The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [252]
I, in turn, had grievances against him, mighty ones. I flung them at him, but he failed to react, or even to refute them. I said that (1) Charles was guilty of treason toward me, that we had agreed that either of us might negotiate separately but neither should conclude a treaty without the other; (2) Charles was bound by treaty to act as my ally, not as a negotiator between France and England; (3) English merchants in Spain were being subjected to the Inquisition; and (4) Spanish troops had entered French employment.
But these were futile, rearguard gestures. The truth was that I had lost my ally and stood naked to whosoever wished to attack me. Even the Pope was proceeding to call his General Council, which would meet at long last in Trent, not in Mantua. I was beleaguered and abandoned, alone on my island kingdom.
Even that would not be so fearsome, if the island itself were only united. But half of it was given over to enemies, French sympathizers. I kept my Border troops busy harassing the Scots, making pitiful little raids into their territory. In one of those, my troops had accidentally desecrated the tombs of the Earl of Angus’s ancestors in Melrose. This turned Angus against us—he who had been our stoutest ally—and he and Francis, as well as the infant Queen’s council, began plotting for revenge. The form that revenge would take was a Franco-Scottish invasion. The plans were (my spies were able to ascertain this much) for France to send a force to Scotland via the northwest and another just to the Border in the east. Released from bothering with Charles, the rest of the French forces could attack England from the heast by sea. Francis could raise an immense fleet if he so desired, and since the prevailing winds were from the south across the Channel, he could effect a landing in almost any season.
I was half sick with worry about these things, when Gardiner insisted on a special audience with me to raise alarmist concerns about the growth of the Protestant faction in our midst.
“In your absence this summer they have grown like pestilent weeds,” he said. “But unlike weeds, the frost does not kill them. Nay, they hibernate in winter, meeting secretly in one another’s homes, spreading their sedition, infecting others with it.”
I was weary of this, weary of having to stamp out things, prune the kingdom, control sedition. Ungrateful, malicious dogs! There were always such, prowling and sniffing about the kingdom, lifting their legs and pissing on the rest.
“Let them but show their faces, I’ll cut them off,” I promised.
The Great Turk continued to correspond with me, for mysterious reasons of his own. He inquired after the crocodile—which was miraculously thriving, having been quartered near the hot springs in Bath, in the southwest part of the country—and offered to send me eunuchs for my court. He himself, he wrote, was luxuriating in winter retreat in Constantinople. How did we ever endure those northern winters, he asked? One January in Vienna had been enough for him. He sent me a Koran. A month later another long, chatty letter arrived. Suleiman was a friendly fellow.
I must confess I enjoyed his communications. They took me far away to a confusing but perfumed land, made me forget the chill-induced misery I grappled with daily in the palace.
CXXV
That I was miserable that winter, I readily record. Only Kate served as a comforter, and I thanked God every day that I had had the grace to make her my wife. For she was a source of grace to me. She was a quiet spot to which I could always return, who was never sharp or cross or unable to give.
The children revered her as well, and she brought out the very best in them. They were gathered together in the palace under her tutelage, and I felt, at last, that we were a family. Kate, mother of none of them,