The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [155]
That January afternoon, one had to be a Northman born to relish the idea of putting on cold metal armour. It was a bright, blue-and-white day, the edges and outlines of all things appearing extra sharp. The air seemed thinner and harder than normal, and even the sounds of the trumpets and pendant bells on the horses were as brittle as icicles. The tournament colours, bold and primary, made a great heraldic shout against the white snow as the challengers rode out. Today the clash of metal against metal would ring and echo coldly, and sparks would be struck, like showers of stars.
“It was a Prince?”
“It had the appearance of a male, of some sixteen weeks. Do you wish to—?”
I nodded. A physician’s attendant brought the basket to me. I pulled back the coverings and stared at the jelly-like creature there, almost transparent, and only a few inches long. The male genitalia were recognizable. I pulled the cloth back over it.
“I will see the Queen now,” I said. “When was she—when was this delivered?”
“Not above half an hour ago,” Dr. Beechy said. “She strove, with all her might, to keep it within her womb. She quite exhausted herself by her efforts, making this issue more painful than a normal birth. She needs ... comforting.”
“The Queen has miscarried of her saviour,” a diplomat wrote that week. Indeed, Anne had lost the son upon whom she had based all her schemes and visions of triumph. She was done for.
“So,” I said, as I approached her bed, where she was still being sponged and ministered to by her women, “you have lost my boy.”
She looked up at me. Stripped of her jewels, her immaculately coiffed hair, her stunning costumes, she was as ugly and wiry as a sewer-rat. Like one of those, she swam for safety.
“O my Lord,” she cried, “he was lost for the great love I bear you. For when my uncle, the Duke, brought me word of your accident, and that you were not thought like to live, my pains began—”
Liar. That was two days ago.
“Has Her Majesty been in labour since Thursday?” I asked Dr. Beechy blandly.
The honest, frightened physician shook his head. “Friday it began, Your Majesty.”
“It was for despair that your love had left me!” she cried. “On Friday I saw the locket that Mistress Seymour wore.” She used her thin arms to hoist herself up to a sitting position, where she glared at me. “Can you deny that you are giving her tokens? I will not have it!”
“You will not have it? You’ll have what I dictate that you have, and endure it as your betters have done.”
“Katherine?” she screamed. “No, I’m no Katherine! And your maids shall never live to flaunt their tokens in my face!” She opened her hand, and lying on her palm was the locket I had given Jane—my mother’s locket.
“I tore it off her neck, her thick, bullish neck. She’s plain, Henry, and has a fat neck. It’s pale and lumpy-looking.”
Her whole body was straining forward, and the cords stood out on her neck. I could see a vein throbbing slowly, right under her ear.
“Your neck is prettier,” I allowed her. “Slender and with a curve. Yet the head it bears up is filled with evil and curses and malevolence. You’ll get no more boys from me.” It was not a threat but a statement, and a promise to myself.
She hurled the locket at me. I caught it easily, although she meant it to hhard.
“When you are on your feet again, I shall speak to you,” I told her, closing my fingers over the locket.
I left her chambers.
I was free. She had no further hold over me.
LXXI
March had come in like a lamb, the country folk said, so it was bound to go out like a lion. They were correct, but not for the reasons they thought. This mid-March day, I, the lion, was hawking with Cromwell, my presumed “lamb.” At least he was always obedient and docile; in that way he was lamblike.
The day was one of those March oddities—glum and yet alive with potential. Everywhere ice was melting, and one could hear the water flowing in streams and brooks, trickling