by Betty Younis
When day of their departure finally arrived, Bess had appeared from her room at the Ransdell house dressed in boy’s clothing. Constance had not been prepared for it and had explained yet again that England would not look upon such behavior in the same way as Bess’ friends and mentors in Rome did. Bess shook her head and declared her indifference. She explained to her mother her intent to make the voyage as a man, thus freeing herself to learn sailing and cartography and wayfaring. It was late, the ship was leaving, and Bess won.
As on her voyage to Rome so many years earlier, Constance suffered from constant seasickness. She could not adjust to the rhythmic rolling of the ship’s hull and the constant sound of the sea sloshing and battering its sides. She spent her days in their cabin, her head in a bucket. Sea spray misted the air like fog on the Thames in the pre-dawn hours and her leg ached with the damp chill of it all. She remembered the voyage out to Rome, leaving Woolwich and believing her life would unfold as her mother’s had when she left England – an exciting adventure through which her own passion and personality would shine forth. But it did not turned out otherwise. Now she wanted nothing more than to return to her childhood home and pick up where she had left off. She knew instinctively that such a thing was not possible, but she yearned for it nevertheless. She wanted home. Desperately. She no longer knew what such a place might look like, but Coudenoure had sheltered her for her entire childhood, and even with the changes which must surely have beset the estate in the intervening years, it was all that came to mind when the word “home” hovered on her lips and in her thoughts. She would take it as a beggar might take a crumb from a passing stranger. The ship shifted beneath her and she rolled onto her back, clinging to the brace which ran above her bunk. Coudenoure. She hoped it would provide what she needed, and getting there was simply to be endured, not enjoyed.
Bess was solicitous of her mother, and secretly worried about her constantly. The loss of her lower leg had cost her dearly, and even now her recovery seemed less than certain. Her cough had always been with her but it seemed to increase in depth and frequency since the accident. Bess wanted to do what she wanted to do, but she also wanted her mother’s approval and love. She split her spare time between trimming the sails and cleaning the decks with caring for Constance. Each day after dinner, she would curl up beside her and read to her from one of the many books which were making the journey home with them. Once Constance dozed off, Bess would go to her work above deck, returning with supper in the early evening. She played cards with her, told ridiculous stories to make Constance laugh, and hugged her when the roiling of the ship proved to be too much and emptied the bucket. She listened to her mother’s stories of her own youth at Coudenoure and built a picture of the place in her own mind. To pass the time, she purchased charts from the captain a large page of paper intended for nautical. As her mother described Coudenoure she began tracing out the manor on the page. The exercise proved to be a tonic for Constance, for it made real what she not seen in more than twenty years. For Bess, it gave her a clearer picture of the great unknown which awaited her.
Roberto and Michelangelo, along with other artists in Rome, Florence, Paris and beyond, had wide networks which they used to procure pigments for their paints, stone for their statues, and canvases for their work. Never rising to the level of major sea-lanes but nevertheless worn and certain, merchants of all manner of goods had plied these secondary routes, searching and bartering over vast regions in the Far East, Africa and the lands north of England to obtain everything in demand. Early on in her Roman sojourn, Constance had begun using this tenuous means to transport letters to and from Coudenoure. It was through this method that she learned of her mother’s death, of her father’s search for her, and of the upheavals which accompanied his death. As the years had crept by and she had become ever more disillusioned with her life in Italy, Constance had likewise used this channel to communicate her own discontent and finally to tell Prudence of her decision to return to Coudenoure along with Bess. Prudence, in turn, had learned of the arrival of their ship through their contacts at Woolwich, and had hurried forth from Coudenoure to meet them. Constance was overjoyed to see her.
In November of that same year, Mary died and Elizabeth ascended the throne.
Chapter Six
True to her word, Elizabeth began visiting Coudenoure on a regular but erratic basis. Greenwich Palace and Whitehall served as her major seats of governance and prior to her discovery of Coudenoure, she had used river transports to travel from one to the other. Her subjects had become accustomed to seeing her in glorious state as her retinue came and went between the two on royal barges. Once she became aware of the treasures that Coudenoure held for her, however, she began alternating such transport with horseback rides along the Thames and backroads which still connected Greenwich to London proper. As her father before her, she learned that such rides necessarily took longer and generated a much more fluid time for her expected arrival at the other end. This, in turn, allowed greater windows of opportunity for discreet stops at Coudenoure.
Elizabeth no longer wondered about Coudenoure’s hold over Henry, for it had become a magnet for her as well. She would leave her guards at the end of the long drive and along with them her cares. She found in Constance and her small household the same respite from the throne that her father had relied upon for so many years. She and Constance would sit before the great library fire, as their father and Constance’s mother had done as well. Constance taught Elizabeth bezique, a card game she had learned to play and love in Rome. In turn, Elizabeth told Constance of life at court and her own transition from bastard princess to queen. The exchange allowed the two women the opportunity to breathe freely in a world which they had often been denied such honesty.
“So, Constance, you rode that night to Woolwich and boarded a ship bound for Rome?”
“Yes, you see, my mother had planned such an escape for years should I ever be in danger.”
“Ah, and so you repeated your mother’s own life?” Elizabeth sighed. “I have always wanted to please my father and to rule as he did, but ’tis difficult to know the answers to many of the problems presented to me.”
Constance poured Elizabeth a cup of tea.
“Are you sure this is healthful?” Elizabeth asked cautiously. “It is used for medicinal purposes only at court.”
Constance waved her hand to dismiss the concern.
“I have been drinking this delightful beverage ever since I lived in Rome and I believe it to be beneficial. It provides me energy when I am feeling fatigued.”
She laced her own cup with honey before continuing.
“And as for pleasing your father by emulating his reign, be careful my friend, for I sought to do the same with my mother’s life and adventures, and it ended not well.”
“Tell me.”
“I believed that by going to Rome and living as she had lived when young, all my own questions and problems would be resolved. I was terribly wrong. What I found was that I although I am the daughter of two passionate souls, I myself do not possess such passion. It took many years for me to see that and to learn that I must betray my own identity.”
“I do not understand.”
“Elizabeth, as I have told you before, when my mother was in Rome she knew the great artist Michelangelo. I, too, knew him, but in a different way. The man trained my dear friend Roberto…”
“Dear friend? I thought he was the father of Bess.”
Constance shook her head and smiled.
“No, her father is Michelangelo, although she does not yet know that.”
Elizabeth put honey in her tea and considered what she had just been told.
“So what is this about you and passion?”
“Michelangelo told me much about my mother – about her creative spirit and that it was matched by a passion that time would never quell. He was right, for she loved Henry until the moment she died, and likely even now beyond the grave. But he also told me frankly
that I did not have that same passion. I am creative and learned, but creativity without passion produces only small finite creations, creations that only live and breathe for a moment.
“It is only when creativity is married to passion that great loves, or great works of art are realized. Michelangelo is blessed with both, as were my mother and Henry.”
Still Elizabeth remained quiet.
“Roberto Ransdell had known my mother since she left England as a young maid. He had great talent but no passion – his work is valued and certainly treasured, but it cannot compare to that of Michelangelo.”
Constance poured more tea and honey before continuing.
“At any rate, Roberto and his wife sheltered me when I arrived in Rome. Shortly after that she died of the plague and Roberto was left with two small children. I served as their mother until he remarried. Michelangelo loved my mother as a father does a daughter, and when he learned I was in Rome, he insisted I come to his studio and work beside his students. After a bit, we became lovers, for he was in between mistresses, as he said, and I was eager to know carnal love.”
Elizabeth gasped.
“You are very open about such matters, sister. Some might call you…”
Constance laughed.
“Call me what, sister? A whore? Perhaps, but I have always gone my own way, and you must remember, I was not a young maid when I reached Rome.”
“And so you were with Michelangelo, the great artist?” Elizabeth leaned slightly forward and her voice invited Constance to say more.
“I was.” Constance’s eyes twinkled with the memory. “He was kind and passionate and gentle and taught me much. But it was not to be a long affair and we both knew it. In a way, I believe we both got what we wanted. He was desperate for female companionship at the time, and I confess I wanted a child regardless of the circumstances of conception. It had begun to drive me in ways you may not yet understand.”
“No, I understand what you say, for I myself have felt such stirrings.”
“Roberto and his new wife took me in…”
“Do the people of Italy treat such matters lightly?” Elizabeth’s voice was laced with incredulity.
Constance laughed.
“Perhaps not the people of Italy, but the people of the art world are not so bound to custom and tradition as we are, sister. Roberto took me in and for some years we all lived happily.”
“What happened?”
Constance shrugged.
“I missed England. You know, you might think that a warm climate and a beautiful city would replace such a musty and damp home as our little isle but it will not, I assure you. I began to long for the smell of peat upon the snowy winter path, of lavender mixed with the scent of roses in the spring, for the sight of the muddy Thames flowing slowly onwards.”
“And you never contacted our father?”
“I dared not, for I knew that should my heritage become known, I would be in danger of being pulled into intrigues against him for the throne, intrigues in which I have no interest even now. I waited for an opportune time, and after your brother Edward and your sister Mary died and left the throne to you, it seemed safe to return.”
Elizabeth nodded understanding.
“Also, Elizabeth, you must realize that my daughter and I are Protestant in our beliefs, while Agnes clings to the only faith she ever knew – the faith that Thomas and my mother died in, and which she will die in as well. It would have been difficult had I come home and the rift which was playing itself out in the realm then been reflected within my own household.”
“Yes,” Elizabeth responded slowly, “I can follow your reasoning. But were you ill and lame when you left England?”
“No, the cough which robs me of breath came upon me late in my stay in Rome. I visited numerous doctors, but none had an answer for what caused it, much less a cure. But I am fortunate for it grows no worse as time passes. It is only when I exert myself that it causes me harm.”
“And your leg?” Elizabeth asked gently.
“That happened in Rome as well. After the birth of Bess, while I was living with Roberto, I continued working and studying in Michelangelo’s studio…”
“What! You continued working for the man even though you had his child and were no longer his mistress? What manner of relationship allows such behavior?”
“A relationship with a great artist who lived among other great artists,” Constance laughed as she spoke. “It was not the model of courtly behavior to which our class usually subscribes, but artists are not like us – they have their own code of conduct and their own sense of morality which only occasionally intersects with that which exists at court.”
“But as you can imagine, I did not want Bess to be labeled as I had been, a bastard child.”
A bitter laugh escaped Elizabeth.
“I know all about such labels, Constance.”
“So Roberto agreed that I could claim that he was her father, and that we had been married.”
“And Michelangelo?”
“He was appalled that I would want to return to a place where our child might not be beloved, but in the end he accepted it and understood that she would be raised as I had been – outside the strictures of the court but with paternity rather than without.”
Constance coughed a deep wheezing breath.
“My leg – you asked about my leg. During my last months in Rome, we were supervising the moving of a great slab of marble and one of the tethers broke –“ Constance made two fists and a snapping motion with her hands.
“The marble fell on my leg.”
Elizabeth listened in horror.
“I was lucky it did not fall on my person proper. My only hope to survive was the sacrifice of my leg. I did not hesitate to allow it for I desired rather to live crippled than to die whole. It took some months at death’s door even so, but my will to live prevailed.”
She coughed again.
Elizabeth placed a shawl around her sister’s shoulders and looked around for her riding gloves.
“Enough for today,” she exclaimed. “We will talk again.”
Constance lay back, exhausted by her own memories. She listened to the slowly fading sound of hooves beating down the gravel drive and knew that the sound had marked her entire life at Coudenoure. She remembered her father Henry on his mighty destrier coming and going. Strange how patterns repeat, she thought as she dozed off, and how sounds can pull and push memories at will.
Chapter Seven
Autumn turned cold as winter drew on.
As always, old Agnes refused to wear more than her thread-bare shawl over her head when visiting the cemetery. It had been her habit for years and no one save those willing to risk the random thrashing of her cane suggested she might benefit from additional clothing on her daily outings. She adamantly refused to hear the warnings of her loved ones about the effects of winter cold on old bones and continued her daily treks to convene with those in her past wrapped only in her thin garments.
Constance’s cough, which had shown signs of improvement in the summer months, grew worse as the damp and clammy air closed in around them and the light faded to a glow on the horizons of the late afternoons. With each waning day, she seemed to cough more and sink deeper into her own sad thoughts. No funny stories from Bess or cakes and scones from Prudence could free her from her from the clutches of her own disaffected and mordent reflections. They held her as a hawk might hold a helpless mouse in its talons as it flew high above the earth and traced its way homeward. Even on sunny days, when Bess placed her chair in the library window so she could enjoy the bright winter sun, her melancholy remained acute.
The change of seasons seemed to have triggered the reflections, though she knew not why. She realized that her life had always been lived in the shadowy reflections of others’ thoughts, others’ wishes and others’ existence, and this knowledge suddenly seemed to drive a depression she had never felt before. Had she ever known happiness, she wondered, or
was she simply one in a great chain of beings whose lives have no outward purpose? But even as her thoughts darkened with such conjectures, she knew it was not true, for she had Bess. She would gladly live it over again if it meant she once again had such a light in her life.
Visits from Elizabeth became more and more routine, but even as they did so they became less about Coudenoure and more about Elizabeth’s troubles beyond the gates of the small estate. Were her sovereign’s calls at the heart of her own discontent? Early on, Elizabeth had demanded deep and intimate detail of Constance and her life. She seemed to feed on the knowledge it provided her about their father and like a young child at its mother’s breast she could not get enough. With each revelation about Henry and his personal likes and dislikes, she would lean back and close her eyes, fitting the detail into some overall mental image she obviously held of the man. On and on Constance talked until finally, Elizabeth was somewhat sated. But the endless talking had brought back endless memories for Constance, and with them came a sense of an unfinished and quite useless life. It might not be true, but she remained its prisoner nevertheless.
It was on one of Elizabeth’s visits that Constance was simply too tired to talk or play cards. Secretly, she acknowledged that it was not fatigue but a weakness in her chest. To ward off questions and concerns, she suggested Elizabeth walk with Bess, and learn more of Coudenoure in that manner. Elizabeth was at once amenable to the suggestion, for despite her frequent trips, she knew little of her niece, save that apart from Constance she was her closest living relative.