The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [168]
“I am here,” she said. She left the window, came down the stairs, and walked slowly out the front door. I dismounted and stood waiting, weary, yet accepting that weariness as something that would never go away, would only have to be shared.
She came to me silently, extending her hands. Her face shone with an otherworldly love and kindness. She understood, without being contaminated by her knowledge.
“Jane,” I said, makingr Jane.
Afterward, at York Place, I gave a great afternoon banquet, ostensibly to celebrate Whitsun—for the centerpiece was a huge cake of crushed strawberries, seven layers to commemorate the seven gifts the Holy Spirit conferred upon the Apostles at Pentecost—but it was in reality a bride-cake, and a bride-feast.
England had a true Queen at last, and no one begrudged her me.
I ended the celebrations by bringing her with me to the Opening of Parliament on June eighth.
Seated beside me on the Chair of Estate, looking out over both Lords and Commons, she heard Chancellor Audley exclaim, “Ye well remember the great anxieties and perturbations this invincible Sovereign”—he nodded toward me—“suffered on account of his first unlawful marriage. So all ought to bear in mind the perils and dangers he was under when he contracted his second marriage, and that the lady Anne and her accomplices have since been justly found guilty of high treason, and have met their due reward for it.” He shook his head as the ugly black shadow passed over the entire Parliament, and over my soul as well.
“What man of middle life would not this deter from marrying a third time? Yet this our most excellent Prince again condescendeth to contract matrimony! And hath, on the humble petition of the nobility, taken to himself a wife, this time, who by her excellent beauty and pureness of flesh and blood, is apt—God willing—to conceive issue.” The company rose in acknowledgment of this.
“The lords should pray for heirs to the crown by this marriage,” Audley concluded.
Jane was now my wife, and Queen indeed: wedded by a true rite, saluted by the common people, and honoured by Parliament. It was done, and I was happy at last.
Happy at last. Why is it so difficult to describe happiness? There are words aplenty for anguish, despair, suffering, and these are full of vitality. But happiness is left with weak verbs, supine adjectives, drooping adverbs. A description of happiness moves a reader to skip over those passages and causes a writer to flounder in treacle.
Yet how can we recall it if we do not write of it? We put up summer in preserved fruits and conserves, we trap autumn in wine made from late-ripening grapes, we make perfumes of spring flowers. That way we can recall, albeit in a slanted or altered way, some essence of the moment.
But human happiness . . . all our words for it are so bland, as if the thing itself were bland, or merely an absence of pain. When in fact happiness is solid, muscular, and strong; its colour all the spectrum of light; its sounds as sweet as water splashing in a Pharaoh’s desert palace; and its smells those of the flesh and its life: fur, heat, cooking.
I was happy with Jane, as happy as one of the great cats stretched out in the sun around Wolf Hall. Only touch them and feel their deep, rumbling purrs, as they rest entirely in the present moment. That was me, that summer Jane and I were one.
LXXVI
Happiness begets courage, inasmuch as we raise our eyes from huddled self-absorption and, secure behind the ramparts of our solid, sun-.”
Pope Paul III. There was no doubt that in this gentleman I had a tireless, clever adversary. He, unlike Clement, had drawn a line, and I was clearly outside it. Thereafter he made no apologies. His goal was to dethrone me or, failing that, to discredit me. It was he who had made Fisher a Cardinal, and it was he who had published the Papal bull which called for a Holy War against me by foreign powers and absolved