Six of One (16 page)

Anne of Cleves looked positively rhapsodic as she spoke of Hans Holbein. She made me think that perhaps the old German saying,
die erste liebe ist die beste
—“the first love is the best”—was true. I thought for a moment of Wally and missed opportunities, but I did not allow myself to dwell on it.

I reminded Anne that she had promised
me
a question once I was able to give her the guess she wanted.

“I have given you your guess, Anne; now you must give
me
my question,” I demanded.

“As you wish,
liebchen
. My question to you is this: Dolly, have
you
got the courage to reach out and grab what you really want—your heart’s desire?”

I answered slowly and deliberately. “What I really want is Harry, and all that being his wife will bring me, including the life in England I’m so looking forward to. I am ready to grab at that with both hands, if I can just get out of here in time. That
is
what you mean by what I really want—‘my heart’s desire’—isn’t it?” I asked.

Anne of Cleves grasped my hand.

“Dolly, I didn’t ask you if you knew what your heart’s desire really was,
but
you
just asked yourself if you did. And you won’t have to look very far to find the answer.”

No farther than my own backyard, I thought, because if it isn’t
there…

Chapter Twenty-Six

“A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Medicine
Go Down,” à la Katherine Parr

Katherine Parr, the Julie Andrews ringer, was next up. Her blushing pink, English-rose looks still surprised me; Katherine Parr had been the only one of Henry VIII’s wives to have not just one but
two
books—and prayer books at that—published, so I had expected her to be a much more severe-looking woman.

The prayer-book writer was also quite the radical thinker: her ideas about religious reform brought her to within a hair’s breadth of execution for treason. She escaped that fate only because a careless courier accidentally dropped some papers in a courtyard one day. Those papers proffered treason charges against Katherine for her unorthodox religious beliefs and were en route to King Henry for his signature. A friend of Katherine’s found them on the ground and warned her about them before forwarding them along to the king.

Katherine Parr was able to beat the incriminating papers, as they traveled at the speed of government, to Henry VIII’s presence. She cajoled the king into believing that she had conjured up her provocative religious ideas only to distract him from his ailments by way of stimulating intellectual debate. She blushingly confided that absorbing the religious wisdom that flowed from Henry during these debates was her great wifely pleasure. As gullible as he was gouty, Henry VIII was duly sold, and Katherine Parr maintained the use of her level head.

“Dolly, like Anne of Cleves, I will speak of your heart—but not of its desires,” Katherine said. “In my life, desires were thwarted and cursed things. I prefer to avoid the subject of desire altogether. You and I shall speak of other,
higher
aspects of the heart.”

Anne of Cleves sputtered and then rebutted. “Higher aspects of the heart!
Prutt!
Frau High and Mighty! You are awfully lofty about hearts, Katherine Parr, considering what you did to—”

“Stop right there, Anne!” commanded Katherine. For a fleeting and frightening moment, Katherine Parr seemed a lot less like Julie Andrews and a lot more like Nurse Ratched. Fortunately, her return to composure was almost immediate.

“I did not mean to demean or offend you, Anne; forgive me if I did either,” Katherine Parr continued. “It is simply that you have had your say, and now, I must have mine.”

All
what
things considered?
I was puzzled by the scene I had just witnessed. Katherine Parr could not have had much in the way of heartless acts to bless herself with. She
did
marry the studly Tom Seymour obscenely soon after Henry VIII’s death, but I didn’t think that someone as estrogen endowed as Anne of Cleves would hold
that
against her. I had to admit to myself that my curiosity about Katherine Parr was more than a little piqued. There was nothing prurient about my interest at all. My curiosity was strictly historical, and above reproach.

No sooner had I thought the word “above” than a bird flew into the room. I took its glide in my stride. I had already seen and heard so much that night that I was hardly surprised by it. I admired the creature as it soared around the room a couple of times, wings spread wide, and landed gently on Katherine Parr’s shoulder. The bird was a peregrine falcon with white-and-black-barred feathers just like the barred satin of Katherine’s gown. An escapee from Arabella’s menagerie, I surmised. It had a golden chain, which Katherine fingered intently, attached to one of its legs.

“Eurydice is very fond of Katherine Parr,” Katharine of Aragon said. “Still, the creature’s visit is most ill-timed. Can I have a volunteer to bring the bird back to Arabella, where it belongs? Jane Seymour, perhaps?”

“With all due respect, Katharine,” Jane said, “I daren’t leave the room. I’d worry the whole time I was gone about what Ann Boleyn was doing to my chair.”

“I will do it!” volunteered Catherine Howard. In a trice, she had risen from her chair, but Katharine of Aragon pressed her gently back into it. “Thank you, Catherine, but you will remain where I can keep an eye on you.” The young Catherine meekly resumed her seat.

“I would do it, but you know how crazed the animals get when
I
come anywhere near them,” said Ann Boleyn, reaching out to stroke the falcon and being summarily clawed by it for her pains. “You see how it is, Dolly. That cursed Cardinal Wolsey’s cat has turned all of the animals here against me!”

Katherine Parr was on the bird’s side. “Please allow the bird to stay, as long as it doesn’t cause any trouble,” she said. “That is, of course, if our guest doesn’t mind. It is so sweet to be free, even for a little while.”

I had to agree with Katherine Parr. “You know why the caged bird sings,” I said to her, referencing Maya Angelou. “He sings of freedom.”

“
She
sings of freedom, Dolly. I thought you would recall the legend of Eurydice.”

Katherine Parr was right. I
did
recall the legend of Eurydice, stolen from her true love by a lecherous satyr. It was not like me to make that kind of mistake. I apologized for calling Eurydice a “he.”

“I just don’t know where my head is at tonight!” I said, and my ill-considered words, like a starter’s pistol, set off yet another frenzied dash to the wooden bedpost.

Ann Boleyn and Catherine Howard did the knock-on-wood honors this time with such zest that it frightened Eurydice right off of Katherine Parr’s shoulder and right onto the canopy over the bed. Eurydice had foxed them all; she was far too high to reach, even by the golden chain dangling from her leg over the edge of the canopy.

“Dolly,” said Katherine Parr,” “Eurydice’s gender is not the point. The point is that all of us here before you await one thing: we each want to be free. Each heart longs to spread its wings, just as Eurydice does.”

“You wanted to speak to me of the higher aspects of the heart,” I reminded Katherine. “I guess it doesn’t get much higher than the freedom to soar. That being the case, will you and I be speaking about freedom? Will we discuss how high our hearts are free to fly?”

Katherine scolded me roundly. “You are too impetuous, Dolly! You have just asked me not one, but
two
questions! We told you that only we six may ask questions, not
you
. Your inattention is most troubling.”

“I’m sorry if my words bubble out and cause trouble. I’ll redouble my efforts to be less culpable in the future,” I said, setting my jaw and looking away.

Katherine Parr was not above capitalizing on my guilt. “By way of atonement, Dolly, you will tell me a little bit about freedom before I pose my question to you. Mind you, freedom
will
be part of the substance of my question, as well as of your discourse.” The woman was getting less like Julie Andrews by the minute.

It seemed to me that Katherine was splitting hairs in order to hit me with more than one question without directly breaking the rules. As an active participant in the Protestant Reformation, she’d have gotten very good at splitting hairs.
Two can play at that game
, I thought, certain that I could compete with her on that level.

“As some would have it, Katherine, freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose,” I said.

“You tried evasion once before with Anne of Cleves, Dolly, and I shall call you out on it, just as she did.
I
also do not care how ‘some would have it’; I care how
you
would have it—freedom, that is—because
I
never had it.”

Katherine Parr, as Henry VIII’ sixth wife, had certainly
not
had it—freedom, that is—and I acknowledged as much.

“I don’t know how you stood it, Katherine, married to not one, but
two
sick old men before you even got to His Royal Goutiness, Henry VIII. Anyone would have charged at the red-hot Tom Seymour after all that. What a shame that your marriage to him was nothing more than another kind of trap. You poor little thing; you were only a bird in a gilded cage!”

“An apt metaphor, Dolly. I was no better off than Eurydice was—
worse
off, perhaps. Her wardress, at least, is predictably benevolent. His Royal Goutiness most definitely was not.”

I could not help but agree; gout, suppurating leg ulcers, morbid obesity, and tertiary syphilis are no recipe for benevolence. “It can’t have been a very pleasant existence for you, Katherine, having to take care of someone as sick and cranky as Henry VIII was by then. I cannot imagine any worse curse than playing nurse for someone so perverse. You must have felt like you were chained to his sickbed.”

“I wasn’t so closely tethered to his sickbed that I couldn’t run, bob, and weave when the missiles started flying!” said Katherine with spirit. “The things that man would throw! Food, drink, pillows, chamber pots; anything he could get his hands on was fair game, and when he tired of objects, he would try to strike blows.”

“
Ja
, and when he struck you, you struck him back,
nicht war
?” said Anne of Cleves.

Katherine Parr was not to be messed with. “Are you trying to steal my thunder, Anne? I think that’s very poor form!” she shot back.

“Was it?” asked Jane Seymour, scratching her head. “Should Anne have said ‘striked’ instead of ‘struck’?”

“No, Jane, she should not have said ‘striked.’ You’re confusing form with tense,” answered Katherine patiently.

I felt it incumbent upon myself to curtail this conversational sidebar.

“Being able to run away from actual attack like you did,” I pointed out to Katherine Parr, “is not freedom. Flying away to a safe spot out of blind fear, as Eurydice just did, is not freedom. Momentum that comes from negative emotion or an outside force is escape,
not
freedom,” I finished, thinking I had covered the subject pretty exhaustively. Katherine Parr disagreed.

“Well, Dolly, we are getting closer to it,” she said. “If my counterpart in your world were here, she would have much to say on the subject of internal and external forces—and of freedom, I am sure.”

I could not help but chuckle about Kate having a lot to say. My Harry’s sixth ex had a PhD in Women’s Religious Studies, and she enjoyed defending her doctoral thesis at length to any poor soul who would listen.

“Kate is one strong-minded woman!” I said. “Harry found that out when he tried to land one on her once.”

“‘Land one on her’? That is not a phrase we are familiar with,” said Katherine Parr. “Do you refer to rumpy-pumpy, Dolly? Your Harry must have attempted that with
all
of his wives, not to mention yourself.”

I clarified this at once.

“To ‘land one on,’ Katherine, means to clout someone. My Harry is not an abusive person by habit. Once, and
only
once, he tried to hit one of his wives. As luck would have it, it was his sixth wife, Kate, who was the target. Although a near miss, he very nearly knocked her block off during a dispute about feminism.”

“‘Knocked her block off’—really now! Dolly, you haven’t come nearly as far as I thought.” Katherine Parr, exasperated, assigned Anne of Cleves and Ann Boleyn to do the bedpost honors this time. Poor Eurydice, startled once again by the knocking on wood, departed the bed canopy and returned to the safety of Katherine Parr’s shoulder.

It was hard to believe that I had done it again; I was feeling even dumber than Jane Seymour, and
that
was saying something.

“Permit me to explain,” I said. “In
your
parlance, my Harry tried to box his sixth wife on the ear.”

“The scoundrel!” exclaimed Katherine.

“Kate certainly thought so!” I said.

“As well she should have!” replied Katherine.

“As well she did!” I said. “And speaking of external forces, she got a restraining order against Harry posthaste. Kate was through with Harry from the minute he threw that punch.”

“As well she should have been!” said Katherine.

“As well she was! Their divorce agreement was very enlightened: it required that Harry have a psychiatric evaluation. That is to say, he visited what you would call a ‘mad doctor.’ Kate suspected that Harry would try to marry again when she was finished with him, and she said that she owed it to her fellow women everywhere to ensure their safety against any future depredations on Harry’s part. A Prozac regimen ensued, and Harry has been quite manageable ever since. I guess you could say that for Harry, the Prozac was an
internal
force of sorts.”

“We do not know what Prozac is,” said Jane Seymour.

“It’s a medicinal preparation that calms the nerves and improves the spirits,” I explained.

“Sounds rather like hemlock!” Katharine of Aragon blurted out. Her comment brought the “Nurse Ratchet” look back to Katherine Parr’s face, and it was not a pretty picture, I can assure you.

“Katherine,” I said, taking the bait, “tell me about your hemlock maneuver.”

Katherine Parr took a moment to seat herself comfortably and then told her story.

“In our time, Dolly, hemlock was a medicinal that Henry VIII’s physicians prescribed to him to relieve the pain of his various ailments. It often fell to my lot to dose him with it in the wee hours. The apothecaries would not trust just anyone to do it, because the tincture was so powerful. A drop too much, and there would be relief of a different kind. There would be permanent relief for Henry from an earthly coil that was becoming unbearable. There would be relief from ongoing abuse for me, and relief for many from fear of treason charges. All of the marriageable women in England would be free from the dread of becoming Henry’s seventh wife. I held the key to all that relief and all that freedom.”