The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [16]
I felt drunk. I had done what I longed to do, and in front of everyone! The exhilaration of it ... it was a taste I was never to lose, was to seek from then on.
I looked at Katherine. She smiled joyfully at having been rescued. And there was something else in her look ... she found me pleasing, found my person attractive. I felt her acceptance of me, her liking, and it was like the summer sun to me.
She was a stunning dancer and knew many intricate steps unfamiliar to us in England. I had to struggle to keep up with her. Her timing, her balance, her sense of the music were astounding. Gradually the others fell back and watched us as we progressed through a galliard, a dance du Roy, a quatre bransle, and a Spanish dance of the Alhambra that she showed me. When the musicians stopped, Katherine was breathless and her face flushed. The onlookers were silent for an awkward moment, then they began to cheer us.
Alone on the dais, Arthur glowered like a pale, angry child.
VI
Four months later Arthur was dead—of consumption in that drafty Welsh castle—and Katherine was a widow.
And I was, suddenly, the heir—the only thing standing between the young Tudor dynasty and oblivion.
I was alone in my chamber when the news came. One of the pages brought me a brief note from the King, asking me to come to him right away.
“Immediately?” I asked, puzzled. The King never sent for me, and certainly not in the middle of the day, when I was supposed to be doing my studies.
“Yes, Your Grace,” he replied, and his voice was different from before. So markedly different that even a ten-year-old boy would take note of it. I looked over at him and found him staring at me.
All along the passageway it was the same. People gaped at me. I suddenly knew that something terrible was about to happen. Was I to be sent away to some remote monastery, ostensibly to study?
I reached the King’s Privy Chamber and pulled open the heavy wooden door. Inside it was dark and dismal, as always. Father never lit enough firewood, out of his perverted sense of frugality, unless he expected a high-ranking visitor. He normally kept his quarters so cold that the servants used to store perishable foods behind the screens. Butter kept especially well there, or so I was told.
He nodded, dully.
I had entered the King’s chamber a second son and future priest; I left it as heir apparent and future King. To say that everything changed thereafter is to say what any fool could know. By that they would assume I meant the externals: the clothes I wore and my living quarters and my education. Yet the greatest change was immediate, and in fact had already occurred.
As I left the chamber, one of the yeomen of the guard pulled back the door and bowed. He was a very tall man, and I barely reached his shoulder. As he straightened, I found his eyes riveted on me in a most disturbing fashion. It was only for an instant, but in that instant I perceived curiosity—and fear. He was afraid of me, this great, strong man, afraid of what I might prove to be. For he did not know me, and I was his future King.
No one at court knew me. I was to meet that selfsame look again and again. It said: Who is he? Shall we fear him? At length I developed the habit of never looking directly into anyone’s eyes lest I again meet that look of wariness coupled with apprehension. It was not a good or restful thing to know that merely by existing I threatened the ordered pattern of others’ lives.
They knew Father well and had duly observed Arthur for some fifteen years, grown used to him. But Henry was the unknown, the hidden-away one....
The man smiled, falsely. “Your Grace,” he said.
The smile was worse than the look in his eyes, although they went hand in hand. I made some stiff little motion with my hand and turned away.
No one would ever be candid or open with me again. That was the great change in my life.
There were other changes