The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [255]
“Nay, gentle wife,” I reproved her smilingly. “That is our private talk.” Then I changed the subject. “Yet I know we shall look back upon this date as marking a great anniversary for our realm. We stand on the brink of a great battle,” I said. “May we prevail, with honour!” I raised my fresh-filled glass.
They solemnly drank. Each of us prayed. For it was a fearful hour for England.
Faces were lit only by the candles set on the table. All around it was now dark, except for the lanterns set up on deck; I permitted no open flames on board ship.
“I must to my post,” said Brandon. “I have a far ride to Kent.”
“It will be a long night,” I said. “My thoughts go with you.”
He grasped my hand. “To be alive is to fight the French,” he laughed. “Remember, Your Grace, how we planned it all, at Sheen?”
Sheen. Vanished palace. Vanished youths. “Old men fight boys’ battles. Well, good night, Charles.” I heard his heavy footfalls crossing the gangplank.
“I must take my post as well.” Tom commanded Peter Pomegranate, a fine, new-built ship. He was much more a seaman than a soldier.
“You are anchored one of the farthest out,” I said. “You will see the French first. Set double watches.”
“They won’t approach in darkness,” he said cockily.
“There will be instruments that enable men to come right alongside in darkness, someday,” I said. “Perhaps that day is now.”
“Not for a thousand years. The stars can tell a captain where he’s located on a map, but not what lurks beneath his hull. No, there’s no way night. That is a royal command.”
“Aye.” He bowed, took Kate’s hand. “I will obey all His Majesty’s commands. Bless you in your marriage; I pray daily for you.”
His distinctive step, higher and more prancing than Brandon’s, sounded on the gangplank.
“I think he has become light-witted,” murmured Kate.
“I think he has become dangerous,” I said. “Ambitious, cankered, eaten up with envy—dangerous.”
“Nay, Your Grace!” Her voice rose. “He does not—does not deserve such weight. He is too insubstantial ever to amount to anything dangerous.”
“Perhaps,” I said. “But I will watch him. I like him not. I regret that I invited him to join us.”
“I do not. It was a kind thing to do, and you are ever kind.” She put her arm about my waist, boldly. She had never done this before. “So kind, I think that I have never shown you how my heart warms to your great love.” She was pressed up against me, resting her face on my chest. I bent to kiss her, and she did not pull away; indeed, she returned the kiss, deeply.
There was a royal chamber below decks, where I had quartered on my passing to Calais. It was large, well appointed, and completely private. It was held in readiness for me at all times, and afforded a blissful retreat. “Kate—” I murmured, as I made my way toward the steps leading below, with her clinging to me. “Kate, wife—”
In that wooden chamber, well belowdecks, with its stout door and no window at all save a round porthole, Kate became my wife at last. I was gentle with her and she with me, and as it was a prize I had thought never to win, I received it with awe and gratitude and wonderment. I can say no more; to do so is to desecrate it. I will not insult her body by describing it, nor our actions by narrating them.
CXXVI
It was dawn now, and I stood alone at the rail of the ship. I had come out here on deck, in that darkest time of night, to wait for sunrise.
There was a holiness about “watching in the night.” The early monks had known this when they set their first worship hour at midnight. And indeed it did possess its own benediction. I prayed as I stood there, prayed for England, and it seemed my prayers might be better heard for the sky being hushed and empty.
I prayed that we would withstand this assault, the largest ever launched against England. It was my fault that this had come to pass; it was my mishandling of our affairs with France. I had done the worst thing one can do in hunting: I had injured the beast without killing him,