The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [249]
I looked at Kate, seated as always next to Edward. I tried to catch her gaze, but she did not look at me. Rather she looked only at Edward.
The cooks brought out the first course, spring lamb and larks, prepared with scallions and chervil.
After everyone’s plate was filled, I took the jug of red wine, thin and sour, but sweetened with honey, and filled my cup. “Fill yours, all,” I ordered. When that was done, I took a sip and then raised my cup. “I wish to share with you my great joy this day. England is to have a Queen, and I a wife.” I looked at Kate, inclined my head toward her.
Look at me, woman! I ordered her silently, as she continued to study her plate.
“It is our sweet, kind Lady Latimer who will become my wife, and your Queen.”
Still she kept her eyes down.
“A modest Queen!” I jested, reaching my cup over to her and touching her vessel with mine. The clunk made her look up.
The company broke into smiles. Kate smiled too, shyly.
“The King has honoured me greatly,” she said softly. “I pray that I may ever be a good, kind, loyal, and true wife to His Majesty.”
“Nay, you make it sound like a funeral, Lady Latimer,” said Tom Seymour. He was sitting at the foot of the table, his accustomed place. He grinned, his elbows on the table, the great sleeves of his whing ” I said, “they leave us alone to do as lovers do.” It seemed humourous, as we did not do what lovers do. I patted my basket. “How we shall disappoint them when we return with our baskets overflowing!”
She turned and gave me a smile, but a sad one. As if to say, What a pity. All about us nature was rampantly growing, reproducing, making an abundance of new green stalks, weeds, creepers, and climbers. And here we were in their midst, sterile and restricted.
But it was my time of life. I was autumn now, late autumn. In autumn all these fields and forests would be like me, we would be at one in our cycle. Now November passing through June fields was an outrage, an insult; then we would blend together and I would belong, where today I was but a visitor, a foreigner.
We found the strawberries, mixed in with weeds and self-sown rye. Picking them out was a job, a job I disliked. Bending over was so difficult for me that I was forced to kneel down; but that was also difficult, because the pressure on my weak leg caused it to start throbbing. Disturbing it in any way meant possibly causing it to revert to its festering stage. At length I devised a sort of half-kneeling position to use.
We picked, silently. In truth I had no extra strength to carry on a conversation while bent down in an uncomfortable position. The sun on my hat was rapidly making me overheat, but—last vestige of vanity!—I could never remove it and reveal my baldness.
Sweat began popping out all over my face; then gathered in little streams, running down the troughs and wrinkles of my skin. The red strawberries gleamed and shimmered before my eyes, pulsating like stars. Then everything swirled, and I fell into the patch of meadow, face downward. I felt a strawberry crush against my cheek, and its sweet yielded juice was overwhelming in my nostrils.
I looked up at Kate’s face. I was lying on my back in her lap, and she was fanning me with my hat. My hat ... then she had seen my baldness! Oh, the shame of it!
“The sun made me grow dizzy,” I murmured. I was so humiliated, so mortified, that I hated her for seeing this. I would never marry her now. I could not have a wife who looked down upon my weakness, who considered herself superior to me. My legs were forked out. I lay like a helpless frog in her sight.
I sat up, retrieved the hat, clapped it on my head. I must leave this site, her presence, her shaming presence. I struggled to my feet, pushing away her “helping” hands. Her mocking hands, more like!
“Edward does the same,” she said, in a natural voice. “He overheats in direct sunlight. It must be the Tudor complexion, for I believe Elizabeth avoids the sun for that reason. Although her white skin is