by Julie Sarff
“Actually, she was. After Nanny Margery…” --he clears his throat and looks sad-- “…left the service of the Palace, we only had part time nannies. No one has slept in this room in a long time.”
Poor Nanny Margery. She was the young woman who was taking care of the princes the day that Albert died. She had been watching the two young boys at their maternal grandmother’s estate outside London. When she opened the door to the playroom, young Albert rushed in. He dodged around her and raced towards an open second story window. A moment later he fell to his death.
Turns out Alex was the only other witness to his brother’s accident. It happened when he was four. There was a long inquisition. Even though Scotland Yard ruled it an accident, so many people blamed the nanny for what happened that she ended up taking her own life one year later.
When I last saw the Prince at my place, while we were watching the cricket match on TV, he told me that there was something he wanted to discuss with me about his brother, but he didn’t want to talk about it right away. He wanted to wait. I had just been through quite a shock, the murder of my ex, and another related murder that took place outside of my cottage in the Cotswolds. The Prince thought it would be too much to add to my burdens by talking about his memories of Albert’s death at that time.
“Well, that’s about it. I believe you’ve seen everything, Ms. Rue.” Finished with our tour of the nursery. Alistair shows me to a door that dumps me right onto the streets of London.
“Happy shopping,” he twitters. “Remember to call me when you wish to retrieve your car from the Kensington carpark. I’m leaving promptly at four o’clock. You’ll need to have found your beautiful ball gown by then.”
“Wish me luck,” I call, strolling out into the street.
“I wish you the best,” he responds, and closes the door behind me.
Chapter 5
It’s so nice of Alistair to allow me to keep the car at Kensington while I shop for a dress for the upcoming charity event.
I feel like royalty myself as I make my way to a store in Coventry Garden called, The High Life. It comes recommended by the Palace as a great place for formal wear.
“I know the Princesses shop there,” Alistair informed me while we were chatting away back in the nursery.
In the window of the shop is a short wine-colored dress with a 1920’s fringe around the bottom, and another dress, this one black, also very 1920’s looking.
“Too short,” I think to myself and open the door. The shop’s track lighting is warm and inviting. Each dress is displayed like the masterpiece it is on wooden stands. I find a form fitting dress that would be perfect. I can imagine myself wearing it as I enter the party, swathed from head to toe in black lace.
I scan through the rack of dresses at the back of the store remembering that the global fashion industry recently standardized sizing and for whatever reason, adopted the American numbering system. I search through the sizes -- 0, 2, 4, 6, 8. Wait a minute, I can’t find the black lace dress in a size larger than 8. That can’t be. I return to the front of the store, and look for another dress. I spy a gorgeous coral gown nearby. It too is a lacy sheath with an edgy, knotted-front on one side. I swallow hard when I see the price tag, $800. I’m sure my editor Meg is going to have a fit when I put this on the Schnellings’ company credit card, but I don’t care. It is very practical for a ball gown. I’m positive I can use it again.
I return to the racks and begin searching through sizes. Unbelievably, this dress stops at size 6. What the heck?
“Excuse me,” I call to a stick-like sales attendant who, I swear, needs to eat a donut and drink a milkshake right now or she might be blown over by the lightest of breezes.
“Yes,” she sneers and gives me the onceover.
“I’m looking for something in a size 14.”
The sales attendant stares at me incredulously.
“We don’t serve your size.”
“What?”
“We don’t serve your size,” she says again, and this time her expression changes from disinterest to belligerence.
“All these beautiful gowns in this store and there’s not one in my size?”
A second sales attendant, equally thin, sidles up to the first one, and mumbles, “What’s the matter?”
“She’s a size 14,” the first attendant responds. The second attendant looks me up and down and murmurs, “Oh?” as if I am the most unfortunate creature she has ever seen.
What happened to the “Women’s Revolution” of the 2050’s, I wonder, where women declared that we shouldn’t be judged by how we look? Quite clearly, I am being judged, and rejected, because I am big-boned.
“So you don’t have anything over size 8?”
The stick thin women look back at me as if I asked when the next shuttle to Mars departs. Finally one of them speaks, “well, we can’t carry all sizes.” Her colleague nods praying-mantis style at the wisdom of this statement. My face turning red from embarrassment, I beat a path to the door and fling it open.
That’s it --I must begin a diet. I need to stop shoving whatever is convenient in my mouth, and start eating healthy. My head flooding with thoughts of food and dieting causes my stomach to rumble. On the other side of the street is a lovely conservatory-style restaurant. I make my way over, promising that the diet starts now. A doorman opens the door for me (how swanky!) and I enter the restaurant which is beautiful, with all kinds of tastefully up-lit ferns placed around the room. I pick out the scrawniest, healthiest salad on the menu and leave with my stomach growling even louder than before. Then it’s back out into the means streets of London in search of the elusive evening gown in size 14.
Well, if I’m being truthful, I may need a size 16, but only if I want to be able to breathe.
*****
Am I reading this correctly? I ask myself several hours later, after returning home from London. I take off my glasses and rub my eyes. Schnipps has sent the next few pages of Mary Beaton’s confessional.
I, Mary Beaton, do on this day, the first of February 1589, declare that when I was 15, I became the mistress of Lord Bothwell. I was forever faithful to him, and did undertake campaigns against my own Mistress due to my undying love for my dear Jamie.
When I type “Mary Beaton” into Google, it confirms that she was one of the four little girls named Mary (hence the term “the four Marys”) who accompanied the young Queen of Scots across the channel to France for the Queen’s betrothal to Francis II.
I read on. Schnipps has sent me the next 15 pages with a request that I send him a translation as soon as possible. The pages begin with Mary Beaton describing how she met the dastardly James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, and how they maintained a relationship off and on until the time of his marriage to Queen Mary. Several times she pauses her narrative to describe how her love for Bothwell caused her to carry out an outrageous act against her mistress. But she does not go into detail about what exactly this act was, at least not in the pages I’ve read so far.
Mary Beaton’s undying love for James Hepburn causes me to scratch my head. I find it hard to believe that anyone could love the Earl of Bothwell, who seemed incapable of maintaining any sort of upstanding, monogamous relationship. I know I shouldn’t judge him by modern standards, but I do. Bothwell had wives and mistresses tucked away all over different corners of Europe.
“Oh, Mary, you should have had more sense,” I sigh as I read her enthusiastic description of Bothwell’s charms. My reading is interrupted when an instant message blips across my screen.
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Perhaps I like Schnipps more because he called Bothwell a scoundrel. James Hepburn was most likely a murderer, an adulterer, and a rapist. If Mary, Queen of Scots had one downfall, it was her taste in men. In the same chamber where the Prince and I found this book, Mary’s second h
usband, Lord Darnley and his henchmen brutally killed Mary’s secretary, David Rizzio. Lord Darnley was jealous of Rizzio, accusing him of being Mary’s lover. Most historians don’t believe there really was anything between Mary and Rizzio, yet a part of me hopes, for Mary’s sake, that Rizzio was her paramour; she obtained so little satisfaction from the other men in her life.
In my exhausted state, I picture Mary on some modern talk show with some famous shrink, and I can hear the audience telling her to kick the murderer Lord Darnley to the curb. Of course, a modern day audience would also be shouting for justice for Rizzio. Unfortunately there wasn’t any. 16th century Scotland was not about to imprison a Lord for a crime of passion. Especially not a Lord who had a claim of his own to the English throne. Lord Darnley went on, living his life as if nothing had happened, as if he weren’t married to a woman who despised him. A woman who may very well have conspired with another man to be rid of him. And the man she conspired with was James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell. Mary and Bothwell may have resorted to murder. On Feb 9th, 1567, someone blew up Darnley’s residence. The culprits placed barrels of gun powder under the room in which he was sleeping and set a fire. The bodies of Darnley and his servant were found in the fields near the house in which they had been residing. Examination of the bodies proved they were either smothered or strangled before the explosion. Now, why would someone kill them first and then blow up the residence? It would appear that blowing up the house where Darnley lived was a ruse to cover the murderers’ tracks.
Three months after Darnley was murdered, Bothwell obtained a divorce for his wife on grounds that he had been seducing the servants. Subsequently, Mary and Bothwell entered into the holy union of matrimony. The Scots were scandalized. The whole affair led to Mary’s undoing. She became immensely unpopular as Queen, and Scotland soon descended into civil war. Mary’s half-brother, James Moray, headed up a rebellion and sent her fleeing to England, to beg Queen Elizabeth I for mercy.
All of this drama is what I love about history. Modern detectives solve modern mysteries, but we historians glue together pieces of the puzzle to solve old intrigues --and the mystery of who really killed Darnley is huge. Historians still haven’t definitively answered whether or not Mary, Queen of Scots was involved.
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I finish reading the last of the 15 pages, which are mostly an endless description about the color of Bothwell’s eyes. If anything will put me to sleep, it’s some enamored woman ruminating about a man’s eye color. I shut down my computer, turn out my desk lamp, and head upstairs to bed. Outside there is a soft wind blowing, and a gentle rain begins to fall, pit pat, pit pat, on my cottage roof.
Chapter 6
The following day, I am working on the first three chapters of the Prince’s biography when I take a small break and turn on the television.
There’s the Prince in Indonesia, or somewhere, wearing a basket for a hat. Inside the basket is a snake. Some spry old man, wearing a basket with a snake on his own head, is teaching the Prince how to do a fancy dance, yet neither the Prince nor the snakes look very happy about any of it.
Then, the British press goes on to talk about the aging population of Britain, and how nobody seems to be dying anymore, so everyone is outliving their pensions. This piece sounds very dire --plague-of-locust-dire-- and the reporter drones on saying that if all the merry older folk who no longer contribute to the economy don’t die soon, they will eat Britain out of house and home.
She doesn’t exactly put it in those words, but that’s the gist.
What an awful report to run on the BBC, which, let’s face it, is mostly watched by people of a certain age. And by the number of people driving around London in their BMW’s and their M-Class Mercedes, people in Britain aren’t dying of hunger. Most of the country appears extremely well-off, in my opinion.
I reach up to turn off the television when the broadcast switches to a shot of graveyards. By now, I think every person over the age of 55 must have turned off the television. What are they suggesting? Going from discussing the elderly to shots of graveyards?
“BBC1 has uncovered a rash of grave robberies in the last few weeks, especially in the Cotswolds area, but also on the outskirts of York. Grave robberies are also prominent throughout Scotland.”
Grave robbers? That sounds positively ghoulish. I lean into the television to hear more when my cell phone rings.
“These aren’t your traditional grave robbers, that is to say they aren’t after anything in the grave, but rather they are taking historical tombstones…”
“How dare they!” I shout indignantly, ignoring my phone. It rings again. Perhaps it’s the Prince. Perhaps he has finished his snake dance and is calling to talk about the upcoming charity event.
“Hello?” I answer my phone as cheerily as possible.
“Hello, Ms. Rue?”
“Yes?”
“This is Lady Margaret Jones. Well…that sounds a bit snobbish. My friends call me Margie.”
Lady Margaret Jones? That poor, older woman who got run off the road by the manic truck driver? Oh, I hope she isn’t watching the BBC right now. She might feel terribly put out by the latest reports.
“How are you?” I reply, sounding very upbeat.
“I am very well, and I would like to invite you over to my place. We’ll have a proper tea, you know, as a thank you for all your help the other day. It was terribly nice of you to drive me to Chipping Norton. Will you come?” Margie adds.
“I’d love to. What time?”
“Around four,” she answers, and I ask her for her address. She reminds me that it was on her card, then adds, “But it’s easier just to follow the signs for Blenheim.”
“Oh, you’re in Woodstock?”
“No, no, I’m in Blenheim House proper. Please talk to the person at the ticket office, I’ll leave your name with them. They’ll bring you up to the second floor. See you tomorrow, then.”
She rings off before I can even shut my mouth. Lady Margaret Jones lives in Blenheim? I never even looked at the card she gave me. In a flurry of keys, ticket stubs, wallet, and coin purse, I fling stuff out of my bag, searching for the card Lady Margaret handed me the other day. Sure enough, her residence is listed as Blenheim.
I’m still standing agog staring at the card, like a human fly catcher, when the phone rings again.
“Lizzie?” The Prince’s voice is all warm and inviting.
“Did you get the snake off your head?” I defy anybody to ask that question without sounding like a hillbilly.
“Did you get a dress for the ball?” he responds, like Prince Charming might. Any normal person would be absolutely delighted that the Prince of Wales is worried about such a thing, but suddenly I feel a hotness in my cheeks. How can I tell the Prince that I am too fat for all the posh shops in London?
“Of course, I did,” I lie, “And it’s absolutely stunning. Wait until you see me, I cut quite a figure.”
Chapter 7
It is not right that posh shops haven’t embraced the full-figured woman. It is not right that, yet again, I had a salad for lunch. I’ve been unbelievably good about eating healthy the last few days, and I even went to see the local doctor. If I am going to try to lose weight, then I’m going to do so responsibly.
It was sheer embarrassment in the doctor’s office when the doctor kept yelling to his very hard-of-he
aring, elderly nurse (who is clearly not a locust, because she has kept working well into her golden years) that I needed to be seen by a weight control specialist in Bristol.
It was very embarrassing because there were about twenty people in the waiting area, and she kept shouting, “HUH?” and the doctor kept shouting, “YOU KNOW, THE OBESITY CLINIC!” and pointing at me.
I left the place red in the face, although the doctor did say that I am not technically obese, but an obesity clinic is the only safe place to go if one is serious about losing weight. When the nurse finally handed me a referral, I ran out of the place as fast as my feet could carry me.
I put the whole horrible event behind me as I barrel down the road heading for Blenheim Palace --home to the Dukes and Duchess of Marlborough, and the birthplace of Winston Churchill.
It’s not a long drive from Bourton to Woodstock and twenty minutes later I’m pulling into the carpark at Blenheim. I hurry around to the absolutely massive courtyard. I’m not sure how many soccer fields could fit in here…twenty, thirty? The size of Blenheim and its surroundings are staggering. At the ticket office, I show identification. They ring for a woman in a navy suit who introduces herself with the rather serious moniker of “The Director.”
The Director undoes the hook on a section of velvet rope, allowing me into a back hallway. I can’t believe my luck as I follow her along an empty wing to a door that is marked, “Staff Only.” She swings open the door and we enter Blenheim’s dazzling main entryway which is packed with summer tourists.
“First time to Blenheim?” the Director asks pleasantly.
“No actually, I came here as a kid with my parents.”
“Then you know the family, or what’s left of them, lives on the second floor.”
I nod my head and the Director leads me around more velvet ropes to the grand staircase. Once we reach the second floor, she knocks on the first door on the left, and we enter a modern receiving room. Here, two impeccably dressed elderly ladies sit sipping tea.
