The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [42]
Earlier I had welcomed this cold. I had wanted a cold Christmas, and so I had it. Anything I wanted, I had only to command, or so it had seemed.
Yet the thing that I had most wanted, that above all I cared to keep, was lost.
XVIII
WILL:
Yes, he had seemingly lost the magical power to command fate, which habrief moment. He would spend the next twenty years trying to recapture it—years in which everything happened, and yet nothing happened. They were painful to him without touching him or changing him in essential ways. They left him confused and in that state somewhere between anger and hurt: they left him at the mercy of the Witch.
HENRY VIII:
Neither could I command happiness to return, and my sadness lingered for weeks afterward, well into the new year. Katherine and I brooded together over our loss, drawing ourselves tightly into a partnership of grief. We ordered extra Masses to be said and increased our personal pieties. I could talk to no one else about my feelings in the matter; it touched me too near my royal person. But Katherine, Katherine, royal herself, she understood....
When at length her time of healing was past, I found that our very closeness and sympathy of mind made me approach her differently when we returned to the marriage bed. Why is it, I wondered then (and wonder still), that friendship seems to stifle lust, to smother it under a pillow of intimacy? For lust is not intimate; it thrives on strangeness and mystery, and needs it to survive. Katherine, my mysterious princess from Spain, now my friend in sorrow ... nevertheless I knew her, as a man should know his wife, so it says in Scripture.
It was Wolsey whom I asked to say extra Masses for Katherine’s and my private intentions. Wolsey had already proved himself my man in the Privy Council. It had been politic to appoint him, as he had immediately begun acting on his own initiative to counter some of the Fox-Warham-Ruthal schemes. Wolsey was subtle; I appreciated that, as when he showed no curiosity upon my request for the extra Masses. Wolsey was discreet, and he was honest. I had acquired a valuable servant. Now I must learn to use him to the best advantage—for both of us.
He sent a steady stream of summaries and memoranda about the shifting politics abroad. He seemed to compile a new report every hour. I was so engrossed in reading a stack of them (as well as a summary of the palace inventories) that I did not hear Katherine enter my workroom one morning late in May. Of course her step was very light. She was standing behind me before I even felt her presence.
“What does my love study so intently?” she asked softly.
“All our property,” I answered. “Were you aware, for example, that you—or rather we—possess”—I stabbed a finger at the paper and read the word it rested upon—“a dozen painted tiles from Spain?”
“No. But I should love to see them installed. I miss the tiles of home—so bright and clean. Not like the dark wood here.”
“Where were they used?” I was curious.
“On the floors. In the walls. Every place where you have paintings and hangings, or wood. Reds and oranges and yellows, they were.”
“I shall have them put in the floor of your Privy Chamber at Greenwich, then. With the date entered upon a new tile, to mark the end of the first year of our marriage—and of our reign.” I had just been thinking of the date, and how grow into just a husband and wife, yet the end of the first year of marriage was the end of being a bride; everyone knew that.
“Have I? But I, too, have something to give you.” She took my face in both her tiny hands and said, “I am with child. Our prayers are answered.”
I must have looked as I felt, for she kissed me then, long and sweetly—more like a bride, still, than a true wife.
Midsummer’s Day, and my nineteenth birthday, and the end of my first year of marriage came all in June. I could look back on the