The Jenny Wilson Show (featuring Henry VIII and his six wives)

• Title Page
  
• Chapter One
  
• Chapter Two
  
• Chapter Three
  
• Chapter Four
  

The Jenny Wilson Show

(featuring Henry VIII and his six wives)

Louise Birkett

Copyright 2011 Louise Birkett

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Cover images are courtesy of Wikimedia Commons (Jonata and Sodacan).

Chapter One

“OK Alice, get ready to go,” said the voice in my ear.

“It’s not Alice, it’s Jenny,” said the other voice in my ear.

The production assistant started counting backwards from ten, I arranged my face into what I hoped was a good smile rather than an inane grin.

“It might be The Jenny Wilson Show,” said the producer Ruth, alias voice number one, “but the presenter’s real name is Alice.”

“Well, I just think that’s confusing, I don’t remember that kind of thing happening before,” said the first voice, alias director Julian.

“That’s because they were known by their real or stage names,” Ruth pointed out, “and their shows were named after them. Besides, this was your decision.”

“Cue Alice,” said the production assistant.

“Hello and welcome to The Jenny Wilson Show, PL-TV’s first chat show.” I beamed towards the audience. They’d taken longer than we had anticipated to get settled. It shouldn’t have been a surprise; some of them had egos the size of stadia. The guests had the potential to be worse. Hence Julian and Ruth debating strenuously in my ear: one of the reasons anyway.

“I still say it’s confusing.”

“It was you who wanted to call it The Jenny Wilson Show,” snapped Ruth.

“Well, the Alice Frobisher Show doesn’t sound right,” said Julian. “Why didn’t we find a Jenny Wilson to front it?”

“Today the question we’re asking is whether a five-times married man is a good bet for the future,” my beam was becoming fixed. If I could have gagged them...

“We found eight Jenny Wilsons to front it,” fumed Ruth, “but you didn’t like any of them. The only one you liked was Alice. So you made her use the name or were you thinking she’d change her name?”

It was true. I think having a show where the presenter’s first name began with a J was some sort of homage to Jeremy and Jerry. Or maybe it was just because Julian liked names that began with a J. In any event, he’d thrown enough hissy fits on the subject to convince everyone to go along with him.

“Especially,” I continued, “when some of his previous wives have met what we might call dubious ends. Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together and welcome Katherine Parr and get ready to help her answer the biggest dilemma of her life.”

The audience dutifully applauded. The voices in my ear had gone silent, I glanced towards the control room. I could see Julian and Ruth standing and waving their arms at each other. Clearly they were still arguing so I could expect little help there. Why the sound wasn’t coming through my earpiece was a mystery but most things about PL-TV were a mystery to me. I hadn’t been involved in TV before I became what you might call life-challenged.

It was odd. While full-scale arguments complete with anger, bitterness and a swathe of negative emotions had pocketed my earlier life, here it hadn’t – so far. But, before I could complete the thought, the sliding doors had opened and Katherine Parr was walking towards me, wearing a long red dress with panels of gold and a jaunty little cap with a feather in it. My first thought was how tall she was: impossible to tell whether she was wearing heels under her long skirts. My second impression, as I shook her hand was how kind her eyes were. Perhaps we could somehow wing it without the director’s or producer’s help.

“So Katherine,” I said, when she’d seated herself. “You’re here today to talk to PL-TV’s viewers about the biggest dilemma of your life.”

“That’s right, Jenny,” she said. “The most powerful man in the realm has asked me to marry him but I’m in love with another younger, more vigorous man and he’s already had five wives. The one who’s asked me to marry him, that is. Not the one who I’m in love with who is his brother-in-law.”

Some in the audience gave loud gasps, getting into the spirit of the thing, as it were.

“So, tell me a bit about yourself, Katherine, have you been married before?”

She nodded. “Twice. Both times to men either older than me or in poor health so both times I’ve been widowed.”

“And is it because you’ve only had old or sick husbands that a young, vigorous man appeals?”

The audience laughed. I deliberately hadn’t pulled a suggestive face. Was Clare the floor manager holding up cue cards for them? I didn’t dare look. Neither of us had dried, the cameras were still running and there were still no voices in my ear. I suppose you could say that all was going well.

She smiled before saying, “But I do know that I cannot marry Tom now that Henry’s asked me. Either I must marry Henry or I must stay a widow.”

“Ahhh,” some of the audience members were doing the fake sympathy thing.

“That’s great, Jenny,” Julian was back. “Keep ’em guessing.”

“How can she keep them guessing,” Ruth thundered, “everyone knows the story.”

“Now that’s where you might be surprised, research indicates…” the voices in my ear were switched off so I didn’t get to hear what Julian’s researchers had come up with.

“Tell me about your first marriage, Katherine.”

“It was when I was seventeen, to Edward Borough. He wasn’t well and died within four years.”

“So, you were a widow by the age of twenty-one?”

She nodded, the audience murmured. Real sympathy this time?

“What happened next?”

“Within months I’d married my second husband. John was twenty years older than me, I was his third wife.”

“That was quick!”

“Well, yes, but what alternative did I have? My first husband didn’t leave me well enough provided for to be a merry widow. My only future was to marry again.”

“Did your second husband have children?”

“Yes, a boy and a girl. Margaret and I became very fond of each other. Good friends in fact. Companions eventually. I continued to bring her up after she was orphaned.”

“So what was life like in your second marriage?”

“Well, I was in charge of my husband’s houses. We had one in Yorkshire and another in London. I was responsible for seeing that all ran smoothly, from the brewing to the spinning to the making of soap and the setting of bones. Things within the house went smoothly enough but events around us were, shall we say, turbulent. My husband was taken hostage before my very eyes by Robert Aske during the Pilgrimage of Grace. Aske used my husband as his mouthpiece, much to the fury of the king. Eventually my husband had to go south to explain things, leaving his children and me unprotected in the north. The rebels put us under house arrest to ensure my husband came back.”

“So you were hostages?”

“Well, yes. My husband never recovered from it. He was being accused of treason while his family was being threatened with death.”

“Caught between a king and a rebel, then.”

“Yes. He was later arrested and sent to the Tower for a time.”

“How did he get out?”

“Well, he bribed Cromwell, of course. What else would he do?”

A couple of people in the audience laughed. Presumably mid-sixteenth century members of the audience who knew the difference between Thomas and Oliver or considered Oliver as irrelevant because he came after them – it can happen.

“What did you do?”

“We spent more and more time in our London house. It seemed safer there!”

I couldn’t hear a peep from either the audience or the control room. I’d had no idea Katherine had had such a colourful past. That’s the thing with PL-TV, we didn’t know what we were going to get. The idea for this chat show had come from someone remembering the pre-post-life game of which historical character would you invite to a dinner party. Then it became a chat show where people talked about what they were remembered for, then it became The Jenny Wilson show where people with connections to each other would talk about their greatest dilemmas. Now you know how the story ends would you have done things differently at a cross roads in your life; what would happen if you could get extra information, not available to you then, all that kind of thing really. We had no idea whether the show would prove more popular than pre-post-life TV but Katherine had kindly volunteered to help us out and Henry and his other wives had agreed too. Henry because he loved an excuse to be the centre of attention and at least one of the wives had a score to settle and up until PL-TV, her options had been limited. Or so our researchers had told us. They hadn’t mentioned how colourful Katherine’s life had been before Henry’s proposal.

“So Katherine, how do you think your second marriage made people see you?”

“As someone who could tread delicately when necessary. Also, it was well-known that I love fresh flowers, clothes – particularly shoes – music, laughter, animals, dancing…”

“All wholesome, harmless pastimes, especially in a time before credit cards.”

“Well, yes. Safe pastimes. I discovered that safety is important.”

One of the drawbacks of PL-TV is the clash of mind-sets. Sixteenth century viewers would understand Katherine’s choices entirely, twenty first century viewers would probably find it much harder going and who knew what those tuning in who hailed from the intervening centuries would have thought? A woman who believes that safety is important is proposed to by a man who has the power to order her execution. A twenty first century viewer would probably have told him where to get off – or been seduced by his fame.

“So, ladies and gentlemen,” I addressed the camera, “there you have it. An eventful life in Yorkshire followed by safety in London. Tell me, Katherine, when did you first become aware that you had attracted the admiration of a king?”

“Both my brother and sister were at court and high in favour, so I would visit them there and see the king. He sent me a present of sleeves on the sixteenth of February. I didn’t think too much of that, Henry enjoyed having women at his court and was often generous to them. Umm, do I need to explain about the sleeves?” She’d seen the blank look on my face.

“It might help.”

“In our portraits the lower sleeves you see on our gowns, the ones that are heavily embroidered, were tied on. It meant we could fashion new looks without having too many clothes. Anyway, John died on the second of March and whereas the first time I was widowed I had to remarry to survive, this time I could marry to suit myself. John left me enough property to ensure I was comfortably off, shall we say.”

“Balls! She was a very wealthy widow,” Ruth’s voice was so loud that I was sure Katherine could hear it through my earpiece as well.

“I had known and loved Tom for several months but we had worked hard at keeping it a secret so neither my husband’s last months nor my reputation should be disturbed. In my heart I was ready to marry for love, to bear children…”

“Even though Tom was something of a rogue?”

Katherine smiled indulgently. “He was an adventurer, yes, but I believe he always loved me.”

“He was a sociopath and only after her money,” muttered Ruth in my ear. “Get her to talk about how she knew Henry was interested.”

“All right Katherine,” I smiled. “I think what everyone wants to know is how you found out the king was interested: when did your dilemma begin?”