by Nell Gavin
The horror ceased for me when I had my first menses. He chose that time to come to me, lifted my skirts, saw, and twisted his face with contempt and disgust. He left me unharmed and turned instead to a little maid of 10 years, never forcing me again. Still he touched me for the rest of my life, and his actions led me down a path to my death.
Ah, but he might have killed me sooner. He would, in a sense, be my killer either way.
Except for those who were present the first time, only Mary knew about my “visitor”. Our parents did not know, for action on their part, even had they dared take action, would have had serious repercussions. They received no word of it from my hosts, and neither Mary nor I was eager to enlighten them. There was the obvious shame. I had a strong desire to protect myself from the judgment and scrutiny of others, and from the fury my mother would have aimed toward me for letting it happen.
Ill-fortune carries with it a stench and leaves a wide berth around its victims. Understandably, considering the undeniable stench of rape, there was little sympathy forthcoming from the small knot of ladies who had tended me after the first one. A woman who was raped deserved no sympathy, for it was still fornication in the eyes of God, and the victim’s fault not the man’s. Men could not be severely faulted, for they were not built to withstand temptations of the flesh, as women were. Far worse were raped children, who were an abomination for having tempted God-fearing men into performing beastly acts. The women viewed me as sent by the devil. My deformed finger did not soften the sincerity of their conviction.
Their inclination was to distance themselves and to be cold and sharp toward me. I had caught the eye of a man they secretly knew had unspeakable tastes and needed no act of seduction to tempt him into performing unnatural acts with a child. However, they had to take sides. Even had they felt inclined to pity me, they preferred to side with the influential and the powerful against the weak, for it was more advantageous to their ambitions. Sympathy toward me would demand self-examination and the questioning of their values, with the discomfort that brings. Their hearts were not large enough to withstand that kind of scrutiny.
They conveniently forgot the circumstances in a very short time, and sternly viewed me as a teller of tales and a seducer of priests. They convinced themselves this was true, for to believe otherwise would require action on their part—or guilt if they took no action—and risk to themselves. Rather than suffer a conflict of conscience versus self-promotion and advancement in court, they reported me as a troublemaker and revoked a good deal of the little freedom I had. In the meantime, they smiled and curtseyed and simpered before my attacker, made his way clear for other attacks, and averted their eyes when he prowled the halls.
There were a few outcasts like me among the young ladies of the court, and our numbers grew. I did not know the reason for it, then. Our chaperones gave very generalized explanations for why we were unacceptable socially, or else amplified our minor infractions. They discouraged unblemished young ladies from associating with us lest we prove a bad influence, though their true motive, hidden even from themselves, was to prevent us from confiding to the other young ladies on the subject of the rapist.
The outcasts did not have the desire to seek solace among each other, for none knew the others had experienced the same outrage. We feared that our own stench would grow through association with those who were also ostracized, so we suffered in isolation, stripped not only of our virtue, our God and our faith, but of our friends and our trust. We each struggled to regain acceptance from the majority by rejecting each other. We each thought we were the only one.
Only Mary tended me afterwards each time, and made excuses for my having to remain bedridden until the injuries healed. Mary was, as always, very careful about appearances in front of our chaperones. In public she disassociated herself from me and spoke to me coldly, but in private she did as she pleased. I was extremely fortunate to have had her, for there were others with no one at all. One of these eventually took her own life.
Mary was more knowledgeable than I in matters of men and women. She had taken pains to learn all she could and did not think I was at fault.
“The scurvy, bloody serpent,” she spat each time I came to her, shaking and bleeding, four times in all. “The bloody pig,” she swore. “‘Tis not thy sin, dearest. He will burn for it.”
“‘Tis blasphemy to speak so, about a man of the cloth,” I whispered through chattering teeth. “He is chosen by God.”
“I think not,” Mary hissed. “He doth perform the devil’s work in God’s name is all. Thou hast been ofttimes warned of such as he.” She pressed a cold cloth into my hand and told me to lift my skirts and apply it to myself. I did and winced. “In sooth, he is the devil himself in disguise,” she continued. “How better for the devil to hide himself, than as a proclaimed man of God? Methinks there is no better strategy.”
Touched again by the devil, I knew not what to think about the state of my immortal soul. I knew I must be careful to preserve what little I had left in preparation for the time when I was to face God’s judgment. I was well and truly frightened.
“’Tis not thy sin, Nan,” Mary snapped through tight lips. “Give it not another thought.” Then she leaned over and tightly held me for a long moment. We both started to weep.
Despite the sorrow my situation brought her, Mary happily adapted to the lifestyle in France. She was not averse to the gropings and stalkings, and had learned to piously slip past our chaperones and meet with young men in the far chambers. It became her favorite diversion, and she did this while retaining a reputation of chastity in the early years. I did not know for certain if she was chaste, for she did not offer details, nor did I ask or want to know. Either way, she appeared to be chaste, and for a time I believed her to be so. She ever had the ability to wear Virtue like a cape, just as she had as a child, until the cape became too tattered to cover her and she landed, quite publicly, in the bed of King Francis himself. At that point, I could not help but know.
As for myself, I made the best of things and passed my days. When, in the very earliest months, the old King Louis had died and Mary Tudor had prepared for her return to England, I thought I saw an escape and a reprieve, but found my father’s earnest efforts and appointment as Ambassador had chained me for years to come. I was tolerated by the persons in the French court for his sake and for the sake of my sister who, as ever, had charmed all within her circle. I even had official position there, grudgingly given to me for diplomatic reasons and with great show, but without sincere good wishes.
Eventually the circle of women all died or left, or lost influence without the support of the ones who were gone, and my social position became sound. I was drawn into the society around me by earnest friendship from some who did not know I should be spurned, and had no one to tell them so. Furthermore, my sexual experience would have had no bearing on their opinion of me, and a rape such as mine would have been greeted with a shrug. With the coronation of Francis I, the court overnight became like a brothel where virtually all participated and few condemned.
It was in France that I learned to make a man keep his distance. It was in that environment of lascivious pleasures that I first learned to respond to men with sudden, quicksilver escapes, and where I first issued the charming and teasing refusals that later drove Henry to near-madness. Through the years, and in the midst of constant assaults against my virtue, I feared and hated the sex act too much to succumb willingly. Lest I be called upon to participate unwillingly, I took the greatest pains to never walk the halls alone.
Throughout, I made the time endurable by counting days, and while in France learned much that later proved useful in making me a polished and educated lady of the court. I hurled myself into my music, and practiced as if possessed by demons. I had the greatest admiration for the mannerisms and styles of the French and adopted them fully, learning fluent French and potent feminine wiles. From the experience I learned to be as charming as the French, and more charmi
ng than most women in the English court. It was my duty to learn these things, and I was ever the dutiful child.
My parents were not displeased with my progress when I returned to them in 1522 grown, educated, more attractive than they had hoped, and impressively honed. I was inwardly battered as well. It settled in the corners of my mouth, and when I was not being watched, in my eyes.
۞
At this, my memories search even further back, and I see that this life just past was not the first. Somewhere within me I must have always known this, for these ancient memories are as familiar to me as Henry’s face. They play a part in the work I am performing now. I must sort out my entire history to understand the tapestry I have woven and to prepare for the work ahead.
How I came to be Anne is a lengthy story that does not bear telling. Some things, however, seem more important than others and I see these first.
In France, there was considerable importance placed upon the ability of a woman to attract a man. I learned the lessons easily. On viewing this, I suddenly see myself in Egypt three millennia before, a common prostitute. I was already knowledgeable in the art of luring men so I effortlessly absorbed the lessons taught in France, and even surpassed them. From this combined background I became a woman who seemed to possess great beauty, though I had very little. Poetry and songs were written for and about me. Men swarmed about me, then stuttered and blushed in my presence. I had countless compliments, yet some knew I was plain. I knew I was plain. Henry, however, did not. He thought I was of astonishing beauty, always, and through him, I almost believed it myself.
I see an injury to my husband forced me to the streets. He could no longer earn a living to feed us and our children, and would not go out and beg. I went out and begged in his place, and found that men were not often willing to give me alms without something in return. I was young and comely, and the offers came frequently. Less frequently came the pittances I earned from pleading for food for my babies.
One day out of weariness and desperation, I accepted an offer and pocketed the payment. I did it again, and then again. The alternative was starvation. Sometimes a choice is as simple as that. In England one became a wife or a nun. In Egypt, one became a wife or a whore and if the husband was shiftless or crippled or dead, one could live as both. Choices were limited.
In Egypt, I developed a cynical, bawdy wit, and came to enjoy raucous gatherings of many people. I learned to play music for the first time in order to entertain my customers, and I learned to flirt. I came away with a defiant, stubborn resolve to accept no gifts of any kind from men for, hating the life and having put it past me, I was too proud to go back, and so viewed gifts from men, no matter how innocent, as an insult. I also learned to be ashamed, and to feel myself less valuable than others, and to question my own worth. Lastly and most importantly, I developed a vicious tongue.
I missed a lesson in Egypt. There was much I might have gained from that life, and the most important lesson was to not judge others for their choices or circumstances. I moved on to the next life and failed the test. Having rid my own self of the stigma of the working girl, I chose to place myself above and separate from women who were moving through that same experience. I also judged those who either committed adultery or were accused of it. I chose to be superior and to scorn them, and would usually be in the midst of the crowd of stone-throwers when more “virtuous” women attacked those who were less so.
Throughout three subsequent lives, I was tested. Each time, I had the choice to forgive or to judge and each time the debt accumulated. As the devoutly religious wife of a village leader in the last of these three lifetimes, I encouraged my husband to prosecute and punish women for their sexual indiscretions. I argued that their actions were against the will of God. It was also against local law, in that place, that women be unchaste. I leapt upon each accusation I heard, and saw that guilt was proven on the basis of suspicion and hearsay as much as on fact.
During that particular lifetime, and in that place, it was written that adulterers be cast out with stones and forced from the village. The punishments I urged were more severe and, safe in my position of power and righteousness, I created extreme public humiliation, embarrassment, distress, ruined families and ruined lives for several women.
For one woman, the punishment was death. She was guilty but this does not matter. What matters is what I felt in my heart as I watched her die. I felt vicious self-satisfaction, feeling I had pleased God and proven my own greater worth.
If administering lawful punishment is ever sinful, it is one’s heart more than one’s actions that make it so. The sin comes from finding pleasure in issuing the sentence, or from doling out punishment beyond the law because it pleases one to do so. Punishment is a solemn duty. It is not an amusement, or a triumph, or a means to stake out personal vengeance, and yet I had made it so.
I should have had more tolerance, not less, and was to be taught the lesson once more, as Anne. If I failed to learn it that time, I would be shown again in increasingly more difficult circumstances until I finally came to understand that I must show mercy toward everyone, including those who indulge in behavior that prompts my disapproval. I may not pass judgment even if I believe God is in concurrence with me.
“Judge not that ye not be judged,” are the words I hear now. “For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”
My personal feelings, I am reminded sharply, are of no consequence in the final judgment, which is God’s alone, and I do not speak for Him. Imposing my disapproval onto others only succeeds in bringing it back upon myself. Invoking His name as I do so is blasphemy.
In this manner, I wove my own death and the events that preceded it.
I see that I already knew Henry in Egypt.
There are snippets of sights and sounds forcing themselves into my thoughts, and in these I see that I have been tied to Henry since far beyond Egypt . . . since beyond memory. I cannot find the beginning of it.
He is always there.
There he is most recently, a crying child, a small boy and I am dying—his mother—and he wails in terror when I pass, shaking me to force sight into my open eyes. Who will take care of me? Where do I go? Screams that make me shudder with grief for him echo in my thoughts. I did not mean to abandon the child, yet he has been seared and scarred by my abandonment. I see the scars I left in him.
Mercifully, I was sent to retrieve him soon afterward as the Black Plague spread and made a victim of him as well, unfed, uncared for and alone amid corpses and chaos. Ah, yes of course, I know of this now. It is so much a part of me, how could I forget? How could I not have recognized that terrified child in Henry? His love for me was not, at first, the love of a man for a woman. It was the desperate need of an ill and orphaned little boy for his mother, and I did not see that in my forgetfulness. I see it now. He pursued me and obsessed over me as only a lost child could or would. I see it all.
The memories move me back through time. I see us performing together for an audience, scooping up coins and bowing to the applause.
Earlier, we are tied in marriage to each other’s siblings, unhappily forced apart although we feel a violent attraction.
Further back, our most recent roles are reversed. I am his mistress, minor royalty, and he is my servant—a slave—and this amuses me. Still remembering his “place” and mine from that previous lifetime, remembering me as “Mother” later on and as an equal partner in a number of other lives, he found it difficult, as Henry VIII, to understand that I was now beneath him and not worthy of a king. He also found it difficult to silence me, or to patronize me, or to ignore me when I spoke. I found it just as hard to hold my tongue or to lower myself before him or any of the others, in spite of my inferior lineage and their unquestionable power. He could not make me mind him, poor Henry.
I see humor in it all, and for a second want to share it with him. Only Henry would laugh as well, or at least th
e Henry I knew in the beginning. I miss him. Even in my anger and hatred, I miss “that” Henry.
I see so much.
Beyond that, I see we are tested more rigorously. There are marriages where one or the other is infirm, and the healthy partner assumes the role of caretaker. There are lives where we are sworn enemies due to tribal loyalties. There are lives that place us in destitution, squalor and anger, and lives where we each cannot stomach the other because of some grievance or another. When we hate each other, we hate with strong passion. It comes, I see, and it goes. I see also that, even in the worst of these situations, we have still chosen to be together, and always manage to find a way to bring it about. We have a stronger need to be together, even fighting and hating, than we have to be at peace, apart.
We always meet somehow, and sometimes clash, but we are always drawn.
We are not drawn by preference. Hatred and love are interchangeable cousins, and each of these has carved an impression on our souls. In the carving we became bound, and with each successive life, the bond grows stronger. What we can never do is avoid or ignore each other for, in being bound we can choose to postpone our pairings, or we can separate after meeting once we have handled our business, but we cannot choose to never meet. There will always be circumstances that place us in each other’s path, accidental meetings, coincidental events. We will almost always inhabit a place upon the earth when the other is also there, just as we always have.
We marry in most of these recollections. We are usually married. Sometimes he is my parent or I am his. Sometimes we are siblings. Sometimes we are each the opposite gender, sometimes we are the same gender, but our usual bond is that of marriage. He is my soul mate. There are such things, and he is mine. There are bonds stronger than death or marriage vows, and we are bound in such a way. I would rather not hear this or know it, but the knowledge comes to me, and I resign myself to it unhappily. I once would have felt great joy.
