Six of One

by Joann Spears

  Mary smiled smugly. “You were a silly goose, Dolly, to let your knight crusade away from you without a fight, when it is so very easy to bend a man to your will,” she said, fingering the one piece of jewelry that she was wearing.

  I had not paid much attention to the jewel before, but it was truly spectacular; the one spectacular item in an outfit that was otherwise less splendid than all the others I had seen here. Looking back, I really don’t see how I could have missed it, except for visions of Wally and his codpiece distracting me. It was a brooch, so big it looked more like a medal, with a pear-shaped pearl a couple of inches around suspended from the biggest diamond I had ever seen. I knew that that jewel had to be the legendary Mirror of Naples. Purportedly, it was spirited out of France by the newly widowed Mary to the consternation of her stepson, Francis I. Legend has it that Henry VIII was later seen sporting the jewel on his hat while jousting at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, as a dig at the French. It was the last time that the jewel was seen or mentioned, as far as history was concerned, but Mary was about to break that silence.

  “You are intrigued by my brooch, I see. Isn’t it beautiful, Dolly? Too beautiful to part with, and worth whatever it might take to possess. Unlike my sister Margaret, I let no man deprive me of anything that I really wanted to possess.”

  Mary’s remark shifted Margaret from idling in bridling to gearing up for sneering.

  “Well, it’s all a matter of taste,” snapped Margaret, “what one wants to possess, isn’t it? That thing looks like a military decoration to me! On what battlefield did you win it, little sister?”

  “Margaret, you know very well that this piece was one of the French crown jewels! I was entitled to wear it during my reign as the French queen. I could not bear to part with it when I was widowed—not for all the politics and diplomacy in the world! I won it with the fiercest weapon a woman possesses, and I am not ashamed of it.”

  “‘Come, tears, confound!’” I said. “Mary, you wept your way to that jewel, didn’t you!”

  “I did, Dolly!” said Mary, doing a little dance and clapping because she was so pleased with herself. “My poor stepson Francis! A warrior with many quivers to his bow, but with nothing to shoot at tears as they flowed or sobs as they were heaved. He actually gave me the jewel himself; placed it in my very hand. The only condition he made was that I vowed never to tell how I got it, as long as I lived.”

  “That was the only condition?” I asked suspiciously.

  “Francis also suggested that I give up the greatest jewel of all to him, at which I cried afresh and vacated the field with dignity. Unlike my sister,” Mary pointed out, “I never lost a battle using the weapons of a woman. When my sister fired those weapons, she mishandled the offensive, and they backfired on her. I made no such mistakes.”

  For once, Margaret was neither bridling nor sneering but looking quite sincere. “You made none of the mistakes that I made either, Dolly,” she said quietly. “You made mistakes of a different kind. You were a noncombatant in the battle for your Wally. You fired nary a shot or a volley. What was a man to think about that?”

  It doesn’t much matter now, I thought, what Wally thought about my artillery dysfunction all those years ago. Harry is the man of the hour, the man that my new friends here should be talking to me about. After all, he is their brother—and my fiancé, cosmically speaking. I redirected Margaret and Mary to the subject of Harry.

  “I feel that my time with you is growing short. Here we are talking about Wally, when the two of you should be addressing my upcoming nuptials with Harry. You were Henry VIII’s sisters; you grew up with him. You must have something pertinent to say to his future wife.”

  The two of them put their heads together, for all the world like my future sisters-in-law Maggie and Molly Rose as they giggled together over my bridal suggestion box. It did not take them long to come up with an answer.

  “Love will find you by starlight. Your eyes are lodestars, Dolly.”

  I was amazed, and I knew not what to say.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Of Real Estate Celestial and Terrestrial

  I spoke to many in-laws that night, more than any bride should have to contend with during her last few hours of single, blessed in-lawlessness. Kat was the only one of my new acquaintances that I could see seated on the bride’s side of the church; she was the only one so far who had owned to liking me. I wondered at what point that night I would be speaking to that major-league bevy of beauties, the six wives of Henry VIII. The night was waning, so it had to be soon, but it was not going to be quite yet. I knew this because the next woman to address me could not possibly be a member of the heavy bevy. She looked far too much like that terror of my old neighborhood, Miss Bess. Attired in a toga and brandishing a spear, she could have been Boudica, the warrior queen.

  I knew I was stuck in that place for as long as the resident women deemed necessary for me to hear all that they had to say. Accordingly, I had listened politely to advice both cryptic and direct. This woman looked less likely to offer advice than to issue marching orders. Mind you, the opportunity to march out of there and down the aisle on schedule would certainly not have come amiss. Jane Grey had told me that the objective of all the specters here was to find eternal rest. It was hard to imagine the woman who was facing me at any kind of rest at all. Hers was not the tremulousness that enervated Jane; the edginess that snapped, crackled, and popped from Elizabeth; or the self-fueled neurosis of Arabella. This woman radiated energy that was pure, simple, boundless, and efficient—it was as if she had a nuclear reactor under her farthingale.

  “What, still in your nightdress, Dolly? You are quite the slugabed!” the woman said.

  “Perhaps I am a slugabed, but I’m very properly attired for a honeymoon, don’t you think?” I asked, in what I hoped was a roguish manner. (You have to be very careful with roguish when you are over forty.)

  “I should say that you are, with nothing but a nightdress on!” the woman answered. “Most of our guests request panties as soon as they get here. Of course, I don’t feel the need for them, myself.” At first, I admired how well this woman did roguish, but then I remembered that panties did not hit the fashion scene until well after the Elizabethan era.

  “And I notice that you are still fixed on that honeymoon with your Harry, Dolly. You won’t be, once the wives have declaimed themselves. Or perhaps you will be. I have learned the hard way never to underestimate human frailty or human stupidity. After all, we women of the court are all still here, aren’t we? Each of the guests we have entertained here over the centuries was an opportunity, a squandered opportunity. Six wives! You would think that between them, or should I say amongst them, they could get it right.”

  I would have cast my vote for amongst, but was unable to get a word in edgewise.

  “Six fools!” the woman continued. “Like so many cats in a sack! Squalling, clawing, fur flying, wound licking, but not one iota of effectual sense! So here they stay. Here we stay.”

  I had learned from the younger Tudor contingent what the mission of the women here was. What they hadn’t told me was exactly how or why the ladies who were here came to be here, and it was something I wanted to know. I was sure it would be useful information to have. It might keep me from putting my foot in my mouth and spare the bedpost any more abuse because of my blunders. And if the six wives were as cantankerous as this woman claimed they were, it might spare me some abuse as well.

  “There’s not much any of them can tell you about success at matrimony; you ought to listen to me, Dolly, dear,” she went on. “I’ve had four husbands: one or two missteps along the way, but success overall and no regrets. My head stayed on my shoulders, and my feet stayed squarely on the ground—of which I had plenty; I saw to that.”

  Does she mean plenty of feet or plenty of ground? I wondered. On the other hand, perhaps she meant plenty of feet of ground. Maybe she meant plenty of square feet, but that would surely have made purchasing sh
oes difficult. A woman as enterprising as this one seemed to be probably dealt more in acres, if not miles, than square feet, and the silken espadrilles that peeked out from beneath her gown appeared to house well-shaped feet. The woman above the feet was likewise well-shaped and not at all unattractive—if you like the spiky type.

  “I needed the ground, you see, for my building,” she explained. “Bricks and mortar, my dear, bricks and mortar—the best insurance for a woman’s security and a woman’s standing. A woman needs a place to keep her people and her possessions safe and secure under her weather eye.”

  Under her weather thumb is more like it, I thought. This building fool could only be Bess of Hardwicke, a woman whose name is seldom seen in print without the word “redoubtable” in front of it. I wondered if anyone ever called her redoubtable to her face. I redoubted it.

  Bess of Hardwicke married her way to standing at the English court. She also married into manor houses of solidity and splendor to which she could retreat when her occasional missteps—as she called them—made the royal court too hot to hold her.

  Those houses also proved useful places to shift the troublesome Mary, Queen of Scots when any one prison proved too hot a place to detain that troublesome royal captive. Bess and her fourth husband, the Earl of Shrewsbury, were responsible for the imprisoned queen of Scots for quite awhile. Bess started out as the queen of Scot’s prison matron, but since both ladies were talented needlewomen, they became fast friends over the embroidery frame.

  Bess’s considerable energy and Mary, Queen of Scot’s good taste, focused like light beams through a prism onto the needlework canvas, produced rainbow textiles of real beauty. Some of their joint needlework is still extant; it was on the museum itinerary for when Harry and I were to be living in England after the wedding. The needlework of the two unlikely friends proved more enduring than their friendship, which contention over Bess’ husband blew sky-high.

  I opted to hazard my guess. “It seems that ‘Security’ could be your middle name, Bess. And I have it right, don’t I? Bess of Hardwicke?”

  “You’ve got it right, Dolly. And what’s more, I approve of your directness.”

  Make that two, I thought, on the bride’s side of the church: Kat and Bess.

  “My middle name damned well could be ‘Security’!” she exclaimed proudly. “I made certain that I was secure by taking care, Dolly. ‘Secure by taking care’ was the motto I lived by, and I never regretted it. The six wives tried hard to live by their mottoes, too, but it didn’t matter much in the face of their husband living by his: ‘God is at my right!’ Twaddle! None of those six ninnies could win out against a man so full of himself that he believed that. Mind you, I would have won out if I had ever been set against Henry VIII. I’ve never had any doubt that wherever else he might be, God is always on my right side, as well!”

  “Having this close connection that you do to a higher power, maybe there is something you can explain to me, Bess,” I requested. “How did the six wives wind up here, stalled out en route to eternity? Something to do with their marital contretemps, I would guess, but then there are others of you here, as well. My inquiring mind wants to know, Bess, and I hope you will oblige me.”

  “Well, we don’t have a lot of time before the wives enter the arena, but then, an honest tale speeds best being plainly told. And plainly is just how I will tell it to you, Dolly.”

  Leave it to Bess to cut right to the chase. She must have known that I, too, approved of direct. She plunged right into her tale.

  “It all started with Ann Boleyn’s arrival at the heavenly gates. She ought to have gone to hell, the she-wolf, if you ask me. However, since she was innocent of the trumped-up charges that she was beheaded for, the Almighty was inclined to show mercy. Katharine of Aragon, admitted to heaven earlier on such sterling credentials that she had a place right at the Almighty’s feet, had something to say about that, I can tell you, Dolly!”

  I knew that ‘Humble and loyal’ was Katharine of Aragon’s motto, and in life, she maintained a decorous silence about her marital situation—with one exception. That exception was to the silence, not the decorum. It was in 1529 that a special legatine court assembled in England to do nothing less than denude the woman of all her wifely rights and pave the way for her husband’s marriage to Ann Boleyn. Katharine dumbfounded the assembled VIPs with a dignified and entirely feminine summary of her position, delivered from the floor at her husband’s feet. Not that it did her any good in life. Perhaps the ploy was more effective in heaven; I listened as Bess continued her tale.

  “Katharine made plain to the Almighty, in a most respectful manner of course, that heaven would be hell to her with Ann in it, but that she would defer to the plan of the Almighty with as good a grace as she could muster. Ann being Ann, she said—with no grace at all, but with sufficient ire to enrage even the Almighty himself—that she would rather roast in hell than share accommodations with Katharine anywhere, even if it was paradise.”

  “What did the Almighty do?” I asked.

  “He obliged Ann and sent her straight to hell. Her berth there was a relatively easy one, because she had been executed under false pretenses, and Lucifer made allowances. Her motto on earth was ‘The most happy,’ and, even in hell, she made the best of a bad situation.”

  I knew that it was very likely that Ann really was innocent of the charges she was executed for. These included adultery and incest with as many of her friends and near relatives as the king could get away with naming. Ann being guilty of an unremitting campaign of just plain meanness against Katharine of Aragon was another story, though. It seemed to me that there was a poetic justice to her having to paying for it, ease of berth notwithstanding.

  “Things were quiet for awhile, both in heaven and in hell,” continued Bess. “Then Jane Seymour died in childbed. The girl never had the chance to do enough good on earth to merit heaven, but she did no actual evil either. The Almighty was inclined, as I would have been, to leave her to heaven. But Katharine of Aragon had plenty to say about that, too.”

  “What could she possibly have had to say to that?” I asked. “Jane Seymour’s motto was ‘Bound to obey and serve.’ She was like milk or bread: bland but sustaining and entirely inoffensive. She even died giving birth to the son that Henry VIII had always wanted. Don’t tell me Jane was sent to hell!”

  “Katharine requested that she herself not be berthed with the woman who, after all, had succeeded where she had failed and produced a son for Henry VIII. Katharine was all praise for Jane’s virtues and accomplishment and acknowledged freely that it was her own pride, and a personal need to atone, that drove her request.”

  “I can’t blame Katharine for not wanting to be berthed with the birth mother of Henry’s son. What happened next?”

  “Katharine volunteered to go to purgatory for awhile. Undeniably, her discomfort at sharing heaven with either Ann or Jane spoke of a pride not subdued by adversity in life or by death. She and the Almighty agreed that a brief stint in purgatory might be just the ticket for her.”

  I calculated that thus far, Henry had one wife in heaven, one in hell, one in purgatory, and three in the wings on earth. The next of the cast of characters to die would have been Catherine Howard. Certainly, she was young, giving, and generous enough for heaven, except for the fact that the givingness and generosity played itself out in a sexual context not exactly consonant with angel wings. The Almighty must have been a bit perplexed about where to put this latest, loosest, and most lubricious of Henry’s wives.

  “Catherine Howard came to heaven next,” Bess confirmed. “Her motto was ‘No other will but his,’ and her ductility was pleasing to the Almighty. He judged that her sexual excesses were the product of imposed-upon innocence and misguided youth, rather than any native sinfulness. He could not ignore them, but he deigned to be merciful and spare her the fires of hell. Katharine of Aragon agreed and, in fact, took Henry’s fifth wife under her wing. She said she would be like a s
econd mother to her for the duration of a cleansing stay in purgatory.”

  “I presume the Almighty was copacetic with Katharine of Aragon’s offer?”

  “He was. Of course, Catherine Howard wasn’t terribly excited about having Katharine of Aragon as her duenna, but she managed to sneak out now and again so that she did not totally ossify with boredom. She even grew fond of her foster mother, eventually; after all, she had never really had a mother figure of her own. So, things were quiet on the other side for awhile.”

  I knew that Katherine Parr was the next of the wives to die. I also knew that Henry VIII himself predeceased her.

  “What happened once Henry crossed over, Bess?” I asked, extremely interested.

  “The fires of hell leaped high and crackled when Henry’s fat arse hit them! Ann Boleyn flew out of hell like a mad bat when she saw him descending. Straight up to heaven she went, to demand new accommodations from the Almighty!”

  I knew that making demands of someone superior in might would certainly not have been new to Ann Boleyn; neither would acting without a full appreciation of the positive or negative outcomes of said demands. So there we were in the story, with Ann banging on the doors of heaven, demanding to be let in to stay. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall! But then again, with Bess so willing and able to tell the tale, there really was no need to shrink, shrivel, and surreptitiously metamorphose into Musca domestica. Bess was laughing so hard she was crying, and she took a moment to wipe her eyes and catch her breath before she continued.

  “I am sorry to laugh so, Dolly, but the image of Henry’s fat arse feeding the flames of hell! Really, I cannot help it!”