The Vavasour Macbeth

by Bart Casey

  After strolling by Henry VIII and a young Queen Elizabeth, Stephen stopped in front of a somewhat fierce-looking portrait of a young man in close-up. “Here’s our Sir Henry.”

  “Really,” said Margaret. “He’s that important—I mean, to

  be here?”

  “Yes, it was a small group at the top of the court, and even though he wasn’t a duke or an earl, he was right with the top of the pack. He had this painted around 1568, at about age thirty-five, when he was coming back from various missions on the Continent. I think he had it done in Antwerp, as a souvenir. By the way, Anne Vavasour would have been about five years old at the same time.”

  Sir Henry stared straight out from the wall at Margaret. “He looks almost angry, or menacing. I mean, it’s not a neutral pose, is it?” she said.

  “No, he’s sending signals. There are quite a few, actually. First, he’s wearing white, gold, red, and black—those are Queen Elizabeth’s personal colors. And those decorations on his sleeves—spheres and lovers’ knots—are associated with Elizabeth, too. But then he’s got something strange going on with that red cord around his neck that’s tangled up with three golden rings on his thumb.”

  “What’s all that about?” asked Margaret.

  “I don’t think they know. And he might have wanted it to be ambiguous. But it looks like he’s pledging affection to a few places could be ‘God, Queen, and family’ or perhaps something else. Maybe he wanted it to have multiple meanings so different people would have different takeaways. And then, look here, at what’s hanging next to him.”

  Next to Sir Henry hung a massive full-size painting of Queen Elizabeth, resplendent in a magnificent gown and jewels and standing on what appeared to be a map of England.

  Margaret read out from the explanatory label next to the frame. “This says it’s ‘The Ditchley Portrait, produced for Sir Henry Lee who had served as the Queen’s champion from 1559–90.’ Good lord, there he is again. It goes on: ‘It probably commemorates an elaborate symbolic entertainment Lee organized for the Queen in September 1592. Lee lived at Ditchley with his mistress, Anne Vavasour. The entertainment marked the queen’s forgiveness of Lee for becoming a stranger lady’s thrall.’”

  “And that’s one of her most famous portraits,” said Stephen. She’s actually standing on Sir Henry’s land at Ditchley.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” finished Margaret.

  1590. In the thirty-second year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, many of her oldest advisors were gone or on their way out.

  Her original favorite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, had died in 1588. And in April 1590, her well-connected secretary of state and spymaster, Francis Walsingham, followed Leicester to the grave. Lord Burghley, her principal advisor and lord treasurer, was turning seventy and was maneuvering for his second son, Robert Cecil, to first become a privy councillor and then the private secretary to the Queen.

  And in the same year, Sir Henry Lee, now aged age fifty-seven, was also living through several changes.

  On the personal side, his wife Lady Anne Paget Lee, was ill and about to die. Theirs had been an arranged marriage, back in the reign of Queen Mary, and they had been living separately for many years. Lady Lee always kept a low profile in her husband’s affairs since her two brothers, Charles and Thomas, were Catholic agitators in exile on the Continent, scheming against Queen Elizabeth. Sir Henry buried her in an ornate marble tomb that already held their three children, all of whom had

  died young.

  On his more public side, he retired from his role as Queen’s champion at the joust, after riding with distinction at the 1590 Accession Day tilt. At the end of that tournament, as he stood before the Queen and her ladies, hidden music started to play from beneath their elevated gallery, and much to everyone’s amazement, a reimagining of the Temple of Vestal Virgins, draped in white curtains, rose up from beneath the stairs in a magical and mechanical way. Stepping into the temple, Sir Henry then took off his elaborate black and gold armor, delivered his farewell retirement address, beginning “My golden locks time hath to silver turned,” and presented the Earl of Cumberland as his successor as Queen’s champion. Then Sir Henry clad the earl in another magnificent black and gold suit of armor and donned for himself a country cloak and cap to symbolize his rustication.

  But he was not dead yet. Privately, he planned to carry on and live full-time with his latter-day love, Anne Vavasour, who had just given him a son named Thomas. From this point on, Anne and Henry were inseparable.

  ~

  1592. Two years later, during the Queen’s late summer progress northwest of plague-ridden London, Sir Henry hosted the monarch and her court for a two-day entertainment divided between the Royal Manor of Woodstock and his nearby Ditchley estate. His objective was to secure the Queen’s tolerance and forgiveness for his scandalous living arrangement with Mistress Anne.

  No expense was spared as he hired the best talent to write and plan the stagecraft for the spectacle. On the first day, the Queen and her courtiers became the actors in a formal masque themed around the challenges of true love. They moved from site to site around gardens transformed into an extensive set for the production. The opening action recalled a famous entertainment held for the Queen at Woodstock in 1575, seventeen years earlier. It had been a magical evening, with dinner outside under backlit trees in fine warm weather. Now in the 1592 script, the courtly participants visit a grotto filled with languishing lovers on the estate of an aging knight named Loricus (Lee) who has saved all the emblems and trappings of the earlier happy Woodstock event along with reminders of past jousting tournaments and other celebrations. Then, after a dinner break, there was an elaborate debate between Constancy and Inconstancy.

  On the second day, the Queen was led to a bower where Loricus languished from the wounds of love. Her majesty, playing “a Faerie Queene,” then removed the trance ensnaring him by giving her blessing and forgiveness for his love with another. The knight miraculously recovered and, to end the entertainment, a long speech in the manner of a legal document was read bequeathing “the whole Manor of Love” to Elizabeth.

  The Queen was well pleased and, remarkably, Sir Henry succeeded with his objective of getting her tacit approval for his relationship with Anne. To commemorate the occasion, Sir Henry had also commissioned the famous portrait of Elizabeth regnant and standing with her feet planted on Ditchley and Oxfordshire. Painted next to her figure, a motto reads “She can take vengeance, but does not.”

  ~

  1595. Sir Henry still spent time at court. Reports from this year describe him playing cards with Queen Elizabeth while lobbying for a position as Vice Chamberlain, which he did not get. While in London, he stayed at his fifteen-room apartment in the old Savoy Palace overlooking the Thames. At court, he could have seen four plays acted by Shakespeare’s troupe in the December–January festivities welcoming in 1596, or even another four acted by Edward Alleyn and the Admiral’s Men in January–February.

  Perhaps he and Anne occasionally crossed the river from his private boat ramp to public performances at the Rose, Swan, or Globe playhouse on the South Bank.

  ~

  1597. With the unanimous support of his old jousting friends, Sir Henry was made a Knight of the Garter, a most unusual honor for a commoner. In a letter from this time, he mentions his eyes were getting weak and how much he loved for Anne to read aloud to him in the country. Friends at court sent them lots of things to read. Their lives seemed to be slowing down.

  They would have been surprised, perhaps, to learn their story was not ending.

  Lines spoken by Sir Henry Lee at his retirement as Queen’s Champion

  My golden locks time hath to silver turned,

  (Oh time too swift, and swiftness never ceasing)

  My youth gainst age, and age at youth hath spurned

  But spurned in vaine, youth waneth by increasing.

  Beauty, strength and youth, flowers fading beene,

  Duty,
faith and love, are roots and ever greene.

  My Helmet now shall make a hive for Bees,

  And lovers songs shall turn to holy Psalmes,

  A man at Armes must now sit on his knees,

  And feed on pray’rs, that are old ages alms.

  And so from Court to Cottage I depart,

  My Saint is sure of mine unspotted hart.

  And when I sadly sit in homely Cell,

  I’ll teach my Swaines this Carrol for a song,

  Blest be the hearts that think my Sovereigne well,

  Curs’d be the soules that thinke to do her wrong.

  Goddesse, vouchsafe this aged man his right,

  To be your Beadsman now, that was your Knight.

  Concluding speech of “The Legacy,” the 1592 Ditchley entertainment

  I bequeath (to your Highness) THE WHOLE MANOR OF LOVE, & the appurtenances thereunto belonging:

  Woods of high attempts,

  Groves of humble service,

  Meadows of green thoughts,

  Pastures of feeding fancies,

  Arable land of large promises,

  Rivers of ebbing and flowing favors...

  Fishing for dainty Kisses with smiling countenances,

  Hawking to spring pleasure with the spaniels of kindness,

  Hunting the deare game which repentance followeth...

  —[Etc., etc. ad infinitum]

  At twelve thirty on Sunday afternoon, Stephen and Margaret stepped from their taxi onto the pavement in Soho Square, steering clear of the empty cups and bottles by the gutter—all that remained of the boozy Friday and Saturday night crowds that filled the streets. Now there were only tidy little packs of Chinese kids walking by the garden benches, chattering respectfully on their way to weekend schools to be tutored up for Chinese high school entrance exams.

  They were on time for their planned “Sunday lunch” on Greek Street with Soames Bliforth and his girlfriend, Mandy. Soames had picked the incredibly posh restaurant L’Escargot. There was no sign of Soames and his love when they arrived, so Stephen asked for “Mister Bliforth’s table,” and they were seated in pride of place at the front window.

  Two kir royales arrived before they had a chance to place an order. The server explained, “Mister Bliforth is running slightly late, sir—he called a few minutes ago and sends you these.”

  “Well, I’m glad someone from our old class is making a lot of money,” said Margaret as Stephen wondered how much a glass of champagne with crème de cassis liqueur would cost in a place like this. Not too many English prep school headmasters would know.

  Soames and the surprising young Mandy soon arrived, sending the entire waitstaff into a frenzy, although the place was still almost empty. They were obviously regular customers—and good ones at that.

  “Hello, Stephen. And Margaret, isn’t it?” boomed Soames. “You’re both looking as fresh as you were back at school—very perky, indeed. Let me introduce my friend, Mandy. Oh, and she did not go to Oxford, you’ll be startled to learn.”

  Stephen’s mouth fell open. Mandy was the kind of ravishingly beautiful young black girl you might see on the front cover of Cosmopolitan magazine, perhaps holding a whip and dressed in a leopard-print gown. Her pale eye shadow and crimson lips radiated vivacity and style.

  She must be a model, Margaret thought. I mean, do I recognize her from the media somewhere?

  “Mandy works right around the corner, at an ad agency. Isn’t she wonderful?” said Soames, as if he were showing off a picture in a gallery.

  “Really, Mandy,” said Stephen. “What do you do there?” he said rather rudely to Mandy, but quite frankly unaware of his pointedness because he was totally gobsmacked and put off his guard by this apparition.

  “Receptionist,” said Mandy proudly, slipping into her chair.

  “Yes,” said Soames fondly. “I saw her through the window as I walked by and just had to go in. We’ve been an item since summer—and this is our favorite place for Sunday lunch, so quiet and smoothing after a vigorous Saturday.”

  Good lord, thought Margaret. I have led a sheltered life.

  “Mandy, Stephen is a school headmaster. And you may have seen Margaret here on television.”

  “Really,” said Mandy, landing her otherworldly eyes on Margaret for the first time, now that she just might be worthy of notice. “What show are you on? I’ve always fancied doing that sort of thing myself.”

  “Well, occasionally I’m on the news, I suppose. I’m a reporter.”

  “Oh,” sympathized Mandy. “I never look at the news.”

  Somehow Stephen could believe that. He collected himself a bit and turned his attention to Soames, who smiled back and winked at him. That made Margaret smile. So he does know how outrageous she is; that’s really funny. “So what you have been up to?” Stephen asked, and, quite frankly that made the three old classmates burst into laughter, and even Mandy smiled, too, as she checked her nails.

  Soames was a study in stylishness, thought Margaret, right up there with Mandy. His navy and powder-blue pinstriped suit was complemented by what seemed to be a custom-made Turnbull and Asser striped shirt and a red, blue, and white regimental stripe tie, with a triangular pocket handkerchief peeping out of his breast pocket. The American BBC News producer Margaret often worked with would have said “three stripes and you’re out,” making some kind of baseball allusion that told the on-camera newsreaders to lose one of the stripes in their outfit before filming, or the image would start shimmering. Soames, however, actually pulled it all off. And why not? With a seventy-five-pound haircut and his tan and lean muscular frame, he could be right out of a James Bond film—and Mandy could be right there with him, too.

  “Well,” Soames replied to Stephen’s question, “shall I give you the Sunday lunch version of a response to explain myself? I mean, it’s too early for the bald truth.” Soames caught them up on himself since school. He had taken a modest swath of his late father’s great library and opened a used and rare bookshop not far from where they all sat. “The old man loved books—I think most of the family fortune went into them. And when it all came to me, I sold the ones I didn’t want to keep, and bought others I did keep—and suddenly I realized I could open a shop and just keep doing that. I mean, they say you should do what you love, and I love the books just as much as my father did—and his father before him as well. That’s worked out really well. I keep it upmarket. That’s the only place the money is: I don’t want to get into recycling old paperbacks or running a two-shilling lending library. More like fine bindings, travel, and exploration—even maps, atlases, old prints, and that sort of thing. Now I’ve become so established that a lot of the new stock just walks in the door with people wanting to sell it. At the start I had to go out looking for it: you know, at estate sales, auctions, and knocking at doors of run-down stately homes. I mean, that was good fun, but perhaps success has made me lazy. Anyway, it’s still exciting. One never knows what’s going to turn up!”

  “Oh yes, we do know,” said Stephen. “The papers we want to tell you about came from the tomb of one of Margaret’s ancestors.”

  “Actually, it’s a double tomb: my Elizabethan ancestor, Mistress Anne Vavasour, and her lover, Sir Henry Lee,” added Margaret.

  “Her lover?” said Soames.

  “Yes, said Stephen. “There was a small flood in the church and they had to open up burial vaults to dry them. Then Margaret’s father—the vicar there—found the papers. He called me because he remembered I had studied up on old handwriting at school.”

  “Margaret,” said Soames, remembering himself and turning to lock eyebeams with her. “I am so sorry about your father. Stephen told me when he called and you have my deepest sympathies. How are you bearing up?”

  “As well as could be expected, I suppose. Thank you for asking. But I am glad to be back in London and here today,” she responded.

  “Well,” continued Soames after pausing a moment, having completed the obligator
y niceties, “finding papers in an old tomb is very unusual from this period. Stephen mentioned the 1600s—correct?”

  “Yes, that’s right,” said Stephen.

  “Usually things from that time only turn up from a great house where generations have tucked papers onto a library’s shelves and forgotten them. Then one day desperate descendants discover them and need to flog them to hold on to the house. That’s the normal path. You get things that are somewhat damaged and dusty after centuries of neglect but the copies you sent me look rather crisp. What’s the condition like?”

  “They seem almost eerily new,” said Stephen. “The vault they were in was made of porous firestone—as in a cathedral—so there wasn’t any moisture trapped inside. And it stayed bricked up and undisturbed from the 1650s until the past Bank Holiday weekend. They were inside two ebony boxes. I was a bit suspicious of how clean they were, but the watermarks all check out with ones contemporary to their time. And I do know the handwriting styles are quite right. I sent off a set of copies to old Professor Rowe as well. We went to see him two weeks ago, and he didn’t seem to have any qualms about them because of their provenance, although he didn’t think too much of their value. We thought you might be a better judge of that, since you’re a professional trading in that sort of thing now, and so on.”

  “Old Professor Rowe, you say. Yes, he’d be a good one to ask. I often get his opinion on things that come in to me. He’s a walking link to that history—well, I don’t know how long he’ll continue to be walking, but he’s certainly alive and kicking right now. What else did he say?”