“Go on,” said Mark.
“Well, that governess knew that her life depended upon finding a substitute for Elizabeth, and the substitute couldn’t materialize quickly enough. Briefly, it did materialize in the person of the late Princess’ boy playmate—here are his name and affiliations, as Overcourt neighborhood has it.”
“Fine,” said Mark, “the rest I know or can imagine. She dressed up that kid in Elizabeth’s petticoats and togs and frightened the life out of him not to betray her or himself with the King or any one else.”
“Quite right,” mused Mark, “for the eighth Henry was an ogre—the very unborn children of England knew it. Besides, reading up the official history of Elizabeth, I find that Hal hadn’t seen his daughter for three or four years previous to his visit in Overcourt. The deception, then, worked easily enough. I could have done it at a pinch.”
Mark next went into the life history of the great Queen, or supposed Queen. “She was a male character all over—a thousand acts of hers prove it,” he insisted. “Now tell me what were the conspicuous Tudor traits—”
“But you said she wasn’t a Tudor,” I interrupted.
“Precisely, but she had to copy the Tudors as our stage impersonators imitate Bernhardt and Henry Dixie. Now what were those Tudor traits: remorselessness, cunning, lying till the cows come home, murder, robbery, despoliation! All of them Elizabeth, or the man who impersonated the Queen, practiced to the dotlet on the i. Think of the letters she wrote to Francis Drake, the inventor of fried potatoes, and to the second Philip of Spain. Wasn’t that a man’s game? Could woman ever get up anything so misleading and contraband?
“And the way she fooled her English, Spanish, Austrian, German and French admirers, setting each against the other, never neglecting to threaten Spain’s flank, and, at the last, throwing them the head of Mary of Scots as a gage of battle—regular male strumpet’s chicanery, I tell you.”
From a drawer Mark pulled a highly decorated volume, and turned the leaves quickly. “Elizabeth’s official lovers,” he explained. “Lord Seymour, second husband of her stepmother, Queen Catherine Parr. Catherine, I gather, was in the secret; otherwise she wouldn’t have allowed Seymour to carry on with ‘Elizabeth’ as he did. And he had about a yard of whiskers on his face at that. There was Leicester, this big chap here with the goatee. She had him beheaded, not because he knew anything against her, or about her real sex, but because he had the reputation of knowing things. The Virgin Queen made her alleged lover a head shorter, just to show that she didn’t care what she did. Henry and Francis, the French Valois brothers, Dukes of something or other, were likewise large, sinister looking fellows. These, too, she used, man fashion, like boobs, and as no other crowned harridan ever used a lover. Think of Catharine (of Russia) and of Josephine and Marie Louise—to be loved by those ladies was real fun, a treat.” Mark lowered his voice to add: “I read somewhere that Catharine allowed the brothers Orloff no less than fifty thousand roubles pajama money—fifty thousand! One can buy a powerful lot of nighties for that much money, even at the Louvre, across the way.”