Seven Will Out: A Renaissance Revel (35 page)

“And did everything work out to your satisfaction?” I asked.

“Well, yes and no,” said Elizabeth. “I passed the plays off to Hunsdon in the late 1580s, and he died in 1596. By the time of my death, in 1603, I’d seen only two of Mary’s plays,
Julius Caesar
and
All
’
s Well That Ends Well
, performed. I’d liked to have seen them all, but that was not to be. I left it to faith that my sister’s other works would see the light of day after my death, just as I hoped that my own works would.”

“‘Behold, the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, and has long patience for it, until he receives the early and latter rain,’ as the Bard has said,” I pointed out.

“That is the Bible, Dolly. James chapter five, verse seven,” Margaret said.

“Darn! Goofed again! I hate to mess up like this, especially in front of such erudite ladies as yourselves.”

“Well, Dolly, ‘into each life some early and latter rain must fall,’” said Mary, Queen of Scots. “Although in my own life, I suppose it was all latter rain, really.”

And so Mary, Queen of Scots, the
décapitée
who put the “gal” in gallows humor and knew a segue when she saw it, set the stage for her own revelations.

Mary was Queen of Scots from earliest infancy because of her father’s death in one of the worst military drubbings in the history of Scotland, a country with plenty of such drubbings to its name. The child queen was eventually shipped off to France to be held in some very gilded cold storage until she was old enough to marry the French prince. She was quite a prize, you see, being not only the Scottish queen but an heir to the English throne as well, at least by strictly Catholic lights.

The child grew up a beauty, and the French marriage went off as planned, but the groom died in his teens from an ear infection.
Widowed and at a loose end, the elegant Mary returned to rough-and-ready Scotland to assume the reins of government. It was the world’s worst case of cultural dissonance and an unmitigated disaster. After some of the poorest decision making on record, Mary wound up making a run for her life to Elizabeth I’s England. The back-door advent into her country of the woman that Catholic Europe thought should be ruling it in her place paralyzed Elizabeth’s faculties of resolution; the result was close to twenty years of house arrest and imprisonment for the Scottish queen. Mary, Queen of Scots, was finally executed under Elizabeth’s orders in 1587.

Mary was dressed in the same black and white that she had favored for several of her extant portraits. It suited her perfectly. Her headpiece was a lacy, white French hood with billows of even more lace falling behind into a veil. She wore a large, lacy ruff, and the bodice of her gown featured soft white linen with curlicue embroidery. The effect was enchanting, as if her face was nestled in a cloud somehow.

“I don’t like to brag, Dolly,” the woman began.

“But she won’t let that stop her,” Elizabeth finished.

“The pot calling the kettle black, surely,” Mary Tudor offered.

“I think that when it comes to bragging, my Scottish cousin ‘does it with better grace,’ but Elizabeth ‘does it more natural,’” Jane said puckishly.

“Well, I bested Elizabeth on one thing, and I am not ashamed to crow over it,” said Mary, Queen of Scots. “In fact, on this one thing, I bested everybody else in this room.”

“Your particular accomplishment?” I asked.

“Being prolific,” she said.

“With one child to your name? Surely not,” I said, thinking of Catherine Grey and Margaret Douglas.

“I wasn’t speaking about fertility, Dolly. I was talking about literary output. I wrote more of the plays in what is known as the Shakespeare canon than anyone else here.”

Chapter Ninety-Two

Propinquity with Antiquity

“Well, I guess your literary fecundity is hardly surprising. Close to twenty years of incarceration must have given you plenty of time to write,” I conjectured.

“Yes, and to ponder long and hard the role that sex and violence played in my life and my downfall,” Mary said. “Four of my dozen were dramas that amplified those recurring themes in my experiences.”

“And the other eight?” I inquired.

“The castles in which I served my time were places that were, shall we say, off the beaten path. Those who resided in them were isolated from others, and from opportunities for entertainment such as the masques and plays that I had enjoyed when I lived at court, and that I missed so much. Those various castles all had, as a result, generously furnished libraries. During my confinement, I had access to all sorts of tomes that I could use for my research.”

“Your research into—what?”

“History. The remaining eight of my plays all dealt with history, Dolly.
King Henry IV
,
Part 1
;
King Henry IV
,
Part 2
;
King Henry V
;
King Henry VI
,
Part 1
;
King Henry VI
,
Part 2
;
King Henry VI
,
Part 3
;
King John
;
King Richard II
,” Mary recited, proud as a peacock.

“I can’t help but notice that you stopped at
Richard II
,” I said. “Did you know that Margaret Douglas was covering the subsequent stories of Richard III and Henry VIII?” I asked.

“No, Dolly; I took the modern history of England in numerical order of its kings, and the project wiled away many a dreary hour during my captivity. Unfortunately, I ran out of time, or
perhaps I should say, luck, before I could get past Richard II,” Mary said.

“You wrote in English, rather than Scots or French; that was certainly in keeping with your subject matter.”

Mary nodded. “And of course, everyone around me in my captivity spoke English, and my reference works were in English, so writing in the language seemed the natural thing to do,” Mary said.

“I’m surprised you chose English history over Scottish, though,” I said. “You were, after all, the queen of Scots.”

“Well, Dolly, the preponderance of my plays involved English history because that is what I had access to in my confinement,” Mary said.

“Edward Hall’s
Chronicle
, I suppose?” I asked.

“Yes, among other things.”

“It always tickles me to remember that he came from the Parish of St. Mildred’s in the Poultry,” I admitted.

“Holinshed’s
Chronicles
were available in the latter half of my imprisonment, as well,” Mary told me. “And there was some history in there that allowed me to pay tribute to my native Scotland with one play, at least.”

Not being one to tempt fate, I chose my next words carefully.

“That would be
The Scottish Play
, of course.”

“I know why you refer to my play euphemistically, Dolly. Mistress Sarah Bernhardt, when she was here for career advisement, told me about the suspicion that now surrounds my work of Scottish history. As its author, though, I feel I am exempt from the curse and will call it by its name:
Macbeth
.”

Chapter Ninety-Three

The Lots of Some Scots

The Scottish Curse, as it has come to be known, holds that in theatrical circles, it is bad luck to refer to
The Scottish Play
, or even to the surname of its husband-and-wife protagonists, by name. Elaborate cleansing rituals, such as turning three times or reciting a particular Shakespearian line, are said to be antidotes to inadvertent mentions of the forbidden word.

“I guess Sarah Bernhardt would have known what she was talking about when it came to
The Scottish Play
,” I said. “When her theatrical career was at an impasse in the 1880s, she pulled her chestnuts out of the fire with a very successful portrayal of Lady Macbeth. Based on what I’ve been hearing since my arrival here this evening, I have a feeling that idea of hers may have come from a visit here for career counseling.”

“You are correct, Dolly, but before we go any further, you must perform a cleansing ritual for saying the
M
word out loud just now. Three times around, please!”

“Does it matter if she goes clockwise or counterclockwise?” asked Mary Grey.

“Good question. ‘The devil is in the details,’” said Catherine, who, if anyone, ought to know.

“I think the direction of Dolly’s choice will be quite satisfactory,” Mary Tudor said.

“I don’t know,” said Elizabeth. “My mother says that widdershins is bad luck.”

“Widdershins?” I asked, as I rose from my seat on the floor.

“Yes, Dolly. It is an old-time mystical word for counterclockwise.”

Remembering my last encounter with Ann Boleyn, I realized that she ought to know as well.

Three times around clockwise I spun myself, and let me tell you, it wasn’t easy. The mini-Bernoulli effect that the endeavor created around my farthingale nearly knocked me off my feet.

As I spun, I considered the plot of the
Scottish Play
, aka
Macbeth
.

Macbeth, incited by the prognostications of three witches, embarks on a mission to attain the Scottish throne. Sharing in his ambition is his wife, Lady Macbeth, the one who wears the hose and doublet in the Macbeth family. Macbeth wavers in the blood spilling required to operationalize his plan, but his wife, who is so tough that she doesn’t need a first name, eggs him on. Eventually, guilt and mental illness set in. Macbeth starts seeing things, and Lady Mac goes all OCD about washing the blood of their victims from her hands and eventually kills herself. Macbeth himself is killed at the hands of MacDuff, whose family Macbeth has killed to further his ambitions.

“The
Scottish Play
must have crystallized for you much of what you experienced in your life in Scotland,” I said to Mary. “The clans and their fierce bloodline loyalties; the ruthlessness and the violence; the magic and mystery of the old ways; and of course, the abysmally bad Scottish weather—you got it all in there!”

“
Macbeth
was satisfying to write in a number of ways. As with all my plays, writing it helped to pass the time, a crucial function when one is a captive.”

“Too true,” said Catherine with feeling.

“The play also served as a crystallizing of my own political experiences, as you say, Dolly; ambition, murder, and mayhem.
Of course, it also allowed me to show some Scottish pride by memorializing a piece of my country’s ancient history. It served one other function that may be a little less obvious to you, Dolly.”

“It’s hard to believe you could have fit any more meaning than that into the play,” I said.

Mary, Queen of Scots, raised her hand to her mouth, as if to hide a guilty giggle.

“Well, whatever else it was that you worked in, I’m glad it gives you something to giggle about,” I said.

“I can’t help it,” she told me. “I feel so wicked when I think about what I did!”

Chapter Ninety-Four

Stitch and Bitch

“Out with it, Mary! What did you do?” asked Elizabeth. “I’m as curious to know as Dolly is.”

“Me too!” said Mary Tudor. “It must have been really something to make someone with a track record like yours feel wicked.”

“‘Naughty’ is probably a better term,” the Scottish queen confessed, enjoying the mystery she had created. “I will give you a hint. It involves someone you all know.”

“Not poor old Dudley getting raked over the coals again,” I said. He’d met the Scottish queen when he’d been proposed as a potential husband for her; of course the relationship had gone nowhere.

“No.”

“Well, since everyone here knows the person involved, I’m going to go out on a limb and assume he or she is English,” I said.

“Correct, Dolly.”

“Then it is likely someone you met while you were imprisoned here,” said little Mary Grey.

“Well, then, the pool of candidates can’t be all that large,” said Catherine. “One doesn’t get around much under house arrest.”

“When one is on house arrest, one takes one’s friends and amusements as one finds them,” the Scottish queen said.

“Well, now I know that you had your writing to help pass the time during your captivity, Mary. Other than that, all I know about your pastimes during your incarceration is that you did a lot of needlework to entertain yourself and while away the hours. You and Bess of Hardwick, your primary wardress, embroidered many a panel together, and a number of them are still extant.”

“Are they, Dolly?” asked the Scottish queen.

“Yes,” I answered, “and I’ve seen some of them. I like to do a bit of cross-stitch myself, so viewing historic textiles is something I indulge in whenever the opportunity presents itself.”

“Which of Bess’s and my embroideries have survived?” she asked, with a craftswoman’s concern.

“Panels of animals, both real and fanciful, that the two of you embroidered,” I said. “Some of them were emblematic, some personal, and some just plain charming and fanciful. I recall fishes, birds, an elephant, a monkey, a cat and a mouse, and a strikingly beautiful peacock attributed to Bess. And, of course, my favorite of them all, attributed to you,” I said admiringly.

“And that was?” the Scottish queen asked.

“An embroidered rendering of a pet dog of yours,” I said. “In addition to its being a lovely piece of embroidery, it is a glimpse into your day-to-day life as well. The dog is called Jupiter. He was a white dog with black markings.”

“That dog adored me,” Mary, Queen of Scots, said. “I called him Jupiter as a kind of joke. He was about as unlike his namesake, the god of thunder and lightning, as he could possibly be. He was a sensitive animal, fearful of sudden noises and of storms. And he could read people as though he were human himself. Strong personalities and tension between individuals upset him terribly.”

“Can’t have been easy for the poor old pup, living around Bess of Hardwick,” Elizabeth said.

“I’ll bet,” I said.

“Bess thought it ridiculous that I called the dog Jupiter,” Mary, Queen of Scots, said. “She thought that dogs, like people, should hold up their end. She really didn’t see the point of Jupiter at all. She insisted on referring to him not as Jupiter but as Spot. She felt the name suited him better.”