Six of One

by Joann Spears

  You wouldn’t think that five women could comment in perfect unison without practice, but believe me, they did. “I doubt it!” the other wives chorused, loud enough for Jane Seymour to hear them all the way out there in left field.

  Wanting to keep the warm fuzzy feelings in the room going, I told Katharine of Aragon how much I was looking forward to her discourse. “So far, Katharine, I’ve heard about illicit sex, bondage, murder, and bloody battle. I feel like I need a witness-protection program! Your wifely devotion and piety being the stuff of legend, I’m sure the tenor of our conversation will be in a more uplifting vein from here on in.”

  The wives chuckled at this—all of them. Then, Katharine of Aragon issued me a warning: “Prepare, Dolly, to be amazed.”

  “I am nothing if not in the mode, Katharine,” I responded. “Feel free to amaze, daze, haze, or faze me as you see fit.”

  “Very well,” said Katharine. “I trust I will succeed in my mission. Dolly, you and I will speak on the subject of deception.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Katharine of Aragon on Why Girls

  Rule and Boys Drool

  “Deception: to mislead another, to delude oneself, to be unfaithful to one’s lover, or to disappoint—plenty of material to work with there!” I told Katharine.

  “We shall work with all of it, Dolly.”

  I was glad to hear it. “Your husband, Henry VIII, deceived you in the infidelity sense, obviously. He also did his best to deceive you, and everyone else, as to the legality of your marriage in the debacle of the King’s Great Matter. There was no one more deceptive than Henry.”

  Ann Boleyn did not agree.

  “Dolly,” she said, “you have it quite wrong.”

  “Dolly does not have it wrong, Ann. Dolly has it backwards,” said Anne of Cleves.

  “Dolly does not have it backwards, Ann; she has it incomplete,” corrected Katherine Parr.

  “Dolly does not have it incomplete, Katherine; she has it one-sided,” offered Catherine Howard.

  “Dolly does not have it one-sided, Catherine. Ann Boleyn was right: Dolly has it wrong,” said Katharine of Aragon.

  “Stop the presses, already!” I cried. “Good Lord! My head is spinning!”

  Katharine of Aragon and Ann Boleyn, new best friends, took the honors of the bedpost. That bedpost is not going to last the night, I thought to myself—unless, of course, I again had it wrong.

  “Dolly is not the only one who is confused—so am I! I just don’t get it!” Jane Seymour shocked no one by her frank admission. Ann Boleyn, bitten by the niceness bug, came to her aid.

  “Jane,” said Ann patiently, “I thought that you finally got it the last time we explained it to you.” Jane sniffled.

  “I’ve been confused ever since that lovely German guest with the husky voice was here. You remember her; she was a talented chanteuse. She seemed to think that Katharine of Aragon should not have had a care in the world. But I’ve been at sea ever since.”

  It was hard for me to credit anyone thinking about Katharine of Aragon’s life that way. Katharine had endured a grueling series of pregnancies that failed to produce needed sons, while watching her husband enjoy a succession of mistresses that culminated in Ann Boleyn. In the wake of Katharine’s crumbling marriage were executed friends, a bastardized daughter, a plundered church, and personal degradation and exile. Perhaps the husky-voiced German lady knew something I didn’t. Katharine of Aragon began to explain.

  “The guest that Jane Seymour has misquoted, Dolly, was called Mistress Marlene Dietrich. Contrary to what I am sure you are thinking, Mistress Marlene understood my situation quite well. You see, she was a lesbian, too.”

  I reeled for just a moment. Katharine hadn’t just fazed, dazed, and amazed me; she had gay-zed me.

  “But, Katharine!” I managed at last. “You were so tenacious about staying married to Henry VIII! Your last letter from exile was to him, saying that your eyes desired him above all things. Those were the last words you ever wrote, and they are hardly congruent with your being a lesbian.”

  Katharine explained. “My tenacity and my letter sprang from my sense of duty and honor. I would have failed myself and my family in both regards if I had failed to maintain my position as Henry VIII’s devoted wife and queen of England. As a daughter of the Castilian royal house, I put duty and honor above all else. For many years, I put them above even love.”

  “I see,” I said slowly. “The way you were raised, it couldn’t have been any different. You were all about death before dishonor.”

  “I was, Dolly, for a long time. Then, for a short while, love and my Maria won out—over duty, over honor, over my upbringing, over my conscience, over everything. I was tempted from grace by the woman I loved, and I committed adultery. When my transgression was discovered, I unburdened myself to my confessor and was shriven. My religion, my family pride, and my conscience called for me to cease any extramarital relations, and I remained faithful to my husband after that. It wasn’t my inclination, but it was my duty as I saw it.”

  “And your confessor, John Forrest, was executed by Henry VIII,” I said.

  “Forrest was burned at Smithfield, and it took him two hours over the flames to die.” Katharine winced at the memory. “Henry was merciless to Forrest because of what the man knew about me and the nature of my infidelity. Henry couldn’t stand to think that there was even one man alive who knew what I’d done. On top of that, Forrest urged understanding and forgiveness on Henry’s part; that sealed the poor man’s fate.”

  My academic curiosity got the best of me. “What had your confessor to say about such a surprising revelation as yours?”

  “He directed me to take advantage of God’s willingness to forgive sixth-commandment infractions, to cease my adulterous deception at once, and to resume my duties as wife and queen. I did so, at least inasmuch as I could without Henry’s cooperation; he could not forgive my deception. The King’s Great Matter, the divorce based on my first marriage to Henry’s brother, was a diversionary tactic to obscure the truth about why Henry was so desperate to put me aside. Even on my deathbed, I still hoped for Henry’s understanding and forgiveness.”

  I wondered if Kay, my Harry’s first wife, yearned for his understanding, as well. Her abrupt move to San Fransisco shortly after her divorce from him suddenly made sense. She said she had finally found her home when she moved there, and Harry had always agreed with alacrity. Henry VIII had called his marriage to Katharine of Aragon “blighted in the eyes of God”; who knew that, really, it was just sour grapes! My Harry contented himself with calling his failed first marriage a farce—and ‘farce’ is just another word for ‘deception,’ really.

  “Katharine, I would ask you who your lover was, but that would be a question, and questions are something that I am not allowed at the moment,” I said, hoping against hope that she would reveal the full name of her mystery lover. “Maria,” she had said; suddenly, that name would never be the same to me.

  “It shouldn’t be difficult for you to figure out who my lover was,” said Katharine. “She was always right there, all of my life. I wonder, looking back, that she and I did not see it sooner. And once the two of us saw it, I wonder that Henry did not see it, too. I am sure it was written all over us; we were so in love. Of course, love is blind; and sometimes, so is pride. My confessor John Forrest saw it, though. He was not surprised at all when I confessed the truth to him. He said he’d seen it coming for years.”

  They didn’t call Forrest’s religious order the Observant Friars for nothing. He had to have been observant; gaydar hadn’t been invented yet in Tudor times.

  “All of my life.” Katharine had lived out most of her life in England, but she had begun it in Spain. When she was near death as an outcast in England, her sole companions were a handful of loyal Spanish servants and the Spanish ambassador. On the very last night of her life, she was also joined also by her oldest and best friend: Maria de Salinas Willoughby.<
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  Maria had journeyed from Spain to England with Katharine of Aragon when they were both girls, and she had remained in Katharine’s service down through the years until Henry VIII dismissed her from duty as a pressure tactic to enforce his divorce. Maria Willoughby? Could ya be? I decided to test the waters.

  “Katharine, I think it was more than just coincidence that Henry VIII removed Maria de Salinas Willoughby from your service right around the time he moved to have your marriage annulled.”

  “It was,” she confirmed. “Henry also forbade Maria to have any contact with me whatsoever. She obeyed the order at first, but when she learned that the rigors of my exile had destroyed my health, she begged permission to see me again. Maria’s constant importuning on my behalf failed to make Henry relent. So, she took matters into her own hands.”

  Prior to this, I had always regarded that last meeting of Katharine and Maria at Kimbolton Castle as one of the great straight-girlfriend moments of all time: Katharine, about to die; Maria, demanding entry into Kimbolton against the royal command; the servants, sympathetic but afraid to let her in; Maria, literally forcing her way in to the castle; the dying Katharine, taking the trouble to fix hair when she learns that Maria has finally come to be with her. I suppose the personal grooming activity should have been a tip-off as to what was really going on, now that I think about it.

  “Once you and Maria were finally reunited, the two of you spoke together, alone, for hours. There must have been so much to say! The next day, you died in her arms,” I recounted.

  “Maria’s presence made the end so easy,” sighed Katharine, smiling to herself.

  “I always thought that yours and Maria’s parting must have been a real ‘best friends forever’ event, just like the final scene in Dark Victory,” I said. “Bette Davis with a brain tumor and no time left on the clock, dying bravely thanks to a faithful assist from her bestie Geraldine Fitzgerald, while Bette’s husband stands by, totally clueless. From now on,” I continued, “I’ll consider your deathbed scene as being romantic in a different sense entirely. More like Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein.” I had no idea that Katharine would get the reference, and I was about to explain when she cut in.

  “Mistress Marlene Dietrich did mention those two ladies during her visit; she was well acquainted with them,” said Katharine. “According to Marlene, Alice and Gertrude were the doyennes of the artistic social set in Paris and gave the most amusing fancy dress parties. Marlene told us that she herself would attend those parties dressed as a gentleman. She entertained us by dressing up that way and singing ballads for us just before she ended her visit here.”

  “But there are only ladies here!” I protested. “Marlene Dietrich must have had to do some scrambling to find male attire in a celestial henhouse like this.”

  “Maria de Salinas Willoughby brought some male attire with her when she came here to stay, shortly after her death in 1539,” said Katharine. “Marlene looked strikingly handsome in the items she chose to borrow from my Maria: a scarlet doublet, green hose, and boots of Spanish leather. She sang a song she called ‘la vie en rose’. Marlene looked quite like a rose herself in that outfit.”

  “From the knees up, Marlene looked like a rose. Personally, I had a hard time taking my eyes off those boots,” reminisced Catherine Howard. There was something fitting about Catherine, Henry VIII’s “rose without a thorn,” ogling Marlene Dietrich, a rose without a prick—something as fitting as those tights and those boots undoubtedly had been!

  I considered that Dietrich’s vignette of deception had been harmless and amusing; Katharine of Aragon’s deception, though, had been a real game changer, kicking off, as it did, the Protestant Reformation in England and all of the fear, death, and destruction that had come with it. There had to have been an easier way than that for Henry to have changed partners.

  “Why didn’t Henry just haul you up on adultery charges, as he did Ann Boleyn and Catherine Howard?” I asked Katharine.

  “The morality of our time simply could not admit of romantic love between women; such things existed only in the shadows, then,” she answered sadly. “I was the aunt of the Catholic king of Spain, the niece of the pope, and the darling of the people. My connections and my popularity protected me. Maria’s connections to the royal house of Spain protected her. Henry knew what he could get away with and what he could not. An accusation of lesbianism was simply beyond the pale.”

  “I understand that,” I said. “I just wonder why Henry didn’t trump up a charge of adultery between you and a man, or men, the way he did when he wanted to get rid of Ann Boleyn. Your confessor, John Forrest, for example, would have made a great correspondent. That way Henry could have killed two birds—if you will pardon the expression—with one stone. It would have taken everyone by surprise. They wouldn’t have been able to see—if you’ll pardon another expression—the forest for the trees.”

  “My reputation for honor protected me from accusations of adultery or even impurity. My piety and devotion were bywords. No one would have believed it, plain and simple. What Henry did in the end was, simply, to accuse me of lying about the consummation of my marriage to his brother and to stick to his accusation. That much he could, and did, get away with.”

  “Speaking of ‘getting away with,’ Katharine, Maria was not removed from your service until the whole annulment miasma began to take solid form around 1532; I assume that is when Henry discovered your affair?”

  “It was. Henry had been dissatisfied with our marriage for some time before that because of my infertility. Then, one day in 1532, he happened upon Maria and me with our hair all tumbling down from our cauls and my head resting on her shoulder. We had so far been so careful and discrete that, even finding us in so suggestive a position, Henry did not suspect a thing. We almost got away with it; then Henry commented that Maria and I looked just like Lombardo’s sculpture of Bacchus and Ariadne. Their legend came so close to the truth about Maria’s and my relationship that I could no longer contain myself; I confessed my deception to Henry—every bit of it, all of the years.”

  “All of the years,” I repeated, attempting a little rapid calculation. “Your relationship with Maria must have begun when you were quite young.”

  “It started in 1519. I was thirty-four years old, and Maria was twenty-nine. My husband’s mistress, Bessie Blount, had just given birth to a bouncing baby boy—the son I so signally and repeatedly had failed to produce. Henry’s delight knew no bounds, no discretion, and no consideration for my feelings or my pride. One night, as I sobbed myself sick over the situation, Maria took me in her arms to comfort me. She kissed me, and that’s when we knew. That is when all the deception started.”

  Hearing the context, I thought that the Bacchus and Ariadne comment would have put me over the edge in similar circumstances: The unfeeling Theseus abandons the sobbing Ariadne on an island. The god Bacchus finds her there, and the sight of Ariadne in tears makes him fall in love with her. As proof of his love, he takes the diadem she is wearing on her head and flings it into the heavens, where it becomes the constellation Corona Borealis—the Northern Crown. And, I thought, speaking of crowns, wait until they hear what I have to tell them!

  “Ladies!” I said, clearing my throat dramatically. “Prepare to be amazed, dazed, hazed, and fazed!”

  “Dolly! Don’t tell me you are a lesbian, as well!” gasped Jane Seymour, the wrong end of the stick firmly in hand.

  “No, Jane, I am not. Not that there is anything wrong with being a lesbian. What I have to say is not about me; it’s about Katharine’s Maria.”

  I directed my attention to Katharine. “As I’m sure you well know, Henry VIII’s direct line of descent died with his own three childless children—four childless children, if you count the illegitimate Henry Fitzroy. None of them reproduced. Fast-forward now to my world, and to Princes William and Harry of Wales, sons of the current heir apparent, Prince Charles. William will undoubtedly be king one day. His mother, the
late Princess Diana of Wales, was a woman as well loved by the people as you were. She was known as ‘the People’s Princess,’ in fact. You might be interested to know that Diana was a direct descendent of someone you know: my doppelganger, Cathy Willoughby.”

  “Cathy Willoughby was my Maria’s daughter! My namesake!” exclaimed Katharine.

  “I’ll bet Marlene Dietrich didn’t mention that!” I said.

  “My beloved Maria, a progenitress of kings! We never suspected anything like this. To think that in the fullness of time, Maria would come to have succeeded where Henry completely failed!”

  Thank goodness for that gold-filigreed handkerchief, because Katharine of Aragon was crying, once again, tears of joy. It was a gratifying sight to see, knowing she had cried so few of those and so many of the other kind of tears in life. I had been privileged to give Katharine of Aragon and her Maria the last laugh—and a hearty one at that.

  “Dolly,” Katharine explained, after composing herself, “we have some knowledge of your world, but it is very limited. The friends and relatives who were permitted to join us here over the years brought some of the knowledge from their times, but they could, of course, tell us only about the generation or two that immediately followed our own. Since the seventeenth century, our only knowledge of the outside world has come from our guests. It has been quite a job trying to patch together family genealogies since then, with only the tidbits of information that our guests have been able to provide. We only knew for sure that Henry VIII’s stock died with our own children, and that his sister Margaret’s children perpetuated the line.”

  “And that makes Margaret a damned insufferable bitch a lot of the time!” complained Ann Boleyn. “She never ceases to rub our noses in it.”

  “Well, now, Ann, I for one shall find it much easier to suffer Margaret’s pride from now on,” Katharine assured her. “My Maria suffered such remorse about our situation. She said that her love was ‘but a poor thing’ against Henry VIII’s power and prestige. I can’t wait to undeceive her of that notion!”