Six of One by JoAnn Spears

was prodigious, so much so in fact that I couldn’t find it in myself to do anything except listen to the second of the twin reasons that Elizabeth of York’s plan absolutely rocked.
    “Second,” Elizabeth continued, “I thought that there was a real chance that my brothers might find the legendary Avalon, Isle of the Seven Cities, and upon it, the living King Arthur. I believed that Avalon was real. I believed that Arthur was there, on Avalon, healed by Morgan le Fay and whole. I believed he was just waiting for the right moment and the means to return to England. I believed that my brothers could be that means and that the time for Arthur’s return had finally come.”
    “Believing something doesn’t make it so,” I reminded Elizabeth. “Ask anyone who invested with Bernie Madoff.”
    “I had more than my belief in the legends to back my scheme!” she countered. “John Jay, a merchant of Bristol, had sailed from that seaport three years earlier in 1480. He set off in search of the Isle of the Seven Cities, as Avalon was also known. After Jay’s return, there was a lot of sailing activity out of Bristol seaport for parts unknown or for a nebulous ‘New Found Land.’ A lot was going on, but no one was saying very much about it. Knowledge of the Bristol expeditions was very contained.”
    “Kept below the waterline, so to speak,” I said.
    “Not far enough below the waterline that I didn’t cotton on to the fact that something big was going on,” said Elizabeth.
    Maybe something big was going on in Bristol, I thought. Like the fate of the Princes in the Tower, those Bristol expeditions of the same period are shrouded in speculation and mystery. Christopher Columbus knew of them. He encountered one such expedition himself in the late 1470s, in the vicinity of Iceland. He also received clandestine letters reporting on the Bristol activity in the decade prior to his own 1492 expedition to the New World. There is no shortage of documentation on the British expeditions out of Bristol by John Cabot in 1496 and by his son, Sebastian, in 1499; not so the prequel voyages that seem to have taken place in the 1480s. Were those jolly Jack Tars from Bristol trying to hide something—something like the fact that they were onto the whole Avalon thing? I knew, in my professorial heart of hearts, that all this just had to be mere fantasy and speculation. Still, I could not keep myself from ruminating on this food for thought.
    “Okay, Elizabeth,” I said. “You had two brothers you wanted to put on a slow boat to Avalon, and a port full of seamen you suspected of having found the way there, if they would but admit it. Is that an accurate recap of events so far?”
    “Quite accurate, Dolly.”
    “Great! So what happened next?” I asked.
    “Next,” croaked Margaret’s voice from across the room, “she sent a messenger to me .”

Chapter Ten
    In Which the Queen of Hearts Stacks the Deck
     
    I have to admit, this latest information took me a bit aback; it never even entered my head that Margaret Beaufort needed to be kept abreast of whatever was afoot in Bristol. I couldn’t imagine her wanting to have much to do with those salty Bristol seamen; she wasn’t exactly the queen in a sailor’s dream, if you know what I mean.
    “Elizabeth sent a messenger to you ?” I asked.
    “I knew you rhymed , Dolly,” Margaret said. “I didn’t realize you echoed as well.”
    “I don’t, generally,” I replied. “It must be all the emotion. At any rate, Elizabeth got a message out to you from behind sanctuary walls—saying what ?”
    “She got a message out to me saying that she wanted the English throne restored to its old Arthurian glory as much as she knew I did, since my son’s Tudor forebears were descended from King Arthur. Elizabeth claimed to have found a way for both of us to be a part of the revival with clear consciences. Her word was that the plan was mutually beneficial but that we had to act upon it