Six of One (18 page)

“All of the years,” I repeated, attempting a little rapid calculation. “Your relationship with Maria must have begun when you were quite young.”

“It started in 1519. I was thirty-four years old, and Maria was twenty-nine. My husband’s mistress, Bessie Blount, had just given birth to a bouncing baby boy—the son I so signally and repeatedly had failed to produce. Henry’s delight knew no bounds, no discretion, and no consideration for my feelings or my pride. One night, as I sobbed myself sick over the situation, Maria took me in her arms to comfort me. She kissed me, and that’s when we knew.
That
is when all the deception started.”

Hearing the context, I thought that the Bacchus and Ariadne comment would have put me over the edge in similar circumstances: The unfeeling Theseus abandons the sobbing Ariadne on an island. The god Bacchus finds her there, and the sight of Ariadne in tears makes him fall in love with her. As proof of his love, he takes the diadem she is wearing on her head and flings it into the heavens, where it becomes the constellation Corona Borealis—the Northern Crown.
And
, I thought,
speaking of crowns, wait until they hear what I have to tell them!

“Ladies!” I said, clearing my throat dramatically. “Prepare to be amazed, dazed, hazed, and fazed!”

“Dolly! Don’t tell me
you
are a lesbian, as well!” gasped Jane Seymour, the wrong end of the stick firmly in hand.

“No, Jane, I am
not
. Not that there is anything
wrong
with being a lesbian. What I have to say is not about me; it’s about Katharine’s Maria.”

I directed my attention to Katharine. “As I’m sure you well know, Henry VIII’s direct line of descent died with his own three childless children—
four
childless children, if you count the illegitimate Henry Fitzroy.
None
of them reproduced. Fast-forward now to my world, and to Princes William and Harry of Wales, sons of the current heir apparent, Prince Charles. William will undoubtedly be king one day. His mother, the late Princess Diana of Wales, was a woman as well loved by the people as
you
were. She was known as ‘the People’s Princess,’ in fact. You might be interested to know that Diana was a direct descendent of someone you know: my doppelganger, Cathy Willoughby.”

“Cathy Willoughby was my Maria’s daughter! My namesake!” exclaimed Katharine.

“I’ll bet Marlene Dietrich didn’t mention
that!
” I said.

“My beloved Maria, a progenitress of kings! We never suspected anything like this. To think that in the fullness of time, Maria would come to have succeeded where Henry completely failed!”

Thank goodness for that gold-filigreed handkerchief, because Katharine of Aragon was crying, once again, tears of joy. It was a gratifying sight to see, knowing she had cried so few of those and so many of the other kind of tears in life. I had been privileged to give Katharine of Aragon and her Maria the last laugh—and a hearty one at that.

“Dolly,” Katharine explained, after composing herself, “we have some knowledge of your world, but it is very limited. The friends and relatives who were permitted to join us here over the years brought some of the knowledge from their times, but they could, of course, tell us only about the generation or two that immediately followed our own. Since the seventeenth century, our only knowledge of the outside world has come from our guests. It has been quite a job trying to patch together family genealogies since then, with only the tidbits of information that our guests have been able to provide. We only knew for sure that Henry VIII’s stock died with our own children, and that his sister Margaret’s children perpetuated the line.”

“And that makes Margaret a damned insufferable bitch a lot of the time!” complained Ann Boleyn. “She never ceases to rub our noses in it.”

“Well, now, Ann, I for one shall find it much easier to suffer Margaret’s pride from now on,” Katharine assured her. “My Maria suffered
such
remorse about our situation. She said that her love was ‘but a poor thing’ against Henry VIII’s power and prestige. I can’t wait to undeceive her of that notion!”

“When you do,” I said, “please give her a kiss from me—and my special love. They tell me that I look a lot like Cathy, the daughter she named after you. I don’t want to leave this place without sending your Maria my special regards.”

“That is something else I cannot wait to do. I promise to deliver the message, the kiss, and the love.”

The words “cannot wait” reminded me that I, too, could not wait if I didn’t want to be late for my date with the preacher. Realizing that I was not even fully halfway through the six wives yet, I gave Katharine a not-so-subtle prod. “If you will pardon my mentioning it, aren’t we supposed to be discussing deception?”

“So we are, and back to the question I have for you, Dolly. Let me begin with this: I deceived history into believing I loved a king, but I really loved my own lady-in-waiting. I wonder, Dolly, if there is someone that
you
have deceived about your heart’s true love.”

“Wait one minute!” I interjected, taking up my own defense. “I am marrying Harry tomorrow in good faith and till ‘death do us part.’ I am not deceiving anyone!”

“I did not hear the word
love
mentioned, Dolly,” said Katharine gently. “Could it be that you are deceiving
yourself
?”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Dolly Learns a Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words

From the wife with the
longest
run, it was on to the wife with one of the shortest ones. Jane Seymour was wed, impregnated, delivered, and dead all in a scant year and a half. Short runs running in the family, the golden child she delivered, Edward VI—Henry VIII’s only legitimate son—reigned a brief six years and died, childless, at age sixteen. Contemporary sources describe him at the end as hairless, sore-covered, reeking, and emaciated, possibly from tuberculosis, but probably from the remedies used to treat his final illness. I had always found it difficult to reconcile the deathbed Edward with Hans Holbein’s portrait of the blond, round-faced, pink-cheeked, rattle-bearing toddler in red garb and feather—Henry VIII’s “Mini-Me.”

Meeting Jane Seymour, I could see that the rosy Holbein toddler had inherited nothing—in the looks department, anyway—from his mama. Jane Seymour looked a lot like, well, to be perfectly honest,
Jane Seymour
, the eponymous actress. She was unthreateningly pretty but too posh to be just the girl next door. I could see why Henry VIII had been attracted to her.

“Dolly,” Jane said, “I know the others so far have set you at guessing games. Quite frankly, you’re acuteness amazes me.”

“I’ve never been called ‘acute’ before, Jane. Thank you.”

“You are quite welcome, Dolly. I’ve always wished that someone would call
me
‘acute,’ but no one ever has,” she said petulantly. “That being the case, it’s probably best that I not try to wax clever and just tell you flat out what my secret is. I will try to be very quick about it.”

The “quick” idea was definitely worth encouraging.

“That will make a refreshing change,” I said. “You go ahead and cut right to the quick—I mean, right to the
chase
, Jane.”

The ‘cutting’ reference did not go undetected; however, it affected the proceedings less this time than it usually did. I thought at first that the wives were finally getting immune to my comments, for Catherine Howard and Katherine Parr did not even break a saunter en route to the bedpost; and they knocked so faintly when they got there that I could barely hear it. I realized later that they had adjusted the perceived speed and volume so that I could clearly hear Jane Seymour’s soft and measured voice.

“My son Prince Edward,” Jane said evenly, “was
not
Henry VIII’s child.”

It was the first time I had seen someone transformed from broodmare to dark horse in an instant. All bets were now off in
this
horse race.

“Whose child
was
he, Jane?” I asked, dumbfounded. My professional expertise gave me no clue at all as to who the real prince daddy might be.

Jane’s response was instantaneous. “My Edward was Tom Cromwell’s son.”

I was genuinely shocked and did not think at first that it could possibly be true.

“No way,” I said. “That can’t be! The baby in Hans Holbein’s portrait of your son is the living spit of Henry VIII, if you will pardon the expression. That child could not
conceivably
be anyone’s other than Henry VIII’s!”

Anne of Cleves interjected. “When I came to England from Germany, I saw that same Holbein portrait, and I saw the little Prince Edward himself. The two faces were not at all alike. I was shocked at so bad a likeness from my talented Hans, and I told him so! That’s when Hans told me what he said was obvious to his trained eye, but what
almost
everyone else at court had missed altogether: the boy’s true parentage.”

It seemed to me that Holbein was jumping to conclusions, but Anne assured me that it was not so. “No, Dolly, Hans was absolutely certain. His knowledge of facial features was downright encyclopedic. In Hans’s mind’s eye, every feature he had ever painted was carefully preserved and accurately catalogued. Having painted portraits of the king previously, Hans knew immediately upon sketching the little Prince Edward that he was no child of Henry VIII’s. Having also painted Tom Cromwell’s portrait several years earlier, Hans knew from little Edward’s features which man at court really
was
the child’s father. He said there could be no doubt about it. He said that Tom Cromwell—Henry VIII’s trusted chancellor—had been Henry’s right-hand man in more ways than one.”

“That’s big,” I mused. “
Really
big. Unseasonably big.”

“Treasonably big,” Anne added, “and don’t think that Hans didn’t
know
it.”

Poor Hans
, I thought.
Something that big sticking in his mind’s eye had to have been uncomfortable as well as dangerous.

“So,” Anne resumed, “Hans purposely painted the portrait of the baby Prince Edward as you’ve seen it, the very—as you would have it, Dolly—
spit
of Henry VIII. It was the expedient thing to do. Hans and I, of course, kept what we knew about the boy’s true parentage strictly
entre nous
, and that kept us both on Henry VIII’s good side.”

If anyone would have known which side was Henry’s good side, I reasoned, it would be the portraitist Holbein. Still, I was not entirely convinced.

“With all due respect to Holbein’s weather eye, surely if the resemblance between Prince Edward and Tom Cromwell was that obvious, others would have noticed, as well.”

“Jane Seymour’s circumspection was such that none of Henry VIII’s courtiers thought to question the parentage of Jane’s son,” Anne of Cleves said. “Besides, there
was
someone else who saw what my Hans saw.”

“Who was it?” I asked.

“Scrots,” Anne replied.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Scrots.”

The word sounded to me like one of those audacious Old English exclamations, like the ones Shakespeare made up. I hazarded a guess that it was a variation on the Latin for “balls,” and asked Anne if I had said anything to offend her.

“
Really
, Dolly!” Anne scolded. “I meant Scrots the
artist
.
William
Scrots.”

I remembered now who William Scrots was. He had replaced Hans Holbein as Henry VIII’s court painter after Holbein died. Scrots also painted a standard portrait of Prince Edward, completed when the boy was nine years of age. The overall impression of Scrots’ portrait of Edward, like Holbein’s, is undeniably Henrician. It shows Edward in exactly the same stance that Henry VIII assumed in his own prototype portrait: chest out, feet wide apart, right hand on hip, left hand on codpiece, kind of like a modern-day baseball player. I told Anne that I was familiar with the portrait.

“You may be ‘familiar with’ Scrots’s portrait of Edward, but how closely have you ever really
looked
at it, Dolly? You mentioned the boy’s Henrician stance. That it
all
you noticed about it. That’s all
anyone
notices.”

I chalked up the propensity to focus on the codpiece to human nature. “We look at Henry’s portrait, we look at Edward’s portrait, and we say, ‘chip off the old block.’ What we’re
really
thinking, though, is, ‘chip off the old…’—
you
know.”

Anne smiled. “If any of you raised your eyes to the
faces
in the portraits,” she said dryly, “you would see that there is nothing of Henry VIII’s face in Prince Edward’s.”

“So, there
are
no true likenesses of Prince Edward in existence.”

“Not exactly,” Anne said. “Scrots painted a second portrait of the boy, one that is much less well-known to history. It was a novelty. Scrots called it an ‘anamorphic’ portrait. It had to be viewed from an angle, squinting, to be seen correctly.”

“Like an optical illusion.”

“That about sums it up, Dolly. The portrait was considered amazing in its time, almost magical. Those who appreciated its technical aspects could not see past them. Those who were unable to figure out how to view the thing properly were too embarrassed to admit it. If, however, you look at the portrait the way Scrots meant for you to look at it, the Cromwellian resemblance is unmistakable. That is why Scrots had to obscure the resemblance with a…
what
did you call it?”

“Optical illusion.”

“Thank you. Prince Edward, when he became King Edward in the fullness of time, had a similar portrait of himself done by Scrots to send to France as a gift for the French king, Henri II. I always suspected that Henri, wily as he was, noticed how much Edward resembled Cromwell.” Anne said.

I guessed that Anne was probably right. Scrots very mysteriously disappeared from the pages of history after painting that gift portrait.