The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [40]
Then the secular festivities began. There were masques and miming, and three fools scampered about. A great banquet with some eighty dishes (one of them being baked lampreys, my favourite). Still later, a dance in the Great Hall.
Disguised, as custom decreed, I danced with many ladies to the lively string-melodies of the rebec and the thump of the wooden xylophone. Only one woman made bold to guess my identity: Lady Boleyn, wife of Thomas Boleyn, one of my Esquires of the Body. She was a vain, tiresome woman, much given to flirtation and, as she thought, charm. She began by announcing straightway that she danced with the King; she recognized him by his strength, his manliness, his renowned dancing skill. (A clever move. Should I not be King—as her chances were only so-so that I was—then the hearer would be flattered, as she imagined; and if she were, by accident, correct, then the King himself would marvel at her astuteness.) I did not enlighten her, but let her go on about her stepchildren, who were all deserving of accolades and (now it came) positions at court. Mary, George, and Anne. (Cursed names, all! Would that I had never heard them!) I extricated myself as soon as possible.
WILL:
I am sure he did not mean to include Mary in this wish; and certainly he would not undo the children that resulted from his inability to extricate himself truly from the Boleyns. If only the daughters had been as unappealing as the mother! Incidentally, this should lay to rest the old rumour that he dallied with Lady Boleyn as well. Where this got started I cannot imagine; ill-wishers are determined to give the King as large and indiscriminate a lust as Jupiter himself.
HENRY VIII:
It was time for the musical interlude. To everyone’s surprise, I myself took my lute and went to the middle of the floor.
“I have composed a song for the season,” I announced. It was not strictly true; I had composed it merely for myself, when trying to settle in my own mind exactly what I wished from life. Everyone stared back at me, yet I struck the chord and was not in the least afraid. I sang, boldly:
Pastime with good company
I love and shall until I die
Grudge who will, but none deny,
So God be pleased this life will I
For my pastance,
Hunt, sing, and dance,
My heart is set,
All goodly sport
To my comfort
Who shall me lep in them. Just when it should have been finished, the doors opened and two Frenchmen appeared (one could identify them as such by the excesses in their costume, so much slashing that their topcoats were virtually nonexistent), carrying something the size of a large trunk by handles on either side.
Every eye in the Great Hall turned toward them as they descended the steps, slowly, carrying their burden solicitously. Their abnormally high heels clicked on the stones.
They came toward me slowly, making their way to within five feet of me. Then they laid their coffin-like weight down and pulled back the covering. It was a pie, the immense size of which no one present had ever seen.
“His Most Christian Majesty Louis, King of France, presents you with this meat pie as a New Year’s gift. It is made from a gigantic boar which His Majesty himself took.” They bowed.
I stood overlooking the vast pie, as large across as a desk. The pastry was intricate and teased into various shapes, baked a pleasing golden brown.
“A sword,” I said, and one was placed in my hands. I slashed open the top of that pretty thing and was greeted with a foul odour: all was rotten within. The boar-meat was decomposing, the filling a green slime.
I backed away. “ ’Tis foul,” I said.
“As French manners,” finished Wolsey, his voice loud in the hush.
We turned toward the grinning Frenchmen. “Give your master our thanks,” I said. “But my taste does not run to rancid meat. I have a livelier appetite for fresh French things. Such as my title and inheritance.