The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [137]
Suddenly he flung himself prostrate before his inner vision again. “Enough? But, O Lord, I would do so much more ... give You so much more! ”
He lay motionless for long moments, then eventually pulled himself to his knees.
“As You wish, Lord,” he repeated, and crawled toward a dark garment lying nearby. He began pulling it on, and as he did so, he screamed in pain.
“As You will, Lord!”
He continued to draw it down. But it stopped at his waist, and was sleeveless. A hair shirt. I knew then what had caused the hideous, tormented redness of his delicate skin, and brought about the boils and infections. The ends of the horsehairs—tied, to be prickly and blunt—worked their way into the skin of the wearer within a few hours. Hair shirts were woven and constructed thus, to torment the flesh of the wearer.
Worn on top of fresh lashings and scourgings—what agony would it inflict? Too little for More and his torturing God, evidently.
Now he was fastening a linen shirt over his hair shirt. Did he wear the hair shirt always? Every day? For how long had he worn it? I would never know the answers to those questions, as More would never give them, and I could never ask them.
But I knew the answer to my own tormenting question. More would seek the full punishment of the law as yet another “discipline.” And I would, perforce, be the one chosen to administer it.
I hated him in that moment—hated him for making me his scourge. That was all I had been all along: his scourge, his temptation, his test. I was not a man to him, but an abstract trial, a representation of one of his confounded Platonic ideas. He had never seen me at all, but only the symbol he had chosen to assign to me.
I despised him. He was a blind fool, taking living beings and recasting them in the image of his abstract honour.
Farewell, More, I bade him silently. May you enjoy the “discipline” you have chosen. Remember always that it is your discipline, not mine. For I would keep you with me, veil mine own eyes, imagine that you were as I would cast you in my own imagination....
Before he could come upon me, I was out the door and into the free cold air, then back to my own chamber. When I awoke again it was mid-morning, and the sun was cheerful.
“Good morrow, Your Grace,” said More, at breakfast. “I trust you slept well.”
“Indeed,” I said. “As well as you.”
“Then did you pass the night calmly,” he said. “For never have I slept a fairer sleep.”
The smile was remote.
“May you sleep many another such,” I replied.
LX
It was May Eve, and I lay at Oxford. I had come to inspect Wol-sey Therefore I gave my blessings to the nuptials and arranged that the wedding should take place at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor.
It was not to be a state affair, even though Fitzroy’s titles gave him formidable rank as a peer of England: Duke of Richmond and Somerset, Lord Warden of the Marches, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and Lord High Admiral of England, Wales, Ireland, Normandy, Gascony, and Aquitaine. It was not to be a state affair simply because to do such a thing, at the very time that the Oath of Succession was being administered, would be to focus undue attention upon yet another claimant to the succession. The issue was heated enough already when loyalties were pulled between two females, Mary and Elizabeth. Reminding everyone of a comely royal lad of marriageable age was not politic.
He was comely. I was proud of him, proud of his Tudor looks and his sensitivity and regal bearing.
And still another reason was that Anne did not care to be reminded of my living son, since she had not given me one of her own. That Bessie had was a continual insult to her.
It puzzled me then, why Anne had not. It was not for lack of coupling, or for lack of joy in our bed. Since I had returned from my “pilgrimage,” there