Tudor Pavanne: Tangled Threads
A scant two (subjective) months later, Belle was sitting on a low stool near Queen Catherine's chair, holding the royal thread basket on her lap and attempting to untangle some of the huge knotted mess within it. Listening idly to the chatter of the other ladies with only half her attention, the other half was bemused at the decidedly odd turn her life had taken – odder by far than any of the distinctly odd turns so far.
In retrospect, it had been absurdly easy to infiltrate the royal court. She'd flashed back to Windsor Castle to Jared's selected time, in the fall of 1510, and hid in the garden just long enough to overhear that the court was indeed in residence there, and catch a glimpse of several finely dressed ladies in the distance. Then, making sure that time and place was bookmarked in the Jumper's memory, she flashed back out to the future London and found a costume shop. The money she had in her pocket (her last client's generous payment - was it really only that morning?) was enough, and passed the bored clerk's glance, so when she returned, she was outfitted in a more seemly fashion than her previous "grungies" – which likely would have gotten her thrown in jail, rather than a place at the dinner table. Even though her new clothes were undoubtedly still several decades off – and likely incorrect even then – they got her noticed in a good way instead.
Then she pulled off what she privately called her "Princess Caraboo Maneuver", wandering about the castle garden with a bored, haughty look until she was "discovered" by a group of noblemen whom she "deigned" to greet as equals – in perfect Pig Latin. Utterly nonplussed as to what to do with this mysterious noblewoman who spoke such an incomprehensible language, they finally decided to take her to the Queen, finding her surrounded by her ladies-in-waiting in the sitting parlor of her royal apartments.
Face-to-face with Catherine of Aragon, Belle abruptly felt the full tide of where and when she was flood over her, nearly knocking her over. She managed a creditable deep curtsey, but when she tried to rise again, her knees collapsed instead, and she found herself plopped on the ground, babbling. She maintained just enough presence of mind to keep babbling in Pig Latin (blessing the years she and her best mate, Shereen, had spent irritating their parents and teachers with the non-language), then abruptly shut up, holding the back of one shaking hand to her mouth while two tears (where had they come from? She was no Blubbering Betty!) escaped down her cheeks.
It was the tears that did it. Catherine shooed the noblemen out the door, as well as most of her ladies, then gently raised Belle off the floor herself and settled her into a chair at Catherine's own side in the parlor. Belle stuck mostly to Pig Latin in the interview that followed, gradually letting some Spanish and French words slip in, pretending not to understand the vast majority of what Catherine said – although, surprisingly, she found she did understand most of it and could guess the rest, even in the Queen's heavily accented Tudor English.
The important thing, though, was the immediate, instinctual liking the two women felt for each other; something that startled Belle down to her toes when she realized it. She wasn't used to having women friends, especially in her line of work. But here she was, smiling warmly at a woman born five hundred years before, living in an utterly foreign time and place – and Catherine was smiling back. Suddenly Catherine's face folded in a grimace, and she held a hand to her swelling belly – and Belle remembered why she was there at all: the baby growing in the obviously-pregnant woman. She caught the Queen's eye and, knowing even as she did so that she was probably committing an unbelievably rude faux-pas, she reached out a tentative hand, asking with her eyes if she could touch the baby bump. Catherine, surprised, hesitated and then nodded tentatively, taking Belle's hand and laying it on the right spot, just in time to catch the next kick.
Belle caught her breath. Hello, Prince, she thought, then, … I'm here.
She drew her hand back, and raised her eyes to meet Catherine's again. They simply looked at each other, each wondering who the other was, and what they would come to mean to each other, wanting to understand. Then one of the Queen's women interrupted, reminding Catherine of the time, and Belle saw the decision crystallize in the other woman's eyes. Struggling to her feet, Catherine told her women to find some proper clothes for their mysterious visitor, who would be staying with them – at least long enough to find out where she actually belonged. So it was that Belle became an unofficial Lady-In-Waiting to the Queen of England, in some mysterious halfway point between servant and noblewoman.
She soon found herself swept up into the daily routine of meals, audiences, daily worship services conducted by the Queen's own confessor, Fray Diego (whose piercing eyes Belle instinctively stayed as far away from as possible, fearing both the man's obvious intelligence and whispered lechery – although the Queen would never listen to the second charge), and the various other activities and amusements that kept boredom at bay at a sixteenth-century royal court. She "let" herself slowly "learn" English, but claimed to have lost all her memories of her life before arriving there, save some "vague impressions" of a royal life she gleaned from scenes in old movies. Of course, official inquiries were made, but no trace of this mysterious woman were ever found. She continued to be a curiosity, but Catherine's instant friendship protected her from the full brunt of suspicion.
Belle often shook her head in amazement at herself, for how well and quickly she'd adapted to this life. She never forgot the reason for her being there, slowly growing in the Queen's belly, and never became so comfortable that she didn't long to return home to her own life at the earliest opportunity, but for a long-term holiday, it wasn't bad. Not bad at all.
Of course, there were down sides – a whole lot of them. The food, for one: although far from a vegetarian, the unending series of meat dishes gracing every meal with nary a vegetable in sight made her long for a huge green salad with vinaigrette dressing. Or even just a baked potato – that import from the Americas not having been discovered yet. She struggled daily not to think about it, but she would absolutely kill for a basket of hot, freshly-fried chips.
And then there was the issue of sanitation. She would never, ever get used to the dirty rushes lining the floors in every hallway and room. The stench which arose in the outer halls after a few weeks of use as urinals by everyone was unbearable. No wonder the court continuously moved from palace to palace!
And baths. Apparently what she had been told before was true: at that time and place, nobody took them. Ever. Well, she was NOT going to bend that far. She startled the Queen and everyone else into a tizzy of excitement and concern with her health the first day when she insisted upon having one – although she had to make it a sponge bath, since nobody understood what she was asking for. Stripping down – another Tudor no-no, apparently – she managed to at least wipe everything off with a wet rag before appeasing her mortified roommates by donning clean underclothes. The second morning, they were all set to deny her even this, before the Queen appeared and, being told the situation, simply told her ladies to let her be. After that, they ostentatiously left the room each morning and left her alone – which suited her fine.
(Belle was a bit curious about the lack of body odor from everyone, which she had assumed would permeate everything horribly, but then realized that with the constant changes of clothing – and that clothing, at least, being washed semi-regularly – and the lack of any physical exertion, the upper classes stayed reasonably clean. Although hopefully she'd be gone before the following summer's heat took its toll in perspiration.)
Still, even with these annoyances, all in all, it was a pretty nice gig. She had thought her lack of needlework skills might hamper her – that being a major pastime of the Queen and her ladies – but then they discovered her knack for untangling things, and let her sit and bring order to their thread baskets in lieu of stitching; while the chatter and gossip swirled around her, sometimes including her, sometimes not – but not maliciously, she realized, astonished.
But of course, that was only half of the situation, half of the court. The other half, swirling around the feminine side, sometimes including them, often just affecting them from a distance, was the man's world, the real drivers of the country's business. And in firm command of that world, of course, was the King, Henry, who swept into the Queen's chambers on the third day after Belle's arrival and sucked all the oxygen out of the air, leaving her as giddy as the silly schoolgirls she always despised.
Henry the Eighth, she realized, was a force of nature.
Just nineteen years old that fall, the newly-crowned king of England was the absolute ruler of his world – and he knew it. Considered incredibly handsome in his own time, Belle decided he would have held his own in her era, too, even without the undeniable charisma permeating the very air around his royal person. When Catherine presented her, labeling her as the Queen's mysterious royal visitor and under her protection, Belle fell into a more practiced curtsey, not losing her balance this time, then arose at his gesture and gazed boldly straight into his eyes, letting a tiny knowing smile play around the corners of her mouth after several seconds. A flicker of a raised eyebrow told her the message had been received.
Even so, it was several weeks later before quiet arrangements could be made to get her from Catherine's side for a few hours with a plausible excuse. She was taken to a small chamber down some back stairs and told to wait, then left alone with a young page who kept his eyes studiously averted. Belle looked around the room and smiled: it showed signs of being regularly used as a private retreat. There was a table strewn with forgotten books and papers, a single large chair and footstool on the rug between the table and a small fireplace, and a double bed pushed against the far wall, heaped with furs and cushions. And then she spied what was lurking in the far corner and smiled. The first actual bathtub she'd seen.
That solved that problem. She'd been wondering how she might be able to get Henry into the practice of bathing first that she'd long been accustomed to insisting upon with her clients. She chivvied the page into calling for hot water. Judging from the alacrity with which that command was obeyed, apparently it wasn't as unusual as she'd been led to believe.
Regardless, when the door was suddenly flung open about a quarter of an hour later, revealing an excited monarch (the page, who'd been lurking outside, taking a lightning-fast peek under Henry's arm before retreating instantly to a safer distance), he found his prey sitting coquettishly in the tub, refusing to come out, beckoning him to join her, instead. The tub was barely big enough for two, but it got the job done, and she definitely made it worth his while, to his everlasting surprise. She knew she was going to have to go very slowly, not moving outside of what might be considered "normal" in this excruciatingly straight-laced society until she was certain of him at each step of the way – but that only meant a guarantee that she'd hold his interest for a very long time, indeed.
Yes, this was definitely going to be a very long, sweet holiday.