I paused, moved by his kindness and yet alarmed by the way his soul seemed to know mine. – I shall remember, Daniel, I said softly, and left him alone, again, to the sound of the tiny peal of the silver bell.
Soon after the passage of these most blessed hours in the presence of my friend, I found myself listening to the dreaded sound of the church bell that signified my bond before God with William – a peal that was rung over my head on that terrible morning during which we were wed, I remembered Daniel’s words as I prayed that no harm would come to me. And yet, beneath my serene countenance my soul raged once more against God, for forcing me to honor my dear father’s wish, even as I knew that it would be my undoing.
Of the marriage day itself I can only say these things; I was loath to be led up that strange aisle, with the last moments of my father’s noble name clinging to me. As the priest turned his face to me and decreed that in purity I was given to this man, I knew the truth: that in charity I deferred to my father’s wishes, and within the depths of my most secret heart, I cast all doubt upon God, and turned my faith only unto my wits; that with my desire to the seek knowledge whose presence blessed me with hope, I should find some way to escape the inescapable woe that this marriage visited upon me.
But it was not to be; this holy bond, for me, was nothing more than servitude to an evil and deceitful master, and nothing less than the complete subjugation of my womanhood and my identity as the daughter my beloved father had raised me to become. And within moments of the priest’s pronouncement, I knew the first stirrings of the trap in which I had become ensnared; that I was bound in duty for all time to a man for whom I cultivated an ever-burgeoning hatred; yet in my love for my father I could not forsake my duty to my husband; and in the wit and learning that had been so long prized among those who loved me, there was real danger to my self and my eternal soul.
In the same moment that I took the most holy vows; I was a deliberate sinner outside of His grace, with no hope ever of redemption. And yet in those moments as I falsely spoke eternal fidelity unto the monstrous man I hated, I knew in my heart that I could not displease my father. I looked into his face of sweet humility and there saw Christ; and I could not harden my heart against either of them, neither my father nor my Saviour.
Thus I spent that day, my wedding day, garbed in white, as if to profess mourning for my own soul, clad in a gown in the same hue as a funeral shroud; and bedecked with roses and lilies. I was forced to smile as if I truly possessed love’s radiance. My sisters’ laughter came to me upon the morning breeze, for with my marriage, they were now secure in their marriage prospects. All except for Cecily, whose pain was evident as if marked upon her very soul. I thought of my dear noble mother Jane, dead after four births; I watched my father’s new wife Alice, with her young daughter. I let my gaze fall upon woman after woman, seeing the restless servility of those who were espoused, and the modest flirtations of those who were not.
And my wit struggled with the logic of the marriage bond; for what is it within us as women that seeks to dwell with another? Surely it is arbitrary as the grass which grows beneath our feet! I ask, would the grass grow in the knowledge that it is to be trampled? Or is its growth within its nature, and without reason? Then I ask, why would a woman, born with the capacity of reason, seek to be bound to another in a life of servitude?
Surely wisdom does not forsake the fairer sex, yet the fairer sex is taught to forsake knowledge; it is not a mutual abandonment. A woman is taught that the greatest of all sins is to neglect her child; but a woman who neglects her true value - her wit, her intellect - also neglects her child, and all children born from that child, and so forth through time; these children are only given half-measures of knowledge.
It was with thoughts of my future child that night, when William first came to me in our chamber, I submitted as I was instructed, all the while praying that God would let me conceive right away, and thus put an end to my humiliation. But I knew the Holy teachings about the matters between husband and wife; this was my duty. At any time he could take his pleasure; he could force the sin of his lustful perversion upon me.
That very night, William entered my chambers and destroyed, with all of the proud ferocity of a husband, all of my texts and my papers; I was not present, having been delayed in bidding the king farewell from my wedding feast. When I came upon William in my chamber, his face flushed with drink and with rage, he flew at me with accusations of infidelity of the mind and of the soul.
I paled at his anger towards me until I saw its source – he had read the letters I had written to my father and my sister, in which I told them my fears and suspicions of William’s ill character, and pleaded once more for the liberty of my soul, and for Cecily’s forgiveness. He clutched the unfinished letters in his fists, and swore unto me that no word of his duplicity should ever reach them. And wasting no time, he thrust my papers and quills, and copy-books into the fire.
I cried out with rage and loss, knowing that the words of my heart could never be recovered from the flame, for fire kindled in the rage of destruction is all consuming, and ashes are mute. He turned on me with hate in his eyes. – Never again shalt thou speak of me thusly, he thundered. Thou art mine to rule and mine to bid, and as long as thou hath been bid to carry my name thou shalt do as I say, or else risk banishment, for even your father cannot save you should I decide that you are better sent away, far from the realm of the works of man and God. Thou wilt speak of me with honor and thou wilt bear thyself with silent dignity, for I will not have a wife who shames me by her knowledge, or her unwomanly mastery of thoughts.
All at once I was sure. He married me only because of what the house of More brought to him, and for what my father had promised to him in my name: the rich legacy of his business dealings bringing gold to his purse. I feared most, however, that with William fluttering between my father and the king like a terrible wingèd beast, that my father’s words and deeds in the name of Holy God would cost him his proximity to the throne of England. Even though William appeared to stand his son and friend, to me, he was a declared enemy.
I then thought, as William smiled with a serpent’s knowledge, that perhaps my father did not love me as I once believed. If he had, would he not have granted me my heart’s desire? I would hath lived a spinster’s life of books and study, and my sister Cecily would have been a wife, instead of the ruined woman that I believed William hath made of her.
My countenance, heretofore as strong as stone in the presence of his anger, suddenly shattered into tears. He took me, then, my virgin body cowering underneath the brutality of his fiendish hands. He conquered me by force as an enemy, with every thrust as a sword that runs through the despised. He took me as a king destroys a traitor – with pleasure in the act, with knowledge that his enemy is conquered and defeated. And after the blood, and the bruises, and the pain inflicted by his hands, his teeth, his clenched fingers that held my wrists behind my back as he took his pleasure, he smiled with cruel satisfaction, and upon hearing my muted tears, laughed softly and sleepily to himself, as sated as a glutted serpent.
After he fell asleep, I silently, tearfully cleaned the blood from between my thighs. My body was bruised and blackened as if I had been harmed by a criminal in the night. I could barely move with the pain that throbbed in my shoulders, my limbs; my pale skin was marked with evidence of his victory. I knew myself to be his hostage; I knew myself to be damned.
I knew then that I would never be redeemed in love, that anger and sadness and silence, where there had once been love and peace and wisdom, would guide my footsteps and grieve my heart for all of the days of my life.
After that night – in which he destroyed the sanctity of my body and the work of my hands and soul with brutality beyond the imaginings of my worst fears, he set about locking me in his rooms, unbeknownst to my father and my sisters, with nothing more than my needle-work for a companion. He would not have me study my books any longer; rather, he would have me taugh
t only the housewifely arts. I wished desperately for a way to escape his imprisonment, and thought again of Daniel’s words – that I had true friends among those who sought wisdom.
Yet it felt as if those friends were lost to me. My dearest sister refused to meet my countenance, in spite of my pleas for forgiveness. My mother was dead; my stepmother a stranger to me. My books were forbidden companions; and even my Lord and Saviour seemed as far away as the stars that shone above the oceans at the very end of the earth. And worst of all, my father had abandoned me to the cruel will of his apprentice. I was without justice. I was friendless indeed.
Yet I had to believe in my heart: had my father known of the punishments which William inflicted upon me in the time leading from our betrothal to our marriage, he would have defended me, for even after I was told of my duty to William, in my heart I knew my father still wanted me to learn.
My father spoke often of the sweet intellect and forethought which endeared me to his heart. Indeed, my father believed that my learning was more valuable to me than if I had my mother’s fair beauty or the riches of the king’s very throne. William was not, as my father believed, of like mind. In spite of William’s foolish pandering to my father’s face, behind his back, William spoke of him as weak-willed and insidiously charmed where his daughters were concerned.
William spoke all of these things to me before our marriage, during which time he would know that I was powerless to deny my father’s wishes for my marriage; he strode about the corridors of our house as if it was his own, as if he was already the son and heir to my father’s fortunes. And perhaps worst of all, he flaunted his feigned affection for me in the presence of dearest Cecily, taking my arm as we went in to table; ignoring her if she addressed him; and flouting the false conventions of our courtship to her sick and bewildered heart.
But it was for my father that I had an even greater fear. With this evidence of William’s falsehood, his deceit and deliberate cruelty, I feared that when such time comes as the breeze of the Monarch’s whim blew my father with a puff from his pedestal of righteousness, William would be present to collect the windfall, undisputed heir to his house and his servants, his gold and his books of law. And I, as his servant, could only look on as blindly and stupidly as any wife.
I let out a long breath as we came to the end of the page. “I seriously hate this guy,” I said to Michael.
He nodded. “I imagine her story isn’t so uncommon, being under the rule of a terrible husband with economic ulterior motives. And of course, there was no divorce in England at that time, especially for Thomas More’s daughter. Think about it: Thomas More was the very person who prevented the divorce between Katherine of Aragon and Henry VIII. If he could prevent a king from divorcing, he certainly would never have let his daughter dissolve her own marriage. He was so much a man of the Church that there was no way out for her.”
“But her husband raped her!” I said, indignant. “Couldn’t she have told someone? Her father? The king? Her priest? Wouldn’t that have gotten her out of this horrible situation?”
“Come on, you know better than that. They were married, her husband was within his rights to do whatever he wanted with her.”
“I don’t know.” I shook my head. “It just doesn’t seem right that she had to suffer like this without there being some sort of recourse for her to get out of the marriage. After all, there was such a thing as dissolving a marriage – I mean, that’s what the rift between the king and Thomas More was all about.” I frowned, puzzled. “And if that’s what was uppermost in the minds of William and Thomas More at that time, then isn’t it even more ironic that the dissolution of Henry VIII’s marriage to Katherine of Aragon might have paved the way for Margaret’s independence, even though it cost her father’s life? And of course, the even greater irony is that her father was the very man who prevented a solution for Margaret from coming to pass.”
“Yes and no,” Michael said. “For one thing, Henry VIII was a monarch making the rules, and of course, he was a man. He had appointed scholars, cardinals, all kinds of legal and religious thinkers to evaluate the validity of his marriage to Katherine. When the law of the Catholic Church proved to be indissoluble, he simply decided to disregard it and create his own sovereign church. He had that sort of power.”
“The power to keep women tied to abusive husbands,” I snorted. “Some power.”
“I know. You’d think that the queen would have been able to fight him on the grounds that their marriage vow was unbreakable. But I don’t think Katherine of Aragon had any rights in the matter, and she was – second only to her mother, Isabella of Spain - probably the most powerful woman of her day. Poor Margaret wouldn’t have had any rights at all, and fewer still since her father was so intimately linked with the Catholic Church. But the question of divorce is beside the point anyway, since we’re talking about annulment, not divorce.”
“Right,” I said. “But Judaism had divorce. The concept existed. The sages had already been considering this question for hundreds of years.”
“That may be true,” he answered, “but think about it. Even though the legal system – where divorce was concerned – may have been descended from Judaism, once a marriage was solemnized according to Christian doctrine, divorce didn’t really exist as a possibility for any nation under the sovereign rule of the Church.”
“Oh, man, I feel like I’m back in Western Civilization 101.” I yawned and looked at my watch. It was nearly one in the morning. “It’s really late.”
“You’re right.” He stood and stretched. “We should get some sleep. Even though I want to keep reading.”
“There’s always tomorrow night,” I said. “Let’s get it packed up, so we can avoid potential coffee disasters in the morning.”
Because Michael had a meeting downtown at Foley Square, we rode the subway to work together the next morning. I kissed him goodbye at Chambers Street and then spent the next few stops thinking about what we had read the night before.
Rather than take all the risks of hauling the manuscript back and forth between my apartment and the office, I had left it at home in its case. Even though I considered all the disasters – fire, flood, overheating – that could happen to it while I was gone during the day, I decided to put those unlikely possibilities out of my mind before I drove myself crazy.
When I arrived in the office, Aviva wasn’t in yet. I figured I would be running the meeting again, even though it wasn’t my turn. I searched the computer files that Aviva and I shared for her notes on the catalog assignments, and printed them out while getting my own notes ready to go.
Just before the staff meeting, there was a knock on my cubicle wall, and when I turned around, Robert was standing by my desk.
“Good morning,” he said shyly. “I just wanted to say thank you again for the great news about the promotion yesterday. I’m really looking forward to learning more from you.”
“You’re welcome,” I said, absently running a hand through my hair. “I think it’s going to be an intense couple of months, with Aviva gone, but we both think you’re up to standing in for her. And I’m glad you got here a little early today,” I continued. “You can help me run the meeting, if you like.”
“Sure,” he smiled. “What should I do?”
“Well, to begin with you can make nine copies of this report,” I handed it to him with a smile. “Not glamorous, but necessary. I’d like to hand the status report section of the meeting off to you – what you’ll need to do is make notes, type them up afterward – there’s a form in the shared drive that we use. It shouldn’t take you more than twenty minutes or so to write it up. Just show me the report when you’re done, and then once I check it over, you can email it to Aviva, Larry and me.”
He nodded. “I can do that.”
“Then later today, we can talk about choosing our exhibition assistants for the summer schedule. Larry wants us to get our team in place before Aviva goes on leave, so the sooner we can t
ake care of it, the better.”
“Sounds good,” he said. “Let me get this copied. I’ll be right back.”
Just as he was about to walk away, the office door opened and Aviva walked in, her work bag slung over her shoulder and her cheeks pink from the cold. “Sorry I’m late,” she said briefly. “I’ll be ready for the meeting.”
“It’s under control,” I told her. “Don’t worry.”
She took off her coat and put her bag into a desk drawer. Robert stood wordlessly with the paper in his hands, looking at her sheitl.
“What?” she snapped. “What are you looking at?”
“Nothing. I’m sorry,” he said hastily. “Let me go make these copies.”
I spoke as soon as he was out of earshot. “What was that all about?” I asked her. “Did you really need to snap at him?”
“I hate when people stare at my hair. I just want to say, ‘Yes, it’s a wig’ and be done with it. Besides, he shouldn’t be staring in the first place.” She glared down the hallway in the direction of the copier. “He knows better. He knows that I’m a married woman.”
“Sure,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean you’re not a woman.”
“Don’t start that feminist crap with me this morning. I’m not in the mood.”
“I didn’t mean it as a feminist statement, but whatever. I’m sorry.”
“Besides, why would anyone notice my hair when the only thing anyone ever sees anymore is this enormous pregnant belly in front of me all the time?” She looked as if she were about to burst into tears. “I’m going to get a cup of tea.”
I watched as she stalked off towards the break room. Nothing she had said made sense, but Aviva was certainly under an enormous amount of stress. I followed her to where she stood with her back to the door.
“Aviva, listen, don’t worry about the meeting. I asked Robert to help out and — ”
The Bookseller's Sonnets Page 14
