckle.

  Arthur and Katherine were at court all during the Christmas holidays, and I found I could not bear to be with them. I sulked and tried to avoid the festivities. This was so unlike me that the Queen eventually sought me out in my secret, solitary spot: an empty room high in the eaves of the palace. I had thought no one knew I went there, but clearly she had noticed.

  It was cold there; no fires were ever lit. But I could hear faint music and laughter from the Great Hall below. It was another masque, another dance. I shut my ears against it and looked out the small cobwebbed window, seeing the late-December sun slanting over the Palace grounds, and far beyond. Everything was brown and golden and still. I could see the ships on the Thames, anchored and waiting. Waiting . . .

  I wished I could be a sailor and live on one of those ships; spend my life on the water, sailing all over the world. Being a prince—the sort of prince I must be—was dull by comparison. I would . . . I would start going down to the docks and learning about ships. I would go secretly! That way, Father could say nothing against it. I would disguise myself . . . and then, when I had become an expert sailor, I would sail away, forget my life here, disappear, become a vagabond prince—have high adventures! They would never know what had become of me; only I would know my true identity. There would be monsters, and sea battles, and—

  “Henry?” A soft voice interrupted me.

  I turned, guiltily, and saw the Queen.

  “Henry, what are you doing here all alone?”

  “I am planning my future.”

  “Your Father has already done that.”

  Yes. He thought to make a priest of me. Well, they would have to fit the chasubles and albs and cinctures to someone else. I would be sailing the high seas!

  “You must not worry about your place,” she said, thinking to soothe me, “nor hide yourself from the festivities.”

  “The festivities bore me,” I said grandly. “And the costumes for the masque were moth-eaten!” Somehow this one thing had greatly embarrassed me. I knew that the Spanish ambassador had seen, and laughed at us.

  She nodded. “Yes, I know. They are so old—”

  “Why doesn’t he get new ones, then?” I burst out. “Why?”

  She ignored the question and all that lay behind it. “There will be dancing soon. Please come. You are such a talented dancer.”

  “A talented dancer!” I said grumpily. “I must forget dancing—unless Arthur will permit the clergy to dance in their vestments. Do you think His Holiness might give us such a dispensation?” It was hopeless; it must be the sea for me, that was clear.

  Suddenly the Queen bent toward me and touched my face lightly. “Dear Henry,” she said. “I disliked it, too. So much.”

  So she knew, she understood. She had been the eldest, but only a daughter. Unable to be Queen in her own right. Unable. And waiting. Always waiting—to be assigned her secondary role.

  I nodded. And obediently followed her down to the Great Hall.

  The Hall was hot and crowded, with everyone dressed in satins, stiff jewelled brocades, and splendidly coloured velvets. I was only too aware of my plain clothes. I had been allowed only three new outfits for the wedding and Christmas festivities, and I had long since appeared in them.

  Arthur and Katherine sat at one end of the Hall. Arthur was gotten up like a jewelled idol, and he looked frail and doll-like in the overpowering chair. He kept glancing nervously at Katherine. He and his new wife were to leave London as soon as the holidays were over, and go to a cold, horrid castle on the Welsh border to play King and Queen in training. This was entirely Father’s idea; he believed in toughening Arthur, tempering him.

  Arthur clearly did not want to be tempered. Yet he was willing, because it was his duty. Arthur always obeyed his duty. He seemed to feel that was what distinguished a king, or even was the essence of kingship.

  The minstrels took their assigned places in the stone gallery. There were fifteen of them—double the usual number. Their leader announced that they were honoured by the presence of a Venetian lutenist and a shawm player from Flanders. There was a murmur of appreciation. Then he added that a French musician, well versed in French court dances, would play, as well as another artist who had trained at the Spanish court.

  Initially they played only English dances, and almost all the lords and ladies and company danced, as these measures were familiar to them. They knew the pavane, the bransle, and the almain.

  Arthur would not dance. He just sat, still and solemn, in his great chair, deliberately ignoring Katherine’s restlessness and tapping feet. She was longing to dance—it was evident in every
line of her body.

  Suddenly I was determined to satisfy that longing in her and in myself as well. We were both prisoners of our station: she, wed to a husband who refused to dance; I, a future priest. It was decreed that we must spend the remainder of our lifetimes without dancing. Perhaps so, but there was still a little time. . . .

  I made my way over to her and, bowing low before the dais, indicated that I wished her to join me in a Burgundian. She nodded hesitantly; I held out my hand and together we went to the middle of the floor.

  I felt drunk. I had done what I longed to do, and in front of everyone! The exhilaration of it . . . it was a taste I was never to lose, was to seek from then on.

  I looked at Katherine. She smiled joyfully at having been rescued. And there was something else in her look . . . she found me pleasing, found my person attractive. I felt her acceptance of me, her liking, and it was like the summer sun to me.

  She was a stunning dancer and knew many intricate steps unfamiliar to us in England. I had to struggle to keep up with her. Her timing, her balance, her sense of the music were astounding. Gradually the others fell back and watched us as we progressed through a galliard, a dance du Roy, a quatre bransle, and a Spanish dance of the Alhambra that she showed me. When the musicians stopped, Katherine was breathless and her face flushed. The onlookers were silent for an awkward moment, then they began to cheer us.

  Alone on the dais, Arthur glowered like a pale, angry child.

  VI

  Four months later Arthur was dead—of consumption in that drafty Welsh castle—and Katherine was a widow.

  And I was, suddenly, the heir—the only thing standing between the young Tudor dynasty and oblivion.

  I was alone in my chamber when the news came. One of the pages brought me a brief note from the King, asking me to come to him right away.

  “Immediately?” I asked, puzzled. The King never sent for me, and certainly not in the middle of the day, when I was supposed to be doing my studies.

  “Yes, Your Grace,” he replied, and his voice was different from before. So markedly different that even a ten-year-old boy would take note of it. I looked over at him and found him staring at me.

  All along the passageway it was the same. People gaped at me. I suddenly knew that something terrible was about to happen. Was I to be sent away to some remote monastery, ostensibly to study?

  I reached the King’s Privy Chamber and pulled open the heavy wooden door. Inside it was dark and dismal, as always. Father never lit enough firewood, out of his perverted sense of frugality, unless he expected a high-ranking visitor. He normally kept his quarters so cold that the servants used to store perishable foods behind the screens. Butter kept especially well there, or so I was told.

  I saw a shadowy figure standing in the gloom, his back to me. The King. He turned and saw me.

  “Henry!” He came toward me, his hands extended. The fingers were slightly blue with the chill, I noticed. His face was drawn as if invisible weights were pulling at the skin.

  “Arthur is dead. Your brother is dead.” His thin lips spat out the words as if I were responsible.

  “When?” was all I could think to say.

  “Three days ago. The messenger has just come from Ludlow. It was—a chill. Consumption. I don’t know.” He shook his head and made helpless gestures with his hands.

  “You sent him there.” I heard my own voice; it was a stranger’s. “You sent him to Wales, to that horrible castle.”

  He looked stricken and old: a collapsing leather bag. “To learn to be King—” he protested feebly.

  “To die. Of course he would. He was never strong. He couldn’t survive that place. And he did not want to go.”

  Arthur is dead . . . Arthur is dead . . . the words kept beating against my mind, like rain against a window.

  “Yes. I sent him to Wales.” The King’s grey eyes seemed to ice over. “In so doing, it seems that I have made you King.”

  Until he said it, I had not realized the full implication. Arthur was dead: I would be King.

  “This is God’s doing,” I said automatically, without thinking. It was what priests always said whenever something catastrophic took place.

  Father’s eyes seemed to bulge, and he took a step toward me, his hand raised as if to strike me. “How dare you imply that God meant you to be King?” he whispered.

  “I only meant—” I began, but his blow cut me off.

  “Arthur is dead and you live!” he screamed. “I hate God! I hate Him! I curse Him!”

  I almost expected to see the Devil materialize in the cold chamber and drag the King off. The priests had told me that was what happened to those who reviled or cursed God. But nothing happened. I was to remember that too, later. . . .

  Suddenly the Queen—I had not even seen her in the shadows of the chamber—rushed over to us. “Stop!” she commanded. “How dare you argue and insult each other over Arthur’s grave?” Her face was wet and her hair hanging limp, but her voice was hard and strong.

  “He has insulted me! And God,” I added as a pious afterthought.

  I thought she would upbraid the King, but instead she turned on me. They all turn on me, I thought angrily, and suddenly I was weary of it. . . .

  “You will be King, Henry. Do you feel safe and smug, now that you’re the heir? But there’s nothing to keep you out of the grave as well. Being heir doesn’t protect you. It singles you out.” She moved closer to me and glared into my eyes. Her own were almost the colour of twilight, some other part of me noticed and recorded. “Now death will want you as well. He is hungry for heirs. That is his favourite food. You are now in his fattening pen. Is that your triumph?” With only a few words she was able to strike such fear into me that the history of my kingship would resound with my attempts to still it.

  Then she turned to the King, to whom she had always deferred and before whom she had kept silent. “You are mad with grief,” she said now, drily. “You don’t mean what you are saying. You do not mean to insult Henry, your only son. You do not mean that at all.”

  He nodded, dully.

  I had entered the King’s chamber a second son and future priest; I left it as heir apparent and future King. To say that everything changed thereafter is to say what any fool could know. By that they would assume I meant the externals: the clothes I wore and my living quarters and my education. Yet the greatest change was immediate, and in fact had already occurred.

  As I left the chamber, one of the yeomen of the guard pulled back the door and bowed. He was a very tall man, and I barely reached his shoulder. As he straightened, I found his eyes riveted on me in a most disturbing fashion. It was only for an instant, but in that instant I perceived curiosity—and fear. He was afraid of me, this great, strong man, afraid of what I might prove to be. For he did not know me, and I was his future King.

  No one at court knew me. I was to meet that selfsame look again and again. It said: Who is he? Shall we fear him? At length I developed the habit of never looking directly into anyone’s eyes lest I again meet that look of wariness coupled with apprehension. It was not a good or restful thing to know that merely by existing I threatened the ordered pattern of others’ lives.

  They knew Father well and had duly observed Arthur for some fifteen years, grown used to him. But Henry was the unknown, the hidden-away one. . . .

  The man smiled, falsely. “Your Grace,” he said.

  The smile was worse than the look in his eyes, although they went hand in hand. I made some stiff little motion with my hand and turned away.

  No one would ever be candid or open with me again. That was the great change in my life.

  There were other changes as well, of course. I must now live at court with the King; I must exchange my priest-tutor for a retired ambassador. There were good changes: I was now allowed to practise dancing and even had a French dance-master to demonstrate the fashions in that court, where everything was elegant and perfect (to hear him tell it). I had my own ba
nd of minstrels and a new music teacher who taught me theory and composition, and even imported an Italian organ for me to use. Being constantly at court, I began to meet other boys of my own age, noblemen’s sons, and so I had friends for the first time in my life.

  The bad things: I was not to engage in any “dangerous” activities, such as hunting or even jousting, as my person now had to be guarded against the remotest mishap. As a result, I had to stay indoors and watch my friends at play, or join them outside merely to stand about watching, which was worse.

  I had to live in a room that connected to the King’s, so that I could go nowhere, and no one come to me, without passing through his chamber first. In that way he isolated me as effectively as one of those maidens in the Morte d’Arthur, imprisoned in a turret by her father. The only difference was that as long as my father lived, no one could rescue me or even approach me.

  And how long would my father live? He was only forty-five, and seemed healthy. He might live another twenty years, all the while keeping me prisoner in that little room off his own. How could I endure it?

  For several months after Arthur’s death he was withdrawn and took little interest in anything around him. He used to call for his lutenist to come and play for him. The lutenist was not very good, and his music-making grated on me. I once went in and offered to play for my father instead. He agreed listlessly, and I played several tunes that I had written myself. I could see that he was not really listening, and so I finally got up and returned to my room. He continued staring out the window and gave no sign that he was even aware that I had left.

  Stupidly, I was disappointed. I had not yet learned.