Free The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers by Margaret George

witnesses had emptied the nearby Inns of Court. And they were all chattering away at once, like a great company of monkeys.
    Katherine was somewhere in the midst of them, but it took a moment to see her. When the noise of learned talking and the scratching of pens on parchment was done, they led her out and bade us stand together.
    She is so small, was my first thought. She had not grown, whereas I had.
    She is so beautiful, was my second.
    Katherine was now seventeen, and at her peak of beauty. She was seen by so few people in those days that there remains no legend, no popular memory of that beauty. She spent her young years almost cloistered, and by the time she emerged, some of it had already gone. But then ... O, then!
    We stood side by side, stiff and awkward. The King’s lawyer thrust a paper into the Bishop’s hand on one side, and that of the Spanish lawyer on the other. Then we repeated vows without once looking at each other, long vows in Latin. And signed our names on several pieces of paper.
    That being done, we were immediately forced apart by our respective lawyers. We were not to speak to one another, apparently, until we found ourselves in bed together in two years’ time. We left the Bishop’s residence by separate doors, just as we had come in.
    Father said nothing to me until we were safely on the big, clumsy royal barge, crossing the Thames on our way back to Greenwich. The water was a flat, ugly grey-brown, reflecting the overcast sky. Here and there a piece of garbage floated by. People along the banks seemed to consideer in and about London.” I saw a dead dog turn slowly over and sink from sight in the water. When I was King, I would see that something was done about the misuse of the river.
    “You understand,” Father suddenly said in a low voice, so that the boatmen could not overhear, “that you must not see or communicate with the Princess in any way. Leave her to her Spaniards in her Spanish house.”
    “But surely I should send her tokens, write—”
    “You fool!” He set his mouth in anger. “Do you see yourself as a suitor? Tokens!” He spat out the word. “You will do nothing. Nothing. Leave her be.”
    “But—why?”
    “Because this betrothal is on paper only. I doubt that a wedding will ever take place.”
    “Then why the ceremony? Why the arrangements?”
    “It means nothing. What one ceremony does, another can undo. Surely you know that! It is nearly the first rule of kingship. The ceremony was merely to buy us some time with the Spaniards, to make a show of our good intentions.”
    “Which are neither good nor honest nor kind.” Another dead animal swept past, churning in the foam. It stank. Everything seemed corrupted to me: the river, Father, myself. Everything except the Princess.
    “The Spanish are deceiving us about the dowry. There has been much lying and misrepresentation in the matter. I do not think it will be satisfactorily settled. Therefore I. feel that a marriage between you and the Princess will not be feasible.”
    “Does the Princess ... participate ... in these deceptions?”
    “She knows nothing. She does as she is told. As you must.”
    I gripped the carved railing so hard I hurt my hands.
    I did not want to do as I was told.

IX

    I n the end, I had no recourse but to do precisely that. I could get no message widen played games and fished off the Bridge. They all seemed to know one another. That was the oddest thing to me. Here there were so many of them, such a great gathering of families, yet all so familiar.
    It was not that way at court. There were many families at court, to be sure, and often the husband would be in the King’s household as an attendant in the Privy Chamber, for example, and his wife serve the Queen as lady-of-the-Bedchamber and his children be pages and maids of honour. They were entitled to lodgings at court, which they usually accepted, and so the Palace might house some two hundred families. But it was not a close