by Joann Spears
“They returned in 1498 without having found Avalon, but intrigued enough by what they had found to think they would find it eventually,” said Elizabeth. “They set sail again in 1498, accompanied this time by Father Carbonariis. John Cabot and Father Carbonariis never returned from that voyage, and Dr. Lewis died here in England at around the same time. That meant that now only my husband and I, my mother-in-law, Baron Strange, and my brothers themselves knew the truth about their identities.”
“Sebastian/Edward returned to England eventually, though, didn’t he?” I asked. “I know that before it was all over, he did some prodigious sailing. He visited Canada, Brazil, Argentina, and, eventually, Russia in search of the Northwest Passage.”
“Of course,” answered Elizabeth, “the Northwest Passage quest was a cover for his real quest: Avalon and Arthur. It had become as much an obsession for him as it had for me.”
“My brother said he would live and die trying to find Avalon,” Elizabeth continued. “He was at sea when I died in 1503—the same year Baron Strange died. Edward/Sebastian did not return to English soil until 1512. At that point, my mother-in-law and my husband were dead, too. We never told my children anything about my brothers and the identity substitution, so they thought that their uncles, the Tower Princes, were dead. That left Edward/Sebastian free to travel the world and pursue his Arthurian dream. As far as I know, he never found Camelot, Avalon, or King Arthur. I can only hope that he found joy in his journey if not in his destination.”
“By the way,” I asked, “what happened to Little Richard?”
“Richard/Ludovico never returned from the voyage that also lost us Carbonariis and John Cabot.”
I bowed my head, partly out of respect and partly because I had tears in my eyes. “Poor Little Richard…lost at sea.”
“You are wrong, Dolly. Little Richard never returned to England, but he was not lost at sea. When Edward/Sebastian came back to England the first time, he told us that Little Richard had opted to make his bid for glory by remaining in the New Found Land. He had grown up, you see, and decided that making his own glory in the New World was preferable to seeking it on the sea through dreams of Camelot or doing dirty work here in England.”
I remembered all the tiny-but-tempting bits of evidence that turned up now and again in support of the theory that those fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Bristol explorers had actually made inroads into the American mainland and possibly established settlements. I’d read of Native American tribes speaking variations of Welsh, cryptic carvings on the Cabot Rock, and latter-day settlers happening on blue-eyed Native American children sporting inexplicable European earrings and sword hilts. As a historian, I had dismissed them all out of turn. As Little Richard’s newest conquest, I looked at the evidence in an entirely different light. Seeing him blazing trails and leaving some kind of legacy in a New World suited me a lot better than seeing him buried under a tower staircase.
I turned my attention back to Elizabeth of York. “So, with your brothers satisfactorily provided for, you went on to give birth to two sons who, as Tudors, had Arthurian blood in their veins. You even named the first one Arthur. You had hedged all your bets. The world was your very own Round Table, so to speak, until that ill-fated final pregnancy of yours.”
“Regrettably, thus ended my chapter,” said Elizabeth.
Margaret spoke. “It’s too bad that Dr. Lewis wasn’t in attendance when you labored with that last baby, Elizabeth. He would have pulled you and the baby through, if only for my sake. He’d have dropped dead himself before he let a grandchild of mine slip through his fingers like that.”
I am sure you will agree that the imagery conjured up by that statement was enough to make anyone want to move things along a little quicker. I also realized that we had whiled away quite a lot of time at that point, and visions of bridal preparations yet undone began to haunt me. I spoke up.
“Ladies, I have to admit, your performances have been so compelling that I almost forgot for a moment that this is not real. You really had me going with the Bristol story—very original! I don’t know where my bridesmaids found your Renaissance Faire troupe or what they are paying you, but it is worth every penny. However, since you’ve told me that there are more performers to come, don’t you think that we’ll need to move it along a little faster than we’ve been doing? After all, I do have an altar appointment tomorrow.”
Margaret smiled. “She still thinks it is a game, Elizabeth.”
“Most of them do, this early on. The others will disabuse her of that notion soon enough.”
Turning to me, Elizabeth of York took one of my hands in hers and pressed it. Margaret Beaufort gently clasped my other hand, and I could not help noticing how long and beautiful her fingers were. She smiled as she noticed me admiring them. Then, Elizabeth bade me farewell. “We must leave you now, Dolly. Do not be worried. You will be in as-gentle hands with all of your subsequent hostesses as you have been with us.”
I heard Margaret Beaufort whispering to Elizabeth as they made their exit. I would have sworn she was saying, “You’re forgetting about Ann Boleyn!”
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 th
ey 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.
