Seven Will Out: A Renaissance Revel (4 page)

“Wally isn’t crazy about that particular ad though,” I went on. “His veterinary view makes the whole fur thing a bit much for him, even though the furs were faux.”

“Which ad does Wally prefer?” Bella asked.

“The one where she’s swathed in velvety red roses, seated with arms wrapped around knees, with the roses falling away to expose her left kneecap. He calls it the petals-and-patella ad,” I said, showing off his scientific prowess just a little bit.

“I like that one too! But not as much as the cat lady one,” Bella said.

“I’m not surprised,” said Miss Bess, flicking a cat hair off Bella’s shoulder.

Auntie Reine Marie—so stylish and well equipped to make suggestions along these lines—had given Lizzie the idea for this very popular ad. She was proud of it and rushed in to correct Bella’s fast-and-loose interpretation.

“Cat
woman
, Bella, not cat lady. Cat ladies do not wear elegant leather cat suits with navel cut outs.”

“Nor would they think to make the cat suit white instead of black,” Jean added. “What a well-received break with fashion tradition that was!”

“The world is certainly Lizzie’s stage these days,” Miss Bess admitted.

We were nearing home. My own little world, I was sure, would be a plenty big enough stage for me that evening.

Chapter Ten

The Lives of Six Wives

The Rainbow Chateau is the name Wally and I chose for our little Cotswolds cottage. Surprisingly, the prismatic aspect of the home was not pointed out to us when we set about purchasing it. We were pleasantly surprised the first time we walked out our back door after a rain shower and found our Shakespeare garden nestled under an absolutely perfect arc of a rainbow. Most rainy days gift us with a rainbow as perfect as that first one. In fact, Wally and I actually look forward to precipitation nowadays.

As my relatives and I crested home, the skies were sunny. We moved into gossip cleanup mode about the last six of our acquaintances who were currently gossip worthy: the six exes of my former fiancé, Harry.

“Kay is so happy living on the West Coast,” my cousin Jean said of Harry’s first ex. “She’s turned out to be such an effective political activist and asset to her community—and of course, there’s her work on the international scene as well.” I was glad to hear that the kindly Kay was living a full and productive life.

“Anna Belinda has been migrating between the States and the UK; she’s working on a music video with Lady Gaga!” said Bella. “She’s going to do the ‘ebony’ bit in a remake of the McCartney/Jackson pop hit ‘Ebony and Ivory.’ With those raven tresses of hers, she’ll be perfect for it.”

Taking Harry’s wives in numerical order, I inquired what was going on with Jane, his third ex.

“Jane is traveling abroad, and Cleva has joined her for the trip,” said Miss Bess, accounting for ex number four as well.
“Jane had taken a great notion to take a grand tour of Europe and broaden her cultural horizons. Cleva is acting as her traveling companion for the Amsterdam leg of the trip.”

“I can see the ill-advisedness of letting someone as dippy as Jane go around unaccompanied in a party city like Amsterdam,” I said. “And Cleva would likely enjoy a stint of chaperonage, seeing as no one chaperones the chaperone.”

“Kitty and Kate are traveling too. They are touring the Orient together!” said Bella, bringing in Harry’s fifth and sixth wives, respectively.

“Kitty got out of the Betty Ford clinic a couple of weeks ago,” Jean said. “She says she is done forever with sex, drugs, and rock and roll.”

“I feel pretty sanguine about the drugs and rock and roll part. Not so much about the sex part, knowing Kitty the way I do. Still, she has my best wishes for her getting clean and sober.”

“Well, you know, Dolly, Kate is not much of one for the swinging high life. So, she kindly volunteered to accompany Kitty on a meditation tour of India to get her away from all the old people, places, and things,” Jean went on.

“Well, Kate is unequalled when it comes to being serious and sober, and if anyone can pull off a geographical cure for Kitty, I guess it is Kate,” I said as we pulled into the drive.

Wally was waiting for us at the door, arms full of flowers—a bouquet for each of us. “I will get the luggage, ladies. I’ve gotten the guest rooms all ready for you, and dinner is waiting on the stove.”

If I’d had any envy at hearing about Harry’s exes having adventures all around the globe, it melted then and there.

Chapter Eleven

To Go, Or Not To Go, Commando

I entertained my company in the good old-fashioned way, around the kitchen table. We joked, speculated, and gossiped the way close friends and family will. When dinner was over, my guests headed out to see a movie to allow me to work in peace and quiet. I had to put a few finishing touches on the commencement address I was finalizing for the next day.

My
Henry VIII, Man of Constant Sorrow
had been well received, if controversial, in Europe as well as in the United States and the United Kingdom. I’d had the honor and pleasure of speaking about it to academic audiences all over the world in the months after its completion. International interest in my treatise, and in me, had been flattering indeed. It had also given me a certain cache at the institution where I worked—hence my being asked to give the aforementioned commencement address. Several professional contacts who could easily turn into prospects for the career change that I’d discussed with Burr would be in the audience for the address; they had come, in fact, from several countries. Because my future felt so very much in the balance, I especially wanted my speech to be impressive.

Of course, I also wanted to look drop-dead amazing while I delivered the address. There is only so much you can do about that, though, when it comes to a doctoral robe. Still, I wanted to be sure that my garment was in tip-top shape for the upcoming event, even if hiding my own shape was all that it would do. Truth be known, I also had an ulterior motive for wanting that doctoral robe to look good.

Taking a break from my speech, I unfolded and examined the robe.

“Sexy?” I asked, holding the garment in front of me.

“Depends what you will be wearing under it,” said Wally with a grin I can only describe as hopeful.

Wally has this fixed fantasy about attending a commencement ceremony at which I am wearing nothing but the doctoral robe, a secret known to no one in the commencement audience but him. I am not averse to fulfilling the fantasy but have held off on doing so. I have always advocated that every wife should have at least one coital contingency plan for keeping the interest going, and this was mine. Given both Wally’s and my restlessness lately, I wondered if perhaps it was time for me to play the robe-and-mortarboard card. While I considered it, I assumed a poker face—no pun intended—and answered Wally’s question.

“You never know,” I said, batting my eyelashes and untangling the tassel on my mortarboard with what I hoped was a provocative gesture.

“‘Lend me your gentle hand, and take my heart,’” said Wally, tenderly untangling my fingers from the tassel and raising them to his lips.

“All that puttering you’ve been doing in the Shakespeare garden is showing on your hands,” he said with concern, rubbing a finger over some chapped skin. “They must be frightfully sore.”

I looked at my fingers and had to admit that I could probably grate cheese on them. Wally laughed.

“Some lanolin on them ought to set things right,” he said, kissing each of my five fingers. “I’ll get Janie to compound some for you.”

One of the nice things about being married to a man who works in the sheep industry is that you are never at a loss for moisturizing agents. The research assistant Wally mentioned had quite a sideline in variously scented lanolin-based emollients.

Wally had Janie on the cell phone in a moment and handed the phone over to me.

“I’d suggest lavender scent for your lotion, Dolly. I endorse it for its soothing effects. Your Mary swears by it,” Janie added. Said Mary, my would-have-been stepdaughter, was Janie’s best customer.

“Anything to make my hands, and the course of true love, smoother,” I joked, finalizing the order and handing the phone back to Wally.

“Now I shall allow you to finish your sartorial and speechifying arrangements in peace,” Wally said, heading for the kitchen to clean up the dinner dishes. “‘Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand?’” asked Wally dramatically, gesturing toward the carving knife that Cousin Kath had left dangerously close to the table’s edge. “‘Come, let me clutch thee!’”

As Wally bustled about contentedly in the kitchen, I turned my attention to finishing my commencement speech. I hadn’t gotten very far when the phone rang.

“For you, Dolly,” Wally said, handing me the phone. “It’s those publishing women again!”

My publishing team, as they liked to call themselves, were fairly regular conference callers, but their timing on this particular night left something to be desired. I took the phone and
explained the situation about the upcoming commencement address.

“Well, Dolly,” said Helen, the lively redhead who was in charge of the team of three, “we will contact you in a few days, then, when all the excitement has died down. Mark your calendar for this time next Wednesday. We don’t want too much time to go by, you know.”

“Yes,” commented Emily, the foreign markets gal on the team. “The sooner your story about Henry VIII’s six wives makes it out of the academic world and into the international media, the better!”

I was still on the fence about going mainstream with my academic research; the idea was intriguing, but it took me well out of my comfort zone.

It was as if Annie, the editorial brains of the publishing team, could read my thoughts over the ether. “Time to bust out of the old, tried and true academic world, Dolly; it’s so confining. Let it go, and cast your lot with us. You’ll have the world’s premier publishing team behind you; nothing second best about our operation!”

I thanked the team for their enthusiasm, got off the phone, and applied myself again to my speech, with pleasantly surprising and rapid success. Checking on a few last-minute event details rounded out my night.

“All things are ready, if our mind be so,” I thought, as somehow, after I perfected my speech and committed it to memory, everything else came together by the end of the night. With guests settled in at our cottage, the international professorial contingent phoned in and contentedly ensconced in their
hotels, and doctoral robe and mortarboard at the ready, I turned in for some of “tired nature’s sweet restorer.”

Chapter Twelve

Dear Me, Syncope!

Things went smoothly the next morning at the cottage. My husband and guests breakfasted, but I abstained because of a bit of performance-anxiety dyspepsia. While the others ate, I dressed for commencement. I decided this
was
the occasion on which I would choose to indulge that fantasy of Wally’s and assumed doctoral robe and shoes and nothing else. Mortarboard in hand, I climbed into the car with Wally and shivered a bit. “Chilly,” I commented.

“Really?” said Wally, with a gleam in his eye.

“Yes, really!” I returned, with a gleam in mine. And with that, we and our guests caravanned off to commencement.

When we arrived at the college, Wally shepherded my family and friends to their places in the audience and then went over to say a few words to those international colleagues of mine who had come to hear my speech. I eventually saw Wally settle into a seat toward the front of the audience as I began to climb the steps to the stage from where I would give my speech.

About halfway up the steps, I started to feel woozy and faint. My knees wobbled and my vision bobbled. I felt myself starting to fall. As the foundations of the earth slipped from under my feet, I recalled my complete lack of foundation—or any other– nondoctoral garments. I fleetingly prayed that my doctoral robe would stay down around my ankles somewhere as I fell down the steps, but I knew there was little hope of that. Then, next thing I knew, Wally was bolting out of his chair, leaping over several members of the audience. In a trice, he was at my side, grabbing my mortarboard as it fell from my head. I felt a wisp of draft at my thighs as I continued to fall, but only the slightest wisp; Wally handily clapped the mortarboard over my exposed nether regions with one arm as he held out the other to break my fall.

And then everything went black.

Chapter Thirteen

Déjà Vu Plus Two

When I awoke, I realized I was in a great big bed with some fairly rough-textured bed linen under and above me. Old-fashioned bed-curtains hung around the bed; I reached over and opened them a bit to see outside of it. As far as I could tell by the ambient candlelight, the walls of this round room were made of stone. They were also innocent of windows as we know them, being punctuated only by arrow slits at evenly spaced intervals. It was nighttime in this place, or at least I assumed so, as only inky darkness was visible though the arrow slits. The air in the room was chilly and dampish.

There was hope of warmth soon to come in a fire that had been newly started in the fireplace and the tapestries that hung on the walls. The textiles were impressive, depicting Bohemian revels á la Botticelli’s
Primavera
, only with the participants sporting Tudor-era beards and coiffures and the odd Elizabethan ruff or glove.