Wild Things (4 page)

Nothing to lose. I opened my mouth to say I had plenty to lose, then closed it again. Finally I managed, "Thank you, James, it's so comforting talking to you."

He smirked and helped himself to my
New York Times.
"I'll bring you my
Trib
when I'm done. Good luck on the radio thing."

I spent the next hour thumbing distractedly through a reference book and unsuccessfully trying to
make a list of what I had to lose if my parents told me never to darken their door again. At the end of the hour I'd made a few notes and citations, but my list was still blank. I felt thoroughly out of sorts as I grabbed my satchel and headed for the El again.

* * * * *

Thursdays are usually non-stop research days, but this particular Thursday was interrupted by an interview at the public radio station that served all the local colleges. It was based out of Roosevelt University, which was only a few El stops from me at the southernmost end of the Miracle Mile where Michigan Avenue meets Congress Parkway.

I'd done one-on-one print interviews for the alumni magazine, the student paper, and a local weekly paper, but this was my first live broadcast. The late morning was growing warm and sticky and I was glad I'd opted for cotton from the skin out. I hoped my simple shirtwaist dress wasn't too casual.

I should have worried I was attired too conservatively. The receptionist had magenta hair that made her already pale skin look deathly. She had no less than six earrings in her left ear and none on the right. Her T-shirt screamed, GET YOUR LAWS OFF MY ASS.

She spoke very fast and with no audible forms of punctuation. "I'm so glad to meet you I just loved your book I can't wait to hear you Liz is waiting in the studio follow me this way turn here I'll bring water."

She continued with her breathless tour through a maze of desks, some with cubicles but most back-to-back and occupied by at least one and sometimes two
people. Everyone wore jeans and political T-shirts, and loud conversations in a variety of languages assaulted my ears. The entire station was atremble with the righteous vigor of people working for a cause.

To my relief, Liz, who had called me for the interview, turned out to be in her mid-forties and as interesting as she had sounded on the phone. Her voice had the rich warmth that many large black women's have, and she spoke with a depth of thought and clarity that made me want both to talk and listen.

"I'm so glad we're finally going to do this interview," she said, pushing back a mass of black curls that had escaped from a beaded bandeau. "I wanted to do it after your first book, but the schedule was so full and the river just keeps on rolling by, doesn't it?" She was wearing a light, fragrant attar of rose, and the small studio was cool and soothing, like a flower shop.

"I know what you mean. The quarter starts, then it's time for finals and then I have new students. It's only the middle of September and my summer trip to France seems like a year ago."

We chatted while she pointed out the various lights that would tell me when we were live and showed me how to damp my microphone if I had to sneeze or cough. By the time our hour began I was relaxed.

"I have a dictionary of quotations by women," Liz said when the LIVE sign turned red, "and in it Eleanor Roosevelt, of course, is listed. I found it curious that not one word of her bio mentioned that she was married — or to whom. I thought that this took political correctness a little too far. She was a citizen
of the world in her own right, and much of her life's work was hers and hers alone. Still, there's no way to divide Eleanor from Franklin, and in so many lives of powerful and famous women, the same is true. And that's what I'm going to talk about with my guest today. Say hello, Faith."

"Hello," I said, then gratefully realized that she did this to let me get my first word out without it having to be an important one.

"Faith Fitzgerald has written fictionalized biographies of two remarkable women whose lives, while being inseparable from the men of their times, have a light of their own that shines past the surrounding men. For example, I have found it exceedingly tedious that every biography of Elizabeth the First of England details endlessly whom she might have married, whom she might have slept with, and which men had the greatest influence over her at what times."

"A perfect example," I interjected. "I think I would have tackled Elizabeth if there weren't already hundreds of biographies available."

"Instead, you chose another English queen, Maud."

"Not everyone agrees she was ever queen," I reminded her.

"As your book so clearly points out. For the listeners, Faith's first book,
Maud,
detailed the twelfth-century struggle for control of England which Empress Maud — sometimes called Matilda — almost won. It portrays how Maud's own strength of character is what kept her struggle going, while all the visible action, especially the warfare, was masterminded by her brother. Faith's latest book is
Isabella
and I found it stunning."

In her pause, I said, "Why thank you. I take that as high praise."

"What is it about these women that made them so compelling for you?"

"When I was a lowly undergraduate I was infected by history. I majored in it, I lived it, I read it every chance I could." I laughed a little and added, "It won't surprise anyone if I say I found the mention of women's influence on history completely missing or stated only as a conduit or background for the male activities."

"What a shocker," Liz said dryly. "I can hardly believe that's true."

"Oh, it's true," I said, equally droll. More briskly, I went on, "What I noticed about many influential women in history was that they had economic resources. Maud was heir to several principalities, including Britain. Isabella was queen of two countries, and that's how she financed Cristobal Colon's expedition."

"That's what struck me so vividly about Isabella," Liz said. "You portray her financial backing as a business decision, not as a romantic indulgence to a young, adventurous lover."

"There are historians who don't agree with me," I said, my tone now dry. "They would prefer to portray Colon as the dynamic lover who talked Isabella into giving him her jewels secretly. I don't know why her financing Colon would have been a secret. Isabella wasn't some country maid fortunate enough to marry the king of Spain. She was queen of Castile and Leon. Ferdinand was the king of Aragon. Together they unified Spain. She seized control of the military religious orders and took the Inquisition under royal
influence. She administered law in her own lands. She was a brilliant strategist and knew how to take risks. It's so frustrating to read children's Christopher Columbus books and have her referred to unfailingly only as Ferdinand's wife. Her own titles are never mentioned." I realized I was running on and talking too fast. "Anyway, the funds she used to finance the expeditions were from her own lands and income. Ferdinand had turned Colon's request for money down. Colon didn't skulk off and beg money from Isabella, he applied to her as queen of Castile in open court—her court."

"You don't portray Colon as Isabella's lover."

I smiled. "Maybe he was, but I doubt it. Isabella was a devout Catholic, and one of the outcomes of her faith was the Inquisition. She had no qualms about having people tortured and killed. But she was never referred to by anyone as a hypocrite. She publicly decried adultery. I think she practiced what she preached. Spain was a violent place close to the Holy Land, and religion was a violent matter."

"It still is," Liz said archly.

"You're quite right," I acknowledged. "Other biographers argue that her religious fervor would not have stopped her from taking a lover. She was, after all, an aristocrat. She could buy her reputation if need be. In that regard she is the same as the woman in the book I'm currently working on, Eleanor of Aquitaine."

"I can't wait," Liz said, her eyes widening with interest. "Talk about daring women! Let's come back to her at the end of the program, because I'm not ready to leave Isabella." She sipped her water. "You
made an interesting choice of narrators for the story."

I nodded, then realized only Liz could see me. "One of the difficulties of telling Isabella's story is that the bold risk she took in backing Colon financially led to the European invasion of this continent. Colon's expedition was audacious and inspired, and Isabella's decision to back it changed the world forever. She financed an adventure of unprecedented magnitude. It also unleashed one of the most vicious and prolonged periods of genocide in the history of the world. I couldn't tell the story without that perspective."

"Did she really see it as anything more than a business gamble?"

"It's difficult to know for sure. Yes, she gave Colon money. Sooner or later someone would have. But in the end, hundreds of thousands of North and South American natives died in the following two hundred years because Isabella was hoping to make a profit. So I wanted my narrator to know that bitter fact, and yet be drawn to admire her namesake ancestress for her vision, and her daring, and her Wits."

"And in so doing," Liz added, "you told the story of a modern woman involved in an adventure of her own."

"That's why it's called fictionalized history," I said with a laugh. "The modern Isabella didn't really exist. But I needed her to explain the bittersweet context."

Liz smiled encouragingly. "That was another aspect of the book that kept me reading. The story of
two Isabellas: the queen hoping to strike it big with trade to India by sea, and the biochemist working on a cure for the smallpox her ancestress was responsible for bringing to this continent."

I leaned a little closer to the microphone. "Smallpox was more deadly than swords and guns in the end."

"Tell me more about Eleanor of Aquitaine," Liz said. "I find her so fascinating as a character. It's hard not to see Katharine Hepburn whenever I think of her."

I smiled. "I know what you mean. Katharine Hepburn played her so well in
The Lion in Winter.
That portrayal of Eleanor makes wonderful theater. If anything, I'm struggling with too much material and a personality so vivid it's hard to capture her on the page. Existing biographies are usually of the Eleanor-and-the-kings-in-her-life Variety — more about the kings' reactions to her than her own actions. I'm hoping to do better than that since she deserves it."

"Which is where we began. You can't tell the story of her life without all the kings she influenced in it."

"Certainly not," I said- "But I can make Eleanor the center of my biographic universe and show how her wit and intellect influenced all she touched, not just her beauty and the passion men had for her.
The Lion in Winter
portrays Henry's feelings for her as either hate or love. She had to have been more than a bed companion to him or a hated enemy. She did more than simply madden him — and everyone else around her — into irrationality."

"I begin to see what you mean," Liz said. "I can't
think of any portrayal of her that doesn't center on how she drove other people mad with lust or hate, as if to say that as a woman she worked only by arousing strong emotions in men, but that can hardly be the case."

"And showing that is what I'm hoping to accomplish in the book."

Liz glanced at her watch. "Why don't you leave us with a brief synopsis of her life so when your book is on the stands we'll know why we want to read it."

I took a deep breath. "What fascinates me about her is what she had from birth and what she did with it. She was heiress to one of the richest agricultural centers in Europe, almost a quarter the size of modern-day France. It was hers and hers alone. Her father was mostly absent and left her active mind to its own devices. At fourteen she could speak langue d'oc, which was the language of the Aquitaine, court French and classic Italian, as well as read and write in Latin. When I was fourteen, I was listening to 'Frampton Comes Alive'."

Liz chuckled. "I was busy learning all the words to 'Alice's Restaurant'."

I shared her laughter. "We were still children, but Eleanor was already considered an adult by her fourteenth birthday. She was the darling and star of a circle of women who set the code of medieval conduct. They were the first to look back at the Arthurian era and immortalize it in verse. Most history texts comment on the sudden rise of music and art and the spontaneous development of chivalric behavior by knights, but few go out of their way to point
out that women shaped these changes. The women created a culture that would influence European thought for three hundred years."

"The women were the cultural influence?" Liz leaned forward with an intrigued expression.

"Unquestionably. They demanded that a knight be more than a warrior. He must have an appreciation of beauty, of poetry. He must at all times keep his temper and, above all, revere and protect women and the weak. He must be in touch with his feminine side, if you will." I laughed. "The penalty for crudity of any kind was ostracism by the ladies."

"I'm intrigued," Liz said. "Those were barbaric times."

"Absolutely. For example, a high-born heiress like Eleanor had to have an armed escort of knights because it was common for lords to ambush such women, carry them off, and either threaten or commit rape to force a marriage. No matter how he managed to get her to the altar once it was done her property was his. Her children would be his. Though her family or betrothed husband might take vengeance through war, the property was lost forever."