Six of One (6 page)

Chapter Ten

In Which the Queen of Hearts Stacks the Deck

I have to admit, this latest information took me a bit aback; it never even entered my head that Margaret Beaufort needed to be kept abreast of whatever was afoot in Bristol. I couldn’t imagine her wanting to have much to do with those salty Bristol seamen; she wasn’t exactly the queen in a sailor’s dream, if you know what I mean.

“Elizabeth sent a messenger to
you
?” I asked.

“I knew you
rhymed
, Dolly,” Margaret said. “I didn’t realize you echoed as well.”

“I don’t, generally,” I replied. “It must be all the emotion. At any rate, Elizabeth got a message out to you from behind sanctuary walls—saying
what
?”

“She got a message out to me saying that
she
wanted the English throne restored to its old Arthurian glory as much as she knew
I
did, since my son’s Tudor forebears were descended from King Arthur. Elizabeth claimed to have found a way for both of us to be a part of the revival with clear consciences. Her word was that the plan was mutually beneficial but that we had to act upon it before the night was out if her brothers were to be got out of harm’s way. She begged me to come to Westminster Abbey to help her work out the details.”

“Did you go to Westminster Abbey?”

“Of course I didn’t! I could not penetrate sanctuary myself. What if it was just a trap? I would have been taking quite a chance. Once within sanctuary, I might never come out again. I sent my trusted physician, Dr. Lewis, to meet with Elizabeth in my stead. Dr. Lewis would have done anything for me, right down to risking his life. You see, he had been quite enchanted with me when we were both a lot younger; he would have done anything to get under my farthingale, once upon a time.”

“He had a crush on you!” I said. “That’s sweet.”

Margaret Beaufort blushed. “Really, Dolly! At any rate, Dr. Lewis had treated Elizabeth and her mother in the past, so he was a man they knew and trusted. Lewis told me how clever he thought young Elizabeth was. He felt sure that she would have the composure, if he were detected within sanctuary, to say that she had summoned him to treat herself or her mother for some concocted ailment.”

“You
know
, mother-in-law, how much I appreciated your willingness to take a chance on my plan,” said Elizabeth.

“You knew, daughter-in-law, the risk I’d be willing to take to secure the throne of England for my son, Henry Tudor. I did my share of dirty work to further that plan, but even I would not have deigned to stain my hands, even indirectly, with the blood of innocent children. When you intimated that you had a tactic, short of outright murder, to get your two brothers out of everyone’s way, I was intrigued. Up until then, I’d had no idea you were every bit as ambitious as I was.”

I had also had no idea that Elizabeth of York was just as ambitious as Margaret Beaufort. Margaret, of course, was famous for it. Elizabeth, on the other hand, was most famous as the classic queen image on the playing card—strictly a one-dimensional figure. Up until then, Alice’s Wonderland was the only place I had ever seen the Queen of Hearts turn the tables.

Picking up the threads of the plot once more, I asked if Dr. Lewis had ever made it into sanctuary.

Chapter Eleven

Of Old Admirers and New Conquests

Margaret Beaufort answered my question with alacrity. “Dr. Lewis did get safely into Westminster Abbey, and he and Elizabeth got right down to business. Elizabeth had already roughed out a six-step plan for the proceedings, so she and Lewis needed only a couple of hours to work out the details. Lewis was out of sanctuary and reporting back to me by midnight. The first step was to get the boys out of custodial care and out of the country. Anywhere, as long as it was out—and the farther out, the better.”

“How did you manage it?” I asked.

“My stepson Baron Strange was also imprisoned by Elizabeth’s Uncle Richard, and in the same place as Elizabeth’s brother, the young Prince Edward. In order to get a message in to Baron Strange, I pressed my devoted Dr. Lewis into service a second time. Lewis wormed his way into my stepson’s cell on the pretext of delivering him a medicinal elixir. With the elixir, he delivered the details of the plan to free the boy. Baron Strange was able to get young Prince Edward out of prison the very next day. It was embarrassing for Elizabeth’s Uncle Richard to have this happen, especially with the Battle of Bosworth Field looming large. His administration was already on very shaky ground, so he had the news of the escape kept very, very quiet.”

“It was brave of Baron Strange to take such a chance,” I said.

“My stepson
also
had a…
crush
…on me,” Margaret said, savoring the newfound word. “It was before I married his father. I was a fascinating older woman in my late twenties, and he was in his teens. He would have done anything to make an impression on me, then.”

The hitherto unbeknownst history of Margaret Beaufort, career femme fatale, was building up into quite an interesting sidebar. I regret to this day that I did not take the opportunity to explore it with her more fully. The story of the Tower Princes fascinated me so much, though, that I let the opportunity pass. I inquired instead about Little Richard.

“What happened to little Richard?” I asked. How did you extract him from sanctuary?”

“My fourth husband, the Lord High Constable, was able to help out there. Elizabeth had provided us with the name of the man who was expected to escort Little Richard out of sanctuary and to his brother Edward’s prison cell the next morning. My husband had a henchman who bore a passing resemblance to that escort. We sent our henchman in before the sun was up. What with the dim light and all the excitement, he was able to, with Elizabeth’s connivance, deceive her mother into delivering Little Richard into his hands.”

“What did you do once you had both boys safely in your custody?” I asked.

“I entrusted them to the care of an Italian priest, one Father Carbonariis. He had quite the crush on me as well, back in the day, but he was a man of the cloth, so we never pursued it.”

“You preferred your admirers afar to afire, didn’t you, Margaret?”

“I wouldn’t say I preferred them that way; quite the opposite, in fact. But I had a job to do, and men are of a lot more use all whipped up than they are basking in afterglow. Father Carbonariis was no exception; he was eager to come to my assistance. He was wealthy and known to be involved in the funding of those mysterious Bristol explorations, so he suited Elizabeth’s purposes as well as mine. He was Italian, and he was departing for a visit to his homeland at that very time. The boys were safely en route to Italy with him before the week was out.”

“Well, that’s step one achieved in short order,” I said. “Step two?”

“Step two was to get the boys trained in seamanship. Once Carbonariis got the boys to Italy, he would deliver them into the capable hands of one John Cabot to be apprenticed in the maritime arts.”

“John Cabot, the famous explorer? The man who first claimed Canada for England?”

“The very same,” said Margaret.

I found this all
very
intriguing. John Cabot was the Anglicized name of the Italian Giovanni Caboto, supposedly assumed when he undertook a voyage funded by King Henry VII. There are those who purport that the man actually
was
English and born in Bristol—that he only immigrated to Italy temporarily and then returned to England. The plot was getting thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.

Step three, I guessed aloud, was a witness-protection program of some kind. Margaret Beaufort informed me that I was correct.

“John Cabot had the simple, but perfect, solution to the problem of the young princes’ false identities. The boys, when they had completed their apprenticeship and arrived in England to set sail from Bristol on their venture, would be introduced as Cabot’s sons.”

“So the boy King Edward V, missing Tower Prince, was recycled and returned to the historical stage as Sebastian Cabot?”

“Yes. An appropriate name, don’t you think? Like Saint Sebastian pierced with arrows, the boy was thought to be dead, when, in reality, he was very much alive.”

“What name did Little Richard assume?”

“Little Richard became Ludovico; it means ‘famous warrior.’ For all his training in seamanship, Little Richard wanted nothing more than to be a great knight, like those of the Round Table.”

“And step four?” I asked, more intrigued.

“Step four was my son, Henry Tudor, wresting the crown of England from Evil King Richard, Elizabeth’s uncle.”

“At the Battle of Bosworth Field, of course!” I exclaimed. “Evil King Richard was felled, and his crown landed on a hawthorn bush. It was taken up from there and put onto the head of the triumphant Henry Tudor, now officially Henry VII.”

“You are correct, Dolly. Sir Reginald Bray was the man who retrieved the crown from the hawthorn and placed it on my son’s head. Reggie had
very
big crush on me, back in the winter of 1473. He would have done anything to improve his chances with me, right down to diving into a prickly hawthorn bush.”

The punning possibilities of the horny and the thorny were tempting, but I took the high road and left them alone, inquiring instead about step five of the plan.

“Step five was my son wedding Elizabeth of York and producing heirs; Elizabeth’s family’s place and
my
family’s place in the monarchy were secured.”

“And do not forget, mother-in-law, the Arthurian place in the monarchy secured as well,” added Elizabeth.

Of course, I knew as an academician that the Tudor line claimed descent from King Arthur of the Round Table legends through their Welsh ancestor, King Cadwallader. If Elizabeth of York’s brothers failed to bring King Arthur himself back, Elizabeth would birth a direct descendant of said king through her marriage to Henry VII. The woman really did have it all sewn up. She even named her first, sadly short-lived son Arthur.

“Back to the plan!” I said, seeing the end in sight. “Step six?”

“Step six was to lay the groundwork for the boys’ voyage,” said Elizabeth, and then she took the tale home.

“My husband, King Henry VII, visited Bristol shortly after we were married in 1486 and set things up with the assistance of a man named William Weston. We stayed in touch with Cabot in Italy. We waited patiently while the boys learned their trade, and the Bristol sailors continued their preliminary explorations. In 1496, everything came together. Henry issued a letter patent to John Cabot and his “sons” Sebastian and Ludovico. They were granted leave to explore the northern New Found Land where the Bristol merchants believed Avalon itself was to be found. The patent prohibited any other seamen whatever from exploring the area, so our secret would remain safe. John Cabot and my brothers finally set off on their quest in 1497.”

“Hoping to see King Arthur face-to-face when they crossed the bar,” I murmured. “Did they?”

“They returned in 1498 without having found Avalon, but intrigued enough by what they
had
found to think they would find it eventually,” said Elizabeth. “They set sail again in 1498, accompanied this time by Father Carbonariis. John Cabot and Father Carbonariis never returned from that voyage, and Dr. Lewis died here in England at around the same time. That meant that now only my husband and I, my mother-in-law, Baron Strange, and my brothers themselves knew the truth about their identities.”

“Sebastian/Edward returned to England eventually, though, didn’t he?” I asked. “I know that before it was all over, he did some prodigious sailing. He visited Canada, Brazil, Argentina, and, eventually, Russia in search of the Northwest Passage.”

“Of course,” answered Elizabeth, “the Northwest Passage quest was a cover for his real quest: Avalon and Arthur. It had become as much an obsession for him as it had for me.”

“My brother said he would live and die trying to find Avalon,” Elizabeth continued. “He was at sea when I died in 1503—the same year Baron Strange died. Edward/Sebastian did not return to English soil until 1512. At that point, my mother-in-law and my husband were dead, too. We never told my children anything about my brothers and the identity substitution, so they thought that their uncles, the Tower Princes, were dead. That left Edward/Sebastian free to travel the world and pursue his Arthurian dream. As far as I know, he never found Camelot, Avalon, or King Arthur. I can only hope that he found joy in his journey if not in his destination.”

“By the way,” I asked, “what happened to Little Richard?”

“Richard/Ludovico never returned from the voyage that also lost us Carbonariis and John Cabot.”

I bowed my head, partly out of respect and partly because I had tears in my eyes. “Poor Little Richard…lost at sea.”

“You are wrong, Dolly. Little Richard never returned to England, but he was
not
lost at sea. When Edward/Sebastian came back to England the first time, he told us that Little Richard had opted to make his bid for glory by remaining in the New Found Land. He had grown up, you see, and decided that making his own glory in the New World was preferable to seeking it on the sea through dreams of Camelot or doing dirty work here in England.”

I remembered all the tiny-but-tempting bits of evidence that turned up now and again in support of the theory that those fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Bristol explorers had actually made inroads into the American mainland and possibly established settlements. I’d read of Native American tribes speaking variations of Welsh, cryptic carvings on the Cabot Rock, and latter-day settlers happening on blue-eyed Native American children sporting inexplicable European earrings and sword hilts. As a historian, I had dismissed them all out of turn. As Little Richard’s newest conquest, I looked at the evidence in an entirely different light. Seeing him blazing trails and leaving some kind of legacy in a New World suited me a lot better than seeing him buried under a tower staircase.

I turned my attention back to Elizabeth of York. “So, with your brothers satisfactorily provided for, you went on to give birth to two sons who, as Tudors, had Arthurian blood in their veins. You even named the first one Arthur. You had hedged all your bets. The world was your very own Round Table, so to speak, until that ill-fated final pregnancy of yours.”

“Regrettably, thus ended my chapter,” said Elizabeth.

Margaret spoke. “It’s too bad that Dr. Lewis wasn’t in attendance when you labored with that last baby, Elizabeth.
He
would have pulled you and the baby through, if only for my sake. He’d have dropped dead himself before he let a grandchild of mine slip through his fingers like that.”

I am sure you will agree that the imagery conjured up by that statement was enough to make anyone want to move things along a little quicker. I also realized that we had whiled away quite a lot of time at that point, and visions of bridal preparations yet undone began to haunt me. I spoke up.

“Ladies, I have to admit, your performances have been so compelling that I almost forgot for a moment that this is not real. You really had me going with the Bristol story—very original! I don’t know where my bridesmaids found your Renaissance Faire troupe or what they are paying you, but it is worth every penny. However, since you’ve told me that there are more performers to come, don’t you think that we’ll need to move it along a little faster than we’ve been doing? After all, I do have an altar appointment tomorrow.”

Margaret smiled. “She still thinks it is a game, Elizabeth.”

“Most of them
do
, this early on. The others will disabuse her of that notion soon enough.”

Turning to me, Elizabeth of York took one of my hands in hers and pressed it. Margaret Beaufort gently clasped my other hand, and I could not help noticing how long and beautiful her fingers were. She smiled as she noticed me admiring them. Then, Elizabeth bade me farewell. “We must leave you now, Dolly. Do not be worried. You will be in as-gentle hands with all of your subsequent hostesses as you have been with
us
.”

I heard Margaret Beaufort whispering to Elizabeth as they made their exit. I would have sworn she was saying, “You’re forgetting about Ann Boleyn!”