by Joann Spears
I had never seen anyone grind her teeth and speak at the same time before, but Ann Boleyn was doing it now.
“Hearing the name of that blasted Tom Seymour makes me so mad—the cur! He very nearly destroyed my daughter Elizabeth before she was even out of the schoolroom. He was a ruttish lout, to play on her starved sense of self-importance that way!”
“Screw Tom!” I exclaimed, entering into the spirit of the thing. “Screw him and the horse he rode in on!”
“My daughter had the last laugh, though, didn’t she, Dolly?” triumphed Ann. “His head landed in a basket, but she held on to hers! He was not fit to kiss her shoe, that…hellspawn, that…that—”
“Please, Ann, let me help you again,” I cut in, finding it kind of fun. “Try this out. ‘That knave…one that wouldst be a bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch!’ I think that should about cover it,” I said, confident in my Shakespeare.
“Nothing will ever cover that man’s baseness!” Ann insisted, “but still, that was well said, Dolly. I must admit to being quite speechless at your eloquence.”
“Ann Boleyn, speechless! That makes a nice change, to be sure!” rang out Catherine Howard’s voice.
I had a feeling, from the direction the conversation was taking, that there would be a bitch slap happening sooner or later. And I was not disappointed; Ann delivered a lollapalooza of one to Catherine Howard’s right cheek. Catherine, confirming my estimation of her agility, returned the slap with gusto as she bobbed and weaved.
“Take that!” said another voice. It was Jane Seymour’s. In a surprise rearguard maneuver, she landed an ear-ringing one on Ann’s left cheek. “That was for my brother Tom!”
Predictably, Ann reciprocated, and it became a bitch-slap riot.
“Take that, Jane Seymour! That one was for being Tom Seymour’s sister!”
Paradoxically, all of the slapping had a relieving effect on Ann Boleyn’s agitation, and Catherine Howard and Jane Seymour were none the worse for the wear. The riot quelled itself, and the three of them, along with Katherine Parr and Anne of Cleves, pushed their chairs back and stared pointedly at Katharine of Aragon.
Katharine was looking down and fussing with the folds of her voluminous skirts as though she was mustering imaginary forces about her. She rose suddenly, raised her head, clasped her hands in front of her in a composition of prayer, and opened her mouth to speak.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Wherein the Wives Determine “Who’s On First?”
Katharine of Aragon had a surprising voice for a woman of what the French call “d’un certain âge.” Her voice was definitely not the source of her air of authority; that came from her carriage, her facial expression, the directness of her gaze, and her tightly controlled movements. Her voice was surprisingly soft and lilting, with none of the reediness of that of the very old Margaret Beaufort or the gravelly, menopausal tones of Bess of Shrewsbury. Her slight Spanish accent added to its charm.
“Dolly, I welcome you to our distaff court on my own behalf and on that of my five successors. Out of respect for my being the first and the longest wed of the six of us, I have been elected as spokeswoman for our little band.”
That sounded fair to me. Anne of Cleves nodded approvingly at Katharine of Aragon.
“As you have seen,” Katharine continued, “emotions are prone to erupt. It is inevitable, with so many queens in such close quarters and with our imperative to find eternal rest confounded for so very long a time. We are weary of it, Dolly: weary of the fighting and weary of the waiting.”
“We’re bored, too!” chimed in Catherine Howard.
“We’re frumpy, as well,” complained Ann Boleyn. “Can you imagine it, Dolly? Four hundred years behind in the styles!”
“I’m getting dumpy,” Anne of Cleves added. “Not much room to exercise around here.”
“Don’t forget cranky! Hard not to be, in such close quarters,” joined Katherine Parr.
“There isn’t a day I don’t need a hankie! Some days, I cry for no reason at all!” confessed Jane Seymour.
It was probably indelicate of me to say the next thing I said, but I had to know.
“Tell me,” I began, “is this place like a girls’ school or a convent? You know…ladies only…in close quarters…four hundred years together…do you…do you all get your periods at the same time?”
“Yes, we do!” they belted in unison.
Over four hundred years of synced-up periods—and I was willing to bet that this place did not have a single tampon dispenser. Between that and the dearth of panties they suffered from, I could only think these poor things trebly cursed.
“You girls need to get out of here,” I said quietly, sobered by the magnitude of their problem.
“You don’t have to tell us that, Dolly,” said Anne of Cleves briskly. “We have spent the last few decades organizing ourselves and brainstorming new ideas for getting ourselves out of this place. Our plan of action for tonight is a departure from our usual routine and has been devised in your honor. Katharine of Aragon, as duly elected queen-in-charge, will explain.”
“Quite simply, Dolly,” took over Katharine, “we have heretofore defaulted to the expedient of simply telling our guests our story. Our story, that is, as history has handed it down. Our guests are usually only cursorily familiar with our history, so they always have questions about it, and we have always allowed them to ask as many as they like. We have always answered the questions in the context of our story as traditionally told. But, you see, Dolly, we consider your advent as an opportunity for a paradigm shift.” Katharine was growing visibly excited. “We have heretofore always held that the traditional story of our lives should be gut-wrenching and thought-provoking enough on its own to lead our guests in the correct decisional direction. But we came to realize recently that we have been wrong, and so we started to discuss the wisdom of disclosing the full truth to our guests.”
“So,” I recapped, “you’ve been telling them the truth and nothing but the truth—but not the whole truth? You’ve been holding something back?”
“Precisely, Dolly. We have been holding back. It has been our experience that our guests have a hard enough time absorbing our story, even in its bare-bones version, in the compressed time frame of a single night. The shock of finding themselves here, the raw emotion that accompanies a first hearing of our story…we do not fault our guests for their inability to comprehend. Generally, they are very intelligent women.” She paused. “But you, Dolly, are different.”
I winced, and Katharine of Aragon patted my cheek kindly. “I put that badly, Dolly. You are different because you are the first of our guests already intimately acquainted with the story of Henry VIII’s six wives as history paints us. Telling our fully unvarnished tales to you will be a whole new experience for us!”
“I won’t have to spend hours explaining the history of the Protestant Reformation, because you already know it, Dolly. What a relief!” sighed Katherine Parr.
“And the ins and outs of Henry VIII’s children and all the succession disputes—yesterday’s news to you, Dolly!” said Jane Seymour admiringly.
“You won’t get bogged down in which of the two Anns is which; not to mention the three Katherines! How much simpler that makes things!” gushed Ann Boleyn.
“I feel so loved!” I exclaimed happily. “But tell me: between now and when I get back to my wedding venue, what does this all mean in practical terms?”
“It means, Dolly, that tonight, we turn the tables. Tonight, just for you—and for the first time on any stage—we shall each reveal a part of our story that history does not know.”
“I feel both loved and honored,” I replied, with equal parts sincerity and excitement.
“We will turn the tables in another way, as well, Dolly: We have permitted our past guests to question us ad lib, and we have answered them to our exhaustion. St
ill, they have proven maddeningly maladroit at drawing the desired conclusions on their own. This time, it will be different in that you will ask us no questions at all tonight, Dolly, and we will not have to be bothered with answering. Tonight, we shall do the asking, each leaving you with a single question to guide you. You will come away from this night with six questions total.”
“If I find a question incriminating, can I plead the Fifth?” I inquired.
“That’s not a contingency we had anticipated, but…Catherine Howard, as the fifth wife, will you entertain Dolly’s objections if she does not like one of our questions?”
“Stop, please!” I said. “I was only teasing. I have nothing to hide.”
“The questions will be rhetorical; believe me, you need the answers to them more than we do,” mused Katharine. Then she got back to business. “Each of the six of us will draw lots for the order in which we will address you and present you with our questions. That is a departure from our usual practice, as well; we usually address our visitors in marital sequence. Whether one through six or six through one, though, it is always the same two that get to go first or have the last word. We have decided to give the middle wives a chance at these important female prerogatives for a change. Fate shall determine the advantages—if there be advantages.”
“We didn’t all decide to change sequence; it was Ann Boleyn, mostly,” said Catherine Howard. “I like being in the middle. I hope it does not fall to my lot to be the first to ask Dolly a question.”
“Ladies, Catherine Howard is anxious lest she be first. May I allow her to be the first of us to draw her lot and know her numerical fate? There is nothing worse than suspense and anxiety, and there is no reason not to spare her that,” said Katharine, glancing at Anne of Cleves for approval.
Anne immediately nodded her agreement and seated herself more erectly in her chair. She was watching the other wives intently but made no attempt to micromanage. Jane Seymour, after a brief, murmured conflab with Ann Boleyn and Katherine Parr, gave the joint thumbs-up from the remaining three wives.
“You may proceed,” Jane said to Katharine of Aragon, “as you suggest. Let Catherine Howard draw her lot first. We all know what happens when Catherine is anxious—or, God forbid, afraid!”
Catherine Howard, I knew, had had every reason to be afraid during the last weeks of her life. Arrested and imprisoned on adultery charges, she was facing certain execution. Henry VIII had already proven himself capable of dishing out that punishment to one previous wife and several of his closest friends. The terrified Catherine, freaking out and melting down, became liquid enough to elude her guards and run, shrieking, down the gallery of Hampton Court to the chapel where Henry VIII was hearing mass. Henry ignored her hysterical bid for mercy as she pounded on the doors of the chapel and screamed for forgiveness. Catherine’s ghost began to haunt that same gallery after her execution: a barefoot, hair-streaming, apparition of a female in the grand tradition. Maybe she did that for kicks on the occasions when she was able to escape from Katharine of Aragon’s chaperone-ship in purgatory, I thought.
Granted her request to draw the first lot, Catherine pulled a card from the six that Katharine of Aragon held out fanned before her. She turned it over slowly and exclaimed happily.
“I’ve drawn a five! Just what I am accustomed to! Thank you, ladies!” Catherine, like a confiding child, came over to me to show me the five of hearts she had just drawn. I congratulated her.
“That’s wonderful, Catherine! It must be quite a weight off your shoulders!”
She dropped her playing card and dashed over to the bedpost for the ritual knocking on wood, ably assisted by Katherine Parr and Anne of Cleves.
I begged everyone’s pardon, and eventually, the knocking ceased. Catherine picked up her card from the floor; then she picked up an inkwell, a quill, and some pieces of parchment from the table.
“I shall retire for a moment to a quiet corner, if I may,” she said. “I want to jot down and rehearse my story and my question. I don’t feel comfortable performing in public until I have got it exactly right.”
By reputation, Catherine Howard certainly had no qualms about performing in private. Nevertheless, her rehearsal that night was a sad reminder of her performance anxiety the night before her beheading: she had had the executioner’s block brought to her chamber and spent the night practicing how to rest her head on it properly, in anticipation of the falling ax.
Anne of Cleves stepped up to the plate—or rather, the cards—next, and began to speak.
“Practice makes perfect, young Catherine; carry on rehearsing! As for me, I would like to draw next, if it meets with everyone’s approval.” Receiving the nod, Anne of Cleves reached out to draw a card.
“Look, I have chosen the ace of hearts; I am to go first. It makes a nice change; imagine me the leader of the pack! How funny life is—or, should I say, considering our condition, how funny death is?”
An impressive vibrato from Ann Boleyn pierced the air and set my earrings swaying. “There was nothing funny about my death, thank you!”
You have not seen anything until you have seen one woman deliver a playful kick to another woman’s butt when both of them are wearing farthingales. Ann Boleyn managed to deliver one—and Anne of Cleves to receive it—without falling down. Surprisingly, the exercise made both women laugh. And Ann Boleyn laughing was quite a sight to see.
Observing her like this got me thinking. What exactly was it that made Henry VIII so besotted with Ann Boleyn in the first place?
It certainly was one of the great romantic mysteries of all time. Those of Ann Boleyn’s contemporaries who went on record about her described a woman of far-from-perfect beauty. Perhaps they had simply not been privileged, as I was now, to see her like this. Laughter made her dark eyes crackle; it would have come as no surprise to see sparks flying from them. The habitual tension that drew her face inward around the forehead, nose, and mouth totally relaxed itself in mirth. Her wide smile made a beautiful display of “bee-stung lips” and perfect teeth. She tipped her head back, too, accentuating the refined curve of her cheek and jaw in a playful moment. Laughter transformed her, as it had Greta Garbo in Ninotchka. That had to be it; surely, Henry VIII fell in love with Ann when she was laughing.
Anne of Cleves interrupted my little thought-fantasia on Ann Boleyn.
“I didn’t mean to insinuate that there was anything at all funny about the death of Ann Boleyn. In fact, everyone admired you, Ann, for making it is as elegant an occasion as possible. Poor Catherine Howard did not have the benefit of a swordsman from Calais that you insisted upon and got; she had to make do with an axman.”
“That swordsman performed his job with real flair,” said Jane Seymour. “His sword was beautiful: a work of art and polished to a never-you-mind! The glint of the sun on the blade was quite artistic; all eyes were on it as it descended. It diverted the crowd’s attention quite nicely from Ann’s neck.”
For all her demureness, Jane was like a pit bull when it came to letting go, and she was like a pit bull in one other way, as well: seeing Ann Boleyn about to smite her on the cheek again, Jane very smartly deflected the blow with a hearty bite to the fleshy part of Ann’s open hand. To my surprise, Ann opted to take the high road on this occasion and did not bite back. Instead, she swung around to Katharine of Aragon and motioned for the next draw of the cards. No one objected; in fact, Anne of Cleves quite glowed with approval. The card Ann Boleyn selected was the six of hearts. Throwing her head back again in exquisite laughter, she was, for a moment, true to her motto, the most happy.
“It looks as though I am going to have the last laugh for once, doesn’t it?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Anne of Cleves Makes No Bones About It
A huffy, puffy Jane Seymour was the next to choose a card and drew the four of hearts without comment. Katherine Parr stepped forward next to face Katharine of Aragon. “That leaves the two and the three of hearts for us, doesn’t
it?” she asked.
“It’s pretty much six of one and a half dozen of the other whether one goes second or third,” replied Katharine of Aragon, turning the cards over and handing the two of hearts to Katherine Parr. “Alright, ladies!” she called out, clapping. “We begin the proceedings in earnest now. Places, everyone!”
The six queens bustled about to seat themselves. Jane Seymour stopped herself at mid-sit and stood back up in front of the third chair.
“Do we sit in the order in which we will be asking our questions, or do we sit in sequential order, as usual?” she asked. “I do not know whether to sit in the third seat or the fourth.”
“We shall sit, Jane Seymour, in our usual seats,” said Katharine of Aragon, making an executive decision that got a nod of approval from Anne of Cleves. “I think that would be the simplest thing.”
Actually, “the simplest thing” was Jane Seymour herself. As Katharine was speaking, Ann Boleyn snuck behind the forward-facing Jane, pulled chair number three back by about a foot, and rushed away to park her own farthingale in chair number six. Jane Seymour, bending to sit, landed squarely on the floor with an undignified thud. Anne of Cleves and Catherine Howard laughed unashamedly, which I considered to be in poor taste. It was no laughing matter getting up from the floor in one of those farthingales. With a tug on the wrist from Katharine of Aragon and an assist from Katherine Parr, Jane Seymour eventually crawled and hauled her way into her assigned seat. The other wives settled into their places, as well.
“As promised, I have one question for Dolly,” began Anne of Cleves.
“Talk about getting right to the point! You certainly don’t play games,” I said.
“Oh, yes, I do, Dolly!” said Anne, not laughing this time but with a single thigh-slap for emphasis. “The game I want to play is a guessing game.”
