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XCIV

During the remainder of that unusually hot summer, I fluctuated between two poles of feeling. One part of me rejoiced in Catherine, in my new wife, and basked in her beauty and unrestrained sensuality. She said things I had never thought to hear a woman say. “I dreamed last night of your man-sword, and how it felt inside me, and I could not sleep, for both the memories and the expectations.” “The way you move is sinful, and takes me away in thought at embarrassing times. Today when the French ambassador stood before me, all I could think of was the way we had screamed out together at midnight last.” Now I myself would never be able to see Castillon, the French ambassador, without remembering Catherine’s midnight ecstasies.

On the other hand, it happened again and again—she did not react, did not feel, turned a solemn moment into a trite jest. When I said, “It has never been so good, never in my life,” she replied offhandedly, “Oh, it must have been good with the Princess of Aragon, with my cousin Boleyn, with Queen Jane—for there are Princess Mary and Princess Elizabeth and Prince Edward.” Smile. Laugh. When I told her of how I loved her, she murmured, “It is carnal only, Henry, pure carnality. I know not else why we find ourselves thus.” Giggle. “Have you done this often?” Smirk. And ever: “Tell me, what do you think I—?” Do. Think. Look like. She never tired of hearing how she appeared. Once, when she came upon me writing some music for the virginal, she asked, “Are you writing a tune of our love?” She assumed I was —that she should be my subject and muse and fixation. The fact that it was so was no surprise, no gift. She claimed it as a personal victory, lugged it home with her as the hunters had done the stag and boar heads decorating our wedding-lodge manor.

She was a child, I reminded myself. Children open their presents on the spot. I knew it, and yet I expected more. Or less. I hated her bragging and her strutting. Yet I longed for her kisses and enthusiasms. And her sweet flesh. We remained at royal country manors throughout the summerted, reborn, and reshaped.

When the time came for the summer progress to end, I found I had no desire to return to London and immerse myself in affairs of the realm, to read over the rolls of the shires and the tax compilations. There was the horrid task of sorting through Cromwell’s records, and this I did not care to do at all. I knew they would be orderly and not difficult to survey. But, oh! to touch them, and see that handwriting. It would be as if he himself stood grinning at my shoulder.

Day by day I was increasing in strength and endurance, both out of doors and between the sheets with Catherine. It was only October. What need to break it all off now? I could return to London, unite my private travelling Privy Council with the London-bound lot, transact essential business in a fortnight, and rejoin Catherine for a long, slow autumn. Then there would be the Christmas revels, and after that, I could return to life as it commonly was.

Or life as it was meant to be. The realm was quiet, at long last, after the murmurings and belligerence at the start of my Great Matter; after the outright rebellion against the closing of the monasteries; after the plots and counter-plots and treachery that went abroad in the realm, masquerading as “conscience” (Thomas More), the restoration of the “old order” (Cardinal Pole), the bringing about of the “new order” (Cromwell); after outside threats and sword-shakings (the Pope and his toady the Emperor, until at last their pawn, Mary, disappointed them by coming over to my side). Oh, it was all over at last, and I was weary, weary. I had fought so many years. Now a golden haze of satiation lay on the land I had harried so, and I would luxuriate in it.

In November, then, I rejoined Catherine at Dunstable. Small manor it was, and it suited me. I enjoyed snugness now, a certain warmth encircling one’s being; although I knew I should visit Nonsuch soon, I had at this moment