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Courtenay has the beginnings of a cleric’s paunch; he was running that way even in school, even when he was nimble at fives. It’s the body of a clubbable man, the kind of bishop who doesn’t take God more seriously than Glenfiddich. Henry loves that about him, even when he thinks he should be reproving: why should he, the King, reward a bishop for his worldliness? But Courtenay is not a worldly man. He’s as devoted to learning as Humphrey, only he wears it lighter.
And here he is lying across Henry’s bed with a little of that schoolboy abandon. He wears his reddish blond hair curly over his forehead; it might be boyish except for that heavy, square-jawed face. His thighs are lily white – he is too great a man now to be called the Flower of Devon as he once was, but it is still true. Henry nuzzles between those thighs and for a moment he is Hal again, and Courtenay is a prefect, Oxford bound after this year. The glorious thing about Courtenay is that he - older, cleverer, gracious, in charge – brings Henry back to this place.
“Bend over, Hal,” Courtenay says, and Hal obeys. Like this, Hal is not far removed from being a fag. Courtenay had none of Hal’s scruples about buggering boys. Hal did it, all right, when it was his turn by seniority and the power of the school House vested in him, but he always did it tauntingly: flaunting his badness. Courtenay, when four years mattered, could be a little cruel, sure, but he was after his pleasure honestly. Henry – Hal then, Hal again in bed – liked that about him. His authority was holy and distant in a way that hinted at something under that urbane, easy exterior.
Hal bends over the edge of the bed, and Courtenay smooths his hands down Hal’s back, cold rings making him whimper a little. Courtenay draws back; Hal hears the clank as he takes his episcopal seal off his finger and puts it down, and in the next moment Courtenay’s hand is stinging on his haunches. “Good boy,” he says. “One.”
Henry is already in his nightshirt and night cap, tucked under the covers: rather stiffly, Courtenay thinks. He retreats back into himself after congress. Sometimes he rolls away; sometimes Courtenay can hear him praying under his breath. He offered, once, to give Henry absolution and Henry replied: but I am the king, love. I am the Church. But it seems you can’t forgive yourself for this, Courtenay wants to protest. But everyone needs a Father Confessor.
He himself feels no shame for the vice anglaise – any of them.
Tonight Henry is lying facing the wall, very still. Courtenay sits up and bends over his shoulder. He moves to kiss it and then shrinks back. “What is it, Hal?” he says.
“It feels so good when we’re lying together. And then – .”
“It’s not a sin.”
“I know,” says Henry, impatient. “I just feel different after. Like my skin is vibrating, like if you touch me again I will explode. I love you,” he says hurriedly. “But right after – .”
Courtney sits, stunned.
“You know,” says Henry after a silence, “I never wanted it at school. I just had to, to be a god, and it felt good sometimes, but I didn’t want it. With you I want you, and because I want you I think about your body all the time. But I don’t think I would if you hadn’t shown me first. It’s not really in me, the sex instinct.”
“But you’re an invert.”
“I’m nothing really, not like you’re one. Not women either. I see you looking at men – hush, I don’t mind. It’s just looking. But I don’t look, and it isn’t my virtue and it isn’t my pride.”
“Is it alright – have I been beastly asking so much?”
“No. No Courtenay. But I need to lie alone now.” And Courtenay rolls to the other side of the bed, thinking of all the times when he might have guessed about Henry. But presently his academic mind gives out to sleep.
In the morning, they dress slowly and go down to Hall together. Henry has one of Courtenay’s college ties on. They sit at the high table eating their breakfasts, while students drift in and out. Some of the younger men jump and then hide their surprise when they see the King sitting there with their Chancellor. The older ones smile knowingly. It’s a point of pride among them to be blasé in the face of power. Every few months, the Chancellor’s especial friend comes to stay.
Henry and Courtenay sit at breakfast talking politics. “The Archbishop,” says Courtenay, “won’t sodding relent. He has say over the chapels at most.”
“You know I can’t stop him,” says Henry. “He was my father’s man and he only barely tolerates me. I don’t have any credit with him to waste.”
They sit in silence for a moment. This is an old argument, going back to Courtenay’s first term as Chancellor, and the last King Henry, and the cracks that still sit under England. Nothing ends. The men who stood for Richard never accepted Henry, and Henry’s real loyalists don’t trust his son. Not even a bullet to the face in a shitty colonial war would win them to Henry.
Courtenay knows this. He was there – through Winchester Coll, through the years when he and Henry had to lie low because they had been too fond of Richard, through Henry’s father’s long exile in France, through the years when they couldn’t even say Richard’s name. He was there in the field hospital tent while an enterprising doctor fished around in Henry’s face with forceps and while Henry thrashed in fevers. He made his plans – what would he do if Henry died, where would he go, where would he be safe, he who had made himself Henry’s right hand and shadow. It was then that he knew he needed to be a priest, watching the padre make the sign of the cross on Henry’s forehead in holy oil mixed with Henry’s own blood.
He is still sitting at the breakfast table. The undergraduates are leaving. His tea is cold. Henry stands. He follows.
Then to Mattins, then to his office. It is almost Christmas. I look from afar, the choir sings. And lo, I see the power of God coming, and a cloud covering the whole earth. He keeps a copy of Samuel Pepys’ diary in his desk drawer. Henry laughs indulgently when he sees this. “What do you want,” says Courtenay. “I’m your chief bureaucrat. And chancellor of your finest university, and most loyal bishop, and the only man who can make you come so hard you forget your coronation oath.”
After a day of lazy, half hearted work, choral Evensong. Courtenay vests: cassock with a button for each of the Thirty Nine Articles, rochet, chimere, the hood of a Doctor of Divinity. Henry sits beside him in an academic gown he has borrowed from Courtenay. Courtenay preaches on the Rod of Jesse.
He’s loping through his sermon but he’s watching Henry. O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free/Thine own from Satan's tyranny;/From depths of hell Thy people save,/And give them victory o'er the grave./Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel/Shall come to thee, O Israel. Henry is listening with his eyes closed: praying, probably. The undergraduates are smirking about the Rod of Jesse, and, Courtenay assumes resignedly, about the presumable rod of the son of the house of David in attendance. But that man of the house of David doesn’t betray any sign of hearing the joke. He’s always been as humourless as winter. Sweet man, Courtenay thinks, if scrupulously pious and a little narrowed by the kingship. Henry opens his eyes and smiles at him beatifically, or as beatifically as a man with the face of a hawk can smile. He thinks of Henry’s old endearment for him. Mine own entirely beloved Courtenay.