Six of One

by Joann Spears

  I complimented Elizabeth again, this time on a mighty fine feminist interpretation of the Grail story. I thought she took Lady Elaine from casualty to causality very neatly, and I liked her take-charge Lady Elaine much better than Tennyson’s put-upon Lady of Astolat.

  “My favorite character in the story,” confided Elizabeth, “was the sea nymph Morgan le Fay, King Arthur’s sister.”

  “She was a bitch on wheels—or, maybe I should say, a bitch on foam—wasn’t she?” I said.

  “That perception of Morgan focuses on the means and not the end!” cried Elizabeth. “It’s true that her behavior in the earlier parts of the legends seems indefensible.”

  Let me see now, I thought. Seduction by false pretenses, connivance, betrayal, attempted murder, hooching around the Round Table. I thought “indefensible” about covered it, and I said so. Elizabeth redirected me masterfully.

  “Dolly, focus on the conclusion of the Arthurian legend. For all her faults, Morgan le Fay was the most powerful of mystic healers. She was the one who arranged for her brother, Arthur, to be transported across the water to the Isle of Avalon when he was fatally wounded after his last battle. Once he was there, she could work her healing magic and restore him to life, and through him, restore England to glory when the appointed time came for Arthur’s return. She had to set him to sea in order to effect her healing and to start to make things right.”

  I liked Elizabeth’s take on the female denizens of Camelot. “I can just see Little Richard on his last night with you, listening to you tell the tale. He must have been absolutely enraptured.”

  “Well, if I do say so myself, I had quite a way with the telling of the tale. So it was that on our last night together, Little Richard and I went to Camelot in our imaginations. I spun stories of the adventures of the fair ladies and their knights until I could see that the child was getting sleepy. Eventually, we got to King Arthur, grievously wounded at the Battle of Camlann. I told of how Morgan le Fay saw to it that after the battle, Arthur sailed into the mist to the uncharted Isle of Avalon. There she could help him to heal and to return one day in glory to rule England once more. Before Little Richard could finish saying that he would like to sail off to Avalon and bring King Arthur back, I had formulated my plan.”

  I have always had the greatest respect for my mother’s borrowed wisdom on the best-laid plans of mice and men. But what my mother and the poet Burns failed to articulate about the matter was that the eleventh-hour plans of sisters in sanctuary absolutely rock on the water.

  Chapter Nine

  Whereby the Ocean’s Roll Rocks Dolly’s World

  “So,” continued Elizabeth of York, “the scheme came to me there and then—and literally ‘out of the mouths of babes.’”

  “You mean the Arthurian babes: Morgan, Elaine, Vivian, and all the rest?”

  “No, Dolly, the allusion is to Little Richard, of course.”

  “I should have known,” I said.

  “I pictured my little brothers being part of King Arthur’s triumphant return from Avalon. Even more breathtaking, I pictured myself as part of it. Even more breathtaking than that, I realized that I could be the author of England’s return to glory through the consummation of the legend. I could finish what Morgan le Fay had started.”

  “By?” I asked.

  “By the simple expedient of sending my brothers on a sea voyage in search of Avalon. Such a voyage would suit twin purposes.”

  “Those being?”

  “First, it would remove my brothers both from the fray that surrounded the disputed English throne and from immediate danger. If they stayed in England, Uncle Richard or his henchmen would have them killed. If Uncle Richard did not do it, Henry Tudor’s partisans would. On land in England, the boys were sitting ducks. On the sea, with all its perils, they had a fighting chance of staying alive. While they were away, I would arrange to marry Henry Tudor. That way, if they never returned, our family bloodline would retain its place in the English monarchy through me.”

  I could see that this plan had its advantages. Then I recollected that this whole thing really was just a pageant of some kind, a prenuptial production for a Tudor-obsessed bride, arranged by my mischievous, female friends. There was no denying, though, that the level of historical detail these performers were able to provide was prodigious, so much so in fact that I couldn’t find it in myself to do anything except listen to the second of the twin reasons that Elizabeth of York’s plan absolutely rocked.

  “Second,” Elizabeth continued, “I thought that there was a real chance that my brothers might find the legendary Avalon, Isle of the Seven Cities, and upon it, the living King Arthur. I believed that Avalon was real. I believed that Arthur was there, on Avalon, healed by Morgan le Fay and whole. I believed he was just waiting for the right moment and the means to return to England. I believed that my brothers could be that means and that the time for Arthur’s return had finally come.”

  “Believing something doesn’t make it so,” I reminded Elizabeth. “Ask anyone who invested with Bernie Madoff.”

  “I had more than my belief in the legends to back my scheme!” she countered. “John Jay, a merchant of Bristol, had sailed from that seaport three years earlier in 1480. He set off in search of the Isle of the Seven Cities, as Avalon was also known. After Jay’s return, there was a lot of sailing activity out of Bristol seaport for parts unknown or for a nebulous ‘New Found Land.’ A lot was going on, but no one was saying very much about it. Knowledge of the Bristol expeditions was very contained.”

  “Kept below the waterline, so to speak,” I said.

  “Not far enough below the waterline that I didn’t cotton on to the fact that something big was going on,” said Elizabeth.

  Maybe something big was going on in Bristol, I thought. Like the fate of the Princes in the Tower, those Bristol expeditions of the same period are shrouded in speculation and mystery. Christopher Columbus knew of them. He encountered one such expedition himself in the late 1470s, in the vicinity of Iceland. He also received clandestine letters reporting on the Bristol activity in the decade prior to his own 1492 expedition to the New World. There is no shortage of documentation on the British expeditions out of Bristol by John Cabot in 1496 and by his son, Sebastian, in 1499; not so the prequel voyages that seem to have taken place in the 1480s. Were those jolly Jack Tars from Bristol trying to hide something—something like the fact that they were onto the whole Avalon thing? I knew, in my professorial heart of hearts, that all this just had to be mere fantasy and speculation. Still, I could not keep myself from ruminating on this food for thought.

  “Okay, Elizabeth,” I said. “You had two brothers you wanted to put on a slow boat to Avalon, and a port full of seamen you suspected of having found the way there, if they would but admit it. Is that an accurate recap of events so far?”

  “Quite accurate, Dolly.”

  “Great! So what happened next?” I asked.

  “Next,” croaked Margaret’s voice from across the room, “she sent a messenger to me.”

  Chapter Ten

  In Which the Queen of Hearts Stacks the Deck

  I have to admit, this latest information took me a bit aback; it never even entered my head that Margaret Beaufort needed to be kept abreast of whatever was afoot in Bristol. I couldn’t imagine her wanting to have much to do with those salty Bristol seamen; she wasn’t exactly the queen in a sailor’s dream, if you know what I mean.

  “Elizabeth sent a messenger to you?” I asked.

  “I knew you rhymed, Dolly,” Margaret said. “I didn’t realize you echoed as well.”

  “I don’t, generally,” I replied. “It must be all the emotion. At any rate, Elizabeth got a message out to you from behind sanctuary walls—saying what?”

  “She got a message out to me saying that she wanted the English throne restored to its old Arthurian glory as much as she knew I did, since my son’s Tudor forebears were descended from King Arthur. Elizabeth claimed to have fo
und a way for both of us to be a part of the revival with clear consciences. Her word was that the plan was mutually beneficial but that we had to act upon it before the night was out if her brothers were to be got out of harm’s way. She begged me to come to Westminster Abbey to help her work out the details.”

  “Did you go to Westminster Abbey?”

  “Of course I didn’t! I could not penetrate sanctuary myself. What if it was just a trap? I would have been taking quite a chance. Once within sanctuary, I might never come out again. I sent my trusted physician, Dr. Lewis, to meet with Elizabeth in my stead. Dr. Lewis would have done anything for me, right down to risking his life. You see, he had been quite enchanted with me when we were both a lot younger; he would have done anything to get under my farthingale, once upon a time.”

  “He had a crush on you!” I said. “That’s sweet.”

  Margaret Beaufort blushed. “Really, Dolly! At any rate, Dr. Lewis had treated Elizabeth and her mother in the past, so he was a man they knew and trusted. Lewis told me how clever he thought young Elizabeth was. He felt sure that she would have the composure, if he were detected within sanctuary, to say that she had summoned him to treat herself or her mother for some concocted ailment.”

  “You know, mother-in-law, how much I appreciated your willingness to take a chance on my plan,” said Elizabeth.

  “You knew, daughter-in-law, the risk I’d be willing to take to secure the throne of England for my son, Henry Tudor. I did my share of dirty work to further that plan, but even I would not have deigned to stain my hands, even indirectly, with the blood of innocent children. When you intimated that you had a tactic, short of outright murder, to get your two brothers out of everyone’s way, I was intrigued. Up until then, I’d had no idea you were every bit as ambitious as I was.”

  I had also had no idea that Elizabeth of York was just as ambitious as Margaret Beaufort. Margaret, of course, was famous for it. Elizabeth, on the other hand, was most famous as the classic queen image on the playing card—strictly a one-dimensional figure. Up until then, Alice’s Wonderland was the only place I had ever seen the Queen of Hearts turn the tables.

  Picking up the threads of the plot once more, I asked if Dr. Lewis had ever made it into sanctuary.

  Chapter Eleven

  Of Old Admirers and New Conquests

  Margaret Beaufort answered my question with alacrity. “Dr. Lewis did get safely into Westminster Abbey, and he and Elizabeth got right down to business. Elizabeth had already roughed out a six-step plan for the proceedings, so she and Lewis needed only a couple of hours to work out the details. Lewis was out of sanctuary and reporting back to me by midnight. The first step was to get the boys out of custodial care and out of the country. Anywhere, as long as it was out—and the farther out, the better.”

  “How did you manage it?” I asked.

  “My stepson Baron Strange was also imprisoned by Elizabeth’s Uncle Richard, and in the same place as Elizabeth’s brother, the young Prince Edward. In order to get a message in to Baron Strange, I pressed my devoted Dr. Lewis into service a second time. Lewis wormed his way into my stepson’s cell on the pretext of delivering him a medicinal elixir. With the elixir, he delivered the details of the plan to free the boy. Baron Strange was able to get young Prince Edward out of prison the very next day. It was embarrassing for Elizabeth’s Uncle Richard to have this happen, especially with the Battle of Bosworth Field looming large. His administration was already on very shaky ground, so he had the news of the escape kept very, very quiet.”

  “It was brave of Baron Strange to take such a chance,” I said.

  “My stepson also had a…crush…on me,” Margaret said, savoring the newfound word. “It was before I married his father. I was a fascinating older woman in my late twenties, and he was in his teens. He would have done anything to make an impression on me, then.”

  The hitherto unbeknownst history of Margaret Beaufort, career femme fatale, was building up into quite an interesting sidebar. I regret to this day that I did not take the opportunity to explore it with her more fully. The story of the Tower Princes fascinated me so much, though, that I let the opportunity pass. I inquired instead about Little Richard.

  “What happened to little Richard?” I asked. How did you extract him from sanctuary?”

  “My fourth husband, the Lord High Constable, was able to help out there. Elizabeth had provided us with the name of the man who was expected to escort Little Richard out of sanctuary and to his brother Edward’s prison cell the next morning. My husband had a henchman who bore a passing resemblance to that escort. We sent our henchman in before the sun was up. What with the dim light and all the excitement, he was able to, with Elizabeth’s connivance, deceive her mother into delivering Little Richard into his hands.”

  “What did you do once you had both boys safely in your custody?” I asked.

  “I entrusted them to the care of an Italian priest, one Father Carbonariis. He had quite the crush on me as well, back in the day, but he was a man of the cloth, so we never pursued it.”

  “You preferred your admirers afar to afire, didn’t you, Margaret?”

  “I wouldn’t say I preferred them that way; quite the opposite, in fact. But I had a job to do, and men are of a lot more use all whipped up than they are basking in afterglow. Father Carbonariis was no exception; he was eager to come to my assistance. He was wealthy and known to be involved in the funding of those mysterious Bristol explorations, so he suited Elizabeth’s purposes as well as mine. He was Italian, and he was departing for a visit to his homeland at that very time. The boys were safely en route to Italy with him before the week was out.”

  “Well, that’s step one achieved in short order,” I said. “Step two?”

  “Step two was to get the boys trained in seamanship. Once Carbonariis got the boys to Italy, he would deliver them into the capable hands of one John Cabot to be apprenticed in the maritime arts.”

  “John Cabot, the famous explorer? The man who first claimed Canada for England?”

  “The very same,” said Margaret.

  I found this all very intriguing. John Cabot was the Anglicized name of the Italian Giovanni Caboto, supposedly assumed when he undertook a voyage funded by King Henry VII. There are those who purport that the man actually was English and born in Bristol—that he only immigrated to Italy temporarily and then returned to England. The plot was getting thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.

  Step three, I guessed aloud, was a witness-protection program of some kind. Margaret Beaufort informed me that I was correct.

  “John Cabot had the simple, but perfect, solution to the problem of the young princes’ false identities. The boys, when they had completed their apprenticeship and arrived in England to set sail from Bristol on their venture, would be introduced as Cabot’s sons.”

  “So the boy King Edward V, missing Tower Prince, was recycled and returned to the historical stage as Sebastian Cabot?”

  “Yes. An appropriate name, don’t you think? Like Saint Sebastian pierced with arrows, the boy was thought to be dead, when, in reality, he was very much alive.”

  “What name did Little Richard assume?”

  “Little Richard became Ludovico; it means ‘famous warrior.’ For all his training in seamanship, Little Richard wanted nothing more than to be a great knight, like those of the Round Table.”

  “And step four?” I asked, more intrigued.

  “Step four was my son, Henry Tudor, wresting the crown of England from Evil King Richard, Elizabeth’s uncle.”

  “At the Battle of Bosworth Field, of course!” I exclaimed. “Evil King Richard was felled, and his crown landed on a hawthorn bush. It was taken up from there and put onto the head of the triumphant Henry Tudor, now officially Henry VII.”

  “You are correct, Dolly. Sir Reginald Bray was the man who retrieved the crown from the hawthorn and placed it on my son’s head. Reggie had very big crush on me, back in the winter of 1473. He would ha
ve done anything to improve his chances with me, right down to diving into a prickly hawthorn bush.”

  The punning possibilities of the horny and the thorny were tempting, but I took the high road and left them alone, inquiring instead about step five of the plan.

  “Step five was my son wedding Elizabeth of York and producing heirs; Elizabeth’s family’s place and my family’s place in the monarchy were secured.”

  “And do not forget, mother-in-law, the Arthurian place in the monarchy secured as well,” added Elizabeth.

  Of course, I knew as an academician that the Tudor line claimed descent from King Arthur of the Round Table legends through their Welsh ancestor, King Cadwallader. If Elizabeth of York’s brothers failed to bring King Arthur himself back, Elizabeth would birth a direct descendant of said king through her marriage to Henry VII. The woman really did have it all sewn up. She even named her first, sadly short-lived son Arthur.

  “Back to the plan!” I said, seeing the end in sight. “Step six?”

  “Step six was to lay the groundwork for the boys’ voyage,” said Elizabeth, and then she took the tale home.

  “My husband, King Henry VII, visited Bristol shortly after we were married in 1486 and set things up with the assistance of a man named William Weston. We stayed in touch with Cabot in Italy. We waited patiently while the boys learned their trade, and the Bristol sailors continued their preliminary explorations. In 1496, everything came together. Henry issued a letter patent to John Cabot and his “sons” Sebastian and Ludovico. They were granted leave to explore the northern New Found Land where the Bristol merchants believed Avalon itself was to be found. The patent prohibited any other seamen whatever from exploring the area, so our secret would remain safe. John Cabot and my brothers finally set off on their quest in 1497.”

  “Hoping to see King Arthur face-to-face when they crossed the bar,” I murmured. “Did they?”