The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [62]
The other concerned Francis and myself. Evidently the French King had as burning a curiosity to behold me as I had to behold him. It was a curiosity that we agreed to satisfy. We would meet, with our full courts in attendance, at a place called the Valley of Gold, near Calais, the following summer.
As the last of the diplomats took leave and the ships plied their way across the Channel in the strengthening autumn gales, I was faced with a personal dilemma of a most delicate nature.
Bessie was pregnant.
She had waited until after the treaties were concluded to tell me. I had not seen her throughout the festivities; I had decorously kept Katherine by my side, as good taste, protocol, and respect demanded. There had been no lying with Katherine, however, as she had just begun another pregnancy.
I had looked forward to enjoying Bessie and her incomparable favours again; had found myself thinking on them during the long and tedious banquet that Wolsey gave at York Place, described by flattering chroniclers as “surpassing anything given by either Cleopatra or Caligula,” when in truth the spirit of those two lusty goats was to be found within my head, not at Wolsey’s table. How Bessie and I used one another, in fantasy, while the Venetian ambassador droned on in my ear about Adriatic trade routes!
And now, as I was in the very act of reaching for her, my pre-formed desire in the ascendant—
“Your Majesty, I am with child.” How calmly those four shattering words came from her lips.
I dropped her arm.
“Yes,” she said. “It will be in June.”
Seven months. She waited expectantly (in both senses of the word), waited to hear my happy words. How wonderful. I will make you Duchess of X. What joyooked forwurs. You must have your own estates, honours, be recognized as Maitresse en Titre, my love, my desire, my pretty one.
“You must leave court,” I said.
“Yes.” And?
“I wil!—I will find you a place to go. Nearby, so I can watch over you until the child is born. Perhaps a priory in Essex.”
Her face changed. “But—”
“You must leave the Queen’s service immediately. It would be a scandal for you to continue as her maid of honour. It would dishonour all three of us.
“And my father?” she cried. “Surely he should leave your service as well? Does it not dishonour him to continue to minister to a—a man who has seduced his daughter?”
“So now you turn sanctimonious? This was not your tune in the beginning. Oh, no, then you dismissed my qualms as overscrupulous, old-fashioned.”
“I have honour, too! It is not only you and the Queen who are entitled to it! I have honour, and my father has honour, and now to be treated so lightly—”
How tedious this was, how unpleasant. Why did all pleasure have this rancid aftertaste?
“Come now, Bessie. It was sport, we agreed it was, we’ve enjoyed one another, but now it is time to observe the proprieties, lest we cause a scandal, and thereby harm ourselves. And the child.”
“I loved you! I loved you, and now you treat me as a burden, a problem to be solved.”
There it was, the dreaded word: love. I did not want to be loved; that was the burden. Unwanted love was the greatest burden of all.
“It is not you that is the burden ...” I began, but it was too difficult and complicated to explain, and in the end I could not say the only words she truly wished to hear, anyway.
“And after the child comes, what then?”
“Wolsey will find you a husband. Never fear, you will be well married.”
“Wolsey!”
“So you see, you will not have been ‘dishonoured.’ You will be as marriageable as if you had remained chaste the entire time at court.”
“You let Wolsey attend to even this ... personal thing?