Six of One (17 page)

“Katherine—you offed the fat bastard!”

“If you mean that I killed him, Dolly—yes, I
did
. It was not as difficult as you might guess. After all, I’d had the two practice rounds.”

“You offed your other two husbands, as well?”

“The death of my first husband, Baron Borough, was strictly accidental. He was a sick old man when we were married; I was a girl of fourteen. Even then, I was bookish; my nose was always buried deep in whatever kind of literature I could get my hands on.”

Understandable
, I thought,
with the alternate viewing material being the methuselan Baron Borough
.

“As Borough’s baroness, my duties included administering his medication,” Katherine continued. “One night when he was dozing, I was deep in the pages of a new book on the reformed religion. I simply could not put it down. When it came time to dose the baron, I had one eye on the book and one on the medicine dropper. I gave him the medicine I had prepared and returned my full attention to my book. I read it clear through to the end, at which point I realized that the baron had stopped breathing! I looked at the medicine bottle and realized that I had given him far too much. Him being so old and expected to die soon, anyway, no one suspected any carelessness on my part, and no inquiries were made.”

“You were asked no questions, so you told no lies,” I said.

“There would have been no need for me to lie, in any case,” Katherine replied. “The family was gratified that he’d had a painless and peaceful death, and I became convinced that maybe I had not done such a very bad thing after all. I did learn from the experience, too; I think that is
so
important, to learn from one’s mistakes. It came into my purview to dose many of my stepchildren at one time or another over the years of my marriages, and my experience with the baron taught me to be very, very careful. I never made a mistake with medication again.”

Thank God for that
, I thought. It really would have been a shame if she had deprived the world of its Gloriana, Queen Elizabeth I, by coming a cropper with a dropper while treating some childish ailment.

“Katherine, you said you’d had
two
practice rounds,” I remembered. “What exactly happened with your second husband, Lord Latimer?”

“Latimer was healthier than the baron
and
younger, being forty-four years old to my twenty-two when we wed in 1533. We were quite content together, and there was no reason for me to give him any medication at all until late in 1542. He had been ill for some time before that, but at that point, it became apparent that his ailment would be fatal—and soon. He had such a strong constitution, though, that he lingered, in great pain, for weeks and weeks. In February, his death was so clearly imminent that Henry VIII was already sending me courting gifts.”

“Henry’s unseemly haste showed very poor taste,” I said.

“I thought so, too,” agreed Katherine. “But Henry’s gifts
did
spur Latimer on to make a decision, once he found out about them. ‘Darling,’ he said to me, ‘I am suffering greatly and am about to die. I want to end my pain. You could be queen of England; the only thing in your way is me. It will all be so easy, if you can but steel yourself to the task. I am too weak to do it myself. The medicine bottle is full, and the dropper is there; one draught, properly prepared, and it will be accomplished. I am ready to meet my maker and would be so grateful to you if you dispatched me to him. Can you do it?’ he begged”.

“And you
could
, couldn’t you?” I asked, on the edge of my seat.

“Yes, I could. I thought about poor Latimer, cachectic and in constant pain, looking at me so pleadingly. I thought about his children—my beloved stepchildren—and all I could do for them if I were queen.
That
gave me the strength to do it. It went exactly the same way as it had with the baron, really: so peaceful, and, again, no one suspected a thing.”

“I guess it was a case of ‘practice makes perfect.’ You almost couldn’t miss when it came to icing Henry VIII.”

“I have to confess that my past experience made me confident of success. It was very freeing, you know, administering that extra drop to Henry—freeing for
me
, that is. There was no more fear of execution, no more hiding my thoughts or feelings. I had cleared the path, and I could move forward. There would be no more obstacles to laying my head on my pillow at night in peace and nothing to keep me from marrying young Tom Seymour and having his handsome head on the pillow next to mine. But what a chimera Tom proved to be—a beastlier captor in his way than the pathetic old man who came before him. But that is another story.” Katherine Parr was winding down. “That is another story for another night.”

I took a moment to absorb the full impact of her tale before I spoke.

“With the experiences you’ve had, Katherine, I would guess that freedom must be as sore a subject for you as desire is.”

“As well you should,” she said to me.

“As well I do!” I replied. I wanted to remove any lingering doubt.

“As well I do!
Rawk!
” A screech from my old acquaintance Sir Walter Raleigh—the parrot, not the man—rent the air. Free for a moment from Arabella, he flew into the room and perched on my shoulder. He was quite the affectionate fellow, nuzzling my cheek with his beak. Eurydice, noticing that Sir Walter was not shackled as
she
was, shook the leg with the golden tether on it in a mini-furor and flew away.

“The birds are reminders, Dolly, that freedom is more than flying away or flying
to
. No matter where Eurydice flies, her tether goes with her,” said Katherine.

I smiled at the bird on my shoulder. “Well, at least Sir Walter seems to have freedom down pat. Just look at him.” The parrot had one foot tucked up under his tummy, and his head was turned around and tucked into his backfeathers. He was fast asleep.

“He must like being on my shoulder,” I said. “Talk about being ‘at ease’!”

With that, Katherine Parr finally delivered the goods. “My question, Dolly, is this: what is it that puts
your
heart at ease?”

I had to be honest with myself; it had been awhile since I had felt truly at ease. In my heart, I had been restless ever since my engagement to Harry had been announced. I’d attributed it to the excitement of moving to England, with all its possibilities for my Tudor research. Surely, I had reasoned, once I was living the good life in England with Harry, I would cease to be so restive in my mind. Suddenly—but only for a moment—I wasn’t so sure anymore.

“What is it that puts my heart at ease?” I repeated. “Katherine, I have to confess that I just can’t answer that question right now. I am uncertain. Doubtful. Perplexed.”

“As well you may be,” she said, going into our routine again.

“As well I am,” I replied, following suit.

“As well that ends well! That’s what they always say, isn’t it?” asked Jane Seymour obliviously. We all laughed. No one had the heart to tell her that her brainstorm was more in the way of a brain squall. And there was no getting around the fact that the weather was a little unsettled in my own brain, as well.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Of the Martial, In Addition to the Marital

Next up was Katharine of Aragon. She was the only one of Henry VIII’s six wives who was royalty in her own right. She was
more
royalty, actually, than Henry was, with an impressive list of royal English forebears to back up her imperial Spanish ones. Her mother had been
the
Queen Isabella of Christopher Columbus fame; her daughter had been the original Bloody Mary. Talk about the sandwich generation!

Katharine of Aragon had other sterling claims to precedent among the wives as well: age, being the eldest of the wives at retirement; seniority of sorts, being the first wife; longevity, being the longest married of the wives; and popularity, being beloved, during her life, by the common folk like none of the others during their own. She was also the only one of Henry VIII’s queens with military credentials, earned as a result of the bloody Battle of Flodden. In spite of all this, she had died abandoned and alone, with a heart that her autopsy showed to have turned black. It saddened me to think how things had turned out for her.

“Dolly, you are pensive,” said Katharine. “Tell us why, dear; best to get it off your chest.”

“I was thinking, Katharine, that you must be the strongest-stomached woman of all the ones here,” I offered.

“That’s an odd observation to make, Dolly, and one with which I beg to differ,” said Catherine Howard, her arm around Katherine Parr’s shoulder. “Katherine Parr has
my
vote for that particular honor! Tell Dolly all about it, Katherine! All those nasty bandages you had to change when Henry’s putrid leg ulcers were draining. What a stench, especially in the summer!”

I gave Katherine Parr her due. “You were strong of stomach as well as strong of mind, Katherine. My French hood is off to you! I was referring, in Katharine of Aragon’s case, though, to the strong stomach she showed in her exploits against the Scots at the Battle of Flodden, when she was acting as regent in Henry VIII’s absence.”

“Ten thousand of the enemy killed!” Katharine of Aragon boasted. “If only my warrior mother, Queen Isabella of Castille, could have lived to see it! We decimated the Scots. There was not a single family in Scotland that did not suffer loss at the hands of my victorious troops!”

The carnage must have been unbelievable, but it apparently hadn’t upset Katharine of Aragon, warrior-queen’s daughter.

“You didn’t even flinch at sending Henry VIII the blood-soaked coat of the vanquished and slaughtered Scottish king, James IV, as a trophy,” I reminded her.

“I was pregnant at the time,” said Katharine, rubbing her tummy in reminiscence, “so I will admit to some queasiness over the smell of that jacket, but I didn’t let it stand in my way! My husband was away in France, you know, having just won the Battle of the Spurs at Tourenne.”

“
Battle?
” Ann Boleyn shouted so loudly that it made my earrings rattle. “You call the ‘Skirmish of the Spurs’ a
battle
?
All Henry VIII ever did during those French war games was
posture
! Katharine, what happened under your command at Flodden—now
that
was
battle
!”

In the weighty silence that followed, Anne of Cleves looked pleased as punch. The rest of the assemblage, however, looked just plain shocked at Ann Boleyn’s tribute to Katharine of Aragon’s military prowess. Katharine herself was actually shedding a tear.

“Ann Boleyn…that is the first time…you have ever said anything…
kind
to me,” she quavered.

Anne of Cleves handed Katharine a gold-filigreed handkerchief with which to dab at her eyes and made a small correction.

“It’s the first time Ann Boleyn has ever said anything even
civil
to you! This is indeed a moment to savor. Dolly,” Anne of Cleves said, positively beaming at me, “seems to bring out the best in us.”

“Gadzooks! Perhaps Ann Boleyn will say something nice about our Henry next!” said Jane Seymour.

You wouldn’t think that five women could comment in perfect unison without practice, but believe me, they did. “I doubt it!” the other wives chorused, loud enough for Jane Seymour to hear them all the way out there in left field.

Wanting to keep the warm fuzzy feelings in the room going, I told Katharine of Aragon how much I was looking forward to her discourse. “So far, Katharine, I’ve heard about illicit sex, bondage, murder, and bloody battle. I feel like I need a witness-protection program! Your wifely devotion and piety being the stuff of legend, I’m sure the tenor of our conversation will be in a more uplifting vein from here on in.”

The wives chuckled at this—all of them. Then, Katharine of Aragon issued me a warning: “Prepare, Dolly, to be amazed.”

“I am nothing if not in the mode, Katharine,” I responded. “Feel free to amaze, daze, haze, or faze me as you see fit.”

“Very well,” said Katharine. “I trust I will succeed in my mission. Dolly, you and I will speak on the subject of deception.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Katharine of Aragon on Why Girls
Rule and Boys Drool

“Deception: to mislead another, to delude oneself, to be unfaithful to one’s lover, or to disappoint—plenty of material to work with there!” I told Katharine.

“We shall work with
all
of it, Dolly.”

I was glad to hear it. “Your husband, Henry VIII, deceived you in the infidelity sense, obviously. He also did his best to deceive you, and everyone else, as to the legality of your marriage in the debacle of the King’s Great Matter. There was no one more deceptive than Henry.”

Ann Boleyn did not agree.

“Dolly,” she said, “you have it quite wrong.”

“Dolly does not have it
wrong
, Ann. Dolly has it backwards,” said Anne of Cleves.

“Dolly does not have it backwards, Ann; she has it incomplete,” corrected Katherine Parr.

“Dolly does not have it
incomplete
, Katherine; she has it one-sided,” offered Catherine Howard.

“Dolly does not have it
one-sided
, Catherine. Ann Boleyn was right: Dolly has it
wrong
,” said Katharine of Aragon.

“Stop the presses, already!” I cried. “Good Lord! My head is spinning!”

Katharine of Aragon and Ann Boleyn, new best friends, took the honors of the bedpost.
That bedpost is not going to last the night
, I thought to myself—unless, of course, I
again
had it wrong.

“Dolly is not the only one who is confused—so am I! I just don’t get it!” Jane Seymour shocked no one by her frank admission. Ann Boleyn, bitten by the niceness bug, came to her aid.

“Jane,” said Ann patiently, “I thought that you finally got it the
last
time we explained it to you.” Jane sniffled.

“I’ve been confused ever since that lovely German guest with the husky voice was here. You remember her; she was a talented chanteuse. She seemed to think that Katharine of Aragon should not have had a care in the world. But
I’ve
been at sea ever since.”

It was hard for me to credit anyone thinking about Katharine of Aragon’s life that way
.
Katharine had endured a grueling series of pregnancies that failed to produce needed sons, while watching her husband enjoy a succession of mistresses that culminated in Ann Boleyn. In the wake of Katharine’s crumbling marriage were executed friends, a bastardized daughter, a plundered church, and personal degradation and exile. Perhaps the husky-voiced German lady knew something I didn’t. Katharine of Aragon began to explain.

“The guest that Jane Seymour has misquoted, Dolly, was called Mistress Marlene Dietrich. Contrary to what I am sure you are thinking, Mistress Marlene understood my situation quite well. You see, she was a lesbian, too.”

I reeled for just a moment. Katharine hadn’t just fazed, dazed, and amazed me; she had
gay-zed
me.

“But, Katharine!” I managed at last. “You were so tenacious about staying married to Henry VIII! Your last letter from exile was to him, saying that your eyes desired
him
above all things. Those were the last words you ever wrote, and they are hardly congruent with your being a lesbian.”

Katharine explained. “My tenacity and my letter sprang from my sense of duty and honor. I would have failed myself and my family in both regards if I had failed to maintain my position as Henry VIII’s devoted wife and queen of England. As a daughter of the Castilian royal house, I put duty and honor above all else. For many years, I put them above even love.”

“I see,” I said slowly. “The way you were raised, it couldn’t have been any different. You were all about death before dishonor.”

“I was, Dolly, for a long time. Then, for a short while, love and my Maria won out—over duty, over honor, over my upbringing, over my conscience, over everything. I was tempted from grace by the woman I loved, and I committed adultery. When my transgression was discovered, I unburdened myself to my confessor and was shriven. My religion, my family pride, and my conscience called for me to cease any extramarital relations, and I remained faithful to my husband after that. It wasn’t my inclination, but it was my duty as I saw it.”

“And your confessor, John Forrest, was
executed
by Henry VIII,” I said.

“Forrest was burned at Smithfield, and it took him two hours over the flames to die.” Katharine winced at the memory. “Henry was merciless to Forrest because of what the man knew about me and the nature of my infidelity. Henry couldn’t stand to think that there was even one man alive who knew what I’d done. On top of that, Forrest urged understanding and forgiveness on Henry’s part;
that
sealed the poor man’s fate.”

My academic curiosity got the best of me. “What had your confessor to say about such a surprising revelation as yours?”

“He directed me to take advantage of God’s willingness to forgive sixth-commandment infractions, to cease my adulterous deception at once, and to resume my duties as wife and queen. I did so, at least inasmuch as I could without Henry’s cooperation;
he
could not forgive my deception. The King’s Great Matter, the divorce based on my first marriage to Henry’s brother, was a diversionary tactic to obscure the truth about why Henry was so desperate to put me aside. Even on my deathbed, I still hoped for Henry’s understanding and forgiveness.”

I wondered if Kay, my Harry’s first wife, yearned for his understanding, as well. Her abrupt move to San Fransisco shortly after her divorce from him suddenly made sense. She said she had finally found her home when she moved there, and Harry had always agreed with alacrity. Henry VIII had called his marriage to Katharine of Aragon “blighted in the eyes of God”; who
knew
that, really, it was just sour grapes! My Harry contented himself with calling his failed first marriage a farce—and ‘farce’ is just another word for ‘deception,’ really.

“Katharine, I would ask you who your lover was, but that would be a
question
, and questions are something that I am not allowed at the moment,” I said, hoping against hope that she would reveal the full name of her mystery lover. “Maria,” she had said; suddenly, that name would never be the same to me.

“It shouldn’t be difficult for you to figure out who my lover was,” said Katharine. “She was always right there, all of my life. I wonder, looking back, that she and I did not see it sooner. And once the two of
us
saw it, I wonder that Henry did not see it, too. I am sure it was written all over us; we were so in love. Of course, love is blind; and sometimes, so is pride. My confessor John Forrest saw it, though. He was not surprised at all when I confessed the truth to him. He said he’d seen it coming for years.”

They didn’t call Forrest’s religious order the Observant Friars for nothing. He
had
to have been observant; gaydar hadn’t been invented yet in Tudor times.

“
All of my life
.” Katharine had lived out most of her life in England, but she had begun it in Spain. When she was near death as an outcast in England, her sole companions were a handful of loyal Spanish servants and the Spanish ambassador. On the very last night of her life, she was also joined also by her oldest and best friend: Maria de Salinas Willoughby.

Maria had journeyed from Spain to England with Katharine of Aragon when they were both girls, and she had remained in Katharine’s service down through the years until Henry VIII dismissed her from duty as a pressure tactic to enforce his divorce.
Maria Willoughby?
Could ya be?
I decided to test the waters.

“Katharine, I think it was more than just coincidence that Henry VIII removed Maria de Salinas Willoughby from your service right around the time he moved to have your marriage annulled.”

“It was,” she confirmed. “Henry also forbade Maria to have any contact with me whatsoever. She obeyed the order at first, but when she learned that the rigors of my exile had destroyed my health, she begged permission to see me again. Maria’s constant importuning on my behalf failed to make Henry relent. So, she took matters into her own hands.”

Prior to this, I had always regarded that last meeting of Katharine and Maria at Kimbolton Castle as one of the great straight-girlfriend moments of all time: Katharine, about to die; Maria, demanding entry into Kimbolton against the royal command; the servants, sympathetic but afraid to let her in; Maria, literally forcing her way in to the castle; the dying Katharine, taking the trouble to fix hair when she learns that Maria has finally come to be with her. I suppose the personal grooming activity should have been a tip-off as to what was
really
going on, now that I think about it.

“Once you and Maria were finally reunited, the two of you spoke together, alone, for hours. There must have been so much to say! The next day, you died in her arms,” I recounted.

“Maria’s presence made the end
so
easy,” sighed Katharine, smiling to herself.

“I always thought that yours and Maria’s parting must have been a real ‘best friends forever’ event, just like the final scene in
Dark Victory,
” I said. “Bette Davis with a brain tumor and no time left on the clock, dying bravely thanks to a faithful assist from her bestie Geraldine Fitzgerald, while Bette’s husband stands by, totally clueless. From now on,” I continued, “I’ll consider your deathbed scene as being romantic in a different sense entirely. More like Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein.” I had no idea that Katharine would get the reference, and I was about to explain when she cut in.

“Mistress Marlene Dietrich
did
mention those two ladies during her visit; she was well acquainted with them,” said Katharine. “According to Marlene, Alice and Gertrude were the doyennes of the artistic social set in Paris and gave the most amusing fancy dress parties. Marlene told us that she herself would attend those parties dressed as a gentleman. She entertained us by dressing up that way and singing ballads for us just before she ended her visit here.”

“But there are only ladies here!” I protested. “Marlene Dietrich must have had to do some scrambling to find male attire in a celestial henhouse like this.”

“Maria de Salinas Willoughby brought some male attire with her when she came here to stay, shortly after her death in 1539,” said Katharine. “Marlene looked strikingly handsome in the items she chose to borrow from my Maria: a scarlet doublet, green hose, and boots of Spanish leather. She sang a song she called ‘la vie en rose’. Marlene looked quite like a rose herself in that outfit.”

“From the knees up, Marlene looked like a rose. Personally, I had a hard time taking my eyes off those boots,” reminisced Catherine Howard. There was something fitting about Catherine, Henry VIII’s “rose without a thorn,” ogling Marlene Dietrich, a rose without a prick—something as fitting as those tights and those boots undoubtedly had been!

I considered that Dietrich’s vignette of deception had been harmless and amusing; Katharine of Aragon’s deception, though, had been a real game changer, kicking off, as it did, the Protestant Reformation in England and all of the fear, death, and destruction that had come with it. There had to have been an easier way than
that
for Henry to have changed partners.

“Why didn’t Henry just haul you up on adultery charges, as he did Ann Boleyn and Catherine Howard?” I asked Katharine.

“The morality of our time simply could not admit of romantic love between women; such things existed only in the shadows, then,” she answered sadly. “I was the aunt of the Catholic king of Spain, the niece of the pope, and the darling of the people. My connections and my popularity protected me. Maria’s connections to the royal house of Spain protected
her
. Henry knew what he could get away with and what he could not. An accusation of lesbianism was simply beyond the pale.”

“I understand
that
,” I said. “I just wonder why Henry didn’t trump up a charge of adultery between you and a man, or
men
, the way he did when he wanted to get rid of Ann Boleyn. Your confessor, John Forrest, for example, would have made a great correspondent. That way Henry could have killed two birds—if you will pardon the expression—with one stone. It would have taken everyone by surprise. They wouldn’t have been able to see—if you’ll pardon
another
expression—the forest for the trees.”

“My reputation for honor protected me from accusations of adultery or even impurity. My piety and devotion were bywords. No one would have believed it, plain and simple. What Henry did in the end was, simply, to accuse me of lying about the consummation of my marriage to his brother and to stick to his accusation. That much he could, and
did
, get away with.”

“Speaking of ‘getting away with,’ Katharine, Maria was not removed from your service until the whole annulment miasma began to take solid form around 1532; I assume
that
is when Henry discovered your affair?”

“It was. Henry had been dissatisfied with our marriage for some time before that because of my infertility. Then, one day in 1532, he happened upon Maria and me with our hair all tumbling down from our cauls and my head resting on her shoulder. We had so far been so careful and discrete that, even finding us in so suggestive a position, Henry did not suspect a thing. We almost got away with it; then Henry commented that Maria and I looked just like Lombardo’s sculpture of Bacchus and Ariadne. Their legend came so close to the truth about Maria’s and my relationship that I could no longer contain myself; I confessed my deception to Henry—every bit of it, all of the years.”