The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [213]
I liked it not. It was gloomy; there was something ominous even about the “happy” triads. I shook my head.
He shrugged, clearly not understanding why I did not want more of it.
He struck a chord and began a new poem.
“Lovely whore, though,
Lovely, lovely whore
Slept with Conn,
Slept with Niall,
Slept with Brian,
Slept with Rory.
”Slide then,
The long slide.
“Of course it shows. ”
What peculiar sentiments the Irish had! Why would they celebrate a whore in verse and achingly poignant melody?
I smiled. The music was exquisite, that I acknowledged. I nodded vigourously, so that he might play on.
From his harp came a sparkling sigh, a whispered wave of beauty.
“Ebb tide has come for me:
My life drifts downward
Like a retreating sea
With no tidal return.
“I am the Hag of Beare,
Five petticoats I used to wear,
Today, gaunt with poverty,
I hunt for rags to cover me.
“Girls nowadays
Dream only of money—
When we were young
We cared more for our men.
“But I bless my King who gave—
Balanced briefly on time’s wave—
Largesse of speedy chariots
And champion thoroughbreds.
“These arms, now bony, thin
And useless to younger men,
Once caressed with skill
The>Wha
“Why should I care?
Many’s the bright scarf
Adorned my hair in the days
When I drank with the gentry.
“So God be praised
That I misspent my days!
Whether the plunge be bold
Or timid, the blood runs cold.
“But my cloak is mottled with age—
No, I’m beginning to dote—
It’s only grey hair straggling
Over my skin like a lichened oak.
“And my right eye has been taken away
As down-payment on heaven’s estate;
Likewise the ray in the left
That I may grope to heaven’s gate.
“And I, who feasted royally
By candlelight, now pray
In this darkened oratory.
Instead of heady mead
“And wine, high on the bench
With kings, I sup whey
In a nest of hags.
God pity me!
“Alas, I cannot
Again sail youth’s sea;
The days of my beauty
Are departed, and desire spent.
“I hear the fierce cry of the wave
Whipped by the wintry wind.
No one will visit me today
Neither nobleman nor slave.
“Flood tide
And the e>
When all one has to do is lie abed, one quickly loses the normal rhythm of the day, the one that governs everyday life. There is a great wisdom in the orderly arrangement of the hours and the daily passage of light and dark. An invalid can rearrange those units to suit himself, like a child playing with blocks, and he soon makes a jumble of it.
So I lay awake half the night, because I had had no occupation during the day to exercise and tax me. “Christ prayed all night,” it says in the Bible. I tried to do so, but fell into that eerie suspended consciousness that bordered on rapture, communing with the Holy Spirit and then waking, or gliding into full awareness, as the dawn stirrings began in the adjoining chamber. By the time Culpepper had appeared with my newly warmed bedjacket, and the beaming young Scarisbrick approached my bedside, grinning, with the laden tray of breakfast food, I was already sleepy, worn out from my night of wrestling with the angel, so to speak. When other men’s blood was stirring, mine was settling. 0 cursed life, an invalid’s! No wonder they never mend.
Culpepper was busy and preoccupied. He brought in my clothes, he attended to all my needs, but in a rattled, distracted way. Once he brought a delicately embossed leather envelope to hold all the correspondence from our ambassadors abroad, made with marvellous flaps and pockets, with. a special container for wax and the Royal Stamp. He had designed and commissioned it.
I grasped his arm and nodded thanks. I hated this dumbness. Even though I knew it was—must be!—temporary.
Catherine came in directly after Mass, which she attended daily at eight. She had a devout soul, which, like most physically attractive people, she attempted to hide, as if it were a shame, or would cause others to regard her differently. In the young, that is of paramount importance.
But when she came