The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [218]
“Your Grace—my dear Lord—forgive me,” said Cranmer, thrusting a rolled letter into my hand. He looked ill.
“What? No other greeting? I have missed you, Thomas, in our separation.”
“And I you, Your Majesty. Truly.”
“I will plough through all the notes you took in my absence, I promise it, tonight. You did well.”
“The letter—read it first, I beg you, I—” He looked so agitated I knew immediately that he suffered from rebellious bowels.
“Go, Thomas,” I said. Still he stood with a hangdog look. “Yes, yes. I’ll read it straightway,” I assured him. He slunk away, as if in pain. Poor man.
I seated myself on a wooden bench in the Long Gallery outside the Chapel and unfolded the letter, just to humour him.
It was a joke. It reported the claims of a certain John Lassells that his sister, Mary Lassells Hall, had told him that Catherine Howard was a whore, that she had behaved wantonly from a young age with men of the Duchess’s household, giving herself to a “music master” when she was but thirteen and then living in open sin with a cousin until her departure for court.
Who was this Mary Hall? I reread the letter carefully. She was, before her marriage, a servant at the Duchess’s Lambeth establishment. When her brother, who was a fervent Protestant, had asked her why she did not seek a position at court, as the other Lambeth servitors had done, she had replied with disdain, “I would not serve that woman! She is immoral, both in living and in conditions.” And then she had named “Manox, a music master” and “Dereham, a gentleman,” as Catherine’s lovers.
Nonsense. It was nonsense. So the Protestants were on the move again. Since the head of the heretical serpent, Cromwell, had been severed, it writhed on its own, in meaningless thrashings. A flush of resentment spread through me. I had spent the summer quashing the pretensions of the Catholics, I thought, and now I must spend the winter curbing the Protestants. I was amused that Cranmer should have been taken in by this bait. But I had left my Protestants in charge in London, I reminded myself. Cranmer, Audley, Edward Seymour ... they would be approachable by the extremists.
Well, I would have this investigated, and have this Mary Hall silenced. She would regret ever having uttered this slander. Wearily I ordered William Fitzwilliam, the Lord Privy Seal, Anthony Browne, the Lord Admiral, and Thomas Wriothesley, Secretary of State, to round up Mary and John Lassells, and question Manox and Dereham. The slander must be stopped.
In the meantime I enjoyed Catherine heartily, as if in defiance.
Three days later my men returned, and in the privacy of my work chamber they said they had questioned the Protestant brother and sister, the music master, and Dereham, and had been unable to disprove the story. Quite the contrary.
“I fail to believe this!” I muttered. “They must be lying. Oh, why do Protestants abandon their falsehoods only over the lighted fire? Damn their fanatacism! Very well, then—torture them! Force the truth from them!”
Torture was illegal, except in cases of treason, sedition, or suspected treason.
Catherine had planned a sus illeg; for me that evening. But suddenly I was not amused; suddenly I did not want to see her or share an amusement. Abruptly I sent word that she must take to her quarters and await the King’s pleasure, that it was no more the time to dance.
The King’s pleasure had been shattered, and nothing but a full retraction by those blackguards would restore it.
I slept poorly that night, if at all. At my bed-foot pallet, Culpepper was likewise sleepless. I could hear it in his breathing. Ordinarily I could have passed time with him, lighted a taper and set