The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [19]
The ordeal did not end with the procession. Once inside Westminster Abbey, I still had a Requiem Mass and a eulogy to endure. The hearse was driven to the end of the nave where it awaited the next, the awful, part: the burial.
I believe Warham celebrated the Mass; I do not recall. But a young man rose up to deliver the eulogy. Someone I had never seen before.
“I have composed an elegy for the Queen,” he said, “which with your gracious permission I should like to read.” The man’s voice was strangely compelling, yet gentle.
The King nodded curtly. The man began. He had written it as though the Queen herself were taking leave of us all. That had hurt the most; she had said nothing, no farewell to me. Now this man was attempting to repair the omission—as if he had known. But how could he have known?
Adieu! Mine own dear spouse, my worthy lord!
The faithful love, that did us both continue
In marriage and peaceable concord,
Into your hands here I do resign,
To be bestowed on your children and mine;
Erst were ye father, now must ye supply
The mother’s part also, for lo! here I lie.
Adieu, Lord Henry, loving son, adieu—
Our Lord increase your honour and estate....
His voice, his very presence, brought an extraordinary peace to me. It was not the words in themselves; it was, instead, a great, reaching compassion. Perhaps the first I had ever known.
“Who is he?” I leaned over to Margaret, who always knew names and titles.
“Thomas More,” she whispered. “The lawyer.”
That night as I prepared for bed, I was more tired thaI ss long fled.
At my bedside was a posset. I smiled. Nurse Luke would have seen to it, would have remembered me, even though she no longer had charge of me. I picked up the goblet. The contents were still warm. They tasted of honey and wine, and something else....
I slept. But it was not a normal sleep. I dreamed I was standing at the end of the garden at Eltham. And the Queen came toward me, looking as she had the last time I had seen her—laughing and healthy. She held out her hands to me.
“Ah, Henry!” she said. “I am so happy you will be King!” She leaned forward and kissed me. I could smell her rose-water perfume. “Such a lovely King! Just like my father! And you will have a daughter, and call her Elizabeth, just as he did.”
I stood up, and as happens miraculously in dreams, I was suddenly much taller than she, and older, although she remained unchanged. “Stay with me,” I said.
But she was fading, or retreating, I could not tell which. My voice changed to desperation. “Please!”
But she had already melted into something else: a strange woman with a pale, oval face. I feared her. The woman whispered, “For a King, do like a King!” and laughed hysterically. Then she, too, faded.
I woke up, my heart pounding. For an instant I thought there must be someone else in the chamber. I drew aside the bed-curtains.
Nothing but six squares of moonlight, exactly reproducing the panes of my window. But it had seemed so real....
I lay back down. Had my mother really come to me? No. She was dead. Dead. They had put her into her tomb that afternoon. Later, Father would erect a monument on the spot. He had said so.
With no one to overhear or stop me, I cried—for the last time as a child.
VIII
How fitting it was, then, that the next change in my life had to do with my coming manhood.
We had left Greenwich and removed to Father’s new showpiece, Richmond, where he intended to spend the next few weeks awaiting better weather and attending to affairs of the realm. Each time I came there, I noticed something different. Now I saw that he had put down polished wooden floors on top of the stone. It was a great improvement. And the new panelled wooden walls were far