Seven Will Out: A Renaissance Revel (11 page)

“Why not? Timing is why not! Raleigh had been foolish enough to dally with Elizabeth Throckmorton, whom he eventually married. He wound up jailed for it, of course—as she was one of the queen’s ladies,” Bess reminded me. “I didn’t want to get too close to the man at that particular moment in time.”

Raleigh was on the outs and in the clink during the reign of Elizabeth I, and later James I, as often as not, even if they did let him out every so often to go exploring. I could see where it would be tricky trying to catch the man in the good graces of the current monarch.

Bess sighed.

“Walsingham! Now, there was a man for valor and discretion!”

“Was he your choice for the Marlowe project then, Bess? The man was steeped in politics, statecraft, and espionage. He used all the means at his disposal to achieve his ends, including torture. I imagine the two of you would have worked quite well together.”

“Yes, I suppose we would have, but Walsingham was not available.”

“Indisposed by the kidney stones he so famously suffered from?”

“No, Dolly; he was dead. The man had died a short time earlier, around 1590.”

“Yes, of course,” I said. “It was silly of me not to recall. So who
did
you finally select for your mission, Bess?”

“Knowing what you know, Dolly, you can surely guess his name.”

The idea of guessing games brought back memories of my last visit here and some of the fast thinking I’d had to do. Not wanting to diminish the reputation for smarts that I had established at that time, I put on my thinking cap and thought hard.

I knew the name, all right. And it was one to conjure with.

It was, in fact, Cecil: “a man full of wise saws and modern instances, surely, and so to play his part.”

Chapter Thirty

Hot to Plot

At the time in English history of which we were speaking, the Cecil in question would have been the first Baron Burghley, William Cecil—arguably the original beta male. The man was a political and administrative genius but was content to live a life of useful and productive civil service in the shadow, if not under the thumb, of the flamboyant Elizabeth I. It could not have been easy for a man as steady and unwavering as Cecil was to run the English government under his unmercifully mercurial monarch. Shakespeare’s protagonist in
Hamlet
may have had the male prize for not being able to make up his mind, but Elizabeth I was far and away the front-runner for distaff honors.

For the most part, Elizabeth appreciated Cecil’s efforts, making him her secretary of state and lord high treasurer, ennobling him and nicknaming him her “spirit.” She visited his estate at Theobalds periodically when she was on progress; when Cecil was on his deathbed, she visited him and took the unprecedented measure of feeding him with her own hands. The two went back a long way; after all, Cecil was part of the old flock of Hatfield, the talented intellectuals who served Elizabeth so faithfully when she was still a young and vulnerable princess.

“So, you confided all to Cecil, Bess?”

“All that I have told you about Arabella and Morley, yes.”

“I’ll bet Cecil was surprised about all that!”

“He was! He was even more surprised when I tasked him with a suspicion that my son-in-law, Gilbert, had voiced to me as the whole sorry Morley blackmail episode unfolded.”

“What suspicion was that?” I asked.

“Gilbert had told me he suspected that Morley was a plant; that he’d been suggested for my employ by the head men at Cambridge at the behest of Cecil’s administration. It made sense; Arabella’s proximity to the throne made her a political time bomb, and it would have been like Cecil to want to keep tabs on what went on around her.”

“What roused Gilbert’s suspicions?” I inquired.

“Gilbert started discreetly asking around about Morley once our troubles with him started. Word on the street was that Morley had done a spot of spying for Cecil on more than one occasion. I used this information to tax Cecil with therefore being
himself
responsible for the whole unfortunate Arabella situation by setting Morley loose in my home.”

“Were you
certain
Morley was a plant, or were you just trying to deflect attention from what might be considered a lapse in your own responsible governance of the royal personage of Arabella, Bess?”

Bess was honest enough to admit to both. After she had boxed my ears again, that is.

“Cecil, it turned out, had had his tribulations with Morley as well. You see, Morley had been involved in espionage at the highest levels.”

“The Babington Plot?” I asked, recollecting that his name had been bandied about in association with it.

“To name just one,” Bess said. “Cecil said the others were so sensitive that he couldn’t even hint to me what they were. He went on to say that he had been concerned for some time about Morley’s mental stability and his worthiness for the high-level kinds of assignments he was being given. He said
he knew that the man had been foolish enough to engage in some counterfeiting and tried to have him arrested for that, but the powers that be went against him and demanded that Morley be spared. That Morley would be idiot enough to interfere with an heir to the throne had never occurred to him and was the last straw for Cecil. He said he would be more than happy to provide me with the way out of the situation that I was looking for.”

“So Morley’s death in that bar fight was orchestrated by Cecil, on his own behalf and yours, Bess?”

“Exactly. I asked Cecil to spare me the gory details of exactly how he would arrange it. I asked him one favor, though.”

“And that was?” I asked. Bess looked so like a termagant as she recalled it that “his head on a silver platter” would not have surprised me as an answer.

“I wanted Morley to know, when it happened, that it was his reckoning for interfering with my Jewel, Arabella.”

“So that famous ‘reckoning’ over which Marlowe was killed was not the bar tab that history tells us it was?”

“The bar tab, as you call it, was mere invention. The document presented to Morley just before that fatal tavern scuffle was a note from me. I remember well what I wrote: ‘To one Morley, in reckoning for a Jewel,’ signed, E. Talbot.”

“You give the term ‘dead reckoning’ a whole new meaning, Bess! And you worded your note very cleverly too. Had anyone discovered it at the scene or after, it could be fobbed off as having something to do with an exchange of fashion accessories.
And there had to have been dozens of E. Talbots floating around Britain at the time.”

“Cecil thought me clever as well,” Bess confided.

“I think what you did was
brilliant!
” I said. Renaissance literature and the better angels of my nature took a backseat for just a moment in deference to my feminist leanings and my fondness for Arabella and Bess.

Bess pulled herself to her full height and raised her right hand, exposing a beautiful, jeweled ring; in fact, a ruby ring. She raised it to her lips, puffed on the gem, and rubbed it to a shine on the fur of her ruff.

“Dolly,” she said, holding out her finger and admiring the ring, “you flatter me.”

“‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks,’” I replied.

Chapter Thirty-One

Bring on the Bling

I noticed at the conclusion of Bess’s tale that the cheerful, low fire that had been burning earlier in the grate was reduced now to mere embers.

“Time does fly,” I said, “when history is turned on its head for one’s benefit. I’ve enjoyed our visit, Bess, but I think it is time to move things along.”

“I suppose you are right, Dolly.”

“And you know, Bess, it is getting rather chilly in here.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” Bess answered. I wasn’t surprised. She was likely the low-thermostat, wear layers, conserve-energy type.

“Maybe I could get out of this nightdress and into some warmer work clothes?” I asked.

“Delighted to oblige, Dolly.”

“Will Beaton, Seton, Livy, and Flamina be dressing me this time, as they did the last?” I asked hopefully. With Flamina being a Renaissance Vera Wang, I could be sure of being dressed to impress if she were at the fashion helm. And I needed a copilot, if not several, when it came to managing the considerable mechanics of full period dress.

“Not this time, Dolly. The four Maries of Mary, Queen of Scots, are not in residence at present. But have no fear. You will be well served and well dressed. And unless I am much mistaken,” she called out as she disappeared out of sight around the doorway, “accessorized like you have never been accessorized before!”

Chapter Thirty-Two

Regalia Inter Alia

From the outside hallway, I heard two female voices talking indistinctly. I could not make out the words, but the general tone was one of excitement and laughter, and they were clearly nearing me.

The first lady to round the bend and come into view had garments of all hues and textures piled high in her arms. The weight of the textiles must have been considerable; it was hard to see how she managed to carry them all without falling over. It was likely hard for her to see as well; the garments in her arms were piled up over her head.

While the garments obscured her face, they could do nothing to hide her proportions; her hips stuck out quite a ways on either side of the garment pile. Not in this case the bumrolled or farthingaled backside; this lady’s contours could only have come from a generous Mother Nature. I remembered reading somewhere that “robes and furred gowns hide all,” but with this lady, they wouldn’t have stood a prayer.

I got up to help the woman with her burden. As I lifted a foot or two of garment from her arms, I found myself looking into the face of an old friend.

“Kat!”

The lady before me was none other than Kat Ashley, the lady who acted in loco parentis for Ann Boleyn in raising Queen Elizabeth I. Some of her decision making in Elizabeth’s adolescence was more loco than parentis, but of course, nobody’s perfect.

As Kat and I divested ourselves of the textiles and shared a hearty embrace, another lady came through the door bearing as many jewel boxes as her arms could carry. She put them down on the bed next to where we had placed the garments, turned to me, and made a slight bow.

She was like Mutt beside Kat’s vertically challenged Jeff; tall, slender, and with posture that could go toe to toe with Bess of Hardwick’s ramrod spine any day. The black and tawny ensemble she was wearing set off her ginger coloring to perfection.

“Here are the jewels! I’m off again for some ruffs and whatnot, now. Won’t be a moment! So happy to meet you, Dolly, having heard so much about you,” the lady said in passing as she issued out of the room.

I wondered who this woman was. She had an accent that differed from those of the other ladies here; it was soft and lilting, with gently rolling
R
s. I concentrated hard as I watched her walk away, trying to deduce who she was.

The attention I paid to the lady seemed to rub Kat the wrong way. “I hope she doesn’t neglect to bring the headpieces!” Kat said. “It would be,” she added, looking exasperated, “just like her.”

As I opened the various jewel chests and peeked into them, I was surprised at Kat’s allusion to the lady’s inattention to detail. The jewel collection she had assembled indeed seemed complete. Rings, earrings, bangles, bracelets, pendants, brooches, and chains were all well represented. Gems precious and semiprecious, pearls, enamel, and finely carved cameos peeped out at me from their coffers.

“It would be a mistake, Dolly, to start with the jewels and then assemble an outfit around them. Surely you’d want to do it the
other way around. Come here and look at what I’ve brought for you! Skirts! Bodices! Sleeves!”

“No farthingales though, I see,” I said, hopefully.

“We will have Jane bring the correct foundations for your outfit once you have chosen it, Dolly.”

“Jane! Is that the name of the lady who is out there acquiring ruffs for my delectation?”

“No, Dolly, it is not!” Kat was standing with her hands on her hips, an impressive sight when one had hips like Kat’s. I’d seen the like before, whenever my dear cousin Kath was cross with me, but the familiarity did not blunt the impact. That stance and Kat’s tapping foot told me that I’d best move from the jewel trove to the garment pile and pay Kat—and my outfit-to-be—some attention.

“You’ve gained weight, Dolly, since your last sojourn here,” she pointed out, evening things up, I supposed, for my inattentiveness to her.

“Only a few pounds, and just lately, Kat; I must be comfort eating more than I realized. Lots of stress at work and at home these days, you know.”

“Well, we’ll work around it,” she assured me. It was something I was sure she had plenty of personal experience with.

“You’ve certainly outdone yourself in selecting outfit makings for me, Kat. So many colors—a veritable rainbow! I’m practically giddy with the fashion!”

I’m generally not a flamboyant dresser and firmly believe that a little black dress goes a long way. I noticed no black garments, however, among those present. Going all Audrey Hepburn on Kat seemed ill-advised, so I didn’t comment on the omission and
set about selecting some garments around which to build my outfit.

Some plum-colored velvet sleeves caught my eye; I lifted them to take a closer look.

“Dolly,” Kat said softly, fingering some sapphire-blue damask pieces, “take a closer look at
these
. They would be pure magic with your chestnut hair and brown eyes!”

The way the fabric scintillated in Kat’s hands was magic indeed. On closer inspection, I could see that it was generously embroidered with metallic thread.

“A beautiful effect,” I admitted, “but maybe a little too showy for a humble college professor such as myself. I think it would be best for me to dress simply if I am to be meeting with the great Gloriana of fashion, Elizabeth I. It wouldn’t do for her to think that I was trying to show her up, fashion wise.”

“Ha! As if you stood the slimmest of chances of doing that!” Kat said, laughing heartily.

“I suppose you are right, Kat; fat chance of me showing up Elizabeth I!”