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wonder if his pawkiness wasn’t a bad influence on young Henry.”
    “Certainly not!” countered the old woman, with spirit. “I chose Skelton because of his sense of humor. Too serious a man would never have gotten through to Henry the way Skelton did. Besides, I knew Skelton well, from way back. He knew just where to draw the line with his pranks. The man worshipped me from afar, you know, during his Cambridge days. I was the University’s patroness, and he paid chaste court to me like an old-time troubadour. How the man could make me laugh! He used to call me “Merry Margaret.” When I chastised him for flirting with such a mature woman as I was by that time, he said that I was lovely as a flower in midsummer. I felt like quite the hussy in his company, but he never crossed the line of courtly love and chivalry.”
    The phrases were familiar to me; they were from John Skelton’s charming “To Mistress Margaret Hussey” (“Merry Margaret, as midsummer flower, gentle as a falcon, or hawk of the tower, with solace and gladness, much mirth and no madness”). That sweet, lighthearted sonnet had been written covertly for Margaret Beaufort, the wizened old lady I saw before me? I supposed it was possible; stranger things had happened—and stranger ones were about to.
    “Mother-in-law, your service to my husband, to me, and to our children was stellar. You were like a bastion for our family; my husband, the king, always said so.”
    The old woman was reedy and gaunt, all passion spent. She could not have looked less like a bastion if she tried, although that gabled headdress of hers could have passed muster on its own merits.
    “They weren’t easy, those bastion years, especially when my son, Henry, was in exile overseas. I missed him so, even though I knew he was safe with my brother-in-law, Jasper Tudor, watching over him. Jasper was quite smitten with me when I was married to his brother, you know, so he would never let anything happen to my son, if only for my sake. Even so, it was good of my son, the king, to appreciate my own efforts on his behalf.”
    “It wasn’t just your son who appreciated your efforts. Everyone at court spoke highly of you. Everyone, that is, except the Spanish ambassador.”
    “The Spanish ambassador? What had he to say?”
    “He said that you reminded him of a Spanish farthingale because you were—pardon my language—‘hard-assed and difficult to get around.’”
    “The Spanish ambassador, faugh! The man was like a padded codpiece—all puffed up, but really small stuff on the inside.”
    “The king didn’t like the man either. So obsequious! He said the Spanish ambassador was like his doublet and hose—always up his ass.”
    I am sure you know, gentle reader, how it is when you just cannot smother a laugh. Even if you manage to maintain silence, the spasms give you away. My cover was blown, and the long night was about to begin in earnest.

Chapter Six
    “Dissemblance, Ah Me!” or “Is That
a Resemblance I See?”
     
    Margaret Beaufort, the mother-in-law, was the first of the two to speak to me. “So, you are finally awake. What amuses you so much that you laugh in the presence of a king’s mother and a queen, neither of whom is laughing herself?”
    “I meant no disrespect,” I said. “It wasn’t the farthingale joke I was laughing about, honestly; it was the codpiece image.”
    I castigated myself for this fib with a silent “liar, liar, pants on fire” until I remembered that my wardrobe for the evening had been reduced to that nightdress alone. There was nothing else, not even panties. I suddenly felt quite vulnerable.
    “We will continue our discourse as soon as you compose yourself,” said Margaret Beaufort.
    I took a deep breath, sat up a little bit in my bed, and smoothed my hair. I was not quite sure how to address royalty. Your Majesties? My Ladies? I took the avoidant way out by foregoing salutations altogether.
    “The last thing I remember,” I