The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [192]
Now I lived again. To want was to be alive. And I wanted Mistress Howard, wanted her so violently I was ashamed and breathless at the same time.
That night I could not sleep. Truly. For the first time since I had beheld Anne Boleyn at the investiture (June 25, 1525; I would never forget that date) and been bewitched, I had not had such a feeling. Was this, too, witchcraft? No, I knew better now. Anne’s witchcraft had come later. That initial feeling I had had was genuine and undesecrated.
To experience it again! I had thought never to do so, and now to be given it, unsought, at my age!
I lay awake all night, enjoying the love yet to come, relishing the fact that I knew it would come to pass, for I had power to command, and what I wished, I could take. I was no Culpepper. But in the interval between the framing of a desire and the acting on it—therein lies the torture, and the bliss. A person is never more ours, yet never more unattainable, than in those hours.
Anne snored softly beside me. I felt fondly toward her, knowing that she was the odd means of having brought about my present and future bliss. Without the arranged marriage, I would have been content to languish forever, mourning and feeling myself dead. I had believed myself so. I even felt gratitude toward Francis and Charles. Without their enmity, I never would have had to make this forced marriage, then I never would have had a Queen, and the Queen would never have had a household—
Enough! This was absurd. One might as well be thankful that one’s father lay with one’s mother on a certain night, and that the midwife was saved from tripping on the stairs because of a fortuitous candle. The truth was, I was gloriously in love—rebom, as it were—and that was all that mattered. Things were as they were, and to care overmuch who brought them to this pass was to busy oneself wastefully. Any action not bringing a lover to the possession of his loved one was wasted, unless it be savouring the moment to come.
Culpepper’s wounds were slight. He had been pricked by a lance-tip that somehow found its way between the overlapping thigh-plates of his armour. The surgeon had cleansed his wound and bound it with pink satin.
“Her colours,” said Culpepper with a wink, as he reported back to my sleeping chamber for duty. He unwound the satin carefully and placed it reverently on his night-table.
“Whose?” I forced myself to ask, casuallyours.
“—turnips.”
They crowed with pleased laughter. I enjoyed hearing Anne’s delight. Without the shadow of my presence, she seemed a lighthearted person, altogether at odds with her leaden appearance.
“Very good, sweetheart,” I said, strolling into the room. The laughter ceased. That hurt me.
“Come, come,” I chided. “Do not interrupt yourselves for my sake. What else is in the market? A fat hog, perhaps?”
But they would not resume. Feeling let down, both in my original intention of seeing Mistress Catherine and, unaccountably, in having intruded on Anne and being excluded, I made my way back to my own chamber. This was the time when I would gladly have saddled a horse, gone hunting, left the palace and my feelings behind. But I was not now capable of riding. Lately my leg-ulcer caused me such pain from being rubbed on a saddle that I no longer could endure it. Moping about my chamber on this bleak February day, I called for one of the few pleasures left to me—Will.
Will worked, still, when wine failed and company palled. Almost imperceptibly he had passed from being an entertainer for my private moments, witty and full of scabrous gossip, to being a listener and a wise commentator—especially after Jane had died and I simply could not abide fools about me, I mean true fools, not professional jesters. Fools who murmured unctuous platitudes about how “time will heal all” and “you will rejoin her in heaven,” and “she would not want you to grieve