Seven Will Out: A Renaissance Revel (45 page)

“Well,” I said, glancing over at the paperwork in the doctor’s hand, “how am I?”

“You are,” he asked, “Catherine Rolly, aka Dolly?”

“I am.”

“Well, Dolly, all your tests came back negative, except for one.”

“Which one?” I asked, figuring that all the stress eating I’d been doing lately had shown up on my lipid panel.

“The pregnancy test, Dolly! You’re going to have a baby!”

With Wally’s grin now so wide that I feared his ears would pop off, we got down to the nitty-gritty.

“You’ve known all along, haven’t you, Wally?” I asked.

“Well, dear, I
am
a physician. I’ve suspected it for some weeks. That’s why I’ve been hounding you to go see your doctor.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me about it?” I asked.

“I wasn’t sure how your feminine ego would take
my
being aware of the possibility before
you
were. And pregnant women must be humored, you know.”

“I like the way it’s turned out,” I said, snugging up against Wally’s chest, “both of us hearing the news together, at the same time. Perfect! It’s awfully unexpected, though. Not exactly what we had planned.”

“Unexpected?” said the medic, digging his elbow into Wally’s side companionably. “And you a physician, Wally!”

“Stranger things have happened,” Wally offered in his own defense.

“And very recently too,” I added, looking skyward and remembering the changes Blanche Parry had prognosticated when she read my palm.

Driving home from the hospital, Wally and I started to plan for the impact our blessed event would have on our lives.

“We can remodel the second floor of our Rainbow Chateaux to create a nursery,” Wally began. “I knew my degree in architecture would come in handy one of these days!”

“Can you squeak an office out of that space as well?” I asked.

“Certainly I can, if you like, but why?”

“You know how Burr has been at me to move away from the world of Tudor academia and on to greener pastures. It occurs to me that freelancing and baby raising might go very well together.”

“Abandoning your beloved Tudors?” Wally asked. “Frankly, I’m shocked.”

“Not abandoning them, dear. Just taking a new approach to them is all; letting go of the old way and trying something new. There’s only so much one can do about revealing the history when one is limited, by academic rigor, to the extant primary source documents that we have available to us. All those sources have been worked to death over the years. Maybe it is time for a fresher, less academic approach.”

Wally looked a bit skeptical.

“For the next seven or eight months, dear, it’s anything my little heart desires,” I reminded him.

“Wrong, darling,” Wally said. “For the rest of our lives, it’s anything your little heart desires, Dolly.”

Chapter One Hundred-Seventeen

The Shindig and the Big News

There was yet another surprise in store for me when I arrived home. Wally had arranged for a postcommencement address reception at our house, complete with all my friends, family, and coworkers. Wally had instructed them to go on with the proceedings in spite of my fainting spell, saying he would explain all when we arrived. He didn’t have to, as it turned out.

“Dolly!” Miss Bess called out as I entered the front door. She was holding a drink in her hand, and unless I was very much mistaken, it wasn’t her first or even her second. “You’re glowing, Dolly! Have you had a drink already? Let me get you another.”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to say no to that, Bess.”

“Why, Dolly? One more drink Morley or lessly won’t matter,” she said.

“Miss Bess, did you just say ‘Morley’?” I asked, taken aback.

“She’s drunk, Dolly,” cousin Bella explained. “I’ve been mixing her drinks, and I’ve made them all doubles. It’s fun to watch her when she gets like this.”

“Passive-aggressive, but true,” I agreed.

“Not drinking at a party, Dolly? That’s not like you,” said Kath, feeling my pulse at my wrist and putting a hand to my forehead to check for a temperature. “They let you out of that hospital too soon.”

“Let me see what her palm says,” said Blanche.

“I don’t need to read her palm,” Auntie Reine Marie said with a knowing smile, “to know that I’d best be getting my needles and pastel-colored wools out of storage.”

“You can see it in Dolly’s face, surely,” said the ever-perceptive Jean; there was no getting anything past my wise little cousin.

“I see happy motherhood in Dolly’s palm,” Blanche said, peering into one of my hands. “But,” she added, perplexed, “I do not see a little boy or a little girl.”

“Time will solve that little mystery,” Wally said.

The practical-minded Amy brought the conversation around to more mundane matters. “In my little home village, Dolly, we have a sovereign remedy for morning sickness. We call it the ‘in-a-fix elixir.’ Works every time! I’ll bring some in to the office next week in case you should need it.”

“We have a potion like that in my family too. We call it the ‘gestation distillation.’ It’s nothing short of a miracle drug, I can tell you. I’ll make some up for you, Dolly,” Lettice offered.

Gladous was not to be outdone when it came to pharmaceuticals. “Out our way, it’s ‘in-the-club syllabub.’ Absolutely the best thing for when a girl’s gotta hurl,” she said seriously.

“In my hometown in Italy, we have a surefire powder for morning sickness. A pinch of it mixed into a shot glass of milk does the trick. Loosely translated into English, it’s called ‘gravid granules,’” Demi said.

“You can all bring some of that stuff around for Katie too. She’s still got a few weeks to go on her first semester, you know,” Merrie said.

“I think you mean trimester, dear,” said Katie, giving her office partner in crime a big hug.

“And I’ve got a linen, lanolin, and lavender belly binder that will do wonders for your stretch marks, once you get them,” said Janie, Wally’s research assistant and part-time herbal girl. “I got the idea for it during my recent trip to France. It’s the one foundation garment every expectant mother should have!”

Marge brought a much-appreciated change of subject to the conversation, when she called my attention to the rather dramatic bouquet of flowers that graced the dining room table.

“Cockscombs, aren’t they?” I asked, as I admired their jewel tones and ran a finger along the velvety surface of the flowers.

“They’re what is blooming in my garden at the moment,” Marge said. “‘Yet my goodwill is great, Dolly, though the gift small.’”

“What kind of name is ‘cockscomb’ for a flower?” asked Miss Bess. “Sounds more like something you’d call—”

We were spared Miss Bess’s conjecture by a bustle at the front door. Wally opened it to what turned out to be a trio of women: Helen, Emily, and Annie. I was concerned for a moment that he might refer to them as “those publishing women” to their faces, but I needn’t have worried. He came out with their names like a trooper and even managed to apply the correct name to the correct woman, as we greeted them at the door.

“Dolly,” he whispered to me in an aside, “I didn’t invite them. How did they know to come?”

As if on cue, two more women popped out from behind the trio.

“Surprise!”

“Lizzie and Mary!” I exclaimed, welcoming in the daughters of my former fiancé, Harry.

“I hope you don’t mind that we brought our mutual publishing friends around for the party,” Lizzie began. “They and my sister and I have been doing some business together on the I Make a Whisper a Sell campaign. Well, when your name came up, Dolly, they told us about how they’ve been trying to get you to go mainstream with that Henry VIII treatise of yours.”

“We couldn’t agree with them more,” Mary said. “And our campaign can help you make a success of that project, not to mention any others you might have in the hopper in that vivid imagination of yours, Dolly!”

“All very interesting, ladies, but that will all have to go on to the back burner, at least for today,” Wally said, gathering me protectively into his arms. “You see, we’ve just learned—well, you tell them, darling.”

“Wait just a moment, Dolly, before you tell us your news. I think,” Lizzie said, looking at the car that had just pulled into the drive, “that is my mother and Mary’s mother come to join us.”

It did indeed turn out to be Anna Belinda and Kay. We welcomed them into the house, and Mary and Lizzie explained to their respective mothers that I was about to break some exciting news to them.

“Well, judging by the way Dolly’s glowing—” said Anna Belinda with the look of an old-time wise woman who knows all.

“And,” the ever-practical Kay added, “considering the subtle changes in her face and figure—”

“You’ve cracked it, ladies. There’s a jolly little Rolly on the way, by golly!” Wally said.

“What’s that I hear?” said a masculine voice from the direction of the library. Wally looked relieved as the speaker brought some much-appreciated additional testosterone to the proceedings.

“I was hiding out in the library from—if you will pardon the expression—all these complicated women,” said Burr, my dear old mentor and favorite geek—aside from Wally, of course.

“Can’t say I blame you,” said Wally, “speaking as one man to another, of course. Not to be misogynistic or anything. It’s just that
I can see how so much high-powered feminine talent and brains in one room could be a bit overwhelming for a man on his own.”

“So did I hear the news properly, Dolly? A baby on the way?” asked Burr, actually blushing at the word “baby.”

“Yes, sir, you did!” said Wally, shaking Burr by the hand and mercifully leading him away and back into the library.

As Burr and Wally beat their retreat, I overheard Burr talking excitedly to Wally. “I’ve been reading Dolly’s Henry VIII work again, Wally. I’d forgotten how intriguing it is. Really, it’s a shame for the rest of the world to miss out on it, while it circles around aimlessly in academia. And you know—it’s time for Dolly to follow up that project with another one. She must seek the next dream to pursue. Time is a-wasting!”

“I think, Burr, that a lot will change around here in the next year or so,” Wally said, looking back at me and throwing me one of those smiles of his that makes me go weak in the knees. “In fact, Burr, I think Dolly may just find that she needn’t look any further than her own backyard for her heart’s desire, because if it isn’t there—”

“Whatever are you talking about, Wally?” asked the ever-literal Burr.

“I think the rainbow’s end that we all want for Dolly isn’t far off at all, and that she will, in fact, give up her death grip on old ways and somehow find her future right under her very nose. Just a feeling I have. I think, Burr, that your wish for Dolly may come true sooner than you think.”

“It would be ‘a consummation,’” Burr said solemnly, “‘devoutly to be wished.’”

Chapter One Hundred-Eighteen

Bliss and Synthesis

Blanche’s prediction of neither a boy nor a girl proved true when I delivered twin girls, Olivia and Viola—or, as their father likes to call them, Ollie and Vollie. Good old Burr just couldn’t be prouder of his two goddaughters, not to mention their Shakespearian monikers. Harry’s girls are the children’s godmothers. Lizzie, Mary, and I have grown dearer than ever to each other over the past few months. We’re working closely together, along with the publishing women, to make their I Make a Whisper a Sell campaign the vehicle for bringing my Henry VIII treatise, as well as my in-development Tudor/Shakespeare research, to the world at large.

Based on my second otherworldly Tudor experience, I finally found myself able to let go of my university job shortly before the end of my pregnancy. Gravid as I was, I still felt light as a feather with the relinquishment. Once I’d delivered the children, I started in on revising the pedantic
Henry VIII, Man of Constant Sorrow
for consumption by the general public and began work in earnest on my Tudor/Shakespeare project. Nothing makes one better at multitasking than motherhood does. Between research, writing, nursing, diapers, and Wally, my days are pretty full.

Wally’s home office and nursery project made him realize just how much he missed flexing his architectural muscles during all the years he’d been practicing as a veterinarian and physician. That, combined with his hobby interest in local archeology, has started him on a very satisfying new career of restoring historically relevant structures. Now that we are both working in the field of history, it seems that Wally and I are united on every front possible.
Much of our most recent shoptalk has been about a Tudor-era lodge that Wally is rescuing from rack and ruin.

“I’m off to that antique auction now, Dolly.”

“Good luck, Wally!” I said as I settled the girls into their little playpen. “Are there any promising beds up for grabs?” I asked, knowing that he was in the market for an antique one for this latest project of his.

“No bed out there is as promising to me as ours tonight is, dear,” he said happily. “Still, there is one bed at this auction that might do for the current restoration. It’s a very sturdy middle-Renaissance piece with a rather mysterious provenance. It has seen better days, though, according to the description.”

“I should think so, if it is several hundred years old.”

“No, not that, Dolly. It apparently has evidence of tampering.”

“Tampering?”

“Yes, it’s been taken apart and put back together again—and clumsily at that, it seems. I don’t like to settle for second best in a bed when it comes to furnishing one of my houses, but I suppose it is worth a look.”

“Did I just hear the words
second…best…bed
?” I asked.

“Yes, you did,” Wally said. “Perhaps I’d better skip looking at that bed altogether.”

Before the words were out of Wally’s mouth, a clap of thunder shook our cottage, a bolt of lightning struck, and torrents of rain began to fall.

“How odd for that storm to have blown up so suddenly!” Wally said. “Up until a second or two ago, it was a perfect day.”

“It’s more than that, darling; it’s a red-letter day! The girls and I are going with you to take a look at that bed. I can’t wait for you and me to get inside it!”