The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [210]
“Christmas—Christmas departs,” mourned the Phallus. “Our costumes we must lay by, our everyday lives take up.” He bowed, shuddered, swayed. “We must unmask.” He ripped off his head-covering, that impudent, rounded protuberance. It was Tom Seymour. The company gasped.
The pox-infested Francis I removed his mask. Bishop Gardiner!
When my turn came, I peeled off my own silver visor carefully. “I, Balthazar, King of the East, happily existed for one evening amongst you. Now I am consigned to darkness again, to await another resurrection.” People clapped and pretended to be surprised. “There is yet another gift and surprise to be revealed,” I announced. “It is this.” I held aloft a velvet-lined box, wherein nestled a golden coin, minted but a fortnight past. “A gold sovereign, in honour of my beloved Queen, Catherine. On this side is her likeness. On the other, the seal of England, with her own motto, the motto I have bestowed upon her: Rutilans Rosa Sine Spina. The Rose Without a Thorn.”
Now true silence fell upon the company. To mint a special issue of coin, in honour of one’s bride ... such a token of love robbed them of speech. As it robbed Catherine.
“0 Your Majesty—” she began, then her words died.
I encircled her waist. “Unmask,” I commanded.
Stiffly, she obeyed. She peeled the mask from her eyes, said softly, “I disguise myself as what I am not—a Jezebel.” She stretched out trembling fingers to grasp the coin of honour. “Thank you,” she whispered.
It took over two hours for all to unmask, and after the first few moments it grew tedious. But it was an integral part of the ceremony, and I would not cheat anyone of it. I stood, as if I thirsted to know every identity, and laughed as lou#8212;God, how they wandered. Cromwell ...
“The Lutheran revolt goes on,” he said. “All the Low Countries and half of Germany have been seduced. The other half of the Empire fights back, like a man taken with plague. The heretical outbreaks are the black pustules which weaken and drain the entire system. Spain is the patient’s mouth, wherein the medicine—orthodox Catholicism—is poured in full-strength to combat it. Alas, all it does is burn the mouth—as the Inquisition is blistering Spain—without ever touching the buboes themselves.”
“My, my. Such poetic analogies. I now understand where your son gets his wild conceits and fantastical metaphors. And to think I thought you merely a tough and literal-minded soldier. But what of the Scots? You have fought them; you know them best of anyone. What news from our spies there?”
“The North mocks you,” he said plainly. “They are a nest of traitors you must needs clean out again and again.” His eyes danced. He loved killing Scots, riding over the River Tweed and burning their simple homes and terrorizing them. “But they have no truck with the Emperor,” he had to admit. “They are not at the moment in league with any of Your Majesty’s enemies.”
“May I speak?” young Lord Clinton, all bursting with power and prowess, asked politely. I gave him leave. He stood slowly, and as he rose, his physical presence dominated the table—except where it met my own presence. There it stuck.
“I am Lincolnshire born and bred,” he said. “A Northman of the realm. You know not, any of you, what it is to be a Northman. We live and take our selfhood from the moors, the wild mountains, far from London and courtish ways. We are conservative, it is said. Those on the frontiers are always conservative. They believe in werewolves and saints. There are no half-measures about them. Percy of the North—Northumberland, to be correct—was called Hotspur. We are either hot or cold, and our loyalties outlast our lives. We believe—”
“What is it, Clinton?” I cut off his inferior poetical ramblings. “Is there something I need g at the floor. I wanted to be alone; I did not want to be alone. There was only one person for such a mood—Will.
“You