The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [212]
My Scriptures were in their customary place, and I sought them out, turning to the portion about Zacharias.
Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John.
And Zacharias said unto the angel, Whereby shall I know this? for I am an old man, and my wife well stricken in years.
And the angel answering said unto him, I am Gabriel, that stand in the presence of God;
And behold, thou shalt be dumb, and not able to speak, until the day that these things shall be performed, because thou believest not my words, which shall be fulfilled in this season.
Had I, too, received a messenger or a sign, and refused to believe?
No. There had been no sign, no message. Of that I was certain. I would welcome a conversation with God, or his angel. All my life I had awaited it. But He had never spoken directly to me.
The door creaked open. Someone was checking on the royal patient. I made gestures for him to come forward. It was a page. I mimicked writing motions.
The lad looked clean frightened out of his skin. Perhaps, after all, they had expected me to die.
Dr. Butts followed, looking grave and curious. He carried his leather pouch, crammed with potions and flasks. He sat down on a footstool bean may own. The seasons. Sleep. Dreams. Memories. Music. Then I thought of specific things about those things. I imagined one leaf on one tree, saw it through its entire life, from its swelling as a bud, to its sticky pale green unfoldings, to its flat, dark, dusty prime in high summer.
As I did this, first with the leaf and then with other things, I entered a sort of trance. I began to talk to God directly, yearning to open everything to Him, because only then could I be united with Him, only then could He reach into whatever was diseased in me and heal it. My speech was wordless, if that is possible for you to understand. I gave myself to God as nakedly as little Edward gave himself up to his nurse every evening, and with the same complete abandon.
I felt an odd bliss, a peaceful ecstasy. My eyes were closed—or were they open? I was not in any worldly place.
My answer came, too, but in wordless form. This palpable sense of peace meant that complete surrender was what God required of me: to continue to give myself to Him without reservation, as I had just done. It would take learning, but those moments would have to come more and more frequently. God would keep me dumb until I had learned to pray with my mind and whole being, rather than just with my lips.
CIII
Whilst I waited to be led further into this rich and baffling relationship with God, my earthly body must needs lie on the fur-warmed couch and endure the wait. It must be beguiled, for earthly hours are long to our earthly clay, even though they pass in a trance for the mystic.
Evening was coming on when Timothy Scarisbrick, a chamber-groom, entered with a tray of food for me. Where was Culpepper, I wondered, open every a woman. “This is a diatonic harp, gut-strung. We use it either alone, in single lines of melody, or else in what we call Cerdd Dant, where we sing poetry in counterpoint to the harp.” He swirled a bit in preparing himself to play.
“We have, in Ireland, special triads.” He began plucking the harp-strings, so sweetly that they seemed to caress the air.
“Three things that are always ready in a decent man’s house: beer, a bath, a good fire.
“Three smiles that are worse than griefs: the smile of snow melting, the smile of your wife when another man has been with her, the smile of a mastiff about to spring.
“Three doors by which falsehood enters: anger in stating the case, shaky information, evidence from bad memory.
“Three times when speech is better than silence: when urging a king to battle, when reciting a well-turned line of poetry, when giving due praise.
“Three scarcities that are better than abundance: a scarcity of fancy talk, a scarcity of