Midnight in Westminster Abbey

by Sean Dennis Cashman

  She said this last to elicit a guffaw from the little animals in the audience who rewarded her with jeers against Mary Stuart: “Up yours, Fanny”; “Just like a Frenchie—turn and turn again”; “Mary, Mary, queen contrary”.

  Having underlined her tart remark with a wink like a needle pulling thread, Elizabeth went on, “Mary Stuart had agreed to Philip’s plan to place her on our throne as his puppet if his invasion proved successful. We had our skilled agents. They had proof in a letter Mary wrote to a Catholic intriguer, Anthony Babbington.”

  Mary Stuart interrupted with, “He misled me. I was set up.”

  “Blah, blah, blah!” said Elizabeth with contempt. “Go on protesting your innocence. It’s all hooey, honey, and everyone knows it—including you.”

  Turning to Chaucer and the audience, she said, “Mary Stuart was tried for treason and convicted.”

  Chaucer honed in on Elizabeth’s weak spot.

  “But you jibbed at her execution.”

  As Chaucer well knew, Elizabeth was a statesman unparalleled. And she knew when to be candid without being contrite.

  "Yes, I jibbed at Mary’s execution. Wouldn’t you? This was partly because she was a cousin. It was partly because she had been a sovereign. And it was partly because of the unfortunate precedent it would set—of executing inconvenient monarchs. I kept the genuine loyalty of my advisers because when things went awry I didn’t say, ‘Off with their heads!’ as my father would have done.

  “My hesitation over Mary Stuart’s death was also because of the foreign reaction it would provoke. Yes, I signed the death warrant under pressure. I listened. I heard the voices of my advisers. Wouldn’t you? We had at least been half expecting this Spanish invasion for some time. With Mary’s execution in 1587, war with Spain was inevitable in 1588.”

  Faced with this, Mary Stuart calculated that she could win around any audience—no matter how hostile—by tugging at its heart strings.

  “What it comes down to is this: Elizabeth Tudor could not stand the fact that I was charming and alluring. To them, I was worse than any F word. I was two F words.”

  “Two F words?” Geoffrey Chaucer dared her mischievously.

  “Femme fatale.”

  Although Mary Stuart had won this tiny game of word play, Geoffrey Chaucer knew instinctively how much political history his audience could take before needing a comfort break—especially if they were little animals. And he had a big surprise ready.

  “Before we continue, let’s meet our next guest star who takes a special interest in the radiant careers of our three lovely queens. She is more than a great—and I don’t know how many times ‘great’—grandmother to all these queens.”

  At that, there was a whirring noise. As if on cue, Sir Walter Raleigh rose to his feet and leaped onto the sound stage. Together with Mr Chaucer, he shuffled an outsize round black drape on the floor that no one had noticed before. It had a large metal ring like a hula hoop at the top. Sir Walter and Mr Chaucer held it upright. Then they lowered it to the ground and then raised it up again. It rippled like a quick-change column of undulating material. When Sir Walter clicked his booted heels together with somewhat Prussian precision, the drape fell to the ground to reveal Queen Katherine of Valois, widow of Henry V, and her unexpected, accidental protégée, Ginny Chancer. Together they stepped out and saluted the applause.

  Ginny shielded her eyes from the bright light of the spectacle before her and then moved her hands away cautiously. She saw the unmistakeable dark shapes of TV cameras. More important, she saw him. No matter how august the company, Georgie and Ginny now only had eyes for one another. Georgie bounded onto the sound stage and Ginny embraced him. Their clasp could not have been tighter had they been brother and sister twins separated by shipwreck and then reunited unexpectedly.

  “I missed you,” admitted Georgie. “How did you get here into this Tudor Court?”

  “I missed you, too, Georgie. I came by the scenic route—two or three hundred years of Plantagenet history. I lost count.”

  “Sounds like the reign of Elizabeth I,” said Georgie. “It seems to go on forever.”

  “That’s my opinion too,” said Mary I in a whisper everyone could hear.

  Ginny and Georgie could not say any more. Studio animal heavies moved them back into the audience and into the pew beside Sir Walter Raleigh. And there Ginny had her second surprise reconciliation for it was Walter, the Plantagenets’ Walter—orderly, horseman and now Elizabethan courtier. Sir Walter put his muscled right arm across Ginny and Georgie’s shoulders as a sign of protection. Georgie’s eyes welled up but he was ashamed of his tears. Ginny was too sensitive to let him know she had noticed them. Nevertheless, she handed him her favourite handkerchief with the strawberry design.

  Recalling his three incarnations altogether, Ginny took a risk and asked Sir Walter, “You’re a time traveller, aren’t you?”

  “That’s your word. I’m a historian as well as an explorer,” Sir Walter answered simply. “And we historians have to travel across time and space to write our works. How we travel—within our individual studies, by exploring new continents, or both—as I did—well, that’s up to us. But our works do range across space and time—yes.”

  Ginny understood that this was as much as Sir Walter was going to give her.

  Georgie did not see Elizabeth I look like a demented fury at the reunion of Ginny and Walter nor the waspish smile that played on the lips of Mary Tudor who muttered, “Playing away, again Walter? You will never lead Lizzie to the altar.”

  “Who is this TV presenter?” Georgie asked Ginny when the commotion among the animals caused by Ginny’s breath-taking appearance had died down. “He said his name is Geoffrey Chaucer. I think it was him in the boat on the river trip yesterday.”

  “Right. Geoffrey Chaucer is an inspirational poet and storyteller,” answered Ginny.

  “How so?”

  “He has an unerring instinct for separating truth from falsehood, genuine from fake.”

  The same Geoffrey Chaucer, once he was sure that the surprise of the sibling reunion was past, resumed his calm demeanour.

  Mary and Elizabeth Tudor had wondered who was going to appear and sit in the fourth and empty chair on stage. They were not sure they wanted to meet their great, great grandmother, who looked more svelte and elegant in her modern black slim-line dress than Elizabeth and her sister queens did in their exaggerated farthingales.

  Once again, Geoffrey Chaucer deliberately forgot he was not supposed to ask leading questions. He said to Katherine of Valois, “Gracious majesty, you were daughter of the king of France and married to his adopted English heir and thus queen of England as well as mother of his son and heir, and, through your second marriage, grandmother of England’s most famous dynasty, the Tudors. Phew!”

  “You’ve certainly done your homework,” Katherine said simply.

  “Let’s cut to the chase,” host Chaucer resumed, fixing his eyes anew on Katherine of Valois. “What was it that attracted you to world-renowned military leader King Henry V?”

  Chaucer’s implication was that any common French princess must have been tempted by Henry V’s political power. But Katharine was canny. She simply shrugged winsomely.

  Chaucer continued, “Let’s move on then. What’s your opinion about the legendary feuds between these three queens who call one another ‘sister’ with cloying emphasis even though they were deadly rivals in their conjoined dynasty?”

  He pronounced ‘dynasty’ as ‘die nasty’, at which the little animals in the front rows squealed again with undisguised delight.

  Gracious Katherine answered, "Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose. It’s always the same, the way royal politics rules love, marriage and death. Here were three wayward, incompatible temperaments. There are historical parallels. The passion of unexpected romance that I had with both my partners, Henry V and Owen Tudor—well, as an old film star observed, ‘Too much of a good thing can be wonderful’—
so that’s my answer. I sympathise with the dilemmas of all three queens.

  “With Mary Tudor, her passion became undying devotion to Philip II, a cold man consumed by his own sense of destiny. Dear Mary’s tragedy was that she let her husband dominate her—even in the many months when he wasn’t here. She gave up everything for politics. Unfortunately, it wasn’t for her politics but his.”

  This comment made Ginny realise that Mary Tudor had indeed wrapped herself completely in her self-deceiving love for Philip II.

  “I also have sympathy for dear Mary Stuart,” continued Katherine of Valois. “From childhood, Mary had potential for great power—to lead three nations. But she was always vulnerable. Harsh circumstances and false men undermined her. First, she was widowed to a French king when she was even younger than I was. Then she was cast adrift in Scotland, a country supposed to be her home but really foreign to her. Then she was condemned for becoming a widow a second time when her second husband was murdered in mysterious circumstances. How could she choose husbands sensibly? Her third husband was widely suspected of the murder of the second.”

  This gave Elizabeth I a malicious opportunity. She said, “Gentlemen of the court, wouldn’t you rather go down the aisle with Lady Macbeth than with Mary Stuart?”

  Katherine of Valois ignored the interruption and continued:

  "Then Mary’s political enemies dethroned her. Yet she had physical courage and daring that her canny but cautious cousin Elizabeth never did. She had once successfully led Scottish troops into battle.

  “I’m in no position to cast stones at her recklessness. My second partner, Owen Tudor, and I had to meet in secret. Owen worked in my household when I was a widow and raising my infant son, Henry VI. Love and passion burst upon me when I least expected them. For the sake of our six children—” (At this, there was another sensation of oohs and aahs among the animals but Katherine continued unchecked): "—we had to surmount all sorts of courtly obstacles against our being together.

  “Well, now sitting opposite me is great Elizabeth I. She sacrificed everything emotional and romantic to maintain her political role of meting out firmness with fairness—as she puts it. But at least her sacrifice was for her own role, her voice in history.”

  “You seem to see events in a wider perspective than your own emotions,” Chaucer said encouragingly to Katherine of Valois as he cast a slight look of disapproval at the other queens. Only Elizabeth I caught his mild censure.

  “Yes. One thing is for sure,” Katherine replied. “Some of what historians write about us changes. And, you know, each time you re-read a book what you get from it is different from your last read. Sometimes its meaning shifts delicately and sometimes more broadly. To take another example: the audience at a play or at court becomes part of the experience. The same play may seem different at a different performance and different to different members of the audience at the same performance. As I implied, re-reading a book thus creates its own parallel world different from the time before.”

  Ginny sensed that Katherine of Valois was speaking directly to her. Katherine had shifted the topic from the emotional lives of the three queens to writers—and writers of history at that. Was Katherine trying to pass on a message to her? Ginny was now hooked on Katherine’s words.

  Some of Katherine’s words went round and round in Ginny’s head. She tried to focus on any double message: “Re-read a book and the meaning is different, subtly and broadly, from the last time. The audience at a play and its response is part of the experience in the theatre and it also changes each time the play is performed.”

  Then Ginny was brought up sharp by Geoffrey Chaucer’s next introduction.

  “Honoured guests, let’s move on to the Spanish Armada, the almighty crisis that boiled over from three conflagrations: the grand adventure of the New World; the uproar of the Reformation; and rivalry among rising nation states.”

  As if on cue, Sir Walter Raleigh rose and beckoned everyone to follow him in the abbey to stand underneath the hole in the roof and by the puddle over which he had laid his cloak for Elizabeth to mince upon.

  The move meant everyone moving from the comfort of front stall seats to the hustle and bustle of a crowd jostling in an uneven circle around the puddle. Most disconcerted were the fey animal TV cameramen who now had to hoist the cameras off their cradles and onto their shoulders. Ginny remembered how a teacher had once explained in a class on TV production that, for outside broadcasts, what was needed in a cameraman was someone with a perfect V, hefty shoulders and torso capable of supporting a heavy camera. Ginny wondered what animals would now shoulder such a load. Up trotted a mighty ceremonial red deer, ready to hoist a camera and record the scene.

  Ginny felt her jeans being tugged gingerly at the ankles. Looking down she saw a small red squirrel that looked up at her, almost pleading to be included. Ginny was relieved it was not a frog. Georgie, however, was disappointed that it was not a lizard. Instinctively, Ginny bent down and scooped the little squirrel up and set it on the deer’s head. As if in thanks, the little fellow gulped. From its bulging mouth, it produced a plain brown nut that it deposited in Ginny’s hand. Thus, with the red squirrel perched on its head ready to tilt the camera this way and that, the red deer was ready.

  “Well, they’re certainly colour-coordinated,” Ginny thought.

  Reading her thoughts, Mary I said, “But they’re common.”

  When she was sure Mary Tudor was not looking, Ginny put the squirrel’s spare nut in her jeans pocket. Then Georgie and Ginny heard a loud whoosh. Everyone looked up and saw a large black eagle perched on the edge of the gaping hole in the roof of the abbey. Glaring down at the little assembly, it waited while the smaller animals ran for cover under the larger ones. Then it swooped down onto the red deer. With one claw, it seized the camera and the little squirrel. It snapped, “Beat it,” in a Spanish accent. The deer stood petrified but motionless. “Scram!” urged the eagle.

  “It’s time to move over, darling,” said Mary I not kindly to the scared deer. “Meet Iago, the eagle of St John, Santiago, the emblem of my husband and his family.” Turning to the little assembly, she added, “In case any of you are forgetting it, Felipe, Philip, was king of England during our marriage.” Then looking askance at Elizabeth I and Mary Stuart, Mary I added, "Like you and me, dearies, he’s also descended from John of Gaunt.

  “This is our lovely eagle,” she added, giving the glowering bird an affectionate peck on the neck just below his ornamental gold crown. The bird returned the favour by giving her a hungry peck on her cheek that tore her Venetian mask, albeit only slightly. Mary bore this small token scar with pride, saying, “He has bulky shoulders, as butch as any wild boar. He’s muscling in on the action so that my beloved Spain will get a fair shout in the RBC broadcast about the Armada.”

  With that, the simple deer was gone. Dismissing the deer’s timid squirrel with a twist of her frail fingers, Mary next picked up an inconsequential stoat that was standing conveniently by. She pressed it into service on the shoulders of the eagle to tilt the camera on the action.

  “These queens certainly dominate their fauna,” thought Ginny. “That’s for sure.”

  Then Ginny imagined she heard a very slight tap-tapping on a side drum somewhere far off. But she could not be sure.

  By now, the vast puddle on the abbey floor was drying. It had left two blobs of land in the middle. Sir Walter, not to be outfaced by a Spanish coup de TV, was ready to take the initiative. He started to point out geographic details on his impromptu map to the delight of the two youngsters and the little animals who wanted English laughter at the defeat of the Spanish Armada rather than tears over religious intolerance.

  “See, this dry point on the floor is like the outline of England, Scotland and Wales,” said Sir Walter. “This other dry spot is like an outline of the northwest of France and the Netherlands above it. Look southwards. The remaining puddles represent the English Channel and the North Sea.”

>   There it was again, this time louder in Ginny’s ear—a tap-tapping of a drum and not so far off.

  Georgie looked down and across the stone paving. The street refuse had turned into waste paper.

  Before Geoffrey Chaucer could tell everyone what to think, Mary Tudor spoke. She had had just about enough of this pesky chat show host bending every discussion to his own interpretation. Perhaps he was now about to cancel out the advantage of her coup with the Spanish eagle seizing the camera. No matter how much better she was informed now she was dead, Mary I still wanted to tread the primrose path of her imagined great reciprocal love with Philip II of Spain, the most powerful man of his time.

  “Dear Felipe and his advisers were aware of the naval difficulties of the Armada,” she said, “first bringing two large forces of ships together in the right place and at the right time in the Netherlands and then of ferrying troops safely across the English Channel in vulnerable ships and boats.”

  As Ginny heard the continuing offstage sound, this time there must be several heavier drums being beaten—kettle drums, timpani and other percussion instruments—accompanied by woodwinds. “Yes,” thought Ginny, “the sound must signal an army advancing—menacing soldiers getting closer by the minute.” Most dominant was a mighty drum now tap-tapping away with an undulating rhythm.

  Elizabeth, ready for anything Mary Tudor could cast at her about the Armada (which she had lived through and Mary had not) said, “Our English ships were more formidable fighting ships than anything the Spanish had. Since the 1540s, we monarchs—my father, my brother and I—had built up the Royal Navy, using money from the dissolved monasteries, and building permanent dockyards.”