The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [241]
“I marvel at your scurvy wit!” I snapped. “And we shall have no more riddles!”
“ ’Twas an oak tree!” he blurted out, trying to absolve himself.
Oaks. They are my favourite trees. Oh, foul, foul! That day in the little chamber ... oaks would forever be ugly for me, soiled by the Howard whore.
“I think we all tire of riddles,” said Thomas Wyatt. “Let us turn to poetry instead. Shall we try a rhyming round? I will begin with a verse, then someone else shall add to it, until we have a complete story in verse.” He looked round, a great poet himself, but an equally great diplomat. I had sent him on many missions abroad.
I nodded assent. The mood had grown ugly; I hoped this would sweeten it. He began,
“Within this tower
There lives a flower
That hath my heart,”
Francis Bryan continued easily,
“Within the hour
She pissed foul sour
And let a fart.”
There were ladies present! Genuine, honest ladies like Joan Dudley, Joan Denny, Katherine Brandon, Anne Seymour—no unwholesomeness amongst them.
This was enough. I stood up slowly, and let the full force of my displeasure rest on him. “Be gone,” I said. “Come no more to my table. And look for no more favours at my hand.”
He knew enough not to argue, or attempt to excuse himself. He nodded and quit the bower.
Once his small-minded, obscene presence was gone, it was once more a fair summer’s day. We sang songs: “Death and Burial of Cock Robin”; “Mouse and Mouser”; “The Milk Maid”; “The Carrion Crow.”
“Bessy Bell and Mary Gray
They were two bonnie lasses,”
sang Elizabeth in a thin little voice. I had almost forgotten she was there, at the farthest end of the table.
“Bessy kept the garden gate,
And Mary kept the pantry;
Bessy always had to wait
While Mary lived in plenty.”
I was stunned. That Elizabeth would challenge me so publicly about her rights, accuse me before the entire court of withholding her due as a Princess. When all the world knew she was may keep your garden gate at Hatfield House,” I said softly, “by returning there by the morrow. I am grieved that you have not proved fit for the royal bowers at Hampton.”
No one else, up and down the long table, murmured a sound. It was only Elizabeth and myself, some fifty feet apart.
“May I take Robert?” she asked. “To take turns with me waiting upon the garden gate?”
I looked at young Robert Dudley, a comely lad, a blue ribbon tying up his pretty brown hair.
“No,” I said. “For that would make it play, not work.”
His face fell, but hers betrayed no sign of disappointment. So they meant something to one another. Good. Then not seeing each other would hurt.
“Very well,” she said. “I am saddened that I must miss tending to the crocodile. For exile from one’s source of life and those in sympathy is hard. Nonetheless I shall pray for his survival. May his thick hide and craftiness protect him from all evil-wishers.”
By God, she pushed me too far! She was no child; no, she was as political and dangerous as any Pretender of three times her years. As such, she was a danger to my Edward. “You are excused,” I said. “No further leave-taking is necessary.”
Yet my heart ached to see her go. Who can explain the human heart? Mary was my firstborn, my only child for so long, and nothing could ever alter that. Edward was the gift I had prayed for, so long withheld. Elizabeth? She was a disappointment from the first, she was naught, she was the wrong sex, from the wrong woman, and in the wrong order of birth. Nevertheless she was the most intriguing to me, and I could not fathom why. Perhaps because she was the only one of the three children not afraid of me. As indeed why should she be? She alone, perhaps, of all persons in the realm, was untouchable by my wrath. I could never execute her; I had already illegitimized her, but I would never disclaim her; in short, I had already done to her the worst of what I could do, and she knew that. And I knew that.
All the guests were looking intently at their strawberries. Domestic