The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [107]
Returning to my apartments, I was glad to be done with it. I called for Anne, who came within a moment, or so it seemed.
“Happy New Year, my love.” I gave her her present—yet another jewel. I expected her to be bored by now with jewels. But she received this one, a sapphire from Jerusalem, with hushed delight.
“I did not have it made into any ring or brooch,” I explained. “The stone itself was brought to England by a Crusader who fought alongside Richard the Lionheart. It had lain in the same chest for more than three hundred years, in its wrappings from the Holy Land. Somehow those wrappings seemed something I should not disturb.” Would she understand?
She touched the stiff old cloth gently. “Nothing could become it better than this.” She folded it back along its creases. “It belongs here.” She placed it carefully in its velvet pouch.
Her eyes shone with a peculiar light I had never seen before. “And now I have a gift for you this New Year’s Day. Your jewel from the Holy Land serves to bless it—and I shall treasure it forever.”
She stood in front of me, but her hands were empty.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It is ... I am with child.”
Her voice was low, and the four words, which meant more to me than all the jewels brought back from all the Crusades, hung on the air. I could not speak, for ecstasy. Yes, ecstasy.
“Anne.”
“In the late summer.”
Still I could not speak, beyond saying her name.
It was all to be: it was all to come true.
That night I lay in bed, alternating between giddy exultation and dreary practicality, like a man with the smallpox, first sweating, then shivering. The exultation: Anne was with child, with my child, the heir I had been longing for.../font>
It was late January, the time when cold creeps into the very walls of all dwellings, and Bridewell Palace was no exception. The sun did not even rise until well after eight o’clock, and at five in the morning it was still dark night. A raft of candles fluttered in the draught of a lonely, unfurnished room in the upper regions of the palace. The window was yet a darkened pane against which sleet drove itself. Chaplain Edward Lee stood there, looking bewildered, sleepy, and uncomfortable. The other witnesses were there, looking much the same.
I was dressed in an embroidered moss-green doublet and new fox-furred cape. The rest were in the things nearest to hand when they had received the summons to come to this attic room. No one had been notified ahead of time, for fear of the secret getting out and someone trying to stop the ceremony.
Suddenly Anne appeared. Although undoubtedly as sleepy as the rest, she appeared radiant and was wearing a light blue gown with a furred mantle over it. I reached out my hand and took hers, bringing her gently to my side.
“You may proceed with the Nuptial Mass,” I told Chaplain Lee.
“But, Your Grace, I have no permission nor instructions from His Holiness—”
“They have been received,” I lied. “You may rest assured His Holiness approves.”
Looking discomfited, he began the ancient ceremony. I clasped Anne’s hand. My head was spinning—Anne, my wife at last! No trumpets, no costumes, no eminent churchmen to conduct it. No feast or tournaments afterward. Instead, a great grey secret, with the winter wind singing outside, and the sleet flying, and Anne in no wedding gown. The candles kept flickering in the wind that found its way through the tiny gaps in the mortar. It was deathly cold; by the time we exchanged rings, my hands were numb.
Then, afterward, no fanfare. The onlookers filed silently from the room, like shades, and vanished in the early morning grey.
Anne and I were left alone. We faced one another.
“Well, wife,” I finally said. I meant to be light, jocular, but all of that faded as I looked at her: her youth, beauty, life—all mine. “Oh, Anne.” I clasped her. I was alive at last. It had been a long wait, but all was right, all destined, in that one clasp of flesh against flesh as I held my true wife to my