Six of One (7 page)

Chapter Twelve

What the Kat Dragged In

Given a moment’s respite between hostesses, I took the opportunity to make more careful note of my surroundings. The furniture was all wood, with no upholstered pieces (unless you counted the bed). The ebony and rosewood were dark and oily looking, almost
black
, very unlike the mellow, golden woods of today. They were carved with grotesqueries to make the blood of the un-bold run cold; griffins, both rampant and couchant, seemed to leer directly at me no matter where in the room I moved.

There were aromatic herbs strewn around the edges of the floor, but only the faintest hint of their scent remained. Crumbling, dry, and dead, they struck a sepulchral note. Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme, I supposed, although I opted not to verify this with a taste test. Mother had always advised against putting things in your mouth if you didn’t know where they had been, and at that point, I didn’t even know where
I
was. The flagstones beneath my feet were icy cold. The tapestries and arras that lined the walls were all quite beautiful. Like the dancing Eve piece I had noticed earlier, they all featured strictly female images. Reddish shades dominated, as they often did in Renaissance-era textiles.

I decided that it had been very smart of those long-ago weavers to be so generous with the warmer colors of the spectrum in the warp and weft of their tapestries. Even with the banked embers in the grate burning low, this room felt dank and cold, as all castle rooms must have felt back then. The warmth of the reds, salmons, oranges, and pinks in the tapestries must have had an almost primal appeal for those long-ago people who had to live in these otherwise chilling rooms.

Overall, the attention to detail and authenticity that the set dresser had taken in decorating the place was impressive. Unless I was very much mistaken, the furnishings and incidentals were all genuine antiques. I realized that the sum total of the value of the pieces in the room must have been staggering. My family and friends, as much as they loved me and as much as I deserved it, could not possibly have afforded to spend what this must have cost on a wedding-eve prank. Harry, on the other hand, could easily have afforded it, but he was well at the bottom of my “honey-whodunit” list. Nothing made him madder than jokes about him being named Henry and having six wives.

A sudden explosion of noise and activity, like Reveille, ended my reverie. The woman creating the ruckus was in the hallway and bustling toward my room like the biblical Martha, cumbered with hostess-y things. She was shooing a cat from under her feet, carrying a tray of refreshments, and blowing a stray wisp of hair out of her eyes all at the same time. Distractedness aside, she was the very picture of
bien-être
and hospitality.

“Look what I’ve got!” she said. “Gingerbread husbands! Tempting, aren’t they?”

I didn’t see any rings on the fingers of the gingerbread men that the woman presented, but I took her word for it that they were out of circulation. Later, I remembered that gingerbread men were called “gingerbread husbands” back in days gone by.

“Yes, they are tempting,” I admitted. Actually, I found that I was getting pretty hungry.

“They’re just what you need to keep you going, Dolly. The gingerbread husbands will sustain you until you have a flesh-and-blood husband to tempt you tomorrow. What could be better than that?”

The woman waved a salver in front of me with a flourish. It was loaded up with the gingerbread men, a pitcher, and two large tumblers. I laughed, and took up the theme along with some gingerbread: “If my flesh-and-blood husband can sustain as well as tempt me, like the gingerbread does, nothing
could
be better! Just now, though, that beverage interests me more. I did a lot of talking when Margaret Beaufort and Elizabeth of York were here, and I worked up quite a thirst. What
is
the house beverage, if you please?”

“The house beverage is ale. Good, strong ale. Ale with a fine head.”

“Well, that’s great!” I said. “I like my ale like I like my men, good and strong and with a fine head.”

“I like your way, Dolly,” said my companion. “You’re no milky face; I
despise
a milky face. You are a hearty girl, and I like a stout heart! A draft of ale is your reward for your forwardness. I shall be forward, too, and request the honor of sharing in your beverage.”

I nodded my un-milky face in agreement, and my hostess placed the salver on a table and poured the liquid from the pitcher into the glasses. The yeasty smells from the ale and the gingerbread were heady, making me feel relaxed and at ease. We settled down, this cheery woman and I, into the matching caquetoire chairs on either side of the table. For un-upholstered chairs, they were surprisingly inviting and comfortable. The seats were wide, which was especially fortuitous for my amply upholstered companion. The arms of the chairs were exaggeratedly bowed, as if to embrace the sitter. I liked the idea of enjoying a hug, a cookie, and a yummy drink in my nightgown. Throw a boon companion into the mix, and you know there will be female bonding in the immediate future.

I raised my glass to my hostess, and she responded in kind. “Well met!” she said. “Very well met, indeed!” My new friend was rocking in her chair a bit and chuckling; she was really cracking herself up. I wondered if she had had a nip of that ale back in the kitchen. “What tickles you so?” I asked her.

“It occurs to me that tomorrow, when you’re in bed with your new husband, if he doesn’t disappoint you when the candles go out, maybe it’s
you
who will say ‘Well met!’”

I could not help but laugh with her. A good companionable laugh did not seem to be out of place, as it would have with Margaret Beaufort and Elizabeth of York. This woman was clearly not of the rank of my earlier companions. Judging by her simple gown and linen cap, she portrayed an attendant of some kind. An attendant of the usual kind wouldn’t belly up to the bar with a guest, though. Perhaps she was supposed to be an especially privileged servant or was just a little drunk. Or perhaps, I thought, both were true. I wondered if maybe she was just not as authentic a performer as the last two of my hostesses. Authentic or not, she definitely approved of me.

“You laugh easily, Dolly, and that means you have a light heart. I like a woman with a light heart! I also like a woman who does justice to her cakes and ale!”

I think the ale must have gone to my head a bit, because I started talking in the same vein as my newest drinking buddy.

“Would you have me be lighthearted and stouthearted at once?” I asked her. “What will my new husband think? He will not know where to look for my heart: down on the earth or up in the air. How can his heart tell mine ‘well met’ if he doesn’t even know whether to look high or low for it?”

“The right man will know where to find your heart without looking, Dolly!” answered my companion, looking me dead in the eye. “I want you to have a stout heart for what you
give
to life, and a light heart for what you
receive
from it. Lighthearted only, you have no worth. Stouthearted only, you have no joy. You must have both to do life justice. That’s what I taught my poppet!”

“Your poppet is your daughter, I take it,” I replied. “I want to hear more about her in a minute. First, though, tell me something about yourself. Your name, for one thing; I don’t even know what to call you.”

“You may call me Kat, as my poppet does. She is not my daughter, but she is as precious to me as if she were. She was my charge,” said the woman proudly, pulling herself to her full height. “The Princess Elizabeth, daughter of King Henry VIII.”

Thus I learned that my newfound friend was Kat Ashley née Champernowne, the governess of Queen Elizabeth I. And why not? After my Avalonian revel with the Queen of Hearts, a conversation with the Tudor Mary Poppins seemed perfectly supercalifragilistic-expialidocious. I was not to have the chance to get too comfortable with it, though. All in a moment, Kat’s demeanor suddenly changed. Someone was calling her name in the distance, and it put her on her guard.

“Kat,” I asked, “why so worried? You look as if you’re waiting for the ax to fall.”

Before the words were fairly out of my mouth, Kat had set up a racket, knocking on the wooden bedpost to ward off any evil omens. I would have to learn to choose my words more carefully in a place that was as execution-aware as this one was.

I immediately offered my apologies to Kat. “It was needless of me to be so heedless just now. I can see that you ladies really hate to tempt fate, so I will try to be more careful.” I doubt if Kat heard me over the din at the bedpost.

“The summons for me to leave does not worry me, Dolly. It just tells me that I need to hurry. Our time together is almost over, and I have a question to ask you before we part. Tell me please: how does posterity judge my poppet? I know what the poets and the sycophants said about her while she lived, but I want to know what the wise and weighty have said of her down through the ages. I ask you because you are a scholar yourself. So was my poppet—and so, in my time, was I. Tell me, please—and the
truth
, mind you, be it good or bad.”

What was I supposed to say about the great Gloriana, Elizabeth I, to the person who taught her to make her heart a moving target? Me being dressed
en dishabille
and compressed on timeframe, it was not easy to compose a scholarly answer on the spot. Still, I imagined myself wearing my doctoral robe and some panties and delivered my answer.

“Kat, your teaching on heart management produced one of the world’s great white-knuckle diplomats. She has never been anything less than a legend. History has speculated endlessly about the statecraft behind the naval victories, the Machiavellian foreign policy, the exploration of new lands, the endless flirtations of the Virgin Queen. Who knew that it was all so simple, that she was just doing—by heart—what you had taught her all along?”

“Then she was ever the same,” said Kat. Sniffling but smiling, she wiped a tear from her eye with the corner of her apron. She was right about us being short on time. My royal friends Elizabeth of York and Margaret Beaufort entered the room just then, looking none too happy.

“Kat, get going!” said Margaret Beaufort sternly. “You have been here much longer than is necessary. I hope you weren’t trying to question one of our guests for your own ends—
again
. You know it is forbidden! Dolly,” said Margaret, turning to me, “has Kat been holding conversation with you, anything beyond a humble ‘good evening’ and a respectful ‘may I help you’?”

Kat, giving me a conspiratorial wink, busied herself clearing away the refreshment tray.

Even though mother had always advised against it, I told a lie. “Kat has been a model of deportment,” I replied.

“That’s as is should be,” Margaret said. “Our guests are not here to vindicate us for what we did in life. They are here to give us a chance to relieve a curse and a burden. We have failed, so many times, in obtaining that relief. Maybe, Dolly, you will be the one who helps us to attain it. If not, we will simply prepare to entertain yet another guest. We have gotten quite adept at making the arrangements, because we have had so many guests here over the years.”

“Your ensemble’s performance so far proves that you really
are
very good at what you do. The woman who played Kat was marvelous, so engaging and natural—in what little she said, that is. She was a model of circumspection as well as deportment.” I returned Kat’s wink with the compliment.

“Circumspection, indeed! Such a great big word from such a little lady,” muttered Kat, bowing out of the room with the remains of our repast. In a whispered aside to me as she left, she added, “My poppet had an excellent vocabulary, too. I saw to it personally!”

“The woman who played Kat is a pip, a real rip. What a trip!” I said to Margaret and Elizabeth when Kat was safely out of the room. “Perhaps a bit more Dickensian than Tudor overall, but plenty Merrie Olde English enough for just dues.”

With my comment, Margaret Beaufort and Elizabeth of York turned and followed Kat out of the room, their trains sweeping the rushes on the floor as they went. Elizabeth had the last word. “The rest of our ‘ensemble,’ as you call us, waits upon your pleasure, Dolly. We will send the young ones to you next. Perhaps after Kat’s artifice, their artlessness will convince you that we are not play-acting here. This is serious business, Dolly; you’ll find out just
how
serious before the night is out.”

Margaret gave me a royal wave in farewell, allowing me intentionally, I think, one last look at those remarkably long and slender fingers of hers. When she was young, her hands must have been the most beautiful things imaginable. No wonder all those men had crushes on her.

Chapter Thirteen

“It’s All Greek to Me” or “Latin-Lovers”

There were no timepieces in the room, and I could see only darkness through the arrow-slit windows, so it was impossible for me to tell what time it was. The state of the candles and their wicks probably held a clue, if I only would have known how to use them as a gauge. But I did not have much time to wonder about it. The young people came through the door, as promised, almost immediately. They were girls—three of them. The eldest was really more of a young woman than a girl, close to thirty by the look of her. She was not one of the world’s great beauties, but she had, as they say, a pleasant face. She was definitely older than the other two, who looked to be in their early to middle teens. All three resembled each other. Which Tudor characters had they sent me this time? I wondered. I would be ashamed of myself if I was not able to guess them more and more quickly as the night wore on.

The older of the two teenagers before me was very lively. She reminded me of Harry’s daughter Lizzie, and she looked about the same age. With those carroty locks, she couldn’t possibly be anyone but the Princess Elizabeth, burgeoning Virgin Queen and Kat’s own poppet. She actually resembled her great-grandmother, Margaret Beaufort, to a striking degree. Like Margaret, she was tall and slender, and she had the same beautiful, tapering fingers. I couldn’t help it; it just burbled out of me. “Hello, Miss Firecracker!” I said. “You must be Princess Elizabeth!”

Trying to make up for my informality, I curtsied deeply as I said this. Even so, my statement elicited winces all around.

“I apologize for the Firecracker soubriquet,” I said. “It was only a tribute to the young lady’s fiery red hair.”

“I have to agree, the firecracker
is
reflective of my cousin Elizabeth’s temperament. It does tend to make itself felt, no matter how hard she tries to conceal it.” The youngest of the trio, a pale girl with a serious demeanor, validated my guess. She clearly felt responsible for toeing the social line and easing over an awkward moment. She looked very much as though she wished she was somewhere else, a lot like my cousin Jean had looked earlier, back at the Rainbow Lounge.

The young Elizabeth was not about to be outdone. “I have nothing to conceal!” she said. “If our guest thinks of blazing ascension in my connection, there is no need for her to apologize for it!”

“Our guest’s allusion is also germane to fiery objects burning those around them, even if such harm is unintentional,” the eldest girl said to Elizabeth. Then she turned her attention to me.

“It is not your allusion we take exception to, Dolly. It is the use of the word ‘princess’—or the title ‘Lady,’ or even the word ‘queen,’ in our association. We request that you avoid the use of these words altogether when you address any of us. Rank is a very sore and highly disputed subject for many of us here, especially my sister and me. We have agreed that allowing our guests to use our Christian names alone is the simplest and most acceptable solution to the problem. Use our first names freely while you are here, but, in general, please choose your words carefully.”

If the middle girl of this trio was the young Elizabeth Tudor, the eldest could only be her half-sister, Mary, Henry VIII’s firstborn daughter. Legitimated and bastardized according to their father’s vagaries, one could forgive the sisters their avoidant tendency on the title-and-precedence issue. The youngest girl was their cousin. Henry VIII’s daughters only had so many girl cousins, I knew—at least on their dad’s side. The third young woman might be one of the Grey sisters. Since Catherine Grey was drop-dead gorgeous and Mary Grey was a dwarf, the Grey sister now present was most likely Jane Grey, the Nine Days Queen. When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, has got to be the truth.

I framed my next words very carefully. “I am in the presence, then, of Henry VIII’s daughters, Elizabeth and Mary, and Jane, his niece. Have I deduced correctly, and addressed satisfactorily?” I asked.

“I believe you have,” said Elizabeth, looking smug.

Mary did not agree. “I believe you have
not
, Dolly! In order of age, I am the king’s first daughter and should have been mentioned first when you named us.”

I groveled accordingly. “Accept, if you will, my humblest apology.”

“Apology accepted.” Mary spoke to me but glared at her younger sister out of the side of her eye. I supposed that sisters were the same everywhere. Harry’s daughter Mary used to glare just like that at her sister, Lizzie.

In spite of the cold look from her big sister, young Elizabeth was determined to have the last word. “Staying among us,” she said to me, “you will find apologies needful and frequent. You’ll find yourself becoming quite adept at them.”

I noticed at that moment that Mary’s hands were just as beautiful as her sister Elizabeth’s were, but you had to look very carefully to see it. Mary, who had been wringing her hands earlier, was now cracking her knuckles. It was unfortunate that her choice of nervous habits obscured the view of such an attractive feature. The fact that she was agitated, though, was indisputable. Elizabeth was not visibly discomfited one whit by the tension in the room. Jane Grey, on the other hand, was markedly uncomfortable with it.

“If my cousin Elizabeth is like a firecracker, then what am
I
like?” Jane asked me.

Coming as she did from an abusive home, Jane Grey would have learned early on about diversionary tactics like the one she had just pulled off so nicely. It took me a minute to determine how I would answer her. She was fragile and tremulous, her complexion fair, and just then, she was blushing. A flower, of course, was the obvious answer. It was a sad answer to give to someone whose destiny was to bloom, fade, and die, just like a flower, in a little over a week. Nine days was how long it took Jane to go from coronation to executioner’s block at the age of sixteen, declaring pathetically that she ‘washed her hands in innocency.’

“What could you possibly be,” I said to her as kindly as I could, “but a flower?”

“What kind of flower?”

“Oh, one of the delicate, early-season flowers, I think; something pink and white. A bleeding heart, perhaps.”

“A likely choice,” Jane commented. “Lovely in spring, but with summer’s heat, the entire plant goes dormant and dies away.”

Jane did not look angry, or even sad, as she said this; she just looked wistful. I could have bitten out my tongue for ever having said it. I was beginning to see what Elizabeth meant about apologies around here, and that Mary was right about choosing words carefully.

“I am
so
sorry,” I said. “I just spoke off the top of my head.”

My companions scurried to the wooden bedpost and started knocking away. I began to wonder if I ever
would
learn, and I attempted to make amends. “I apologize doubly to each of you! I did not mean to hurt, embarrass, or offend. It is not like me, a scholar, to choose my words so clumsily. Did I mention that I am a history professor? History remembers all three of you as scholars—indeed, as some of the outstanding female minds of your day.”

My companions bowed their heads in acknowledgement of the compliment. I could not help but notice the beautiful French hoods worn by all three of them, quite different millinery altogether than the angular, gabled headdresses worn by Elizabeth of York and Margaret Beaufort. The French hoods were simpler in their lines, smaller, curvier, and more feminine. They also had to have been a heck of a lot lighter and easier to wear.

Not surprisingly, Elizabeth’s French hood was the most eye-catching of the three. At the front, it featured a buckram brim, something like an old-time nurse’s cap; and, like such a cap, it sat a little bit back from the center of the top of her head. It fanned gently out over her hair in a corona shape. The corona, swooping down in a curve to the front of Elizabeth’s ear, was trimmed along the bottom edge with a
crepine
of pleated gold ribbon and along the crest with a double-rowed billament of gold fretwork and pearls. Behind this, Elizabeth’s hair was gathered into a caul of white linen embroidered with salmon thread that matched exactly the color of her gown.

Jane Grey’s French hood was shorter, white with elegant bands of black velvet overlaid with gold filigree lining the top and bottom borders, and with a plain white linen caul behind. The shape of Mary’s French hood was more rectangular, flatter at the top and with the sides flaring out to rounded corners. The body of Mary’s headpiece was black, with gold bead and enamel work covering fully two inches of the top brim. In place of the virginal white caul, Mary had chosen a matching black, shoulder-length veil.

Interestingly, the relative freedom that fashion afforded to the girls’ heads did not carry through to their bodies; not for these young women the fluid, forgiving lines of Elizabeth of York’s free-form velvet gown. The three slender figures before me were firmly encased in variations of the Elizabethan farthingale, with gowns cinched to a never-you-mind at the waist and extending out in geometrically perfect, inverted cone shapes from waistline to floor.

A cryptic “Benigne dicis”
from Mary interrupted my fashion fugue.

“I beg your pardon,” I said. “I had only one semester of Latin, and the events of the evening have not helped my memory. Translation, please?”

Jane and Mary gasped audibly in disbelief. “Bene, cum Latine nescias, nolo manus meas in te maculare!”

It seemed that it had been a mistake to admit to the gap in my academic credentials.

“Jane and Mary will drive you distracted showing off their Latin, Dolly,” said Elizabeth. “Allow me to translate. Mary initially acknowledged your kind compliment to our learning. She and my cousin Jane then expressed wonderment that a woman who boasts of being educated would admit to having so little Latin. I will remind them of the wisdom of Cicero, who assures us that ‘in virtute sunt multi ascensus’; that is to say, ‘in excellence, there are many degrees.’ I am sure your particular brand of erudition will make itself known to us, Dolly—sooner or later.”

“Pardon me, Elizabeth,” I started, “but how would you say ‘passive-aggressive,’ not in Latin, but in Greek?”

“Well,” said Elizabeth seriously, “if one wanted to say it, ‘
’”

“But why would one want to say it at all, and to say it in Greek at that?” asked Jane. “What are you talking about, Dolly?”

“I am talking, Jane, of a field of study unknown to the people of your time: psychology. That is from the Greek for the ‘study of the mind’ and the analysis of human behavior. Elizabeth reminded me of it just now. It’s my own brand of erudition, you see. I am a history professor, but I minored in psychology.”

“Ahem…yes, indeed,” said Mary, taking the conversational bull by the horns. “I think that each of us, including our guest here, has proven her mettle. Let’s get down to business. We really don’t have time for further dalliance.” I could not have agreed with Mary more, but I did want to let the three of them know just how much I had enjoyed their performance.

“I must say, you are three of the most convincing performers I’ve ever seen. I congratulate you! For a little while there, I debated with you as though you actually were three smart, young Tudor whippersnappers come to life. I don’t know if I can make you understand, but talking with the Tudors is something that I have done in my imagination so many times. The verisimilitude the three of you brought to our conversation was a real treat. Where did the organizers of this event find treasures like you? Why, you can even translate Latin and Greek extemporaneously!”

Elizabeth took over the bull’s horns next. “Denial est non iustus a flumen in Egypt,” she said.

“Did you just say what I think you said, Elizabeth?” I asked.

“I said ‘Denial is not just a river in Egypt.’ Psychology, you know.”

Mary took a deep breath, visibly mustering her forces to restore some much-needed order to the proceedings. “Dolly,” she said, “look at me.”

She took me by the shoulders and looked me in the eyes just like her great-grandmother Margaret had done earlier. “Do you really still think we’re players, Dolly? My grandmother told you earlier that your fiancé, Harry, and our father, Henry VIII, are, cosmically speaking, the same man. All of us here are part and parcel of your life. You know us all very well, like old friends. Even so, we are not people ourselves—not anymore. We cannot enter the spirit world though, not
yet
. We are like shadows, but in this place and in
this place only
, we live and breathe.”