The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [222]
yours as long as life endures
Catherine
One thing I had forgotten and that is to instruct my man to tarry here with me still, for he says whatsoever you bid him he will do it.
Catherine. Her frantic, muddle-headed “arrangements.” This could be no forgery, for it reflected all too perfectly her personality.
It makes my heart to die to think what fortune I have that I cannot be always in your company....
The “fortune” that kept them apart, that “made her heart to die” was me, my existence, my presence.
Oh, why did it stab me so hotly to realize it, to savour the full meaning? Why did not the full meaning—she was an adulteress, a traitress—cancel out the pain of the little, petty particulars? Yet it was these little things that had the sharpest barbs....
For I never longed so much for a thing as I do to see you and speak with you....
As I had written Anne so long ago, almost the same words-what was it I had said? “her absence having given me the greatest pain at heart that neither tongue nor pen can express”?
Catherine had had the same madness for Culpepper, then.
No, with her it was not so enduring. It was mere lust, not bewitchment.
Yours as long as life endures, Catherine....
She had never written me a single letter.
“Thank you, Cranmer,” I said slowly. “I think it best that you go to her, take her confession now.”
It was the next day, while I was awaiting word from Cranmer, that Will received a message from Lady Baynton, Catherine’s married sister.
“Dereham did what he did by force,” div width="1em">How like Catherine, I thought. She said one thing and now wishes to retract it, like a child choosing trinkets at a summer’s fair. “I like this—no, I’ll have this instead.” But it was no more the time to dance.
At length Cranmer came, so nervous he was trembling. “ ’Tis done,” he murmured. “She has given a confession. Take it.” He thrust it to me, the odious task performed.
“What ... state was she in?” Oh, tell me something of her, what she wore, how she looked—Sweet Jesu, did I still love her, then? I all but spat.
“In a frenzy of -lamentation and heaviness.”
Play-acting! As she had play-acted all along. But what if she were changed? No, impossible. “What said she of Dereham?”
Cranmer reluctantly opened the page of his personal notes. “Of Dereham she said, ‘He had divers times lain with me, sometimes in his doublet and hose, and two or three times naked, but not so naked that he had nothing upon him, for he had always at least his doublet and as I do think, his hose also, but I mean naked when his hose were put down.’ ”
She remembered every detail, she cherished them! Odear God! And the doublet still on—I remembered our wedding night, when she had had me do the same ... it excited her....
I thought the top of agony had been reached, but each day brought new heights, and this confession most of all. I would read it, then, read it and die. And be done with death, as I was already done with living.
It was addressed to me. So she wrote me a letter at last.
I, Your Grace’s most sorrowful subject and most vile wretch in the world, not worthy to make any recommendation unto your most excellent Majesty, do only make my most humble submission and confession of my faults.
Whereas no cause of mercy is deserved upon my part, yet of your most accustomed mercy extended unto all other men undeserved, most humbly on my hands and knees I do desire one particle thereof to be extended unto me, although of all other creatures I am most unworthy to be called either your wife or your subject.
My sorrow I can by no writing express, nevertheless I trust your most benign nature will have some respect unto my youth, my ignorance, my frailness, my humble confession of my faults, and plain declaration of the same referring me wholly unto Your Grace’s pity and mercy.
First at the flattering and fair persuasions of Manox, being