Seven Will Out: A Renaissance Revel (42 page)

“You’ve gained weight, Dolly,” Ann Boleyn pointed out.

“Married life must agree with her,” said Katharine of Aragon.

“You both look wonderful,” I said. “Not a day older than when I saw you last.”

“The afterlife goes much easier on a girl than the one that comes before does,” Katharine of Aragon reminded me.

“I’m
so
glad your visit here coincided with mine. It is wonderful to see you again! And why didn’t you bring the other four wives with you?” I asked, inquiring after the full contingent of Henry VIII’s wives.

“This is
my
daughter’s moment, and I didn’t want anyone stealing her thunder!” Ann said; apparently sharing the thunder was OK, even if stealing it was not.

Katharine glowered at Ann. “All right,” Ann conceded, “
our
daughters’ moment!”

It was now the hour, or at least the moment, for the Grey sisters, Margaret Douglas, and Mary, Queen of Scots, to glower.

“All right,” Ann said, correcting herself yet again and gesturing to include all the seven authoresses present. “It is
everyone’s
moment!”

“We didn’t come here to make a scene, Dolly,” Katharine of Aragon said, elbowing Ann. “We just wanted to see you again and to wish you well.”

“And to impress upon you the importance of fulfilling this new mission of yours, bringing our daughters even greater fame than they already enjoy,” Ann added.

“If Dolly does as well with this task as she did with the last one, all will be well,” Katharine said.

“Fancy seeing you two arm in arm; it’s good to know that what I accomplished here last time was more than just a flash in the pan. What an amazing development!”

“Thank you,” Ann said.

“Any amazing new developments back in your world, Dolly?” Katharine asked politely.

“Just one, but I think you should know about it!” I said. “What a thrill to be the one to tell you about the Succession to the Crown Act of 2013!”

“Tell us about it!” Ann Boleyn demanded.

“Well, around the time that the current second-in-line to the English throne, Prince William, was expecting his first child, the rules of inheritance were changed by Act of Parliament. Absolute primogeniture has eclipsed male-preference primogeniture. Girls, you will be happy to know, are now on an equal footing with boy children when it comes to being in the lineup for the English throne!” I said.

Ann Boleyn and Katharine of Aragon wept tears of joy, hugged each other, hugged their daughters, hugged me, hugged
everyone else in the room, and then wept some more. The depth of their feeling could be gauged by the fact that Ann Boleyn was absolutely speechless for some time.

Wine all around, served by Jane Grey, cleared up the tears and gave us all the means to toast the good news.

“
Who rule the world
?” I asked, raising my glass.

The assemblage raised their glasses in response. Katharine of Aragon and Ann Boleyn, just for good measure, linked elbows to be able to drink out of each other’s glasses when the toast was completed.

“
Girls
!” they all replied.

Chapter One Hundred-Ten

What’s Supposed to Be Sub-Rosa

Once everyone had consumed their wine, we got back to the business of wrapping things up.

“Time for me to remind you of rule number one for our departing guests,” Elizabeth said. “You must maintain a religious silence about your experience here, Dolly.”

“No one knows of my last visit here or of the personal details that the six wives so willingly shared with me. Based on what they told me, I was able to troll the primary sources available to the modern historian and interpret them correctly to develop the women’s true stories. I maintain that it was all totally aboveboard in regard to rule number one.”

“Well, your actions in that situation are what made us realize you were the girl to handle our stories,” said Elizabeth, speaking for all the latter-generation Tudors if their nodding heads were any indication.

“It occurs to me that you could have gotten your story out a century and a half or so earlier if you’d entrusted it to Delia Bacon,” I said. “Did you ever consider it? She was the original Shakespeare conspiracy theorist and spot-on about the Shakespeare plays having been a group effort. Of course, she had the candidates all wrong though; Raleigh, Spenser, Francis Bacon, and the Earl of Oxford.”

“We heard of her doings,” Elizabeth confirmed, “and did consider her for the assignment. We came to the same conclusion that her contemporary, Ralph Waldo Emerson, did, unfortunately.”

“With genius, but mad,” I recalled, remembering that after publishing her
The Philosophy of Shakespeare
’
s Plays Unfolded
, Delia Bacon went all OCD about digging up Shakespeare’s grave and had a nervous breakdown. She died in an asylum shortly thereafter. “I guess you made the right call there.”

“Girls, it is time to be leaving Dolly to her task. You’ve all had enough gallivanting for one night!” said Katharine of Aragon in tried-and-true motherly fashion.

The Grey sisters led the charge out of the room, with Mary, Queen of Scots, and Margaret Douglas right behind. I waved a final good-bye to them all. Mary and Elizabeth tarried.

“When shall we three meet again?” I asked, rather rhetorically.

“‘In thunder, lightning, or in rain,’” Elizabeth said.

“Yes, Dolly. Look for us to communicate with you in that way if ever you need our help on the other side in completing your mission,” Mary affirmed.

Katharine of Aragon, Mary Tudor, Ann Boleyn, and Elizabeth lingered at the door for one more moment, hands joined. I addressed, for the last time that night, Elizabeth, the legendary Gloriana.

“I may be thinking ahead a bit, Elizabeth, but there’s something I’m going to need to know a little bit more about. How did your works and those of Mary, Queen of Scots, get from you, or your designees, to Shakespeare? You’ve not enlightened me on that particular nugget of information.”

“That,” Elizabeth said, motioning to two as yet unmet ladies who were about to enter the room, “is their job. The art of leadership is in delegation, you know. I leave you in their capable hands.” With that, Elizabeth gently touched my cheek in a final farewell salute as she left the room.

“Isn’t my daughter
brilliant
?” said Ann Boleyn, squeezing one of my hands with her free one for a moment as she exited the room.

“Yes, your daughter is brilliant,” Katharine of Aragon acknowledged as she waved me good-bye and exited the room with her daughter, Mary. “
She takes after her older sister that way!”

Chapter One Hundred-Eleven

Enigmas, Anyone?

One of my new companions was a tall, elegant, pale redhead; the other, a petite Mediterranean type, was very mysterious and sexy.

“Good evening, Dolly,” said the redhead, with a marked Scandinavian lilt. She was dressed with elegant and tailored understatement in a black velvet dress and poufy white hat.

I consulted my academic memory for legendary Nordics of the Renaissance era. This beautiful and very feminine young woman couldn’t possibly be Queen Christina, the eccentric, awkward, and inelegant Swede who hightailed it off to Papal Rome from Lutheran Sweden. I was at a loss, though, to figure out exactly who she was.

“A pleasure to meet you, Dolly,” said the dark young woman. She didn’t have an accent, exactly, but her tone and inflection spoke of roots not strictly British and likely from points south. I was as much at a loss for placing her as I was for the redhead. Like her companion, she was dressed in black. Her outfit, however, was flowing and sensuous, with bell sleeves and a low-cut neckline.

“Ladies,” I said. “This night has been forever, and my memory has been reduced at this point to about an inch.”

“Well, that is the long and short of it, if ever I’ve heard it,” the redhead said, laughing. “Talk about the bloody obvious!”

“What is not bloody obvious,” I confessed to them both, “is your identities. I take it,” I said, turning to the redhead, “that you are from points north of the Tudor clan’s England?”

“I am,” she confirmed. “I hail from Sweden but lived most of my life at Elizabeth’s court, privileged to serve, as maid of honor, the greatest woman of the age I lived in.”

“Helena von Snakenborg!” I said, coming out of the fog I’d been in and—if the woman’s smiling and clapping was any indication—nailing it first time out.

“At your service!” she said.

Helena von Snakenborg came into Elizabeth’s ambit as part of the entourage that came to England in 1565 to tempt Elizabeth to marry Sweden’s king. Helena’s intelligence, looks, and charm won everyone over, including Elizabeth and the elderly Marquess of Northampton, whom she eventually married. Given that he was the brother of Henry VIII’s sixth wife and Elizabeth’s beloved stepmother, Katherine Parr, Helena had more or less married into the extended Tudor family. When the elderly marquess died a few months after the wedding, Helena rose to the dizzying heights of the rank of marchioness in her own right overnight.

As was the wont of more than one of Elizabeth’s courtiers, Helena married down when she chose her second husband, one Thomas Gorges, a relative of Ann Boleyn’s and therefore of Queen Elizabeth’s. As was the wont of Elizabeth in these matters, she roundly punished the pair for marrying. However, Helena was eventually rehabilitated socially and regained her place in Elizabeth’s favor. As Elizabeth entered old age, Helena was her chief deputy in many affairs. In the fullness of time, she was the chief mourner at Elizabeth’s funeral.

Having placed Helena, I turned my attentions to the dark lady next to her. “You remind me an awful lot of Ann Boleyn,” I said. “Are you a relation, perhaps?”

“I am no relation to Ann Boleyn, or to anyone at the Tudor court, except for my father. I lived there rather as ‘a stranger in a strange land,’” she said.

“Not so very much a stranger,” Helena pointed out. “The man who kept you was, after all, a cousin of Queen Elizabeth’s.”

“One of the Carey clan?” I conjectured.

“Yes,” the dark lady answered. “Henry Carey, First Baron Hunsdon.”

“He was the patron of Shakespeare’s theatrical troupe!” I recalled. I could vaguely see pieces of a puzzle coming together and grew quite excited.

“He was,” the dark lady confirmed.

I realized then that in thinking of this mysterious woman as the dark lady, I had actually hit upon her very identity. She had to be, of course, Emilia Lanier, England’s first self-proclaimed poetess and the reputed subject of Shakespeare’s
Dark Lady
sonnets.

“It is a privilege to meet each of you, and your personal histories would be something I’d love to dish with you about,” I said. “But time being of the essence, we need to get down to business. I was told that you two would tell me how the royal plays of Mary, Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth I were transferred over to William Shakespeare. I know already that the works of Margaret Douglas got there through the auspices of Robert Dudley, and that Mary Tudor’s made it through thanks to Lord Hunsdon. The works of the Grey sisters were, last I heard, in your hands, Emilia, ready to get passed to the Lord
Chamberlain’s Men and, I assume, to your friend, William Shakespeare.”

“Susan Bertie realized by the late 1590s that the Lord Chamberlain’s Men were just about ready to bring the Grey plays to life,” Emilia began. “She also conjectured that the troupe’s success and popularity would eventually make playwriting a more acceptable literary specialty. So it was that at that time, with her life coming to its end, she turned the Grey plays over to my possession, to be turned over to the troupe as I saw fit. I feared doing
anything
with plays by royal relatives without the queen’s blessing, so I went to her with the Grey plays, as you’ve already been told, and sought her permission to pass them on to, as you call him, my friend Will.”

“Were you and Shakespeare lovers?” I asked.

“No, we were not, even though he wanted us to be,” Emilia said. “The possibility of my giving in was something I dangled in front of him to keep the development and production of those plays going along the way I wanted it to. It worked, of course.”

“The old Ann Boleyn strategy done right, not to mention the sonnets that were written about it,” I said. I recalled sonnets 127‒154, the beautiful
Dark Lady
series in which Shakespeare immortalizes the passion and desperation he suffers at the hands of a taunting brunette.

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes…

Emilia listened with raised eyebrows as I quoted a few lines. “Very lovely, Dolly, but that was George Gordon, Lord Byron—spot-on about brunettes, but well after my time.”

“Hell’s bells; so much for my poetry credentials! But I guess that’s what I get for straying from the topic at hand. Getting back to it—tell me about how you handled the Grey plays that made their way into your hands.”

Chapter One Hundred-Twelve

Routing and Outing

“As I began to tell you,” Emilia said, “I sought permission from the queen to forward the Grey plays to Will. She felt that the time was right for the plays to be incrementally forwarded to the Lord Chamberlain’s Men but not right for the royal identities of the authors to be revealed. She and I collaborated on feeding those plays, one by one, to Will over a period of years, as we saw fit; each play had its own right time. I’d been privy to the way my lover, Lord Hundson, handled the plays that I later learned were authored by Mary Tudor, so I had a good idea of how to go about the logistics of it.”

“‘Sooth!’” I said.

“My story to Will was that the plays had been written by well-born women who preferred to remain anonymous. He suspected that
I
wrote them and had them copied out by other hands. I didn’t do a lot to disabuse him of that notion, because it made him all the more compliant with my directions for bringing the plays to the public.”

“And what about the plays of the two queens—Elizabeth and Mary, Queen of Scots? How did
they
make their way to Shakespeare?”