Six of One

by Joann Spears

  “Twenty questions?” I asked.

  “We’ve already told you, Dolly that we each get one question, and you don’t get any. That hardly adds up to twenty.”

  “Arithmetic is not my bailiwick, Anne. Even so, I’m ready for impressing you with my guessing,” I joked.

  “Then guess, Dolly, why I was an untouched wife, relict of an unconsummated marriage—like a beloved sister, and nothing more, to Henry VIII.”

  Since political correctness was not around in Tudor times, Henry VIII had blamed it squarely on the woman before me being a “Flanders mare.” He alleged that Anne had flabby breasts and belly, and that these were insurmountable—or should I say “unmountable”—obstacles to consummation.

  Although admittedly “built to last” along the classic Teutonic lines, Anne of Cleves was in no way ugly or unfeminine. Everyone knows a woman like her; she flies under the radar of the general run of men, but, eventually, one appreciative guy very wisely falls in love and pops the question. As a bride, the woman turns out to be stunning, so much so that the guests in the church audibly draw breath as she floats down the aisle, not so much in admiration as shock at the transformation. It was really too bad that Henry VIII’s failure to appreciate Anne of Cleves became the thing that people would associate with her the most. It was plain to see that in love, Anne of Cleves would glow.

  Getting back to business, I addressed myself to the guessing and to Anne.

  “Based on my study of history and on my now having met you personally, I would say that your…er…non-consummation rests squarely on Henry VIII’s failure to appreciate your brand of appeal; call it a ‘lack of chemistry.’ You know what they say: ‘you can’t light a fire when the wood’s all wet.’”

  “Fires have been successfully lit in less likely circumstances than Henry’s and mine. Guess again.”

  “My next guess is—erectile dysfunction!”

  “Was ist das? Excuse me…what is that?” she asked, completely baffled.

  “Erectile dysfunction,” I repeated. “Henry VIII was not a young man when he married you, and all the weight he carried must have been starting to affect his health and his…uh…you know…” I trailed off.

  “I do not know!” insisted Anne.

  She did know; I could tell. She was playing with me and enjoying it.

  I remembered that my mom had always told me that there’s nothing like a good visual, so I resorted to the universal gesture of the flagging finger to make my point.

  “That I understand!” roared Anne of Cleves, slapping her thigh.

  “That I understand!” laughed Katherine Parr, widow of not one but three old men.

  “I don’t understand that!” said Catherine Howard, totally unacquainted with wilting weenies.

  “I don’t understand at all!” Jane Seymour flumped in her chair, mystified as usual.

  “When it happened, I always understood.” This admission of wifely charity from Katharine of Aragon surprised no one, least of all Ann Boleyn.

  “You indulged Henry far too much, Katharine!” recriminated Ann. “I never understood when it happened! I let him know it, too!

  “Yes, and look where it got you!” snapped Katharine. “And do not dare to slap me, woman, or I will slap you back!”

  Katharine of Aragon, arm raised and hand open, was ready to make good her threat. She certainly succeeded in surprising Ann Boleyn and, judging by their dropped jaws and gaping faces, everyone else, as well. I think she even surprised herself; for a moment, the room was completely silent. Then Anne of Cleves spoke again.

  “Your second guess, Dolly, is not entirely correct either, although, like the first, it has elements of truth to it. Guess again.”

  Calling forth my considerable professional expertise, I tried again. “My third guess,” I said, “is that Henry was in love with someone else. Some historians assert that Henry VIII became smitten with his fifth wife’s charms before his fourth—you, Anne—had even arrived from Germany.”

  “I do not want to know what ‘some historians’ think; I want to know what you think, Dolly,” Anne said.

  “Well,” I admitted, “I do have my reservations about the ‘smitten’ theory.”

  It had always seemed to me that Henry could easily have made Catherine Howard, low-hanging fruit if ever there was any, his mistress before or even after he wed Anne of Cleves, and I said as much to her.

  “Well, Dolly,” she replied, “you are entirely right on that one; Henry’s fifth marriage had nothing to do with ending his fourth marriage—my marriage. So you must guess a fourth time,” she prompted.

  I was at a loss for a guess until I remembered something that Cleva had once told me. I shared the revelation with Anne of Cleves.

  “My Harrry’s fourth ex told me that she divorced Harry because he was a coward. I have never been sure what she meant by that. People admire Harry for his boldness in business, and his heedlessness on the sporting field is a byword. I have always chalked Cleva’s remark up to sour grapes, but maybe there is something more to it than that.”

  “There is more to it than sour grapes, Dolly. That fourth guess brings you closer to the truth. Tell me what happened to my counterpart in your world after she divorced your Harry.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said, “you are supposed to ask me one question only. That makes two.”

  “That was not a question, Dolly; that was a directive. I’m surprised at you, a scholar, being so poor on grammar. Come along now, time is wasting!”

  I was totally with Anne of Cleves when it came to beating the clock, so I answered with alacrity. “After she divorced Harry, Cleva married a beach bum; a much younger beach bum by the name of Moondoggie. She said that she knew just what she wanted in a husband, and that, thanks to Harry’s divorce settlement, she could afford to have it. Judging by the beach bum’s Speedo bulge, what she wanted was a great big…well…you know.”

  “I am not familiar with ‘beach bums’ or ‘Speedo bulges,’” Anne of Cleves said. “Translation, please.”

  “A beach bum,” I answered, “is a ne’er do well, and a Speedo is a garment that reveals the same dimensions that a codpiece would.”

  My explanation jogged something in the memory of Jane Seymour.

  “Your Cleva reminds me of one of our earlier lady guests, Dolly. Mistress Ava Gardner was so worldly and such a beauty! She told us that her favorite husband, Francis Albert, weighed one hundred and ten pounds, and that one hundred of those pounds were…you know. I always wondered how he could stand upright, let alone walk.” No doubt about it; Jane Seymour hadn’t just fallen out of the stupid tree; she had hit every branch on the way down.

  “I always wondered how—well, never mind what I always wondered!” said Catherine Howard.

  “Size isn’t everything, you know,” said Anne of Cleves.

  I have always been a firm believer that size does matter but was willing to concede that there could be mitigating factors.

  “Perhaps not,” I answered. “I only know that Cleva and her beach bum simply dote on each other and that both look equally content lolling on the sand at their beach house. I guess that as long as Moondoggie’s Speedo bulge, Cleva’s money, and the margarita mix hold out, it will always be that way.”

  “So you can see, Dolly, that these two are happy together. He, a man who is not daunted by a woman with a keen zest for…you know…and she, a woman who knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to take it.”

  “You certainly could frame it that way,” I said.

  “So then, put all the pieces of the puzzle together for your last guess, Dolly.”

  I pondered the vagaries of attraction, cowardice, Speedo bulges, knowing what one wants, and “failure to rise.” Suddenly, everything fell into place.

  “Let me tell you how I think the pieces fit together, Anne,” I began. “Henry VIII decided to wed you based on the preview portrait that Holbein the Younger painted of you in Germany and sent over to England. Ja?”

&
nbsp; “Ja.”

  “When you eventually arrived in England, Henry considered you a hick, much less sophisticated than all of the other women he knew. He married you anyway, prepared to do his duty and to be tolerant with a woman that he presumed to be a lesser and submissive vessel. He would deign to throw a bone to poor, humdrum you.”

  “Dolly, was that pun intentional?”

  “Absolutely!”

  “Das ist gut! Carry on!”

  “Okay, I will!” I said, warming to my subject. “Fast-forward to your honeymoon night. Henry VIII hits your bed, resigned to going through the motions and expecting you to be pathetically grateful. Boy, was he surprised! You knew what you wanted, you saw it, and you made a grab for it—literally. Not only that, but you gave him detailed instructions on what you wanted from him. How am I doing so far, Anne?”

  “Sehr gut!”

  “All of Henry’s other women weren’t like you at all. They were, if they will pardon me saying so, simply willing victims, martyrs, or both. Henry couldn’t dominate you, Anne, the way he dominated them. In your bed, he finally met someone his own size—figuratively speaking, of course—and he was too much of a coward to stand up to it.”

  “Pun intended?”

  “Of course!”

  “Wunderbar!”

  “Anne, you incapacitated the great Henry VIII by the simple expedient of unashamedly demanding what you wanted. You deflated his ego and his…you know…at a single stroke!”

  “You’ve guessed correctly, Dolly! Henry was mortified by my—what did Mistress Ava Gardner call it—my sex drive.”

  “You really had that man by the goolies, Anne. Henry couldn’t possibly risk letting word about his connubial incapacity get out. He would never be able to hold his head up when he went looking for another wife. So he ensured your silence with a very generous divorce settlement.”

  “Enough to keep me in comfort and all the ale I could drink till the end of my days,” Anne of Cleves beamed. “That was good enough for me.”

  “But Anne, it surprises me that having such a healthy interest in sex, you never married again after divorcing Henry.”

  “I developed my healthy interest in…you know…before I ever married Henry and was able to pursue it, for a little while, at least, after my divorce. You have not heard me use the word ‘virgin’ in my own regard tonight, Dolly. Holbein, the portrait painter, thought me a beauty, and, unlike that coward Henry, he was delighted by my overtures. We lit the fire together before I ever left Germany. No problem with the wood being too wet at all! After my divorce, Holbein happened to be in England a good deal of the time, and we were able to meet discreetly now and again up until his death a few years later. What a man! And what a—you know.”

  Anne of Cleves looked positively rhapsodic as she spoke of Hans Holbein. She made me think that perhaps the old German saying, die erste liebe ist die beste—“the first love is the best”—was true. I thought for a moment of Wally and missed opportunities, but I did not allow myself to dwell on it.

  I reminded Anne that she had promised me a question once I was able to give her the guess she wanted.

  “I have given you your guess, Anne; now you must give me my question,” I demanded.

  “As you wish, liebchen. My question to you is this: Dolly, have you got the courage to reach out and grab what you really want—your heart’s desire?”

  I answered slowly and deliberately. “What I really want is Harry, and all that being his wife will bring me, including the life in England I’m so looking forward to. I am ready to grab at that with both hands, if I can just get out of here in time. That is what you mean by what I really want—‘my heart’s desire’—isn’t it?” I asked.

  Anne of Cleves grasped my hand.

  “Dolly, I didn’t ask you if you knew what your heart’s desire really was, but you just asked yourself if you did. And you won’t have to look very far to find the answer.”

  No farther than my own backyard, I thought, because if it isn’t there…

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Medicine

  Go Down,” à la Katherine Parr

  Katherine Parr, the Julie Andrews ringer, was next up. Her blushing pink, English-rose looks still surprised me; Katherine Parr had been the only one of Henry VIII’s wives to have not just one but two books—and prayer books at that—published, so I had expected her to be a much more severe-looking woman.

  The prayer-book writer was also quite the radical thinker: her ideas about religious reform brought her to within a hair’s breadth of execution for treason. She escaped that fate only because a careless courier accidentally dropped some papers in a courtyard one day. Those papers proffered treason charges against Katherine for her unorthodox religious beliefs and were en route to King Henry for his signature. A friend of Katherine’s found them on the ground and warned her about them before forwarding them along to the king.

  Katherine Parr was able to beat the incriminating papers, as they traveled at the speed of government, to Henry VIII’s presence. She cajoled the king into believing that she had conjured up her provocative religious ideas only to distract him from his ailments by way of stimulating intellectual debate. She blushingly confided that absorbing the religious wisdom that flowed from Henry during these debates was her great wifely pleasure. As gullible as he was gouty, Henry VIII was duly sold, and Katherine Parr maintained the use of her level head.

  “Dolly, like Anne of Cleves, I will speak of your heart—but not of its desires,” Katherine said. “In my life, desires were thwarted and cursed things. I prefer to avoid the subject of desire altogether. You and I shall speak of other, higher aspects of the heart.”

  Anne of Cleves sputtered and then rebutted. “Higher aspects of the heart! Prutt! Frau High and Mighty! You are awfully lofty about hearts, Katherine Parr, considering what you did to—”

  “Stop right there, Anne!” commanded Katherine. For a fleeting and frightening moment, Katherine Parr seemed a lot less like Julie Andrews and a lot more like Nurse Ratched. Fortunately, her return to composure was almost immediate.

  “I did not mean to demean or offend you, Anne; forgive me if I did either,” Katherine Parr continued. “It is simply that you have had your say, and now, I must have mine.”

  All what things considered? I was puzzled by the scene I had just witnessed. Katherine Parr could not have had much in the way of heartless acts to bless herself with. She did marry the studly Tom Seymour obscenely soon after Henry VIII’s death, but I didn’t think that someone as estrogen endowed as Anne of Cleves would hold that against her. I had to admit to myself that my curiosity about Katherine Parr was more than a little piqued. There was nothing prurient about my interest at all. My curiosity was strictly historical, and above reproach.

  No sooner had I thought the word “above” than a bird flew into the room. I took its glide in my stride. I had already seen and heard so much that night that I was hardly surprised by it. I admired the creature as it soared around the room a couple of times, wings spread wide, and landed gently on Katherine Parr’s shoulder. The bird was a peregrine falcon with white-and-black-barred feathers just like the barred satin of Katherine’s gown. An escapee from Arabella’s menagerie, I surmised. It had a golden chain, which Katherine fingered intently, attached to one of its legs.

  “Eurydice is very fond of Katherine Parr,” Katharine of Aragon said. “Still, the creature’s visit is most ill-timed. Can I have a volunteer to bring the bird back to Arabella, where it belongs? Jane Seymour, perhaps?”

  “With all due respect, Katharine,” Jane said, “I daren’t leave the room. I’d worry the whole time I was gone about what Ann Boleyn was doing to my chair.”

  “I will do it!” volunteered Catherine Howard. In a trice, she had risen from her chair, but Katharine of Aragon pressed her gently back into it. “Thank you, Catherine, but you will remain where I can keep an eye on you.” The young Catherine meekly resumed her seat.
>
  “I would do it, but you know how crazed the animals get when I come anywhere near them,” said Ann Boleyn, reaching out to stroke the falcon and being summarily clawed by it for her pains. “You see how it is, Dolly. That cursed Cardinal Wolsey’s cat has turned all of the animals here against me!”

  Katherine Parr was on the bird’s side. “Please allow the bird to stay, as long as it doesn’t cause any trouble,” she said. “That is, of course, if our guest doesn’t mind. It is so sweet to be free, even for a little while.”

  I had to agree with Katherine Parr. “You know why the caged bird sings,” I said to her, referencing Maya Angelou. “He sings of freedom.”

  “She sings of freedom, Dolly. I thought you would recall the legend of Eurydice.”

  Katherine Parr was right. I did recall the legend of Eurydice, stolen from her true love by a lecherous satyr. It was not like me to make that kind of mistake. I apologized for calling Eurydice a “he.”

  “I just don’t know where my head is at tonight!” I said, and my ill-considered words, like a starter’s pistol, set off yet another frenzied dash to the wooden bedpost.

  Ann Boleyn and Catherine Howard did the knock-on-wood honors this time with such zest that it frightened Eurydice right off of Katherine Parr’s shoulder and right onto the canopy over the bed. Eurydice had foxed them all; she was far too high to reach, even by the golden chain dangling from her leg over the edge of the canopy.

  “Dolly,” said Katherine Parr,” “Eurydice’s gender is not the point. The point is that all of us here before you await one thing: we each want to be free. Each heart longs to spread its wings, just as Eurydice does.”

  “You wanted to speak to me of the higher aspects of the heart,” I reminded Katherine. “I guess it doesn’t get much higher than the freedom to soar. That being the case, will you and I be speaking about freedom? Will we discuss how high our hearts are free to fly?”

  Katherine scolded me roundly. “You are too impetuous, Dolly! You have just asked me not one, but two questions! We told you that only we six may ask questions, not you. Your inattention is most troubling.”