Midnight in Westminster Abbey

by Sean Dennis Cashman

  Mary Tudor nodded at this. It was as if in death she and Elizabeth had learnt they had more in common with their cruel and capricious father than they had ever thought in life what with his double-dealing religious standards and his seemingly endless procession of dispensable stepmothers.

  “Or was it,” Elizabeth thought to herself, “it was what we had in common that made us such enemies in life?” It must be true, what some modern pundit said: lifelong feuds aren’t about hate—they’re rooted in pain. We both had plenty of that."

  Georgie realised the two queens were being less than candid about their family and their own roles. He had heard his dad distinguish between sins of commission—things you did that you shouldn’t have—and sins of omission—things that you didn’t do either because you conveniently forgot them or by overlooking wrong things that others did.

  Elizabeth read his mind.

  “In modern times, people think they have the right to know everything about you—the full Monty—and even then to search for undercurrents beneath the surface,” she said. “Your writers call this subtext. I am what you call Old School. Not everyone has the need—and far less the right—to know everything. Reveal the grammar—the substance behind the surface glamour—and the illusion and the power it exerts are gone. All that does is provoke gossip and debate leading to uproar. It tears apart the delicate veneer of civilisation—the way society works.”

  “Keep your opinions to yourself, polish up the handle on the big front door and you’ll make a good page boy,” Mary added almost as if she were grooming Georgie for some unspecified future role.

  Georgie was starting to feel nervous again. Were these joyfully macabre queens as malicious as the spiteful witches in Macbeth? What did they want from him? Were they like the Snow Queen who captivates young boys and then keeps them in frozen captivity? He missed his dad. So he said, “I want to get back to my own world. My folks will wonder what’s happened to me.”

  Elizabeth I was ready for this and said, “Out of this world, do not desire to go, my pretty young fellow. I am a spirit of no common rate.”

  “She’s off again,” Mary Tudor confided to Georgie, seeing him try and control his quivering. “She’s stolen the lines from some poet. She thinks she’s still an immortal fairy queen whom no one can stop. She’s never heard the song, ‘No one loves a fairy when she’s forty’—and she’s over four hundred herself. Say nothing. Sit it out. Wait until her current fancy passes.”

  Georgie simply stared. What had he let himself in for?

  Turning back to Elizabeth, Mary Tudor said sharply, “If you want to party tonight, it’s best to rock and roll now.”

  Georgie had no choice but to let Elizabeth take him by the hand again and guide him on to—but he did not know where. The light was changing. Everything seemed to be glowing, more reddish.

  ELIZABETH I AND THE NEW WORLD

  When Elizabeth smiled at Georgie during her progress around the abbey, she gassed him with her bad breath. Now they were being accompanied by warriors in turbans and dressed in silver breastplates and turquoise pantaloons. Elizabeth sensed Georgie’s restlessness and said most charmingly, “England needs allies beyond Europe. We’re ready to treat with the Muslim Turks against the hostility of ultra-Catholic Spain. Unlike you moderns, we’re always expecting the Spanish Inquisition. It’s never a surprise to us. And I’m ready and prepared. I send the sultan coaches and clocks. He gives us sugar.”

  She smiled again. Georgie did not want to follow his own unsettling thoughts. The two queens’ progress around the abbey was now garnering attention as more and more fanciful heraldic animals were pouring in from the British aisles to cheer on the Virgin Queen. In no time at all, it seemed that as Elizabeth I began to glow more lustrously, the costume and very demeanour of Queen Mary Tudor grew duller.

  Georgie felt large splashes of rain on his head, his shoulders and his clothes. When he looked up, he saw the abbey roof had opened up a gaping hole. A brief autumn shower was taking advantage of the hole to prove that time, tide and the seasons took no account of what kings and queens wanted. Elizabeth I suddenly stopped before a mushy puddle on the ground. She looked around expectantly at the little improvised court of heraldic animals. Around the puddle were the flotsam and jetsam of street refuse. The queen clearly expected assistance without having to ask for it. But the little animals had come to gawp and gape, not to assist. Elizabeth looked uncharacteristically unprepared and askance.

  But unexpected help was at hand. A handsome, young fellow stood at the rim of the puddle. He had dark hair, a pointed, cultivated beard and a pearl earring in one ear. Doffing his stylish hat, with a showy gesture he flung off his own cloak and laid it immaculately flat on the soggy ground over the nasty puddle.

  Appreciating his gallantry and enjoying his adroit self-promotion, Elizabeth I suddenly produced tiny feet in exquisite costumed shoes. She held out her elegant hand to the young man and crossed the puddle in style.

  Georgie could not help wondering, given that this spirit queen had no real feet anyway and had glided around ever since he had met her, first why did she need such help over an ordinary puddle and then how had she acquired feet and shoes? Besides, who was this newcomer since it was only kings, queens and their attendants who resided in Westminster Abbey and who could come to life on this special night? Queen Mary Tudor had read his unspoken thoughts and was ready to answer them.

  “He’s Walter Raleigh, later Sir Walter Raleigh when he became one of Lizzie’s favourites. As you saw, her other courtiers didn’t have the gumption to help her across the puddle. But he saw the advantage of getting recognised and—to his credit—he took it. And he got as much as he deserved.”

  When the Virgin Queen had passed on, Walter Raleigh retrieved his sodden cloak. Rather than trying to wring it dry, he shook it, something that made the little animals gaping at the royals scoot away. Sir Walter hung his cloak on an artist’s easel. Georgie saw that the rain had left an imprint on the inside of the cloak. Coming into unmistakeable view on the cloak was a rather conventional court scene.

  Georgie recognised Queens Mary I and Elizabeth I at either side. In the middle was the even more unmistakeable figure of their obese father, Henry VIII, seated pompously on a throne and gazing contemptuously out of the picture.

  “Piggy little eyes and, boy, what a size,” said Sir Walter who was now at Georgie’s side and telling him how to interpret the picture: “As round above as he was round below.”

  At first, Georgie found Sir Walter’s rural accent difficult despite his voice being baritone and warm. Mary Tudor explained that Sir Walter was from Devon and so he had a southwest English accent. As he listened more intently, Georgie started to get the drift of Sir Walter’s syrupy words:

  “The picture is one of many circulated in the late sixteenth century. Although some of the characters were real people, it’s an allegory,” said Sir Walter. “In the centre, we see Henry VIII with his third and most beloved wife, Jane Seymour. Standing before them is his son and heir, Edward VI—whom you will meet later. Henry VIII can’t touch us now. Wouldn’t you like to tweak his nose?”

  Georgie nodded. Guided by Sir Walter, he put his right thumb and index finger together and pinched King Henry’s nose on the picture. Frozen in time on the picture, all Henry VIII could do was wince visibly and look like thunder because he could do nothing about the insult. He could neither move nor speak. Georgie could not be sure but he thought a wry smile crossed the face of the boy in the picture, King Edward VI.

  Sir Walter carried on regardless.

  "To the left is Queen Mary Tudor, Henry’s next heir and her husband, Philip II of Spain. She was Philip’s second wife, ultra loyal yet also the original desperate housewife. The two of them represent Roman Catholicism and are supported by a man in dark amour with a plumed Roman helmet. That is Mars the Roman god of war.

  “On the right in all her glory is our Elizabeth as Gloriana, Henry’s second daughter and rightful qu
een of the Protestant succession. She is supported by Roman goddesses of peace and plenty. That is the message: Elizabeth, married to England, represents a positive and bountiful future.”

  Hearing this praise, the skeletal Elizabeth at Georgie’s side, positively purred and preened. Mary I winced. But she was not lost for words. First, she set Georgie aright. She guessed he must be wondering why Sir Walter, a simple knight, was in Westminster Abbey among kings and queens.

  "He doesn’t live here. Oh, no. His body is buried in St Margaret’s Church in Westminster nearby. He can join us by special invitation—and Lizzie’s very generous with that invitation because she loves people who fawn over her.

  “As was her wont, Lizzie—such an immaculate Virgin Queen—according to her—didn’t like it when her favourite young men got married—even though she wasn’t going to marry them herself. When upstart Walter married someone else in secret, she made sure they spent a miserable wedding breakfast in the Tower of London. What’s the expression you moderns use? Ah yes, ‘Marry in haste; repent at leisure’. That’s how it goes. But Lizzie’s precious new lad from Devon was too useful for her to keep him in the Tower for long.”

  As if to interrupt Mary Tudor’s sour commentary, Sir Walter then turned over what turned out to be his most educational cloak. The outer side had now dried and looked like parchment but more dark grey and cream than black and white. It showed a scrawly map. There was England and Europe to the right, the Atlantic Ocean in the middle and the New World of the Americas on the left hand side.

  “This represents the Old World and the New World together—our future as well as yours,” said Sir Walter to Georgie.

  “For Europeans, the discovery of the vast New World opened up new land for discovery and exploitation. It was also important for what it represented in geography, physics and as a landscape of the mind. No longer could anyone deny that the world really was round and that the Earth revolved around the Sun. In the 1580s, Sir Francis Drake was the leader of what was only the second successful expedition to sail around the world. English adventure was at the centre of new discoveries. Our duty was—as I said in life—‘to seek new worlds, for gold, for praise, for glory’.”

  This was too highfaluting for Georgie who looked blank. Again, Mary Tudor kindly gave him her take on the history of Elizabethan adventurers.

  "Lizzie thought of Sir Walter as a soldier-courtier. My handsome and mighty husband, Felipe of Spain and the Netherlands, thought of him as a buccaneer—along with the infamous Sir Francis Drake and other pirates. It was Sir Walter who began the colonisation of Virginia. In fact, it was he who named it—wrongly in my opinion—after Lizzie. Virginia may be the right name for your sister, Ginny, but it was far too good for Elizabeth I.

  “What was I saying? Ah yes, Sir Walter was most enthusiastic. He introduced potatoes and tobacco from the New World to England. Comical, isn’t it? Educated men who should have known far better screwing up the dry shards of one vegetable in the leaves of another, then setting fire to the roll, and inhaling. Well, it would be comical if it weren’t so addictive—making men slaves of unattainable pipe dreams and prone to all sorts of life-threatening diseases.”

  “Holy smokes,” said Georgie.

  “Exactly so,” said Mary Tudor.

  “You’re too kind, majesty,” said Sir Walter with a false compliment Mary Tudor did not understand. “English traders roamed the seas and established sea routes,” he continued. “Queen Elizabeth financed many expeditions, carrying on an unofficial war with Spain. Its richly laden ships plied across the Atlantic. One famous incendiary incident was called singeing the king of Spain’s beard. Sir Francis and his fleet raided the Spanish port of Cadiz and set fire to Philip’s ships.”

  “Would you like to try that?” he asked Georgie who nodded.

  With a flick of his multipurpose cloak, Sir Walter led Georgie to the other side with its Tudor family tableau. He lit a match from a box conveniently at hand on a table nearby. Together Sir Walter and Georgie held the match to the cloak with as much pleasurable excitement as the little match girl in the famous story by Hans Christian Andersen. On the picture, Philip II’s face twisted and turned this way and that as he experienced a tiny sample of the horrendous burning the Spanish Inquisition meted out to unfortunate heretics in Philip’s own reign in Spain. Philip’s face contorted with insensate fury especially as Georgie giggled with boyish delight at the outrage. The picture on the cloak proved fireproof. When the match fizzled out, Philip’s face was at peace again, except that he had lost his beard. It had been replaced by a red weal and burn scar.

  Then Sir Walter swirled his cloak over to the other side to reveal the map again. Elizabeth, who had titivated herself during Sir Walter’s implied compliment about her largess, returned to the little merchant history tutorial.

  “Although the Spanish were ruthless conquerors and brutal plunderers (especially of gold) and pretentious empire builders, they were poor merchants. The wealth that came to Spain created no new industries. On the other hand, we, the resourceful English, found our special skill in trading with these new discovered lands. What would you moderns say? Oh, yes, ‘We’re all in this together’. That’s it. So we created more permanent wealth.”

  With that, Elizabeth folded her spindly hands together in front of her sparkly farthingale. This was a signal to Sir Walter to explain the mundane details.

  “The growth in overseas trading brought about the formation of companies, such as the Merchant Adventurers. This was an association in which each member traded on his own capital, and later of the joint stock company where the company traded as a whole. The profits and losses were shared equally among the members.”

  Georgie, who knew a little about his father’s Wall Street job, immediately thought, “This is like commodities trading.” He called out, “I know about that,” to everyone’s surprise. “Dad told me. Futures contracts are the oldest way of investing in commodities. Futures are secured by physical assets.”

  All this—surprising anyway coming from a youngster—was also way too technical for this Elizabethan court. Sir Walter tried to recapture the initiative, by saying, “Royal charters assigned each company a monopoly of trading in a particular geographical sphere.”

  Never fazed by an interruption and focussing on her supreme destiny, Elizabeth said, “Sir Francis Drake, Philip Sidney, Frobisher and dear Sir Walter Raleigh standing here tonight—dearly beloved merchant adventurers, sea rovers—all of them come to me. Male traders take more risks; male adventurers certainly take risks, but women are better at managing trade over longer periods—for the long haul you moderns might say. So, yes, I am the supreme lady of all returning rovers—that is apart from the nasty parts of my character. They’re the invention of historians.”

  REELING

  Coming from the suffused but becoming light of the Plantagenet courts into a black cloth hoop, Ginny was now in total darkness. It was worse than being uncomfortable. It was like being swallowed by an unending silent scream in the throat of some immense unidentified animal.

  Katherine of Valois was still with her and held her waist to steady Ginny. Then she let Ginny rest her head on her shoulder. That was some relief. But when Ginny returned the favour and tried to hold Katherine by the waist, she found the queen’s waist was neither soft nor comely but hard and spiky in some places and in others her body was like gristle. Such nasty places to touch made Ginny uneasy. Her uneasiness grew when the black globular drapery that enfolded them started to rustle within like curtains being blown by the wind. And the wild wind seemed to be carrying them hither and thither to a destination unknown.

  “Ma pauvre fleur,” whispered Queen Katherine. “Avez vous peur? Never mind. This uncomfortable turbulence will pass. You have me to hold. Hold tight. There’s no need to fasten your safety belt.”

  “That’s fortunate,” thought Ginny, “because we don’t have safety belts.”

  Just then, the wind became a whirring and Ginny sens
ed she was going round and round in circles, ever faster and ever decreasing and amid all sorts of debris. Were they twigs, broken rushes, flying insects, flapping bats? For something, anything different, to distract her, Ginny thought of Lewis Carroll sending Alice down a rabbit hole and that he must have left the worst part out.

  Ginny wondered if the turbulence inside the black cloak or fashion hoop or whatever it was would ever come to an end. Had it lasted thirty minutes or even an hour? She could not be sure. Maybe the length of time was really a trick of time when what seemed an eternity was no more than the flick of a mere minute. Or was it, as PC instructions would have it, ‘In Real Time’?

  “Let me cheer you up by singing to you,” said Queen Katherine. Ginny thought of the White Queen in Alice.

  Then Katherine of Valois paused as if waiting for a polite acknowledgement. Ginny said, “Thank you, merci,” rather hoarsely.

  Katherine started singing ‘Boom!’ “What makes my heart go boom?” mixing French and English lyrics. This did nothing to calm Ginny down.

  As the little somethings or others within the hooped cloth scurried past her in the dark, Ginny had an unwanted childhood memory of seeing Walt Disney’s version of Snow White when the heroine, left alone in the dark wood, is horrified as the roots and branches of sinister trees tear away at her dress. Rather than let this memory increase her fears, Ginny shut her mind down.

  Queen Katherine continued singing in her mix of French and English. In this dark felt tunnel, she was in her own world.

  “She must have done this many times before,” thought Ginny.

  Now the whirring was not as loud. Queen Katherine said, “Hold me close. When I tell you, do what I do.”

  Ginny was reluctant. She knew now that it was better to see Queen Katherine at a distance rather than up close and personal, all spiky and grisly like a grizzly bear.