The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [66]
“He looks like you.” She smiled, touched e droe gently nudged.
“Fitzroy. A traditional way of saying ‘son of a King.’ ” She smiled. “For this has happened before.” She stopped smiling.
The infant had been bathed, swathed, and put in his cradle. I stood looking over him for a long while. His resemblance to my lost Prince Henry was unsettling.
My wife had had a monster. My mistress had had a healthy son.
Clearly, God was giving me a message. One too blatant for even me to ignore.
I spent the remainder of the long summer’s day at the Priory. Bessie fell asleep, sleeping the sleep of the young and healthy, undisturbed by conscience, worn out by natural physicality.
The Priory was a neat little community. It nestled in the slightly rolling foothills of Essex, which looked like green knolls. Everything seemed ordered and elevated into more than the everyday. I walked through the stables, the kitchen garden of herbs, the greater vegetable garden. Everything was kept in the most transcendent order, as though the Lord might appear at any moment and puto’s just to placate him and entice him to France. Ha! Now he was out his money, out of Leonardo’s services, and stuck with the dark painting of the half-smiling woman that everyone agreed was ugly.
“And I am showing my good intentions on my face,” I said, fingering my new beard. Francis had proposed that neither of us shave until the meeting, as a token of good faith. I was not sure I liked myself with a beard. Certainly it changed my face.
WILL:
As it turned out, Katherine hated the beard and begged him to cut it, “for her sake.” Still trying not to cross her, still half hoping for an heir, Henry succumbed and shaved the beard. This provoked a diplomatic crisis, as Francis was thereby offended, and Henry’s ambassadors had to explain the circumstances. Francis’s “dear mother” Louise hastened to assure them that “men’s love is shown not in their beards but in their hearts,” and the incident was smoothed over.
Then, belatedly, Henry started growing the beard again just prior to his departure. Thereby it was not long enough to offend Katherine, but could serve as a token of goodwill toward Francis. Such are the weighty considerations that diplomats must deal with.
HENRY VIII:
June, 1520. I stood on the castle deck of Great Harry in the fairest winds God ever sent mortal man. We skimmed across the Channel—nay, we,flew. The great sails, painted to look like cloth-of-gold (trompe-l’oeil, the French say—oh, they have a word for everything!), billowed out and did their duty. We were bound for Calais, to undertake the great meeting between the French and English courts. It had all come about, despite the deep reservations of everyone on both sides.
Including—perhaps most of all?—Katherine, who mounted the steps up to the forecastle to stand, now, by my side. Part of me noted how slowly, how painfully she moved. Her arthritis had made stair-climbing difficult for her in the past two years. The other part of me welcomed her presence as a companion.
“Look, see! There is Calais!” I had sighted it only once before, but took an authority’s pleasure in pointing it out to her.
Before us was France and the cupped, fine landing beaches of her northern coast. Behind us, equally visible, were the high white cliffs of England.
“It looks so harmless,” she said.
“It is harmless. For the land you see is England, the Pale of Calais.”
Why did even my wife, the Queen, forget that I was King of part of France?
The plans had been settled to the last detail. I, and all my company, were to land in the Pale of Calais, and thereafter, Francis and I would meet—and all our courts with us—just at the border of the two jurisdictions. Afterwards, each would entertain the other on his own land, and on his own territory. Special cities—temporary, splendid, as those can be only when permanency is not a factor—had been could not resist asking. I was young, remember.
“The Kings move?” He