Seven Will Out: A Renaissance Revel (29 page)

“History thinks it was some kind of female disorder that led to my death—a uterine cancer, they say.”

As a historian, I was able to confirm that Mary’s end at age forty-two, after months of abdominal distention she mistakenly thought a pregnancy, had indeed come down through the ages that way.

“I was eaten alive all right, but not by any physical cancer,” Mary said. “I was eaten alive by each and every religious execution I authorized. I did not and do not harbor guilt for them in the traditional sense because of my Catholic upbringing. I harbored, and harbor, the pain that comes from violating the feelings of my own heart. I was not and am not a mean, vindictive, or cruel woman by nature. My upbringing and what I considered my duty called for me to act like one. And so I have had to answer for my actions, down through the ages, not to the lights that guided me, but to my own heart. It has not been easy.”

“That’s got to be one of the worst scenarios of nature versus nurture imaginable,” I said, with heartfelt sympathy. “How, then, Mary, do you come to be so fond of the quality of mercy speech?” I asked. “I would think that if anything, it would torture you with remorse even more than you torture yourself.”

“Don’t you see, Dolly?” asked Mary, Queen of Scots, proffering the tearful Mary Tudor a hankie. “My cousin isn’t
claiming
personal mercifulness when she recites those lines from
Merchant
. She is
asking
for mercy—for herself.”

“I no longer have to ask mercy from my Maker; he showed enough to allow me to come here, where I’ve been able to spend time with the beloved mother I was so cruelly separated from in life,” Mary Tudor said. “And thanks to your auspices, Dolly, he has now permitted me to come to terms with my cousin Jane, a woman who has proven by her gesture just now that she is well
and truly the last word when it comes to mercy. What a relief! Now all I wish for is mercy from the world at large and from history; I hope, Dolly, that somehow, when you tell our story, you can arrange for at least a little of that for me.”

It was a tall order for a postmodern world, but I felt comfortable with a promise to do what I could.

Chapter Seventy-Eight

Hindsight Is All Right

After the naked emotion of Mary Tudor’s revelation, the remaining shared praises of
Merchant of Venice
were tame indeed. Still, they served their purpose of bolstering Jane’s ego quite nicely.

“The use of literary devices in
Merchant
is simply brilliant,” said Margaret Douglas. “The three caskets is one of my favorite bits of business in the whole Shakespeare canon.”

I recalled the three caskets as one of my favorite parts of the play as well. “The lovely Portia’s suitors are asked to choose one of three caskets—gold, silver, or lead—in a sort of lottery for her hand. The gold one says, ‘Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire.’ The silver one says, ‘Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves.’ Both of these weed out suitors who are looking strictly to gain wealth by marrying Portia. The third leaden chest, which says, ‘Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath,’ would be the choice of a man who is more interested in giving to Portia, than in what he can get from her.”

“Wish I’d thought of a lottery like that when it came to marrying Darnley!” Mary, Queen of Scots, said, recalling her marriage to one of history’s great opportunists. “He’d have given himself away as a silver casket man for sure. He had a big head and an entitlement attitude to go with it.”

“Even if he had given himself away that way, you’d probably have made the same decision. Cooler heads seldom prevail when there’s a strong sexual attraction,” said Jane, based presumably on her academic base of knowledge. The poor thing had only a
brief arranged marriage prior to her execution and was reportedly dragged kicking and screaming to the altar.

“Nothing like a tempting codpiece to cloud one’s judgment,” Catherine said knowingly.

“True,” Mary, Queen of Scots, admitted, “and Darnley had that going for him even if he had precious little else.”

“I should think, daughter-in-law,” Margaret said to the queen of Scots, “that you’d have been wiser to have forsworn silver caskets altogether.”

I was taken aback by Margaret’s reference to the infamous Casket Letters of Mary, Queen of Scots. Eight epistles housed in a silver box, they were damning evidence against Mary in the murder of her husband, Darnley, and in regard to her sexual relationship with the macho Earl of Bothwell. The historical jury remains out on the letters’ authenticity, but they were certainly political dynamite in their day, blowing up in the face of the Scottish queen.

“My mother-in-law is correct about that!” was all Mary, Queen of Scots, would admit to.

There were so many questions that my professorial heart longed to see answered here. Were the letters really written by Mary, Queen of Scots? Had they been altered or forged? Was she complicit in Darnley’s murder? Was she romantically involved with Bothwell before her husband’s murder? Was her relationship with Bothwell after the murder consensual, or was she an intimidated hostage?

None of these questions were to be answered, at least for the time being. “Unraveling your convoluted story, cousin Mary,” Elizabeth pointed out, “would require that Dolly have a two-night stay here at least. We simply haven’t the
time
for that.”

My emotions were mixed; I lamented a missed opportunity but applauded the idea of moving on.

“I can tell you what literary device
I
think is most impressive in
Merchant
,” I offered. “The pound of flesh, hands down.”

I was speaking, of course, of the bargain made between two of the protagonists in the play: a pound of flesh removed from the debtor for nonpayment of a debt, at the creditor’s discretion, and the anticipated death of the debtor as a result.

“The pound of flesh is unique in its reference to something between revenge and repayment,” I said. “People in the modern world know immediately what is meant when they hear the words. But ask someone to describe it using other words, and they have difficulty. Some might say it parallels ‘an eye for an eye,’ as the Bard says, but the pound of flesh goes much deeper than that.”

“‘An eye for an eye’ is from the Bible, Dolly. Book of Matthew, chapter five,” Elizabeth reminded me. “And that pun about the pound of flesh—intended?”

I shrugged my shoulders as Elizabeth took over the conversation.

“As to the literary devices in
Merchant
,” she said, “I myself am most impressed with that of Portia’s ring, given in earnest by her to a man she loved and given away by him so very readily.”

“As my daughter-in-law would have been wise to stay away from silver caskets, I would hazard that you, Elizabeth, would have been wise to steer clear of promise rings,” Margaret said, eyeing the cameo “Essex promise” ring on my finger. I could see Margaret’s point. I could also see that although she never made queen of England, Margaret could easily be the queen of After-the-Fact. I buried my hands in the fold of my gown just in
case Elizabeth’s glance should follow Margaret’s. Thankfully, it didn’t.

“Well,” Jane said, looking quite confident again, “I would like to thank all you ladies for your kind appreciation of my play and for your support. I am feeling—if my cousin Mary Tudor will pardon the expression—quite sanguine about it again.”

Bloody Mary Tudor raised an eyebrow at Jane and rose to pour glasses of wine for everyone. The flask of wine we had present must have been a magical one; it never seemed to run dry. My own glass seemed fuller than the glasses of the others. I asked why.

“You are going to need it,” Jane said.

“You see,” Mary Tudor said, “the identity of the editor of the Grey sisters’ plays is about to be revealed.”

I took a good sip of wine and did a pretend drumroll on the cushion next to me. “And the editor is…”

The assembled Tudors looked at me pointedly. I was again reminded of the four Maries of Mary, Queen of Scots, and their reaction to my earlier debut here in a French hood.

I rose to my feet and prepared myself for the editorial revelation. I was pretty sure, though, that I already knew who it was: my unmet soulie, Catherine Willoughby.

The already-mentioned Catherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk, Twelfth Baroness Willoughby de Eresby, was about as connected to the Tudors as it was possible to be without actually being one of them. She was born the daughter of Maria Salinas, the BFF of Katharine of Aragon, Henry VIII’s first wife.

When the child Catherine was eventually orphaned, she wound up as a ward in the home of Mary Tudor, Henry VIII’s baby sister, and her husband, Charles Brandon. When Mary died, Charles married Catherine, who was then thirteen and the heiress of a considerable fortune. Charles Brandon also died in the fullness of time, leaving Catherine a young, wealthy, and desirable widow.

Catherine Willoughby was a witty, learned, and seriously Protestant woman and was great friends with the like-minded Katherine Parr, Henry VIII’s sixth wife. When Henry was on the outs with his last wife, it is rumored that he was lining up her friend Catherine Willoughby as wife number seven. The woman was saved by the bell—and Henry’s death. She went on to marry Richard Bertie and had two children, Peregrine and Susan.

Catherine also had, as a result of her marriage to Charles Brandon, three step-granddaughters: the three Grey sisters now present—Jane, Catherine, and Mary.

Chapter Seventy-Nine

Execution, Exile, and Exculpation

“Let’s take it in chronological order,” said Jane with authority. “That is probably our best chance to get the story of the editorship across clearly in the time frame we’ve got to work with.”

“It also means you get to go first,” said Catherine, showing a little middle-sister petulance.

“Well,” Jane said, taking a deep breath and no notice of her sister, “the reality is that in July 1553 I was headed for the block, leaving behind a play that I wanted desperately to see the light of day: my final words on justice and mercy. I knew that if I could get that play into the right hands, the tame, final words that I’d speak in the shadow of the block need not be my last.”

“‘Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow,’” Mary Grey quoted.

“A final request of yours, Jane?” I asked. “For grooming aids, perhaps?”

“No, Dolly. My sister quotes the Book of Psalms, a selection I recited at my execution. Psalm fifty-one. It begins–”

“‘Have mercy on me, O God, according to your loving kindness; according to the multitude of your tender mercies blot out my transgressions,’” quoted Mary Tudor. “You see, Jane, at the time of your execution, we were both praying from the same psalm.”

Jane brushed a tear from her cheek and continued her tale. “Well, immediately before my execution, I penned my last epistle on earth, and it was to my step-grandmother, Catherine
Willoughby. I enclosed my manuscript for
Merchant
in the correspondence.”

“So, Jane, am I correct in assuming that Catherine Willoughby was the editor of the Grey-Shakespeare plays?”

“Yes, Dolly. Could there possibly have been a better choice?”

“I can hardly give an unbiased opinion on that, Jane, being as big a fan of Catherine Willoughby as I am.”

“Well, I knew that the time for my work to be made public, and attributed to me, would be a while in coming. It certainly would not occur during the reign of the woman who had executed me, and probably not for a long, long time after that.”

I had to agree that four hundred years and counting did indeed qualify as a long, long time.

“So,” Jane resumed, “I realized that I had to get my work into the hands of someone with an eye to the long view. I knew also that the work would need some polishing; my expedited end meant that while I had finished a good first draft of the play, I didn’t have the opportunity to put the finishing touches on it. So the person to whom I entrusted my play would have to function as editor as well as keeper of the flame.”

“Given her precarious position under Mary Tudor’s rule, I suppose it was courageous of Catherine Willoughby to be in communication with you during your imprisonment. Not to mention her accepting from you, via a trusted messenger I presume, a lengthy and mysterious document that was all about justice and injustice.”

“My step-grandmother knew little fear,” Jane said, “but was likewise one who would let nothing get in the way of
self-preservation. I knew my play would survive the Marian counterreformation in her capable hands.”

“You were right there,” I commented. “Catherine was nothing if not a survivor.”

“That sounds like Grandmother,” Mary Grey confirmed.

“I was fortunate enough to die knowing that my manuscript had reached my step-grandmother,” Jane said, “and to be able to tell, even from her brief and cryptic message back to me, that all would be well.”

“What word did she send you?’

“Simply the words ‘Ruth three:eleven.’”

“Since Catherine Willoughby was so famously devout, I am not at all surprised she employed Bible code as a way to communicate with you. I recall that Ruth was one virtuous woman, according to all sources, but I’m not savvy enough to identify the words in that verse. Can you help me, Jane?”

“‘
And now, my daughter, fear not. I will do for thee all that thou requirest, for all the city of my people doth know that thou art a virtuous woman.’”

“Short, pithy, and to the point,” I commented. “I expect being circumspect and expeditious with her communications around that time was especially important. She surely must have been planning, if not executing, her flight from England as one of the Marian exiles,” I said.

Catherine Willoughby was a staunch reformer and Protestant, and by all accounts rather shirty about it. She had made enemies in the Catholic camp in England and would have been, under Mary Tudor’s rule, a marked woman. Like many of the Catholics in England at the time, she went into voluntary exile to avoid the fate of those martyred by Mary Tudor. Catherine and her
husband wound up in Lithuania, of all places, where they supported themselves doing administrative work for the king of Poland.