The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [221]
They led him away and dragged Dereham in. Handsome, cocky Dereham.
He, too, was read the accusation and called upon to clear himself.
“The Queen is my wife,” he said boldly. “She was promised to me two years ago. We lived as husband and wife, and then she went to court and I to Ireland—both to make our fortunes, that was the plan. Well, I had some success in ventures there”—yes, piracy, I remembered—“but imagine my surprise to find, upon my return, that my little wife is now styled Queen of England. Naturally I hurried to reclaim her, and she was most amenable to appointing me her secretary. But, alas, I found I had been replaced in her affections ... by a Thomas Culpepper.”
No. No.
“You say you ‘lived as husband and wife,’ ” said Cranmer dryly. “In what precise sense?”
“In that we coupled often, and had intentions to marry.”
Coupled often. I looked at the long-legged pirate, imagining him lying on my Catherine, quivering above her, searching out her secret parts and then depositing his seed within her.
The stone. The stone in her womb ... that was what it was for.... It was Catherine herself who had sought out a practitioner to put it there, to protect herself from her own sexual indulgences.
I felt vomit in my throat.
“Did she promise herself to you?” asked Cranmer reasonably.
“We called one another ‘husband’ and ‘wife.’ I entrusted my money to her while I went to Ireland. I remember holding her whilst she said, in tears, ‘Thou wilt never live to say to me, “thou hast swerved.”’”
But she had, she had. O God—why did not the pain stop? Why could I not feel anger? Come, clean anger, sweep this agony away!
“Look to Tom Culpepper if you want more!” he cried, as he was taken from the chamber.
Culpepper.
A dozen eyes blinked back at me. I thought my heart would break, I thought myself torn into shreds, as I whispered, “Arrest Culpepper. Question him.” A stirring, and my servants went to carry out my bidding.
It was all coming now, the recall, in brutal and torturous detail. Her pretend-chastity, which I had been so loth to violate that I rushed forward the marriage in such haste; her lewd behaviour on our wedding night, appropriate to a jade who was long past sweetness; Dereham’s Syrian love-cream; Culpepper and Catherine’s absence during my illness, and her skittishness; my attributing her high colouring on those mornings to her religious experiences at Mass; the locked doors on the great Northern Progress, with the trumped-up story about the Scottish assassins, and her kisses and assurances the next morning. O God!
I wept, putting my head down on the Council table. My hat rolled off, revealing my balding scalp. I was naked as I had never been, and I cared not, so great was my grief. I had loved Catherine, had believed her chaste and loving. It was all a lie. She was a whore, a scheming whore, who had gone to court “to make her fortune.”
I swayed up and screamed, “A sword! A sword!”
No one shorhow that you do. For I never longed so much for a thing as I do to see you and to speak with you, the which I trust shall be shortly now.
The which doth comfort me very much when I think of it, and when I think again that you shall depart from me again it makes my heart to die to think what fortune I have that I cannot be always in your company.
My trust is always in you that you will be as you have promised me, and in that hope I trust still, praying you then that you will come when my Lady Rochford is here, for then I shall be best at leisure to be at your commandment.
I thank you for promising to be so good unto that poor fellow, my man, which is one of the griefs that I do feel to depart from him, for then I do know no one that I dare trust to send to you, and therefore I pray you take him to be with you, that I may sometime hear from you one thing.
I pray you to give me a horse for my man, for I have much ado to get one and therefore I pray send me one