Seven Will Out: A Renaissance Revel (20 page)

“What is DNA?” Catherine asked.

“Matter in human tissue by which, among other things, biological lineage can be indisputably traced.”

“It’s a good thing we didn’t know about DNA in our day!” said Douglas with feeling. “There’d be more than one girl in an awful lot of trouble if we had.”

Catherine took a more global view of the matter. “Royal houses might very well have toppled had we known about this DNA back in the day,” she said, hugging her black cat. “The ramifications of such a thing are frightening.”

“The thought of Ann Boleyn hearing you all talk about people playing fast and loose with a disembodied head is frightening as well!” said Lettice, peeking around the doorway just to make sure
la Boleyn
was not within hearing distance. “Can we change the subject, please, and get back to business?”

“Yes, of course; the business at hand; the heretofore unknown story of Lettice Devereaux and Catherine de’ Medici, partners in crime. Bring it on, girls!” I said.

Chapter Fifty-Four

Solution Convolution

“It’s quite a simple story, really; simpler than most of what I had to deal with in my political life,” said Catherine. “I wanted one of my sons to marry Elizabeth I. Negotiations thus far had failed. I suspected that Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, was the fly in the ointment. I’d never met Elizabeth, but I know human nature. As long as her beloved Dudley was in with a chance, she would never marry someone else. At least, that is what I suspected. So I decided to do something to remove Dudley from the equation.”

At the word “remove,” I put my wine goblet down rather abruptly. It was reflexive; I just couldn’t help it.

“No, Dolly, I did not attempt to—in fact did not even consider—poisoning the man. The chemical solution is the way out for the desperate or the politically nonacrobatic. I was neither, at any point in my career.”

“I’m glad you’ve cleared that up for me,” I said, taking a contented sip of wine from my goblet, as Catherine smiled.

“As I said, Dolly, I know human nature. Dudley and Elizabeth I were the same age in 1576: forty-three. It was late for Elizabeth to be having children. In fact, it was doubtful that she’d still be fertile at that point. Dudley had no children—at least no legitimate ones. And he came of a tribe that was invested in having the family name leave its mark on the world down through the generations.”

“I remember,” I said, “some of the lines from that interminable Dudley-Douglas letter—

my brother you see long married and not like to have children, it resteth so now in myself…yet is there nothing in the world next that favour that I would not give to be in hope of leaving some children behind me, being now ye last of our house.

“Dudley seemed pretty clear,” I continued, “about how important it was to him and his family for him to leave behind a legitimate heir.”

“It was also pretty clear the type of woman Robert Dudley liked, if he liked his queen; elegant, intelligent, slender, and ginger,” Catherine continued. “The queen’s cousin, Lettice, was known to be just that type, and Dudley had already shown an interest in her. And in 1576, Lettice’s husband very conveniently died.”

“Not as a result of any chemistry on your part?” I asked, still unable to completely let go of the image of Catherine de’ Medici as a “mother hourly coining plots.”

“No, indeed, Dolly,” Catherine said.

“And he did not die because of exertions on your part, Lettice, or on Dudley’s?” I inquired of Lettice. “Rumors abounded at the time regarding the two of you doing your husband in. You know the sort of thing: ‘foul whisperings abroad, murder most foul, unnatural deeds breeding unnatural troubles.’”

“I am innocent of the charge, Dolly, and so was Dudley. My husband died a natural death,” Lettice said.

“So, with poor old Walter Deveraux out of the way—what happened next?” I asked.

“As I’ve said, it seemed to me that Dudley would want to leave his mark on the world, DNA-wise,” said Catherine. “His family
history certainly seemed to suggest such a penchant for posterity, as you point out, Dolly. Dudley would need a wife to do that, of course, since illegitimate children could not so easily inherit in our day,” Catherine went on, bowing to Douglas.

“And Lettice—all elegance, intelligence, ginger, and slimness—was still young enough to be reliably fertile and was conveniently available for wifely duty. The ideal combination for the furtherance of your plan to get Dudley out of the way of your son’s marriage to Elizabeth,” I surmised.

“I opened up communications with Lettice as to my intentions,” Catherine confirmed. “We corresponded for several months via messenger about her possible marriage to Dudley. I explained to her the reasons I thought that her queen’s marriage to my son, the Duke of Anjou, would be politic for England and for Elizabeth herself. I explained to Lettice that by removing Dudley from Elizabeth’s marital equation, she could do her cousin and her country a great service. I was also able to reassure her about the Douglas shadow marriage, based on what Douglas had told me about it. Unlike Elizabeth, Lettice knew she had nothing to worry about on that score, in terms of the legitimacy of any children she might have with Dudley.”

“And how did you respond to that, Lettice?”

“Well, Catherine’s politics struck me as spot-on, and my personal inclination toward Dudley made the proposition even more attractive. The problem was to get Dudley on board. I was unable to get him to take the marital plunge on my own. Ambition and affection for my cousin Elizabeth had too strong a hold on him; he knew the price he would pay in regard to both if we ever married. I informed Catherine of my quandary and awaited word
from her. What I got was more than word; I got, in fact, the solution for the problem.”

“Which was?” I asked.

“Well, I’m not sure what was in it, exactly, Dolly,” Lettice said.

“Beg pardon?” I asked Lettice, a bit confused. “What answer had Catherine for your problem?”

“I told you, Dolly. A solution.”

“Which was?” I asked again, getting a bit tired of going around in circles. “Catherine, if Lettice won’t tell me what the solution was, will you?”

“I most certainly will not,” Catherine said. “What happens at the apothecary’s stays at the apothecary’s.”

“I thought you said chemical solutions were only for the desperate, Catherine,” I said, putting my goblet down again.

“That is in regard to poison, Dolly. I would not reduce myself to that. But when it came to a potion that would make a man broody? Well, certainly, no harm in that.”

“Can you make a man broody? I always thought that was more of a woman thing.”

“With the right ingredients, almost anything is possible, Dolly.”

I wondered what kind of ingredient would go into a broodiness potion for men. Fearing it had something to do with avian backsides and amphibian orifices, I decided not to inquire too closely about it. An unrelated question about potions did occur to me, though.

“Catherine, if you were proficient in chemistry of that kind, why didn’t you brew up a potion for yourself—one that would have secured your husband’s affections to you and away from his mistress?”

Catherine’s hatred for her husband’s longtime cougar mistress was the stuff of legend. I awaited her answer with interest.

“I wanted the man to love me, Dolly, of his own accord and for who I was. I wanted it to happen naturally. If it could not, so be it. His love would not have been worth the having if it was the result of necromancy. It was that simple.”

I got a little teary thinking of the complex career of Catherine de’ Medici, a woman who knew how to make things happen. The one simple thing she wanted was the love of her husband. She could have made that a reality but did not, in accordance with her personal guiding lights. My respect for the woman was growing, as was my affection.

“So, Catherine,” I said, picking up the threads of the Dudley plot, “you forwarded a male broodiness potion across the sea and over to Lettice. I guess she will have to take the story from here.”

Lettice happily took up the challenge. “Everything fell right into place once that potion arrived. It was in 1578. Once I’d gotten that stuff into Robert, I was amazed at the effect. He went from wanting to be Elizabeth’s consort to wanting to be a paterfamilias in no time flat! He lost all fear of any repercussions from the Douglas Sheffield situation when it came to the legitimacy of any heirs of his—he went from cursing the situation to pooh-poohing it overnight!”

“A pooh-pooh from out of the blue,” I said.

“Now that you mention it, the potion did have an azure cast,” Catherine recollected.

“At any rate, once I’d administered it to him,” Lettice continued, “we started sleeping together regularly, and a short time later, I was able to inform him of my pregnancy. There was no holding
him back once he knew about it! He said he wanted to do the right thing by his child—he was convinced it would be a son—and by the family name, for posterity’s sake. Since I knew he felt no such compunction when he was involved with Douglas, I had no doubt that it was the potion that had done the job. We were married that September, and as I am sure you know, Dolly, we eventually had a son. Sadly, the child did not survive to adulthood.”

“‘Out, out, brief candle,’” I said, thinking of the short lifespan of both Dudley’s son, the touchingly nicknamed “Noble Imp,” and poor Dudley’s aspirations for posterity.

“And so ended Dudley’s chances of seeing his DNA legitimately descend down through the ages,” Catherine said, as if she could read my thoughts.

“The poor man!” I said. “I knew he was thwarted when it came to his relationship with his queen. Little did I know he was thwarted, not to mention made use of, in so many other ways as well.”

“He played right into my hands; that much is for certain,” Catherine said, taking the tale back again. “I sent my ambassador, Simier, to England in 1579 to open negotiations for marriage between Elizabeth and my son, the Duke of Anjou. The queen, not surprisingly, was still smarting from Dudley’s defection. I’ve always thought that’s why she made something of a fool of herself with Simier.”

“History tells us,” I said, “that there was quite the flirtation going on there. I guess I can see where that kind of action might have assuaged Elizabeth’s wounded pride somewhat, in her own eyes, at least, if not in anyone else’s.”

“And of course, things only got hotter and heavier when my son arrived in England to personally press his suit with Elizabeth,” Catherine said, looking quite the proud mama.

“The middle-aged Elizabeth is said to have gone quite overboard showing your much-younger son lots of love and affection,” I recalled. “I guess maybe she thought she was rubbing things in Dudley’s face a bit.”

“Perhaps,” said Lettice. “That is certainly what people at court were saying. At least, those who were brave enough to come visit me out in the country, whence my cousin Elizabeth had banished me after I married her darling Dudley.”

“And unfortunately, Lettice, yours and Catherine’s well-laid plot did not achieve its final end. For all her flirtations with Simier and the Duke of Anjou, no Franco-English marriage took place, even though negotiations went on for literally years and years.”

“Yes, my cousin Elizabeth had, without knowing it, the last laugh. She was good at that sort of thing. As you will soon find out, I am sure, Dolly,” said Lettice, as Blanche Parry crested the door.

“Elizabeth has sent me for you, Dolly; outfit reparations for her and her sister have been completed,” she said.

Blanche gave Catherine a friendly pat on the arm and her cat a playful rub behind the ear, causing the animal to purr loudly. She then addressed Lettice, Douglas, and Amy. “The three of you, I am sure, have regaled and illumined Dolly with your very best,” she said. “Well, you’ve entertained her very well anyway,” she continued, “if the condition of the wine decanter and multiplicity of goblets about the place is any indication.”

Lettice, Douglas, Amy, and I looked sheepish for a nanosecond or so until we saw the glimmer in Blanche’s eye.

After a moment, we all relaxed into a companionable—and, for some of us, wine-enhanced—giggle.

“Well, now that Dolly has been so admirably turned out and fortified by our efforts,” Blanche said, bowing to the ladies in the room, “it is time for her to move on to the more challenging part of her time here. Are you ready, Dolly? Is there anything you need to take with you to make you, or keep you, comfortable?”

“I can see why you were made chief gentlewoman of Queen Elizabeth’s most honorable Privy Chamber, Blanche. I admire the way you look to the comfort of those around you and the way you rally and enliven the troops. What you have just said, though, has me worried a bit.”

“Whatever are you worried about, Dolly?”

“The ‘take with me’ part. Am I going somewhere? On my last visit here, I never left this room, you know.”

“In fact, I did know that, and so did my mistress. She has a highly developed—what shall I call it?—sense of theater, you know.”

“That would be the term for it,” Catherine confirmed.

“Well, that being the case, Dolly, my mistress thought you might enjoy meeting with her and her entourage in a new and different setting—a setting to do her justice. A setting that has benefited from my mistress’s considerable decorating sense, the hard work of the staff here, and the carte blanche the Almighty gave us as to works of art when we were furnishing the place.”

A million questions sprang to mind, but the best I could do was to compress them into a monosyllable with a heartfelt “huh?”

“
Per farla breve
,” said Blanche, showing off her Italian as she smiled at Catherine de’ Medici, “we have been instructed to take
you to the portrait gallery, Dolly. And it does not do to keep Elizabeth waiting.
Andiamo
!”

Chapter Fifty-Five

A Gal in a Gallery

I followed Blanche along a barren corridor with stone walls relieved only by the odd candle sconce. That monochrome stroll only heightened the impact of what I saw when we reached our destination and entered the portrait gallery. I actually staggered back in awe at what I saw. Fortunately I entered the room ahead of my companion, who was able to right me and get me steady on my feet again.