The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [78]
“I forbid it!” I heard myself saying.
Wolsey stared.
“I said I forbid the marriage! It cannot take place!”
“But, Your Majesty, they have already—”
“I do not carnd B1; Ah, but years later how I was to wish I had allowed him to complete that particular sentence! “I said I will not permit this marriage! It is ... unsuitable.”
“But, Your Majesty ... what shall I tell Percy?”
They were still in the garden, hugging. Now he was toying with her hair. A grin spread over his silly face. Or was it a grin? The rising heat made it difficult to see.
“You, who have no trouble telling kings and emperors and popes what to do?” I began to laugh again, too loudly. “You cannot speak to a—a”—I thought hard for the image the hateful Percy boy evoked in me—“a silly, long-legged bird—a stork?”
I slammed the door and shut out the vision and the heat. Wolsey was discomfited.
“A boy? You fear to face a boy?” I taunted him. “And yet you would have been Pope?”
“Yes, Your Majesty. I’ll tell him.”
Now I was surrounded by the press of people. Uncomfortable inside, tormented outside. Clearly, I must leave. The banqueting hall was a vise, pressing down upon me. Without thinking, I said, “I’ll have it all pulled down, and put up a new Great Hall.” Wolsey looked even more unhappy. Obviously something had gone wrong in his plans to impress me.
Agitated and not myself at all, I pulled out the deed to Hampton Court. “I thank you for your gift,” I said. “But you may stay here as long as you live. It is still yours.”
He looked like a stricken calf spared just as he approaches the slaughterhouse. (Why could I think only of animal images that day?) He had made his gesture and it had been duly registered, yet he did not have to pay the price.
“Thank you, Your Majesty.” He bowed low.
“Break the betrothal,” I said, pushing past him.
As I rode toward the river, where the royal barge waited, I became uncomfortably aware of the yellow marigolds bordering the courtyard. And once I was on board, bankside yellow buttercups mocked me all the way back to London, as they lay bright and open under the new summer sun.
A month passed. I heard nothing of the matter from Wolsey, did not see the new Viscount Rochford or his daughter. It was high summer, my usual time for sport and athletic practise, yet I found myself unable to lose myself in either. Instead I was sunk in self-evaluation and gloom.
I thought: I am now thirty-five years old. At my age my father had fought for, and won, a crown. He had ended the wars. He had produced a son and a daughter. He had put down rebellions, trounced pretenders. What have I done? Nothing that posterity would note. When latter-day historians wrote my history, they would say nothing beyond “he succeeded his father, Henry VII....”
I was a man imprisoned, feeling helpless, borne along against my will. True, I could command banquets and even armies, and order men to transfer from this post to that—it yet remained a fact that I was a prisoner in the truest sense. In my marriage, in my childlessness, in what I could and could not do. Would Father have been ashamed of me? What would he have done under my circumstances? Incredibly, I longed to talk with him, consult him.
Alternating with theary moods were acute longings to see Mistress Boleyn. Over and over I pictured her as she stood on the platform (I did not care to think of her in the garden with Percy), until the actual picture in my mind began to fade like a garment left too long to dry in the sun. I had thought of her so much I could no longer see her in my mind.
Clearly, I must see her again. To what end? That I did not ask myself. For yet another fading picture? No. That I knew. If I saw her again, it would not be for a brief glimpse, but for—what?
I sent for Wolsey. His discreet diplomatic summaries had arrived at my work room in a