He thinks, they meant well. They wanted everything ready for a smooth accession.
‘Think how they had to dissimulate,’ the king says, ‘walking around Greenwich with unaltered countenance. I could not have done it myself, being a natural man, incapable of deception. You see how, my lord, by the time my councillors proclaimed me, they had already started lying to me. As soon as you are king, nobody tells you the truth.’
‘I might …’ he says.
‘You might mollify it,’ Henry says. ‘Or tell what truths you think I can bear. Though I will not say, “My lord, I want truth unadorned.” I will not make that claim. I have my share of human vanity.’
He is afraid Gregory will laugh.
Henry says, ‘I wanted two months of my eighteenth birthday, so they named my grandmother regent. But then on Midsummer Day, Katherine and I were crowned together.’
The songs tonight are Spanish: a boy sings about contests with the Moors, airs less martial than melancholy. Messages are brought to the Moorish king: God keep your Majesty, here is bad news. Las nuevas que, rey, sabras/no son nuevas de alegria … The notation is strange to him, the voice part inked in red.
Henry says, ‘You know when you see a little child placed on a chair, its legs dangling? You smile and pity the child, do you not? Imagine a young man placed on a throne … you feel as if your feet are in the air, like that …’
He sees Gregory smile. He thinks of Helen, before she was Rafe’s wife, bringing her little children to Austin Friars and setting them on a bench, their legs thrust straight out before them.
The king says, ‘My father said that the surest sign that Heaven favoured his reign was the birth of a prince so soon after his marriage to my sainted mother. In January they were wed, and in September they had Arthur in the cradle. It is no sin, you know, to go to bed once you are betrothed, or if it is a sin, it can easily be absolved. They were blessed with a numerous family after. I remember us together at Eltham, gathered in the great hall, the day Erasmus came to see us.’
‘May God rest him,’ Gregory says. He hopes Erasmus will not rise, to write more books.
The king’s hand moves to cross himself; his jewels catch the light. ‘I would be eight years old, I think, a bonny child and a toward wit. I sat under the canopy of estate, and to my right my sister Margaret, being about ten years old, already betrothed to Scotland. My sister Mary on my other hand, her hair white like angels’ hair. And Edmund still a babe, he was held in some great lady’s arms I suppose. I had another sister, Elizabeth, three years old when she died, I have no memory of her, but they said she was as lovely as Mary, and a great pity she died, for she could have been married thereafter, with advantage to our polity. Edmund himself lived not long after. And my sister Mary is dead now. And Arthur. There is only myself left. And Margaret, far beyond the border.’
It is hard to know whether the king is congratulating himself, or commiserating with himself. His lips are stained by many cups of a strong and sweet malvasia; he blots with his napkin, eyes distant. ‘The burden of kingship,’ he says, ‘no man can imagine it. All my life, to be a prince: to be observed to be a prince; all eyes to be set on me; to be an exemplar of virtue, of discretion, of excellence in learning; to have a mind young and vigorous yet as wise as Solomon; to take pleasure in what others have designed for my pleasure, or be thought ungrateful; to discipline all my appetites, to unmake myself as a man in order to make myself as a king; to waste not a minute lest I be seen to waste it; for idleness, no excuses; always alert to prove, always to show, that I am worthy of the place God appointed me … When I was a young man I suppose I showed the calf of my leg to an ambassador and said, “There, has your French king a calf as good as that?” And my words were reported, and all Europe laughed at me, a vain idle boy, and no doubt people laugh still. But being young I asked myself, if God had formed François better than me, which prince did He favour most?’
Thomas More had said once, can a king be your friend? He thinks, the first time I came into Henry’s presence, it was like the Fox and the Lion. I trembled at the sight. But the second time, I crept a bit nearer and had a good look. And what did I see? I saw his solitude. And like Fox to Lion, I stepped right up and parleyed with him, and never looked back.
The king says, ‘I have got no good of my sister Margaret or her marriage with the Scot. She has been a trouble and an expense all her life. And see now her daughter going the same way, intriguing with Tom Truth.’
He has been hoping the king will be good to Meg Douglas, and let her move from the Tower to some easier custody; now, he sees, is not the time to broach it.
‘They are saying in the north that you want to marry her.’
Gregory is caught unawares: ‘What?’
‘You need not deny it,’ the king says. ‘I tell everyone, Cromwell would not presume. Not even in his dreams.’
He feels obliged to state, ‘Nor do I.’
The king says, ‘Do you know, there are some who claim the old Scots king did not die at Flodden? They believe he escaped the battlefield and took ship to become a pilgrim in the Holy Land. He has been seen in Jerusalem.’
‘Only in fantasy,’ he says. ‘Did not Lord Dacre, who knew him, inspect his naked remains? And my lord of Norfolk will tell you, you could put your fist through the holes in his surcoat where the blades had pierced him.’
Henry says, ‘I was winning battles in France at the time, I cannot know. But I wonder if princes do die, as common men die. I feel my father watches what I do.’
‘Then surely, sir, he sees your difficulties, and admires your resolution?’
‘How can I know that? If the dead can see us, be sure they do not like the world to change from what they knew. Nor do they like their power disrespected. Norfolk’s father took credit for Flodden, but in Durham they credit St Cuthbert with the victory. They march behind his banners now.’
The king holds up a hand to the lute player: ‘Thank you, leave us.’ The boy stuffs his music back into his budget and goes out backwards. The king picks up his own lute. Oh shining moon light me all the night … Ay luna tan bella, light me to the sierra. He says, ‘I loved Katherine. Did you know that? Despite all that ensued.’
He thinks, if he forgets the words I cannot assist him here. Though it is a fair bet that the night will cloud up at some point and hide the moon. The ladies look down from the towers of the Alhambra. The horsemen curvet below, on white mounts with gilded hooves, pennants streaming from their lances. All the troupe, Moors and Christians both, file together into the antique darkness, a blur of gold against the night: cities are besieged and cities fall, warriors burn with the fires of love and are consumed.
Henry sings: I am the dark girl, the rose without thorn. He says, ‘Katherine claimed she loved me. So why did she try to destroy me?’
He makes no answer. He has mastered silence, but to better effect than More.
The king’s eyes rest on him. ‘The children who died in her womb, I think they did not want to be born, they did not care to live in this peevish world. But where did they go? They say there is no salvation for the unbaptised. Some think God would not be so cruel. And God is not as cruel as man. God would not sew a man in a cow’s hide, and set dogs on him.’
His servant John Bellowe is alive, it transpires. Richard Cromwell has seen him, and patched him up and set him to work again. It is true he was taken prisoner, roughly used, and set in the stocks at Louth. But he is not blinded or mauled by dogs. He hopes no one explains to Bellowe the death they thought he had died. Hearing such a tale, a man might lose his confidence in his fellow man.