Six of One

by Joann Spears

  The banner at the top of the largest tapestry said “DE MULIERIBUS CLARIS”; it was named in honor of a fourteenth-century Boccaccio work (English translation: “Of Famous Women”), the very first piece of chick lit ever. Images in the tapestry were in keeping with Boccaccio’s theme. Eve, buck naked with strategically placed long, virgin hair, could be seen leading a conga line of medievally coiffed and attired angels, saints, queens, and goddesses at what must have been one hell of a party. My bachelorette night absolutely paled in comparison; but then, my wedding-weekend plans had not included stripping it all off any earlier than the honeymoon.

  Inevitably, I asked myself, “Where am I?” The last thing I remembered was choking on those cocktail nuts. I wondered if I was dead, and if heaven—or maybe this was hell—was going to be like an otherworldly vacation in a bad hotel. Eventually, I got up the nerve to stretch my leg over the side of the bed and kick it out from under the two-ton blankets to test the metaphorical waters. I realized that I was wearing an old-fashioned, white nightdress that was awfully long and full, reaching all the way down to my toes. I thought it could almost be a body bag; it seemed even more likely, now, that I was dead. I could just imagine the headline. “Bride Chokes to Death on Cocktail Nuts on Eve of Wedding”; I would never live that one down. Then I realized that since the bottom of my garment was open, it couldn’t very well be a body bag, and hope glimmered on the horizon.

  But then hope tanked when it occurred to me that maybe the garment was open at the bottom because it was a shroud. I thought that my four Marias, who were my personal fashion consultants, would advise against being caught dead in a shroud. I finally decided that if I could move my leg and pun at the same time, I must be alive and kicking, with minimal anoxic damage to the brain.

  Likewise alive and kicking were two figures I could see hazily through my barely parted eyelids. They were making their way from the hallway outside into what I was beginning to think of as “my” room. I instinctively pulled my leg back under the covers, even though, the leg being freshly waxed for the wedding weekend, I had nothing to be ashamed of. Like a little child whose mom is checking on it in the night, I pretended to be asleep as the ladies entered and planted themselves on either side of my bed, looking straight down at me.

  “She snoreth not, doth she?” said the voice of an elderly female, of the type that generally ends such observations with a cackle that could crack Spackle.

  “Really, mother-in-law,” said a sweeter, younger voice. “I thought we had an agreement about the ‘-eths’ and the ‘doths’ and all of that. You agreed to try, along with the rest of us, to learn from our many guests to speak more modern English. You remember, surely.”

  “I do remember that I agreed to try, Elizabeth. I would think that you’d find it in yourself to overlook the odd lapsus linguae, given the greatness of my age and estate.”

  There being no response to this from “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” “She Who Must Be Humored” resumed her discourse.

  “As I was saying: she snoreth not; nor doth she dribble upon the pillow. The fourth one dribbled upon the pillow, you know. It’s no wonder my grandson was so disgusted with her.”

  “We will thank God, then, for this lady’s paucity of spittle. For both her own sake and her intended husband’s, let’s hope that honeyed words will be all that flow from her mouth when her head is on the pillow.”

  “Clever words may come from that mouth of hers; they say she is bookish. Henry’s sixth wife was bookish, and she very nearly paid the ultimate price for her erudition.”

  “Do not, revered mother-in-law, speak of paying the ultimate price. It is like calling an evil omen on our latest guest. We must cross ourselves to ward off evil and knock upon wood for good luck.”

  “The bedpost is the best place to do that,” the elder woman replied with an air of sageness. “It makes the most noise. That’s the whole point of knocking on wood: making enough commotion to baffle the evil spirits.”

  “Make it a quiet commotion, if you please, mother-in-law! The child looks so peaceful lying there. Let her doze for a few more minutes before her night here really begins.”

  “Child?” She is no child, daughter-in-law. She is as old as the first of the six wives was when that marriage started to go down the privy.”

  “That divorce was such folly! The first wife was the kindest and most dignified of queens and so popular with the people. Henry should have tried harder to work out his differences with her. If only he could have remembered her as the maiden he fell in love with, and tried to work with her when she so wanted to make things right in the marriage.”

  “Well, Elizabeth,” said her mother-in-law, “let us hope and pray to the Blessed Virgin that our current visitor is really a maiden! The fifth wife was not, and that is why she paid the ultimate price. That one was so young to die!”

  “Poor Catherine, with her heart…how shall I say…too soon made glad.”

  “The second wife had a hard heart, and the third wife had a soft heart, but they both wound up the same way: dead as doornails far sooner than they should have been.”

  “Death does come to us all, mother-in-law; to some sooner than others,” said the younger woman wistfully. At that point, the older woman’s voice softened considerably.

  “I don’t think anyone expected you to give up the earthly ghost before I did, daughter-in-law. You paid the ultimate price because your heart was dutiful—perhaps too dutiful. However, forsooth, here we are talking about paying the ultimate price again. We’d better knock-knock-knock on wood!”

  This is really too much! I thought to myself, although in retrospect, I suppose zounds! would have been a more appropriate exclamation. I had had quite a job pretending to be asleep up until then. It had been difficult enough when they were talking about my spittle; now, the knocking on wood was making it well-nigh impossible. I decided it was time for a better look at the players in the little vignette that was unfolding around me. As I cracked my eyelids open just the littlest bit more, I found that I could observe them undetected. Jessica Fletcher would have been proud.

  The mother-in-law character was quite an old woman and actually reminded me more than a bit of Harry’s grandma. She was tall, lean, and ascetic—someone who brooked no nonsense, by the look of her. This did not seem to daunt her daughter-in-law one bit. The younger woman was attractive in a matronly way, gracious looking and poised. Both women were in period dress, and their costumier had done them proud.

  Their stiff, gabled headdresses sat upon their heads perfectly, like dormers fitted to their faces by some mad construction worker. The old woman’s headdress was covered with pleated, dove-colored linen, with veiling that descended down to her bodice to form a sort of wimple over a fine, pin-tucked linen chemise. Her gown was black; if the satin brocade fabric were not so rich and elegant, she would have looked decidedly like a nun.

  In marked contrast, the old woman’s daughter-in-law was dressed so vividly that she literally glowed in the firelight. Her gown was red velvet—not the modern fantasy-wear crushed panné velvet, but real, rich red velvet. The hanging bell sleeves of the dress were trimmed with ermine. Unlike the older woman, she was wearing jewelry: a single necklace of garnets and pearls arranged in a simple flower shape.

  I am no modiste, but even I could tell, in the dim glow of the firelight and candles, that these were not your usual Renaissance Faire costumes. Red velvet and black brocade, no lights, blankets on the walls, embers in the grate, a turret chamber—where, I wondered once again, am I?

  “We’re disturbing our guest,” said the sweet-voiced woman. “I think we’ve knocked wood enough, mother-in-law. Better to cease speaking about the ultimate price altogether, than to try to baffle the devil with our racket every time we mention an unnatural…you know.”

  “Our guest has been sent a long way to join us, and the subject of the ultimate price—no, let us not pussyfoot around, Elizabeth—the subject of untimely death will come up more than
once tonight. We shall have to talk about it, and she shall have to hear it, even if it is difficult or unpleasant.”

  “As you would have it, mother-in-law,” the younger woman replied.

  “And things do happen for a reason” continued the older woman. “You paid the ultimate price doing what you saw as your duty. You died before your time trying to ensure heirs for the fledgling Tudor dynasty and my son, Henry VII.”

  “That’s true. When our son Prince Arthur died, leaving Prince Henry as our only remaining son, I told my husband the king that we were both young enough, that we could make good the loss and shore up the dynasty with a new baby. I really believed that I could do it, up to the very last minute. But birthing that last baby killed me, and the poor little mite died right after I did.”

  “You were dutiful, Elizabeth, but misguided. Your son Henry needed no dynastic rear guard! Weren’t my only son, Henry VII, and I proof that one mother with unshakable faith and one son with a lucky star were all that our dynasty required in the way of insurance?”

  I began to take a professional interest in the conversation these two women were having over my supposedly sleeping self. I could only guess that they were meant to be Margaret Beaufort and Elizabeth of York, Henry VIII’s paternal grandmother and his mother, respectively. The relationship between Margaret Beaufort and her son, Henry VII, had been remarkable: She gave birth to him when she was a child-widow of thirteen and nearly died doing so. The boy was a political football if ever there was one; his mother punted him away from his enemies for safekeeping from the time he was two years old. Between then and his return from exile and triumphant accession to the throne twenty-five years later, Margaret Beaufort seldom saw her child. In spite of this, or maybe because of it, she was known for her obsessive devotion to him, and never for a moment ceased machinating to secure the crown of England for her only son.

  “You wouldn’t heed my advice, Elizabeth,” Margaret continued. “You insisted on conceiving one more time, in spite of your age and in spite of all the risk that it entailed. Your sacrifice—on young Henry’s behalf—cost you your life.”

  “Had I but known,” answered Elizabeth, “and not conceived that last and fatal child, I might have lived to see my son Henry crowned king as the eighth of that name. I would have been blessed to succeed you as My Lady the King’s Mother.” I had a feeling Elizabeth really regretted that particular missed opportunity.

  “It would have been a blessing for you to have seen young Henry crowned. It would have been a curse, though, to see all that followed afterward from the vantage point of the mortal world instead of the next one. So do not castigate yourself; better to have seen the progression of your six daughters-in-law through a glass darkly, from the beyond, than to have had an unobscured view of the bloodbath from down there on earth. You didn’t deserve that, my dear; you were ever humble and reverent, a dutiful wife to my son, King Henry VII.”

  Castigate? These two were more than a match for me in the vocabulary department and might just be contenders in the history department as well, if the content of the discussion to that point was any indication. There was more dialogue in store, though, and the daughter-in-law, Elizabeth, picked up the conversational ball.

  “I was not dutiful only to my husband; I did the right thing by you as well, mother-in-law.” The younger woman had dropped her eyelids so that her mother-in-law couldn’t see that she was rolling her eyes just a little. “Do you forget so soon that I always gave you your place? It was only right for me to do so; you were the king’s mother, after all.”

  The old woman started to get teary-eyed, and the moue that accompanied her companion’s rolling eyeballs dissolved into a pitying smile. “I do not forget, Elizabeth. You know I am always remembering! Being My Lady the King’s Mother, the creator of Henry VII, was my life’s work!”

  “And a job well-done it was, too.”

  “My job was never done! Once my son was on the throne and you were busy childbearing, there was the education of the little princes and princesses to be seen to. I was pleased to step into the breach and supervise their educations.”

  “Especially young Henry’s,” replied Elizabeth. “He was always your favorite amongst my children.”

  “You know I preferred little boys to little girls. I always did, I suppose because my own child was a boy. Your oldest boy, Arthur, was a nice-enough child—but that silly name you went and gave him! Henry—now that was a name I could conjure with. I chose Henry’s tutor the most carefully of all. John Skelton was perfect for the job. Do you not agree, Elizabeth?”

  “In terms of erudition, education, literary merit, yes, I agree. Skelton was such a prankster, though. I often wonder if his pawkiness wasn’t a bad influence on young Henry.”

  “Certainly not!” countered the old woman, with spirit. “I chose Skelton because of his sense of humor. Too serious a man would never have gotten through to Henry the way Skelton did. Besides, I knew Skelton well, from way back. He knew just where to draw the line with his pranks. The man worshipped me from afar, you know, during his Cambridge days. I was the University’s patroness, and he paid chaste court to me like an old-time troubadour. How the man could make me laugh! He used to call me “Merry Margaret.” When I chastised him for flirting with such a mature woman as I was by that time, he said that I was lovely as a flower in midsummer. I felt like quite the hussy in his company, but he never crossed the line of courtly love and chivalry.”

  The phrases were familiar to me; they were from John Skelton’s charming “To Mistress Margaret Hussey” (“Merry Margaret, as midsummer flower, gentle as a falcon, or hawk of the tower, with solace and gladness, much mirth and no madness”). That sweet, lighthearted sonnet had been written covertly for Margaret Beaufort, the wizened old lady I saw before me? I supposed it was possible; stranger things had happened—and stranger ones were about to.

  “Mother-in-law, your service to my husband, to me, and to our children was stellar. You were like a bastion for our family; my husband, the king, always said so.”

  The old woman was reedy and gaunt, all passion spent. She could not have looked less like a bastion if she tried, although that gabled headdress of hers could have passed muster on its own merits.

  “They weren’t easy, those bastion years, especially when my son, Henry, was in exile overseas. I missed him so, even though I knew he was safe with my brother-in-law, Jasper Tudor, watching over him. Jasper was quite smitten with me when I was married to his brother, you know, so he would never let anything happen to my son, if only for my sake. Even so, it was good of my son, the king, to appreciate my own efforts on his behalf.”

  “It wasn’t just your son who appreciated your efforts. Everyone at court spoke highly of you. Everyone, that is, except the Spanish ambassador.”

  “The Spanish ambassador? What had he to say?”

  “He said that you reminded him of a Spanish farthingale because you were—pardon my language—‘hard-assed and difficult to get around.’”

  “The Spanish ambassador, faugh! The man was like a padded codpiece—all puffed up, but really small stuff on the inside.”

  “The king didn’t like the man either. So obsequious! He said the Spanish ambassador was like his doublet and hose—always up his ass.”

  I am sure you know, gentle reader, how it is when you just cannot smother a laugh. Even if you manage to maintain silence, the spasms give you away. My cover was blown, and the long night was about to begin in earnest.

  Chapter Six

  “Dissemblance, Ah Me!” or “Is That

  a Resemblance I See?”

  Margaret Beaufort, the mother-in-law, was the first of the two to speak to me. “So, you are finally awake. What amuses you so much that you laugh in the presence of a king’s mother and a queen, neither of whom is laughing herself?”

  “I meant no disrespect,” I said. “It wasn’t the farthingale joke I was laughing about, honestly; it was the codpiece image.”

  I ca
stigated myself for this fib with a silent “liar, liar, pants on fire” until I remembered that my wardrobe for the evening had been reduced to that nightdress alone. There was nothing else, not even panties. I suddenly felt quite vulnerable.

  “We will continue our discourse as soon as you compose yourself,” said Margaret Beaufort.

  I took a deep breath, sat up a little bit in my bed, and smoothed my hair. I was not quite sure how to address royalty. Your Majesties? My Ladies? I took the avoidant way out by foregoing salutations altogether.

  “The last thing I remember,” I said, “is passing out at my bachelorette party the night before my wedding. What day is this? Where am I, and how did I get here? I have got to hop to it; I have elaborate wedding plans to execute—if it isn’t too late already!”

  The king’s mother and the queen were both banging away on the bedpost now, knocking as if for dear life. “What did I say?” I asked.

  “‘Execute’ is not a word we bandy about lightly here,” explained Elizabeth.

  “I am so sorry,” I said. “I shall be more careful about that going forward.” I decided at that point to play along with the Tudor Fantasia theme that was going on around me, even if I was not quite sure how I had gotten in the middle of it or what it all meant. I thought that it must be some kind of Renaissance Faire cabaret, organized by my bridesmaids in honor of my Tudor leanings. I acknowledged to myself that it might even be amusing some other time—like when I did not have a wedding dress waiting for me to be buttoned into it, bridesmaids to be chivied, a groom waiting for me at the altar, guests to be mingled with, and a plane to London to catch, all in short order.