The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [144]
I was vaguely disappointed when the game ended, although it ended under my own aggressive bidding. I had enjoyed my partners, enjoyed especially Mistress Seymour and the way she held her cards and pushed her token about the board. I cannot explain why observing the hand and arm motions of a graceful woman should prove so appealing, like a ceremony of sorts, a dance.
The bell was rung; we must change tables. Outside I saw the heat waves reflected in the light coming in the windows, rising from the river.
Noon. More was being led out.
Going up the scaffold, he turned to the Lieutenant of the Tower. “I pray you, Master Lieutenant, see me safe up and, for my coming down, let me shift for myself. ”
“Now you come to this game with points already,” explained Anne. “You may keep them, only demerits will subtract from the total score—”
He put his head down on the block and made a joke with the executioner. In the Tower he had not shaved, but had grown a long beard. He smoothed it neatly down and asked the headsman not to strike it, as “it has done no treason.”
We played a second round. At my table were those who had already won—Cromwell, Norfolk, and Edward Seymour. This game was more difficult. My opponents did not hold back and kept strategies in their heads the entire time, not merely one or two plays, but contingency plans as well.
The air grew stifling. Sweat gathered about my neck, wilting my fair linen collar.
I asked. He laughed (a smug, hateful laugh) and waved a gloved hand. The walls crashed and turned to water, and bubbled up under the chair I was sitting in. I was carried away, spinning, my arms frantically clasping the chair arms, my legs on the rungs, carried down a dark watery chute....
I awoke. The sound of water was a deluge around me. It was beating against the windows, and I could hear trickles. Somewhere it had found an entrance, had nosed open a little crack between stones or through a piece of loose mortar.
My mind cleared. Rain. There could be no rain tonight. It was impossible. The sky had been absolutely clear at sunset. The soaked fields had been granted respite. The crops would recover, and the harvest be normal. That was what the clear sky had promised.
The downpour, which had penetrated even into my sleeping mind, continued to soak the already waterlogged earth outside.
It has not stopped raining since More died, the common people were saying. On the night of July sixth it had begun to rain, and it had continued, intermittently, for the six weeks since. The vegetable crops had already been drowned, rotted. The grains—oats, barley, wheat—by far the most important, as yet were salvageable. But if they were lost!
Damn this rain! I leapt from my bed and went over to the window. It was not a sweet, soft rain. Ugly, hard thrusts of water were striking against the glass.
Henry Norris stirred on his pallet and rolled over. He no longer slept at the foot of my bed, as it was too close to the outer, waterlogged wall and invited mildew. Instead he had moved to an inside wall.
It was raining on More’s head, which had turned black impaled on Tower Bridge (so they told me). At least it was not growing into an object of veneration and superstition like Fisher’s. I myself had not seen it, nor did I intend to.
This whole business disgusted me, sickened me. Only let this summer be over, let a year’s cycle come round, so that every vicissitude of weather (all normal, all normal) was not converted