Religious discord: The story of Henry VIII.

The most famous of the English kings, who bore the name of Henry, had an accident.

A minor collision like that with a lady, and even though it wasn’t either one of them’s fault, you see, it’s like a traffic collision. One of the people involved has to be at fault, because what would the uniforms write on their notepads, right?

Temporally, this episode falls somewhere between queens number two and number three.

Anne Boleyn had already got her way, i.e. she sat next to Henry on the throne, but it was to be shown that she probably had no idea what he was actually asking for. The role of wife suited her and was far less beneficial to her health than that of the virginally shy favourite.

The rather bland Jane Seymour, who came after her, was again in the crosshairs of Anna’s enemies as only one possibility so far.

That evening a young noblewoman was to dispel the king’s loneliness. As you read on, you may understand why I have chosen to withhold her name. To be discreet. You’d have to really dig through every scrap of paper and go through every scrap of surviving correspondence of the time to find the name at all. It just didn’t mean anything back then.

But her time, indeed her descendants’ time, is yet to come and they are to play the part of victors in English history.

Plus, as I wrote in the introduction. It wasn’t really her fault.

I have to call her something, so I’m just gonna say it randomly. Victoria.

She was a young, rather subtle girl, while the king, at forty-four, was brown, obese and short of breath. On top of that, he was suffering from leg pains from an injury when a horse had fallen on him shortly before at a tournament, even with armor.

For the two of them to enjoy a moment of pleasure together, they didn’t have it easy.

It’s clear what position you first thought of, but the role of hobbyist didn’t suit Henry. It wasn’t at all that he was suffering from this type of trauma after his accident. Quite practically, it was impossible.

The King’s manhood was simply not enough. He wasn’t downright impotent, but he had his problems. Which I don’t see any reason to hide, it was publicly discussed even then. In the words of his second wife, he lacked both strength and skill.

I needed a little help here.

The contraption was invented and built by Anna. A little wood, some leather straps and a servant who was used to not asking questions.

The naked king laced himself into that contraption, and it must be said that it took quite a long time, so that even if he had been really fucked before, what hung from the machine, what hung from Henry himself, did not raise any fears of discharge.

I think you should understand that there was no such thing as sex education back then.

What the girls used to chat among themselves in the corridors of the palaces, today’s teenagers would not benefit from at all. The film, from which more than a few hints can be gleaned, was then awkwardly substituted by the theatre. Perhaps the most daring erotic scene on stage involved an actor burying his head in a deep cleavage and shouting “ah!”. To which another actor, playing the part of a woman, said his “oh”. And that was it.

The only advice this Victoria got from her mother was, “It will work itself out.”

She was seventeen and had some experience with men. With two men. Neither time had she been required to do more than lie.

Hold it if you want to hear it straight.

She had a love affair with the first one for about a year and her parents put her to bed with him. He was powerful, he was rich, and she was young and pretty. When he came to her at night, he was already pretty hard under his coat. He just put her legs apart with the words, “If you will kindly allow me, dear lady,” and did all that was necessary himself. As he rose from her, with a polite nod, he again uttered “Thank you very much, dear miss.” And with that they had their conversation for that evening.

The other lover was only a year or two older than her. He was neither influential nor rich, and if her parents had any idea about him, he would probably have been in France or Scotland by now, wiping horses’ backsides at the cavalry at a trot. They met in the daytime on palings and by rivers, and when it came to mending skirts and untying trousers, even here the readiness for action was already perfect. The entry slogan, at which her thighs parted, was “Darling, I’ve missed you so much.” Victoria, on the other hand, had only a passive contribution to make, and once they had gotten this huffing and puffing out of the way, the thing she was most looking forward to came. She snuggled up to him and babbled nonsense in his ear. Until her lover got up, saying he had to go. Next time.

Having said something about her, we can return to that charming scene.

Henry, strapped with straps so that his heavy torso was lightened, yet his hands were free. A servant uses levers and pulleys to move the body over the bed, where Victoria lies, in a light chemise, ready to do what she always does.

Hold it.

But with Henry’s little Jindra lying or just strangely fluttering in the air, for two of them to be lying around would be too much.

“Take care of him,” commanded the king.

Victoria would have liked to listen, she just had no idea what was being asked of her. It hadn’t occurred to her to associate the pronoun “he” with anything less than a whole man. Since there were only two of those, and one had given the order, there weren’t many other options.

So she looked at the servant and found that she didn’t mind taking care of him so much. He was quite a handsome young man.

She wondered if the king probably took more pleasure in watching others do it. She had heard a lot about the moods and whims of this English monarch, so she tried not to look too surprised. She was a little puzzled as to why he had allowed himself to be coaxed into this strange thing. Tilted to such a forty-five degree angle, a few more turns of the crank and he’d be almost on top of her.

You see, she couldn’t figure out why he couldn’t just crap in that cushioned chair over there and watch them from there.

Who wasn’t surprised at all was the butler.

He was certainly used to his ruler in this position. Even his hammering in the dead caterpillar position was probably more familiar to him than the canon before the attack. And quite surely he had not seen for the first time the young girl’s embarrassment at what was being asked of her.

So he discreetly hinted to Victoria with his hand.

But not right away, as always in this situation, he first enjoyed the way she looked at him and the way the sign that said “hopefully it won’t take long for the old man” disappeared from her eyes and a new one appeared that said “see, maybe it can be endured”.

Again, it was not a good idea to hesitate too much.

The servant knew for a fact that the king not only had no desire to watch the two of them fucking. With a decent degree of probability, he could guess what would happen to them if they even tried.

What followed was a nice synchronized massage.

She wasn’t just touching a man’s boast for the first time. He and her touch and the way she grabbed him, all of this made it pretty clear to the young man that some advice was in order.

And so he gestured with his hand in the air, his palm almost clenched. Victoria watched him, her hand clenched too, though not quite empty, and repeated everything after him.

The servant moaned faster and then paused downstairs to gently wash, and she did the same on the king.

Henry closed his eyes and snorted in pleasure.

Which went on for a while before the young man thought she might not mind at all if he reached into his pants instead of chasing the air.

He wasn’t wrong.

Victoria accepted it with friendliness, even enthusiasm. She understood that he was quite unselfishly showing her directly on his instrument what to do, guiding her to make her actions on the royal instrument more perfect.

The servant sped up and parted his lips a little.

Victoria’s lips parted too, without knowing why. She sped up, too, though she hadn’t given this much thought. She was just doing everything his way.

The king’s imperious voice rang out.

“Now get inside.”

It took a moment for the young man, in the state of mind he was in, to realize that this was on him. Reluctantly, he let go of what he was clutching to grasp the crank of the machine. He cranked, measured, and slowly approached, wanting to aim accurately and then lower it gently.

Victoria wanted nothing more than to skillfully assume a lying position.

The servant steered and turned the lever. It wasn’t the first time he’d done it. But usually he was no more excited than the king himself.

That’s how the accident happened.

Maybe his hand was a little wet, who knows, but the lever slipped for a moment, and the King, with his hard pride, dug into the young noblewoman a little harder than originally planned.

A lot more of a mess than she was used to.

Before she could bear it.

It didn’t matter so much how she screamed. She squealed, twitched.

The problem was when her instincts told her to back off. For this was what her young body had done around that piece of the king the monarch had spoken of a moment ago, as if perhaps he had a separate claim to the title.

That’s as far as it went in or out.

Henry was lurching, she was still screaming, and the servant was running around the machine unhappily. The wooden device jammed just like the girl. To free the King of England and lift him up, she would have to release her grip.

“Madam,” the monarch’s face was redder than ever, and it is hardly to be wondered at, “release me at once.”

She sighed, hiccupped, wiped her eyes with her hand, then her lips.

“I can’t,” she sobbed unhappily.

“Madam,” says Henry again, “I warn you!”

The servant understood that she was not doing it out of stupidity or pleurisy. So he offered to jump in for help.

“Of course,” the king thundered in her face, “bring the guards at once!”

Four soldiers and their weapons ran into the bedroom. The intimate moment on the bed did not interest them at first and they looked for the enemy. They looked around, running the tips of their bayonets through the curtains, some of them even looked under the bed.

Henry frowned at them fearlessly, then dug his index finger into the naked breast beneath him. “Shut up!”

The gunmen have made the bed. They looked at the king and the girl who was writhing under him. It was obvious not only what they had just been talking about, but also that, in the language of God, the two were still one flesh.

One of the soldiers looked boldly at Henry and humbly uttered something like “If His Majesty would be so kind as to allow…”

Then he fell silent, for his Majesty looked at him in such a way that it was evident that he was not in a kindly mood.

“Ma-ma-madam,” he then turned to the girl. She looked at him unhappily as the soldier bit out a command. “Cease your wicked actions immediately. You are under arrest.”

Unfortunately, Victoria could not abandon her wicked actions.

The servant leaned shyly towards the king.

“Perhaps a doctor could help,” he says.

So they sent for a doctor. Henry pointed out that his sweet wife, for whom he had moved the world to have her at his side, so that Anne Boleyn must know nothing.

Discreetly.

By the time the bald man appeared, wearing a black cloak and carrying a large, battered bag, the king’s bedroom was already filled with his advisors and a few other servants. Someone thought to throw a piece of cloth over the ruler’s naked ass, but no one cared about the girl underneath. Her nudity did not seem to compromise the discretion of the situation.

The doctor was quickly done with the whole thing. The next day the executioner was still quickly finished with him.

This scientist has taken a strictly logical approach to the whole thing. He took a good look at what was going on, wiped his dirty long beard and, in the spirit of medieval thinking, suggested the quickest solution.

“You have to cut them apart,” he says.

Of course, it wasn’t that anyone was reluctant to cut into a living human body. But instead of a medical and practical view, the poor man should have realized what would be cut, and more importantly, who would be cut.

So they cut the doctor and it was the head that fell off the body.

The other doctor understood the need to see things in a different context.

He walked over to Victoria, leaned in close and searched her eyes. He opened her eyelids, then commanded her mouth to open, as if their clenching was the problem. But she obediently did as he asked, probably imagining it was just the silliest dream she’d ever had.

Then he took the mixture of herbs out of the bag and let hot water pour over them. Normally he would have added a spoonful of honey for flavor, but the thrifty man understood well that the girl was in no position to refuse anything.

I don’t really understand medicine, but if Victoria hadn’t had to grimace so much, if she hadn’t had to clench her muscles to force herself to drink the slop, things might have turned out differently.

“When will it take effect,” one of the counselors wanted to know, and the doctor rubbed his mustache and said something about it being different.

In fact, he gives the same potion to everyone to drink. Who has a stomachache, headache, legache. For labor pains or dying. A universal remedy, you might say. Mostly, the ailing man gulped down barely half the foulness, then swallowed idly for a moment, watching how much medicine was left, before pronouncing that he had just been relieved.

Without honey, the effect was even faster. Usually a few sips were enough.

But there was something more serious going on here. It had to be a disease he’d never encountered before.

The naked girl drank the entire potion in one go, only tears escaping from the corners of her eyes and her mouth moving as she swallowed hard. She returned the empty cup and looked expectantly into the doctor’s eyes. While he also stared into hers, first expectantly, then rather shocked.

“Maybe a laxative would help,” he says.

He says it rather dubiously. One would think that if it weren’t for the bag left over in the corner by the colcher before him, he might even admit that he simply doesn’t know what to do.

There was already the possibility of running out of laxatives. And you probably understood that it would not only not move the problem, but would make it more acute to solve.

Fortunately for those involved, a counselor who was in charge of defending the faith, the church and all, pushed himself to the bedside. He raised the question of whether this was a spiritual problem.

“Something like an obsession?” the helpless doctor seized upon it.

So they looked at the whole thing from a theological point of view. They called in some clergy. They huddled in a circle and debated passionately. They took every saint, including the Lord, into their mouths, while the king lay there helplessly half lying, half hanging on the machine, wedged in the girl.

I know you’re thinking she should have just grabbed him in the mouth earlier too, but after the battle, everyone’s a general, so they say, right?

“Perhaps a prayer,” said one of the priests.

“Of course, of course,” said another. “But which one?”

He was leafing through a prayer book and leafing through it pretty quickly.

“Some,” came another, “er, appropriate to the, er, occasion.”

Into this came the clear voice of Henry himself.

“Search under ‘How to get rid of iniquities’!”

To which it was difficult to respond. At least to those present, you’re casually enjoying yourselves. The King had a pretty good sense of humour. But then again, he could very well have been serious.

So they put together a sort of compilation of some of the better-known prayers. They suggested that Henry, as head of the Protestant Church, not only could do this, but that some initiative in the liturgy was even welcome on his part.

Then they all knelt down, unless they were lying down, in short, except for the unfortunate couple, they all fell on their knees. Henry at least tried to clasp his hands and close his eyes.

Into the silence came the faint voice of a girl.

“But I’m Catholic.”

For a while, it was unclear whether, what and who should say anything at all. Eventually, the King himself spoke up.

He didn’t even look angry, more like amused. He made a few sparing movements with his pelvis, though of course only a hint.

“Not now,” said Henry.

That settled it.

So they all knelt again and this time they did it without pause.

“Our Father, pray for us sinners,” says the one with the book, and the others repeat. “Pray for us sinners.”

We take refuge under your protection. Do not deny our prayers in our time of need. The flesh, the world, the devil I conquer. I heed my promptings. Let me persevere in union with thee. Till the end. Deliver us from all danger. For ever.

Amen.

“Amen,” says Henry. He tried the pelvic movement again, but he was still in the grip.

“Have you had anything to do with the devil lately?” the eldest priest says, looking at Victoria.

She just shakes her head unhappily.

But he hasn’t let up and is asking again. He asks if she’s given up on the Savior. He wants to know how many times she has denied him. If she ever happens to spit on the cross. And so.

Poor girl says never.

“Don’t deny it,” says another, a kind, even understanding smile on his face.

It’s clear where this is going this time.

“Exorcism,” someone else nods.

But there will also be objections. They don’t have their own formula for exorcism yet. Their church.

The youngest of the clergy seems to see this clearly. He bravely steps out of line, leans toward the bed and says to the naked breasts, “Stand back, Satan!”

He also tries “Stop harming and leave, I command you!”

“We cast you out, every unclean spirit!”

“Don’t you dare, you cunning snake, deceive mankind.”

This and a few other things were uttered, reproached, threatened and ordered around.

But Satan either did not hear or did not heed.

Just when it looked like they had exhausted all options, help presented itself.

The door bursts open and Anna Boleyn bursts in like a whirlwind.

“What’s going on here?” he shouts.

When Henry hears the voice, somewhere inside him a supernatural power rises up, perhaps even connected with a prayer or incantation.

He’ll work against the machine while resisting on his hands. The straps snap, pieces of wood hit the floor, and the massive, if naked, King of England stands there, head up, dignity itself.

Anna looks at the spiritual assembly, the doctor in the corner and the machine, which of course she recognized. A naked girl huddles on the bed. Her crotch and thighs are reddened, bloodied in places.

What will the monarch do at that moment?

He smiles, spreads his arms wide and says, not without pride, “We have just made a Protestant out of that girl!”

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