Seven Will Out: A Renaissance Revel (6 page)

“Surely you were not that,” I said, as comfortingly as I could. “Look at Mary, Queen of Scots, for example. You were the apple
of her eye when you were a child. You probably brought what little joy she had to her prison years.”

“I suppose so, but we all know what end she came to, don’t we?”

I winced as I considered the point.

“And my husband, William, imprisoned for marrying me. Even though he managed to escape, he wound up marooned in Ostend and in exile for years. To boot, he was disappointed of the crown I might have brought with me into the marriage.”

I recollected that the William Arabella had wed was William Seymour, second Duke of Somerset. The Seymour line had pretty consistently brought ill luck to the Tudor house, at least the males of the family did. Arabella was imprisoned for marrying the much younger William, having spent all of maybe a year as his bride. William’s grandfather—Edward Seymour—had been the ruin of Tudor descendant Catherine Grey.

And then of course there was yet another, earlier Seymour: Thomas. He was the brother of Henry VIII’s third wife, Jane. In addition to being a royal in-law, he was also an epic horn dog and came damn near to ruining the life and prospects of Henry’s daughter Elizabeth when she was still in her teens. History is divided on what actually occurred on old Tom’s romps in young Elizabeth’s boudoir. Although I’d never delved deeply into the subject with Elizabeth herself, I did have the opportunity of discussing Tom Seymour at some length with her mother, Ann Boleyn, when last we met. Between the two of us, we’d called him just about everything but a bull pizzle. I suppose it would have been kinder for
us to pity poor Tom, considering his eventual end on the executioner’s block—kinder but not nearly as gratifying.

“And my poor father,” Arabella went on, expanding the hard-luck theme. “Dead before I could even talk.”

“Must be difficult to lose someone so close without ever really having known him,” I sympathized.

“Even worse to lose someone close,
with
really having known him,” she replied.

I took a moment to try to determine who Arabella was speaking about, but I drew a blank.

“Thinking about someone in particular?”

“Yes. I was thinking of my poor, lamented Morley.”

“First name Christopher?” I inquired hopefully, my scholar’s blood well up.

“Yes, first name Christopher,” Arabella confirmed.

Chapter Seventeen

Hello, Marlowe!

“So he
was
your tutor!” I exclaimed. “Some scholars in my time have purported that the famous poet and playwright, Christopher Marlowe, aka Morley in Elizabethan-speak, had the honor of providing you with instruction. Mind you, the reasoning behind the theory was speculative at best, given the paucity of Marlowe evidence that has survived the ages. How fascinating to find out that it is true!”

“Nice to be able to make
someone’s
day,” Arabella replied glumly.

“Surely, you brought joy into Marlowe’s—or Morley’s—short life when you were his pupil. A bright young Tudor sprite like you must have been a charming pupil to be sure!”

“I was not all that young when he tutored me, Dolly; I was in my teens, you know.”

Having so recently considered the depredations of the elder Tom Seymour against the teenage Princess Elizabeth, I had a sinking feeling that I knew where this was going.

Chapter Eighteen

Tête-à-Tête on a Reprobate

When Arabella had said she
knew
her Morley, was she telling me that she had done so in the biblical sense? Inquiring flat out about such relations with, say, Henry VIII’s lubricious fifth wife, Catherine Howard, would have been easy. It was not, however, the kind of inquiry one would directly make to someone as sensitive as Arabella.

I decided to try a nice, open-ended question instead.

“What was Morley like?” I asked.

“Beautiful,” Arabella said dreamily. “Almost pretty enough to have been a girl.”

This so far accorded with the possibility of Morley being the sexually ambivalent Christopher Marlowe.

“I’m rather surprised that your grandmother Bess would have put such a handsome fox into the henhouse, so to speak. I’d have thought she’d be worried about your developing a crush on him,” I ventured.

“Grandmother was convinced that Morley was not, as she put it, a ‘woman’s man.’ She granted him the same privilege and trust she granted my female attendants because of her assumption.”

Score another point for the Morley/ Marlowe theory. If anyone in the Renaissance era would have had gaydar, it surely would have been Bess of Hardwick.

“So you had a crush on Morley as a schoolgirl, and he, unfortunately, came to that sad end in a bar fight that the literati have
mourned for centuries. That is sad, Arabella, but surely not a result of any bad karma on your part. After all, look at how the man lived outside of your schoolroom!”

There is, of course, no shortage of theories on the life and death of the enigmatic Christopher Marlowe. Many say he would have emerged as a greater writer than Shakespeare had he lived longer than the twenty-nine checkered years allotted to him. The high-minded might think that his being stabbed in the head during a brawl was a fitting end to a classic bad-boy life. Romantics tend to attribute his end to some sort of sexual melodrama, possibly involving the lowlife of Renaissance London. Conspiracy theories about his death abound too, of course, bringing in everything from theatrical jealousy to the Babington Plot to Elizabethan espionage gone bad.

“It wasn’t how the man lived
outside
my schoolroom that led to the man’s death, Dolly. It was something that happened while he was employed by my grandmother as my tutor.”

Just then, Arabella looked like someone who wanted nothing more than to have a good old heart-to-heart with a gal who wouldn’t dismiss her out of hand as mad. Of course it was obvious that she was a few stays short of a corset. But as someone who was quite at home with being on a mission for a bevy of dead Tudors, who was I to hold that against her?

“Do you want to tell me about it?” I asked simply.

“I do, Dolly,” she said. “Because of family feeling and fellow feeling, I can’t talk about Morley and his end to the women here. It raises all sorts of negative emotions, especially with Ann Boleyn, for one.”

“Because it reminds her of what happened with her daughter and Tom Seymour?” I inquired.

“Yes. That and the whole idea of a sharp object being taken to the head. She finds both upsetting.”

The little bichon, I’d noticed, had perked up his ears a moment ago when Ann’s name was mentioned.

“Arabella! ‘Por Qoi’—Purkoy—this little fellow is Ann Boleyn’s dog, isn’t he?” I asked.

“Yes, indeed, Dolly.”

“It’s very sweet to think that Ann and her pup were reunited in the afterlife! They say Ann was quite upset when little Purkoy fell out of a castle window to his death,” I recollected aloud, getting a bit more misty eyed at that thought than was my wont.

Arabella looked a little fearful at my Ann Boleyn sympathies. “You mustn’t ever tell Ann I’ve chosen to share my story with you,” she warned. “Eternity with Ann Boleyn being cross with you is no joke.”

“
Silence á la morte
!” I exclaimed dramatically.

“Until death and after death, Dolly; I require a truly eternal promise, regardless of how bad the pronunciation is.”

I bowed my head and held my finger to my lips, gesturing my promise. “I promise to keep mum when it comes to your grand-mum, Bess, as well.”

“That is a kind thought, Dolly. I’d ask that you not discuss the intimate details with her gratuitously. As to the bare bones of the story, though, you need have no worries.”

“Pun intended?” I inquired.

“No, but I trust you to pick up on it,” said Arabella.

“Why don’t I have to worry about those bare bones?” I inquired.

“Because when it comes to those bare bones, Bess of Hardwick,” Arabella informed me, “knows all.”

All, it turned out, and then some.

Chapter Nineteen

The Statutory Story

For my Morley discussion with Arabella, I had to suspend modern-day mores, more or less, and accept the ways of the Renaissance world for what they were. Fortunately, I had learned something about this the last time I was here. In meeting and greeting Elizabeth I, I had chatted quite normally with a woman who had ordered the execution of her own cousin. Sweet Jane Seymour had become engaged to Henry VIII the day after he had his prior wife executed, and it never even occurred to me to call her out on that. Bess of Hardwick performed duty as a prison wardress in her own home, but I conversed with her with no less trepidation than I would have had with any other matron. And speaking of matrons, I had listened with interest, but not surprise, to Margaret Beaufort, a widow and a mama at age thirteen, spin tales of her son, Henry VII.

So when Arabella told me of her relations at the age of fifteen or sixteen with the grown-up and heathenish Morley, I did my best to suspend contemporary judgments. In Arabella’s day, fifteen or sixteen was, handily, marriageable age.

I dragged a chair across the stone floor—not an easy task when the chair is one of those weighty medieval numbers, all wood and finials and minimal upholstery. With my chair placed next to Arabella’s, I climbed into it and curled myself, cross-legged, into its generous seat. Purkoy, seeing a vacant lap, hopped into the chair with me, and together we listened intently as Arabella began her story.

“Greek was never my best subject,” Arabella began. “My late cousin Mary Tudor, of course, was a solid Greek scholar long before she ascended the throne, as was my cousin Elizabeth. Grandmother did not want me to be found wanting should the day come that
I
would ascend England’s throne.”

“You’re forgetting Jane Grey,” I commented. “She was likewise renowned for her scholarship before that nine-day reign of hers.”

“
Grandmother
certainly did not forget her,” Arabella commented. “I recall her throwing Jane Grey in my face as well. When Morley first met me, he described my Greek as ‘middling,’ but as far as Grandmother was concerned, it was much worse than that. She said it was…was…” Arabella paused as she tried to summon up the word.

“Execrable,” I suggested.

“Well, not nearly as execrable as your French, Dolly. Such a degree of deficiency would have put me beyond even Morley’s erudition.”

Tempted though I was, I concluded that sticking my tongue out at Arabella for that one would be unwise. I vented my feelings by making a face at Purkoy, who yelped and jumped ship for Arabella’s already crowded lap. She genially made room for him.

“So, Arabella, your grandmother, Bess of Hardwick, considered you linguistically challenged. How came she upon a ne’er do well such as Christopher Marlowe—or Morley, as you call him—as a prospective tutor to so close a claimant to the throne as yourself?”

“You could be more considerate of my feelings than you are, Dolly, when you bandy words such as ‘ne’er do well’ about in reference to those I hold dear.”

I humbly apologized. “‘Ne’er do well’ probably wasn’t very accurate, considering his contribution to literature,” I admitted. “How does ‘scapegrace’ suit you?”

“Much better,” Arabella said; “much more accurate!”

Marlowe/Morley didn’t so much escape grace as he’d run screaming from it as though his backside were on fire. In deference to Arabella’s feelings, however, I declined to share the imagery with her. Arabella addressed my earlier question.

“Grandmother, I am sure, turned to any number of her friends at court for suggestions for a tutor for me,” Arabella said.

I thought about the prominent Elizabethans Bess of Hardwick would have numbered among her friends. It was heady stuff for a Tudorphile such as me. William Cecil, Baron Burghley; Sir Francis Walsingham; Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester—could one of them have been responsible, I wondered, for the Morley-Arabella connection?

“I am equally sure,” Arabella went on before I could speculate aloud, “that, having canvassed sage advice, Grandmother would have chosen not to take it. It is her way. Anything that even remotely resembles a decision being in someone else’s hands is anathema to her.”

Having met the redoubtable Bess, I did not doubt that one bit.

“I suspect Grandmother would have then applied to Cambridge directly, requesting recommendations for suitable tutors. Having decided on a candidate, she likely made inquiries at court and received no information to make her go back on her choice.”

Considering Marlowe’s history and reputation, I concluded that Bess could not have inquired about him too closely and had made an uncharacteristically poorly informed or careless decision. That would be another one I got wrong.

Chapter Twenty

Spring Fling

“So Marlowe/Morley arrived at Hardwick Hall to take up his duties as tutor. What did he find when he arrived there? Tell me what you were like as a girl,” I prompted. I was interested to hear how Arabella saw herself in the years before trial, tribulation, and house arrest had taken their toll.

“I can remember well what I was wearing when Morley and I first met,” Arabella recollected.

Eyeing Arabella’s current couture, I prepared myself for the worst.

“That outfit was quite a favorite of mine, all my favorite colors included in the ensemble. Grandmother thought it in poor taste and insisted that it was too much of a good thing—or rather, too much of too many good things. Grandmother did not believe in mincing words.”

Of course, Elizabethan ladies’ apparel was nothing if not over the top, and not only in the low-neckline, push-up-corset sense. “Many good things” pretty much summed up the Elizabethan fashion plate: sumptuously textured fabrics, accessories laid on by the pound, ruffs and skirts that were outstanding—literally, finishing up inches, if not feet, from the body. Under the circumstances, it was frightening to imagine what might have been considered too much in those days.

“Having met your grandmother, I’m not surprised about her not pulling any sartorial punches,” I confessed to Arabella. “Even if she was hard on you though, she was surely fond of you. After all, she has gone down in history as calling you her jewel.”