The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [157]
“I thank you,” I finally said. “It is time I knew the full truth.”
Cromwell nodded. “Truth somehow always seems connected with pain. ‘The painful truth,’ we always say. Never ‘the joyous truth.’ I am sorry, Your Majesty,” he said quietly.
“God sends pain to correct us,” I said, by rote. I had been taught that. Did I truly believe it?
“Nonetheless, it hurts. The only way to avoid it is to cease to care.”
Was that what Cromwell had done, after his wife’s death?
“It would be restful not to care,” I agreed. It would be a peace, an absence I could not imagine. All my life I had cared—about everything.
“Shall we?” He indicated the field, with the fallen rooks. “If we don’t remove them, the falcons will feed full, and will hunt no more today.”
Feeling outside myself, I watched as I walked toward the kill. I walked, and used a lure to remove the falcons so we could stuff the poor, mangled rooks into our bags. All the whilee wife had just been irrevocably revealed as an adulteress, a whore.
Why could I not feel? Why this strange detachment, this jumpiness, along with a perpetual shadow, an inner tolling of a bell?
The falcons were off again, and Cromwell and I continued the eerie conversation.
“I have had Master Smeaton to dinner,” he said. “I entertained him last week, at my London house. He was flattered to be invited. I was able to ... persuade him to talk. He admitted everything. That he had had carnal relations with the Queen.”
“He said ... ‘carnal relations’?”
“I have his words,” said Cromwell. “Allow me?” He indicated the horses, and his saddle-pouch. We walked back, and he drew out a sheaf of papers.
“The details of the conversation,” he said. “I thought it best.”
I read the entire hateful thing, wherein Smeaton confessed his adultery and named William Brereton, Francis Weston, and Henry Norris as her lovers as well.
Henry Norris. My companion of the chamber, my friend.
Did she take an especial relish in bedding him?
He must have protested. I knew Norris, an honourable man. He must have been a difficult quarry, a challenge to her ingenuity and persistence. But she had evidently succeeded.
According to Smeaton’s confession:
Anne had asked Norris why he had not been more eager to conclude his arranged marriage with Margaret Shelton, and, answering for him, said, “Ah, if any accident befell the King—such as his jousting accident this January—you would look to have me for yourself. You look for dead man’s shoes!”
So I was reduced to this teasing formula. I felt diminished, depersonalized, weakened.
Francis Weston was likewise neglecting his wife in favour of Norris’s fiancé. When Anne chided him, he had replied, “There is one in your household I love more ardently than either my wife or Mistress Shelton. ”
“Why, who?” asked Anne, innocently.
“It is yourself,” he confessed.
When she came upon Mark Smeaton alone, skulking and looking forlorn, she asked him, cruelly, “Why are you so sad?”
“It is of no importance,” he answered, with as much dignity as he could command.
“No, please tell me.” Her voice was full of luring concern, and he wished to believe it. “Are you unhappy because I have not spoken to you in company?”
After bedding with him, she had undoubtedly taken a taunting delight in ignoring Majesty. I took the liberty of writing them down immediately after quitting her presence, lest I forget.” He shrugged. “Perhaps it was foolish?”
“No, no. You did well.” I appreciated caution and thoroughness. I opened the purse and gave him a sovereign. “We thank you.”
I put the purse away, and the letter. Jane had shown herself to be all that I hoped for. Let this, then, silence the murmurs in my head. Let me not yield to the temptation to test her further. Let there remain some semblance of innocence and trust in me, lest I have nothing to offer Jane Seymour in myself.
April. The very word has a green sound. April. It should have a green look and a green smell as well, and this year it did. A strange odour perfused the