The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [63]
“It is not personal, Bessie.”
That was the tragedy of it for her, and the embarrassment of it for me.
There could be no resistance on her part. I would give orders, and in the morning she would be gone.
That night, as I lay alone in bed, I wondered, in horror and fear of what lay within me, why I felt nothing for her. For three years we had joined our bodies, laughed, sung, and exchanged affectionate words. Yet her actions had been real, and mine, evidently, had not.
Toward midnight I fell into a restless sleep. I dreamed that I was passing through a field of poppies in which each flower, if one looked deep within its red center, had a woman’s face. The faces were different, yet all the flowers were alike. Ifys withered up during the night. Their scent was beguiling but not addicting. This puzzled me because Arabs used poppy seeds for medicine, which was said to be strongly addicting.
The morning sun dispelled the shreds of this strange dream, but the coming day felt stale already.
XXVII
Katherine wished for our child to be born at Greenwich. Mary had been born there, and Katherine wanted the same chamber, the same attendants, the same everything. A good Christian is not supposed to be superstitious, but I overlooked Katherine’s “failing,” if it can be called that, because I shared it. I would propitiate anything, because I knew not from which quarter the hostility came.
“I was born here,” I told little Mary, as we passed a late April morning walking about the palace gardens. She and I were in front of Katherine, who needed the pathway entirely to herself, so bulky was she. And not just because of the infant. She herself had become very bulky.
Mary looked up at me. She loved hearing my voice; I could tell. “Yes, I was born here, and you were born here. Your mother and I were married here! It is a special place.”
Overhead the skies were piercingly blue, and I could smell the coming spring in the air: a peculiar sort of blending of sweetness and death. We walked near the water-wall, where the Thames caressed the stones.
Mary pointed up at the gulls. “Birds!”
How well she spoke! How alert she was! “Yes, sea birds,” I said. “You find them wherever there is great water.” I looked out at the boats bobbing all about, and especially at the royal wharf where my long-awaited flagship was tied up. “The water is England’s greatness,” I said. “It surrounds us on all sides and protects us from enemies, but at the same time it allows us to master it and make it our servant. With ships to ride it, as people ride horses, we shall go far.”
Mary pointed at Henri, Grace à Dieu. “Go see.”
“No.” Katherine shook her head.
“Let the child indulge herself,” I said.
“You mean, let yourself.” Yet she was amenable.
I showed our daughter about the great ship, nicknamed Great Harry. Every odour of her planks, every creak of the ropes made something within me sing. I longed to be away, gone, upon open seas....
Mary began fingering the captain’s knot-cords. “Those are to measure how fast a ship is moving,” I said, opening her fat little fists and making her drop the rope. “But we mustn’t mess them.”
She began to whine, then to cry. Katherine, waiting upon the docks, looked up. Through a mother’s ears, she had heard Mary’s faraway cries.
She took the child in hand as we alighted off the gangplank, and forced her to walk obediently along the water-wall separating the palace grounds from the marshy area surrounding it and from the river itself—for Greenwich was a sea-palace, but protected from the ravages of water.
Katherine went to her lying-in chamber inurroundn my hand, only to find it being opened from the other side. I shot into the room.
Linacre awaited me. His face told me nothing. It was as bland as old snow in February.
I was relieved. It meant Katherine lived; for if she did not, he would hardly have looked so blank.
“Your Majesty.” He gestured. “The Queen wishes you to be with her.”
I followed him down the connecting suite of rooms (all muffled with hangings, to keep toxic airs out, and therefore black and stuffy)