by Nell Gavin
I needed the baby to suckle me—my body told me so, and perhaps I should have listened. An angry part of me did not want to share my milk with that child, nor had Henry’s objections softened over time. The latter was my excuse. The former was the reason why I never held Elizabeth to my breast.
Henry did not visit me as often as I thought he might have. He spared me just a quarter hour a day while I recovered, and I could not complain of this. The failing had been mine.
Why had God betrayed me? I had prayed so hard, with a faith so strong I knew He had heard me and would respond. I had felt it.
۞
The betrayal still has the sharp edge of a knife.
“Sometimes prayers are not immediately answered,” the Voice interjects gently. “That does not mean they are not heard.”
There was an imprint of painted cherubs on my soul and it would one day be manifested in the births of fine sons with beautiful faces, and shining soft curls. God just had not said that my prayers would be answered in a later life, and that their father would not be Henry.
“Then of what use will they be if they come too late?”
“They will be of whatever use you can find in your children,” the Voice answers, amused. “You will one day have children who are the answer to a prayer. That is all.”
“And if I had not prayed, I would never have sons?”
“You receive what you have earned. Had you asked for something else with the same amount of faith, that would have been your reward instead.”
“Reward? But I did not earn reward as a mother to Elizabeth. I rather failed at it.”
I feel compassion coming from the Voice, and a gentleness I do not expect.
“Be more patient with yourself. They will come when you have earned beautiful angels. It is just up ahead.”
“But I needed them then,” I respond, not satisfied.
“It was not intended that you have a son. It never was. You have always known that.”
Indeed I had. We all enter life with a broad sketch of our purpose. There are some things that are predetermined—they form a skeletal structure around which we build the rest with free will. Sometimes we can change them through prayer, or by exercising a determination to learn our lessons and repay before the time has come for punishment; prayer, mind and will have great power. Sometimes we lose rewards through wrong acts.
There are times when we cannot change the plan for, sometimes, what we think we want in life is at variance with what we truly know we need. While the story of my life seemed on the face of it to be a random combination of events, and the sex of my child a random accident, I had memories of the plan for it. It was known to me even before my time in Flanders, and preparations had been made for it throughout several of the preceding lives.
It had started with the birth of a female infant, long ago, whom I had left on a hillside because I had wanted a boy. It was something often done, and was almost to be expected, when one had already given birth, as I had, to several females.
I still retained a decided preference for male children—and even male animals—that I would need to overcome. As a result of this preference, my treatment of daughters typically was overly harsh or neglectful. The consequence of this was that I had had a string of painful losses similar to the ones in Flanders, for I would not learn.
Not all of Anne’s life was predetermined. Most was not. It was only intended that I endure accusation and severe punishment for sexual misconduct, whether I chose to misconduct myself or not. The intent was for me to pay for my hardness toward other women. Then I was to be tested again with the birth of an unwanted female. The rest of it was designed daily, as the life unfolded.
I, of course, did not know of any “plan” as I prayed in the chapel. My fervent prayers were not ignored, nor had they been answered with a “no”. They had simply been set aside for another time.
More important than whether or not God had answered my prayers precisely now, and with precisely what I wanted was this: Elizabeth was neither my punishment, nor was she a reproach. She was my child.
I churn with regret. I might have set aside my own disappointment and thought of her. I might have allowed myself to fall in love with her. In doing this, I would have quelled the fears and the nightmares. I would have been able to hold my temperament in check, for my focus would have been on someone other than myself. Henry might have found me far easier to endure than a shrew of a wife he could never make happy. Had I succeeded thus, my challenges would have been concentrated mainly on the opposition I received at court and, throughout it all, I would still have had Henry as an ally. He would have even reconciled himself to leaving no male heir behind.
There are lives that would have been saved.
I failed again.
“It is not that simple,” the Voice insists. “There was still Henry’s illness and your own. It would not have ended happily, no matter how you altered your life by feeling differently toward Elizabeth. Deal with what you know, and do not speculate.”
Chapter 3
•~۞~•
I did not return to myself after the birth. I was wary and frightened, and sank into a melancholy the midwife insisted was common after the birth of a child. My irritability increased with the fear, the defensiveness and the sadness. Had Elizabeth been male, my safety would have been assured, but now I was in a position as uncomfortable as Katherine’s had been. My position was worse. And within me was the knowledge that, once again, I had failed to please.
Of greatest concern to me was my apprehension that Henry would cease to love me. I daily feared losing him. That fear caused me to watch him and fret when he glanced at other women, which he had subtly begun to do, even in my presence. His patience with me was shorter than it had been in the past, and his shouts of “Good God, woman!” now had tinges of irritation and displeasure rather than amusement. He now went about his business with less interest in pulling me into it, and responded to my reproachful complaints without his former quick desire to please me. It seemed rather that he would do anything to silence me. And I could not be silenced. Fear edged into my voice and made me sharp. I could not stop.
Anxiety reached a high level within me and manifested itself in symptoms that did not make me more endearing to Henry, or to anyone else. Having developed the habit of shrewish-ness during pregnancy, and still passing one sleepless night after another, I grew used to being difficult and did not even notice that I was. I was too consumed by worry and terror to have much energy left for pleasantries, or for concern toward anyone else. Neither did I make any effort to change; I had other things on my mind and no one dared to scold me or remind me to behave myself. Only Katherine and her supporters made public comments about my behavior. I discounted these for we were at war. Aside from them, I had moved to a position above the reproach of everyone but Henry.
There are some who grow more silent with fear. There are people who curl up within themselves and swallow it. I was not one of those. My temperament did not allow for silence. Almost every emotion and every thought needed to be expressed in some manner, and I could not hold my tongue, for fear made it wag. I did not express my fear by simply saying, “I am fearful,” or by shuddering and weeping. I expressed it as anger or haughtiness so that no one would see how vulnerable I was and attack me.
I used words that caused fear in others. That never made me feel strong, but my instincts told me that I could only be safe by driving away those who threatened my safety. And there was no one I thought of as truly “safe”. All I had with which to defend myself was my ability to rise above others and misuse my power. From my perspective, I was climbing up to the highest branches of a tree while the water rose about me.
I was too consumed to notice that I was pecking upon my underlings like a chicken in a barnyard. That was dangerous enough. More dangerous was the way in which I turned my fear onto Henry by counting the minutes he spent with me, or the seconds his eyes followed a woman as she passed. I could not sto
p myself from commenting, in part to solicit his reassurances. As time passed, his reassurances came less often, and my comments grew more reproachful and more frequent. I could not be reassured. He in turn felt less inclined to reassure me.
He was set upon having a son. He forgot his irritations at night and still came to me, but he was more determined than he had been in the past. He came to me with concentrated intent, and obvious purpose. In response to this, I stiffened in fear, knowing now why Katherine had prayed aloud during their lovemaking, and wanting to do the same. Henry sensed the change in me, and answered my daytime reproaches with his own at night: he performed the act then left the room without a word, and went to sleep elsewhere.
I lay awake long afterward and stared.
I began having dreams about France. I thought I had placed it behind me, but still I had vivid dreams about being cornered in the corridor, and pulled into an empty room by my attacker. The dreams always placed us in a church for some reason and, in these dreams, he was dressed in a long black cape, a large, pale, flaccid, thick-lipped man with narrowed eyes that darted about in search of me. I grew small in the dreams, even smaller than I had been in life when he first took me. I would run and hide beneath a church pew where he would always find me, and I would scream myself awake. So unsafe was I in the dream, I could not even find shelter in the house of God.
In place of insatiable passion, I now had no desire for Henry at all. In fact, I quite recoiled from him.
I tried not to let him see this, for I needed to become pregnant again. Yet I feared becoming pregnant, for I might give birth to another female. He had married me solely so that I might give him a son, and I had already failed in this. To do so again was unthinkable, and yet I had no control over this kind of failure, past or future. I needed somehow to gain control, but could not. Was it preferable to not be pregnant, or to present him with another daughter? I had no answer to that and felt as if I was choosing between death from a sword and death from poison. I would in the end, of course, leave it up to God, the very God who had already betrayed me.
My passion would have returned when my body went back to normal, had I not been so plagued. I loved Henry deeply. However, I was frightened after Elizabeth was born. I had no one to tell, and nowhere to run. The fears had taken hold of me and had spawned bad dreams that came with greater frequency until I was again a girl, feeling all the terror of being forced.
I now could not stomach our lovemaking. Too much was tied to it. It nearly made me ill.
It was in this that my attacker lay the groundwork for my sentence of death. He wounded my mind as much as my body, and it was only the bodily wounds that healed. The scars inside my head were larger than the faint one on my neck, and they resurfaced when I faced the strain of having had a daughter rather than a son. Deep inside me, repressed for years by my determination to move past it, that man still waited for me with his knife at my throat. When Henry touched me, I saw that man and remembered, and relived, and felt the same revulsion again.
Why, after so many years? Why was it stronger in these years than it had been earlier on? I did not understand. It made no sense to me. It would make even less sense to Henry, who wanted only that I get on with it and return to being the way I once was. He did not want to discuss rapes he did not believe had really taken place, or examine the effects those rapes had had on me.
Henry would send me away for this. He would send me away and replace me with someone else. I knew it. The thought of it caused me even greater anxiety. Worry quelled my desire even further.
Henry could not help but dwell on what might be causing my lack of passion toward him. He was in constant fear that he could not perform like other men. He had gotten so from Katherine’s coldness. Now he had a second wife who seemed to find him as unappealing as the first had.
He began to “confess” to his advisors that he could not perform the marital act because I had bewitched him and rendered him impotent. Henry had difficulty performing the love act when he did not feel he was desired, so in a sense his words held truth. I was, in fact, the source of his impotence. He did not explain in full, however, when he made this accusation. So ashamed was he that he preferred being viewed as a man who could not bed his wife, rather than admit that his wife would not have him.
Had I done anything but shy away from his advances, I might have lived. Had I merely had a succession of daughters or miscarriages, I would have been divorced instead. My death was a punishment for frigidity more than for any other thing.
It tore at Henry’s heart.
He was a very proud man.
“Wouldst thou deign to have me?” he coolly asked me one night from just inside the doorway as I lay propped among the cushions. I had complained of head pains or monthly cramps for days. For a week prior to that I had used other excuses. I was pushing him into the arms of his mistress, and I knew this and was frantic with jealousy and fear, but I could not change how I felt about his coming to me.
No, I thought. Please no.
“As you do wish, my lord,” I had answered, with no expression.
“I care little either way,” he snapped at me. His eyes were wounded. “Soon, I shall not care at all.”
My feelings instantly warmed toward him when I saw his eyes. I did not ever want to wound him and felt a rush of love, and shame, and regret.
“Henry,” I had said holding out my arms. “Come to me.” I felt deep remorse toward him. I did not even remotely deserve him. Why was I doing this to him? I must stop. I could push aside my distaste once and for all if I willed it strongly enough. It was a weakness I had to overcome.
This was my husband. This was my life’s greatest love. He had done so much for me, and I should not bring such grief to him. I kept my arms outstretched, while he thought for a moment.
“I would not keep thee from thy rest,” he said with narrowed eyes and a tinge of sarcasm.
I read accurately that he was hurt and in fear of rejection.
“Come to me,” I said softly. I leaned forward toward him, stretching my arms. “Please.”
Henry hesitated, then softened and casually walked over to me as if he were doing so by coincidence rather than design. He sat at the edge of my bed and looked at me with an expression of indifferent disdain.
Then his face crumpled and he buried it in my lap. He began to shake, and to twist at my gown with his fists like a small boy. I heard a muffled sob.
“Sshhh, my sweetest,” I whispered. “I do so love thee.”
“Dost thou?” He asked looking up.
“With all my heart and my soul,” I answered. “Nothing will ever change that, Rex.” I stroked his hair.
“Thou hast become cold to me.” He said it accusingly, plaintively, like a child.
How do you explain fears and dreams and wounds to a man? He would scoff and tell me to simply not heed them. I had tried not heeding them, and yet they haunted me still. He would scorn me for that, and think they were an excuse rather than a reason, or that I was weak, or looking for attention.
“I have dreams . . . That is all. They make me fearful.”
“Of me? How couldst thou ever fear me? I could never harm thee.”
That statement gave me faith that perhaps all was not as hopeless as I thought. Perhaps he was not planning to wound me after all, by discarding me for someone else and, perhaps his love for me had not changed. With this small reassurance, I felt safer. All I really needed was to feel safe, and not feeling so was the cause of all that plagued me.
I cupped his face in my hands and kissed him and felt the passion stir within me again.
“I do not fear thee. I have bad dreams that taint my thoughts. They haunt me.” I slipped my hand down to unloosen his codpiece and began to breathe more heavily. I nuzzled his ear and grew limp when he reached for me. “I will try harder not to have them,” I whispered.
“What kind of dreams?” Henry asked distractedly. He sighed when I reached inside and found him. He did not
await an answer. “Oh Anna,” he whispered. “Oh my love.”
He came again the next night and the next, and stayed, and for that short time our passion was as it had been in the beginning. I did so love the man. I did so love him. If I could only purge myself of demons . . .
Then I had another dream. In this one I was raped again, and gave birth to a hideously monstrous child. It had the face of the man who had taken me in France, and claws instead of hands. It was handed to me and I held it, then it reached out its claws and cut my neck. I screamed.
I screamed myself awake, and sat up in bed hysterical. Yet I was not quite awake. I was a child again and back in France. When Henry sat up in bed and grabbed hold of me to calm me, I struck him and screamed louder, for the dream continued and, in it, my attacker had come back for me.
“Anna—please. Thou hast had a bad dream!”
I wrestled away from him and stood up, clutching my nightgown at the chest with my fist.
“Touch me and I will kill you,” I hissed in French, and was suddenly entirely awake.
I blinked, disoriented. “Rex?” I asked. I wondered why I was standing so.
“Thou hast had a bad dream,” Henry repeated, more calmly. He let silence fall for a moment. It was not a comfortable silence. Then he spoke.
“Thou didst just say to me that thou wouldst kill me, were I to touch thee.” His voice was strained beneath the calm.
I stared at him, and slowly shook my head. I could not see to read his expression, but his eyes shone in the moon’s reflection. They did not blink.
“Wouldst thou indeed kill me were I to touch thee? Wouldst thou indeed?” His voice had taken the slippery tones he used when confronting someone who had defied him, someone he could crush. His tone of voice rose and fell unnaturally along a musical scale. There was a studied cheerfulness to the words, and a conscious effort to carefully enunciate each one that I recognized as ominous. He had never once before directed that tone toward me.
