Seven Will Out: A Renaissance Revel (25 page)

“My husband was a giant of a man in spirit as well as body, Dolly, in spite of his humble birth. And yet everyone said he was beneath me.”

“Surely, not with a straight face,” I said, looking down into the eyes of the four foot-ish Mary.

“The joke was on everyone who did not realize what a fine man Thomas Keyes was!” she snapped, pinching my arm by way of comeuppance for my thoughtless words.

Though she be but little, she is fierce
, I thought, surprised at the ire that the little dynamo before me could summon up.

“Thomas could look down into my eyes without looking down on me as a person. He was the only man I knew who could do that. Do you blame me, Dolly, for loving him, even though he was only a gatekeeper?”

I was as impressed with Mary’s dignity and simple forthrightness as I was with her spirit. Because I was thus impressed with her, I felt it only right to be honest with her in return. “I do not blame you for
loving
the man,” I replied. “I have to wonder about your wisdom in
marrying
him, though, given the climate of the Tudor court. You had to know that the queen—Elizabeth at the time—would be furious. You had to have also known how just about everyone else at the court would react, as well.”

“You are forgetting my gynecology, Dolly,” Mary said.

“Oh my—this conversation is about to get
way
too up close and personal, isn’t it?” I asked, feeling, I conjectured, like a manly man being forced by his girlfriend to watch
Call the Midwife
.

“I think you will find that the girl means
genealogy
, Dolly,” said Mary Tudor. “If
anyone
’
s
gynecology is worth forgetting, surely it would be my own.”

I winced as I recalled the phantom pregnancies that had marked Mary Tudor’s short reign and blighted her final months on earth.

“After my father’s death,” Mary Grey resumed, “my mother married her master of the horse, Adrian Stokes. It was a marriage that was beneath her yet a very happy one in every way.”

“So you thought, Mary, that you would be wise to follow your mother’s example?”

“Not just my mother’s example, Dolly. You are forgetting your history again, and I am, quite frankly, surprised at you. Surely you of all people realize who else’s example I was following.”

I thought a moment about those who might have been romantic exemplars for the little Mary.

Mary looked at me fixedly; in fact, everyone in the room did. It reminded me of the way the four Maries of Mary, Queen of Scots, had looked at me on the occasion of my last visit here.

I knew, now, what the diminutive Mary was alluding to.

Chapter Sixty-Seven

Mary Grey’s Matrimonial Testimonial

“Your mother wasn’t the first one in your family tree to eschew aristocratic suitors and make a surprising match; your step-grandmother, Catherine Willoughby, did so as well, didn’t she?”

“She did, Dolly; she was a most outspoken component of marrying for love.”

“I think you mean proponent, dear,” Jane said sweetly.

“Well, anyway—her decidedness on the matter influenced my own mother. Witnessing the happiness that both my mother and my step-grandmother knew helped me to make my own decision.”

Since my last visit here, I’d had reason to be particularly interested in Catherine Willoughby, the gal voted most likely to succeed Henry VIII’s sixth wife, Catherine Parr. Her chance at fame as Henry’s seventh consort ended with Henry’s predeceasing his last wife. This happened between Catherine Willoughby’s arranged marriage to Mary Grey’s grandfather, Charles Brandon, and her later marriage for love to Richard Bertie, her gentlemen usher.

“You know, Mary, that as an academic, I am familiar with your history, but it never occurred to me that you had such compelling examples set for you when it came to your marriage. Now, suddenly, it looks less like foolhardiness and maybe more like a fusion of courage and family tradition.”

“I appreciate that acknowledgment, Dolly.”

My eyes got misty as I considered the history of this romantic little lady and how her story—the long and the short of it—ultimately played out.

“Unlike your mother and step-grandmother, you did not get away with your less-than-noble alliance. Both you and your husband were imprisoned almost immediately after the ceremony.”

“And we never saw each other again,” said Mary, sniffling.

“Your husband, while kept well away from you, eventually left prison and lived a free man thereafter until his death,” I recollected. “You were kept under house arrest in a series of places, including the home of Catherine Willoughby. You eventually achieved a degree of social rehabilitation but died at a young age and with little to your name.”

“What I had in jewels, I bequeathed to my step-grandmother—the jewels, that is, and a few other particulars.”

“Other particulars?” I asked, my interest piqued.

“I refer, Dolly,” said Mary, smiling, “to my literary works.”

Chapter Sixty-Eight

A Little Ire and Irons in the Fire

“Not you too!” I said to Mary.

“Why
not
me, Dolly?” Mary asked, stamping her foot in pique at my statement. I supposed it was true what they say about how “the smallest worm will turn being trodden on,” and changed my tack.

“The emphasis there was on the
too
, not on the
not you
, Mary. I’ve got no reason to doubt that you might have had literary leanings. Actually, given what I’ve just learned about Margaret Douglas, I suppose I might even think it runs in the family.”

“You can say that again,” said Mary, Queen of Scots.

“Don’t encourage Dolly like that,” Elizabeth said. “She talks enough as it is. Time is of the essence, and there is more than one tale left to be told. “Dolly,” said Elizabeth, “will hold her tongue and let our little Mary get on with her tale.”

“I guess that is your spiritedness showing, Elizabeth, and not arrogant willfulness,” I said sweetly.

“I think maybe it is Elizabeth’s unfeelingness showing,” said Catherine, hugging her sister Mary about the shoulder and leaning her head against her sister’s. “Calling Mary
little
, indeed! You know how sensitive she is about her height, Elizabeth.”

“And you oughtn’t to use words like ‘unfeeling’ to me,” Elizabeth said, with, well, feeling.

“In all fairness, Elizabeth has tried very hard to live down her reputation for imperiousness ever since Mistress Hillary Clinton was here to visit us,” Jane said.

“For marital advisement from the six wives?” I inquired.

“No, for career advisement on running for high office,” Mary Tudor said. “We talked a lot about showing one’s softer, human side.”

“Only not too much,” said Mary, Queen of Scots, the voice of too much of a good thing.

“Our advice to Mistress Hillary led me to some healthy introspection and a reassessment of my own
modus operandi
,” Elizabeth said. “Mistress Hillary and I struck up a bargain; I was to work on what she called the warm and fuzzy on this side of the great divide, and she was to work on it on the other side. I refer to it on my end as my ‘farthingale pledge.’”

“And you call it your ‘farthingale pledge’ because?”

“Because Mistress Hillary accused me of having an iron arse under an iron one,” Elizabeth said.

“My sister got her own back though,” Mary Tudor said, with sibling pride. “She referred to Mistress Clinton’s preferred garb as ‘brass-tacks slacks.’”

My mind imploded a bit at the thought of this grand bargain across the ages, between farthingale and pantsuit, so to speak, and at the sheer amount of collective work that would have to be done.

“Elizabeth does
try
to let her softer side show nowadays. Let’s not hold it against her if she fails miserably at it at least as often as she succeeds,” said Mary, Queen of Scots.

I thought the sentiment very big—if a bit passive-aggressive—from someone who had actually been executed at the command of the woman she was defending.

Elizabeth’s sister was not about to jump on the
poor Elizabeth
bandwagon with Mary, Queen of Scots. Bloody Mary Tudor was, in fact, going to show a little iron farthingale of her own.

“Let us not forget, ladies, that we are all Tudors; we are all above getting our feelings hurt over trivialities.”

“Yes,” I chimed in, “let’s not get our knickers in a twist.”

“Dolly,” Margaret Douglas pointed out, “none of us is wearing knickers. They didn’t come into fashion until after Elizabethan times.”

We all had a hearty laugh as Jane assumed the unlikely role of bartender, passing fully charged wine goblets all around. Now that we were drinking buddies, it felt as though we had grown closer as a unit. We settled in with our libations to hear what Mary Grey had to say about her heretofore unsung literary endeavors.

Chapter Sixty-Nine

Mary Grey Tells It to Liz Like It Is

“My works were cries from my heart as I languished in my various custodial situations,” Mary began.

“I supposed they would have had to be,” I said. “You married at a young age—around twenty, as I recall—and spent the rest of your dozen or so years in custody of one kind or another for doing so.”

“Being in custody gave me a lot of time to think,” Mary said, “about my many grievances. The thing that wrangled the most was what I considered the two-facedness of the queen, Elizabeth, when it came to romantic matters.”

Elizabeth’s face, or faces as Mary would have it, went a bit purple at this statement. I was not entirely clear if this was because of Mary’s grammatical error or the personal insult. Either way, little Mary Grey knew an oncoming smack when she saw one and fielded it masterfully.

“You told me to get on with my tale, Elizabeth, and getting on with it is what I am doing. I speak of feelings I harbored in life in the real world. We may be above all that now, but we weren’t back then. You were so hell-bent in life, Elizabeth, on keeping all the ladies in your coterie out of romantic involvements. How any of us who acted on normal romantic impulses were made to pay the price for it! And all the time you were making a fool of yourself over Robert Dudley. The duplicity of it was so unfair!”

“Well, rank does have its privileges,” Elizabeth offered in her own defense.

“She’s right,” I said, remembering the stories of military life that my dad had told me when I was a child.

“Be that as it may, the irony of the situation festooned in my soul,” Mary admitted.

“I’ll bet it festered, too,” I said, correcting her as gently as I could. She seemed grateful for the consideration.

“As you’ve mentioned, Dolly, one of my wardresses during my time in custody was my own step-grandmother, Catherine Willoughby. She noticed my languishing spirits during my time in her care.”

“Yes, she is on record as saying that you wouldn’t eat as much as a chicken leg over the course of two days.”

“You know how grandmothers are. She eventually wheedled out of me the thing that was undermining my spirits the most. Once she had, she took great pity on me and did her best to help raise my spirits. She eventually made an excellent suggestion as to how I could relieve myself of my feelings.”

“A suggestion,” said Margaret Douglas, beaming with pride, “that she got from me, during one of our many friendly visits together.”

“What happened on that visit?” I asked Margaret.

“Catherine Willoughby shared with me her concern about Mary Grey’s bitterness with the virgin queen duplicity situation, as we shall call it; she said it was eating the poor child alive. She wondered how Mary could get it out of her system. I reminded Catherine of how she had started
me
on my literary endeavors and of how very cathartic I had found the writing of my plays. I had no qualms about recommending that she advise Mary Grey to do the same thing: to get her feelings out on paper.”

I don’t know who first noticed that history repeats itself. Whoever he was, he’d have felt totally vindicated if he could only have been a fly on the damp stone walls that surrounded me.

Chapter Seventy

Iniquities and Ditties

“All right now, Mary. The spotlight is on you! Tell Dolly all about those plays of yours,” said Catherine Grey, rubbing her sister’s shoulders as she spoke. The pair of them looked for all the world like a prizefighter getting ready to go the next round and his manager giving him the old pep talk; the only things missing were the towel, the sweat, and
Rocky
’
s Theme
.

The subflyweight Mary came out swinging. “I’ll get straight to cases, Dolly. I took my grandmother’s suggestion about getting my feelings out by writing. Before I knew it, the habit consumed me. I spent most of my captivity writing, drafting and redrafting my plays, obsessed with making them as perfect as I could.”

“They say that when you were under Sir Thomas Gresham’s charge in Bishopsgate Street, you spent all your time locked in a room with your books. I guess what you were doing in there is not so much of a mystery now.”

“I wrote two plays themed on the feelings that were crushing my soul. The first dealt with the unnatural idea of eschewing normal sexual relations, put forth as Elizabeth’s command.”

“Mary Grey versus the celibacy agenda, round one,” I said, the wine having hit me a bit, I’m afraid.

“My plot concerned a ruler who has sworn off sexual relations for the sake of study and has his companions do the same. The presence of lovely and highborn ladies, desirable and suitable in every way, puts a chink into the—as you would call it, Dolly—celibacy agenda. The ladies demand a reasonable period of proof of love—one year—at the play’s end, leaving the field
open for eventual consummation of the various unions sought by the characters.”

“Sounds like a “Love TKO” to me,” I said. “It also sounds a lot like Shakespeare’s
Love
’
s Labour
’
s Lost
.”

“That’s because it
is Love
’
s Labour
’
s Lost
, Dolly,” said Mary, rising from her cushion. Elizabeth came and stood beside her, all five-feet-eight or so of Elizabeth next to the Lilliputian Mary. “And,” Elizabeth continued, “I must have my say—”