The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [20]
But the ice was still on the bare branches of the trees when Father summoned me into his “work closet,” as he called it. It was a small panelled room off the retiring room, with its own fireplace which was, as usual, so meagrely lit it was scarcely functional. I always took a surcoat when I received a message that the King wanted me.
He scarcely looked up when he heard me come in. He was bent over an array of papers on the flat, scarred table that served as his desk. I was expected to stand mutely until he decided to acknowledge my presence.
Eventually he did so by muttering, “Another appeal about these cursed vagrants!” He shook his head, then suddenly turned to me. “And what do you say about it? More to the point, what do you know about it?”
“About what, Sire?”
“”
“Which?” There were so many of them.
He raised his hand and pointed to his ear.
“The one against quacks and fortune-tellers? On their second offence they have one ear cut off. On the third offence they lose the other ear.” I remembered the Welshwoman at Arthur’s wedding feast. I wondered if she still retained her ears.
“But what if the ... soothsayer wears the cloth and claims his revelations are divinely inspired? What then?”
“It would depend entirely on what his revelations were.” I had meant it in sarcasm, but the King nodded in approval.
“You surprise me,” he said tartly. “I would have thought—”
He was interrupted by an official from one of the neighboring townships. When Father was at court, he held a sort of business open-house on Tuesdays, and this was Tuesday.
The man entered, dragging something. It was a large, torn net. He held it up in distress. Evidently the King was supposed to gasp when he saw it. Instead he just grunted.
“Well?”
“Your Grace, look at the state of this crow-net!”
“It is unfit for capturing anything smaller than a buzzard. Are you much troubled with buzzards in Oatlands?”
“We need new crow-nets, Your Grace. When we sow this year—”
“Then buy them,” he said curtly.
“We cannot! The law says each town must provide adequate crow-nets to trap rooks, crows, and choughs. But we cannot, because of the taxes levied this year—and we cannot afford to pay the taker of crows his accustomed price, and—”
“God’s blood!” The King leapt up and looked around accusingly. “Who let this beggar in?”
The man cowered in the midst of his crow-net.
“Yes, beggar!” the King roared. I was surprised at how loud he could speak when he chose. “Where is your licence? Your begging licence? You are required to have one, since you are begging outside your normal township limits. Do you expect me to pay for your cursed crow-nets? The taxes are levied on all my subjects! God’s blood, you’ve had a respite for years—”
The man gathered up his spread nets like a woman bringing in laundry before a storm. “Yes, Your Grace—”
The King flung a coin of some sort at him. “Put this in your alms-box!”
When he was gone, the King asked calmly, “And what is the law regarding alms?”
“If one should give alms into any place besides the lawful alms-box, he shall be fined ten times the amount of the alms he gave.”
He beamed at me, as his mother used to when I successfully conjugated an irregular Latin verb. “You know the law, then. And will you apply it? No nonsense about the poor, and a Golden Age where we shall all be one and dance on the village green together, festooned in crow-nets?” He looked away. “It is natural, when one is young.... I too had ideas, when I was—how old are you?”
“Eleven.” He had a faraway look. “When I was eleven, I was a prisoner of the Yorkists. Two years later things changed, and poor, daft Henry VI— my uncle, remember—was on the throne again. My other uncle, Jasper Tudor, Henry’s half-brother, took me to him in London. And when the mad King saw me, he said, so that everyone nearby could hear: ‘Surely this is he to whom both we and our adversaries must yield and give over dominion.’ Henry was a saint, but he was feeble-minded. A prophecy? Should he have