The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [206]
She bled for a week, following the physician’s instructions and drinking a potion of ground dried pennyroyal mixed with red wine three times a day.
“The wine is to replace the lost blood, and the pennyroyal is to staunch the flow,” he explained.
When that danger was past, we set out for Hampton Court to keep Christmas, sending notice to all eligible members of court throughout the realm, and even to Scots nobles and Irish peers, to come and join us. All were welcome. Replies came quickly, and the allotments of rooms and servants’ quarters were spoken for so greedily that by St. Nicholas’ Day there was not a single chamber or even corner of a chamber free.
“You have your wish, sweetheart,” I assured her. “By my reckoning, fifteen hundred will lodge here for the entire Twelve Days of Christmas. The kitchen fires will blaze night and day. The Lord Steward requests five thousand geese alone to feed this mighty company. How like you that?”
She smiled. “And there will be balls, and masked dancing?”
“As many of them as you wish,” I said.
“Imagine everyone disguised—all fifteen hundred of us,” she said dreamily.
“Much mischief would occur.” Oh, the maidenheads lost, the husbands cuckolded! All in honour of Our Lord’s birth.
I proposed for Will to go about in an Infidel turban and pantaloons, but he refused. As I said, he was most dour and out of sorts these days.
“Costumed or not, you shall not hide yourself away, Will. Too many idle people must be entertained, lest they get into fights. You know the problem of keeping men indoors too long. It transforms them into be-ee-easts.” I sucked my stomach in for the tailor who was measuring me for my masquing-coat. All of clothas reclaiming so many others. And so I would dance, on Ninth Night, for the first planned full evening of ensembles and suites. I practised in my chamber, rehearsing old steps and mastering new ones.
O ! I had missed dancing, in those dead, hollow years, as I had missed so much, so much that I had not allowed myself to dwell on, or even to recall. I thought I had liked being dead.
There! that was it, the proper turn of the galliard. They called it a “shocking” dance, but the younglings loved it....
My leg seemed submissive, although it had, all during the past fortnight, been sending out ominous tingles. What that betokened, I did not know. Perhaps nothing. I intended to regard it as nothing.
The Great Hall was cleared, and my finest consort-ensemble gathered together, with their woodwinds—recorders, crumhorns, and shawms—and their stringed instruments—viols, lutes, and harps. I had instructed them to begin with popular measures, so that everyone present might join in; only gradually were they to progress to the more demanding dances. I myself would refrain from joining until the saltarello near the end. My entrance would take the company by surprise, as I had long, long ago....
I chatted, and circulated among the celebrants, pretending I had nothing more on my mind, pretending that I planned to stay swathed in my heavy robes, presiding like an old man.
“Yes, yes!” I nodded and clapped. The rondo was ending.
Next was my dance. I unfastened my cloak, laid it by. I readied myself, enjoying the pretence of talking, all the while flexing my calves and rising up and down on the balls of my feet, pointing my toe.
The first beat ... I moved, thrusting out my leg. And felt excruciating pain in the thigh, suddenly, like a thunderclap. I was frozen with a paroxysm of pain.
The ensemble played on. One would never know that I had missed my entrance cue. Frantically I massaged my leg—the cursed traitor! With each touch I felt fluid ooze up, as if I were pressing on a sponge. Was my leg, then, become a sponge? A sponge of disease? I was wearing black tights, so the stain did not show. Very well. As I formed the words in my mind, a hatred greater than any I had ever felt flamed through me. This was an enemy! An enemy like Anne Boleyn, like Cardinal Pole, like the Duke of Buckingham.