The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [115]
Of course, closing them would mean acquiring their assets for the Crown, since it was now forbidden by Act of Parliament to send ecclesiastical income to Rome.
As for Cranmer, he moved swiftly to fulfil his duties. By mid-May he called and presided over a small ecclesiastical court, discreetly held at Dunstable, some distance from London, but near enough to Katherine that she could have appeared, as she was requested to do. Naturally she did not recognize Cranmer’s authority and so ignored the little hearing that found our prior marriage to be no marriage at all, and also (conveniently) pronounced my present marriage to Anne valid.
Now we could proceed with the Coronation, which would fall on Whitsunday, a holy day in itself. I prayed that that would help sanctify it in the mind of the people. I tried not to betray my own anxiety to Anne, who had awaited this dh="1em">The people around us packed their food and gear to return home. I bade them farewell.
“ ’Twas lovely,” they said, a trifle sadly. There was a thud as they stowed another item.
“You sound sad,” I ventured.
“Aye. She was so lovely.” They cast off. “I think—” Their voices were lost in the heave of the water and the noise of sails. I turned to our host and to Will.
“ ’Tis time we returned to our home as well.”
“Indeed,” the boatman said. I settled myself and waited for the short journey back to the common Greenwich quay. Even in small things today, it was a pleasure to give up control to someone else, to sit back and dream.
Dream I did, the setting sun on my eyelids. I dreamt of Anne in a great Egyptian barge, Anne as Pharaoh’s wife, Anne as—Potiphar’s wife.
At the Tower that night, Anne was feverishly gay. “Did you see it? What did the onlookers say?” she kept asking, never satisfied with my replies. “The dragon-he was magnificent. Did I tell you he spewed fire right up to my feet? One of my shoes was singed—”
“Hush,” I said. “Calm yourself.”
All around us rose the babble of excited voices. Eighteen young men were preparing for their all-night vigil prior to their ordination on the morrow as Knights of the Bath. The rest of the court was feasting in the hall of the White Tower. And everywhere there were flowers—garlands and petals covered every stone. Bits of broken glass glinted; the boom of the cannons had shattered many windowpanes. Over all this confusion floated string-music.
“Walk with me,” she said. “I need the night air.”
Gladly I took her hand. “Your cheeks are flaming,” I said.
Outside, the White Tower seemed to glow in the luminous May twilight.
“Ah!” She let out a long, shuddering sigh. Then, suddenly, “What of More?”
A jab in my heart. “I sent him twenty pounds to buy himself a new gown for the Coronation. He has not returned it.”
This seemed to satisfy her. “And Mary?”
A second jab in the same place. “My sister lies very ill at Westhorpe.”
“She has always hated me!”
That was true. Mary had begged me not to persist in this “folly” with Anne. She might as well have requested the rain to halt in its falling halfway to earth. “That is not why she is ill,” I stated flatly.
“I insist that she come and pay homage to me as soon as she recovers.”
Her pettiness marred the night, and its glory fled for me. But we walked on in silence for another few moments. Then Anne suddenly wished to go to the little Tower chapel to pray.
“No!” I stopped her. “Not in St. John’s Chapel. It is-it is where the Knights are preparing to keep vigil all night.” It was also where my mother had lain on her funeral bier, surrounded by thousands of tapers, thirty years ago. I would not have Anne pray there b
“But I must pray!” she insisted. Her face looked strained and eager and more vulnerable than I had ever seen it. It also looked different.
“You shall pray,” I said. “But in the little chapel elsewhere on the grounds. St. Peter-ad-Vincula.”
“Is the Sacrament reserved