Threads: The Reincarnation of Anne Boleyn (29 page)

Henry struts and preens, so flattered is he
by her mild attention toward him. I bask in the reflected glow.

When the truth comes out, it is a scandal. It
is not truth about Katherine that we learn. Her life to us will
always be a mystery, though here, I find the speculation of the men
was true. Her father forced himself upon her, and she left. She
chose a man who was not physical in his attentions toward her, as
most men were, and who offered her a ready escape.

Katherine finds that her husband prefers to
be with men. She was never really married to him at all, in the
true sense. We did not know this. It will be a walk through the
woods with Princess Mary, and their discovery of him acting upon
his preference, that will make Katherine run away and blame us
all.

There is a convent 14 miles behind us that
she noted on our travels. She has gone there, and will remain for
the rest of her life. She will become a nun, and eventually the
Abbess. She is better suited to that life, than to this one.

We never find out where she went, and never
hear word of her again.

I discuss her situation with Hal, only days
after the discovery is made. Princess Mary will not speak of what
she saw, and makes the sign of the cross each time she is asked.
Katherine is gone as quickly and as mysteriously as she came, as is
her husband and the musician he was found with.

I do not understand what happened, exactly,
and Henry will not explain it to me, so I turn to Hal for the
truth. I know the men have been discussing it quietly among
themselves. Hal is one of the few men who might be coerced into
talking.

The questions I am asking embarrass him, and
he does not explain to me in more detail than Henry had. I linger,
hoping for more information, but I get none, so I move the
conversation to other topics in hopes of tricking Hal into speaking
later on.

Hal, it seems, is not easily tricked. He can,
however, be made to blush on command if I even hint toward our
original conversation so, out of compassion, I abandon it. Still,
the time passes quickly, and I find myself staying because I do not
want to leave. Hal does not encourage me to go.

I nurse the baby while Hal recites some
lyrics he has written for the minstrels. I clap my hands and laugh.
They are full of wit. He asks me to play a song for him on my lyre,
and I do while he holds Peter for me and listens, smiling.

I have known Hal for most of my life but have
never been alone with him because he is older and a man. I now find
I would even prefer his company to a number of the women’s, and I
sit with him, contentedly chatting about things I never confessed
to Henry—or the women—before. Hal listens, and responds in a way
most men would not. I feel full, somehow, talking to him. I feel
complete and calm.

He is not like most men, which perhaps
accounts for the manner in which he responds to me. He was born
with a cleft palate, a “hare lip”, and is ugly even with a beard to
disguise the torn and gaping upper lip. He cannot speak clearly,
for the roof of his mouth is not fully developed. Understandably,
he is shy of meeting those outside our circle, unless he is
performing.

Hal has dealt with his disfigurement by
learning to be funny, and has succeeded in turning revulsion into
laughter: people laugh
with
him rather than
at
him.
He amplifies his speech impediment during the puppet shows, and he
makes wildly frightening faces, and tells jokes while he juggles.
He acts as well, so he can wear a mask and play the fool or the
villain.

He is a gentle soul now. He was once less so,
and his face is one of the prices he is paying for a cruel past. He
is loved, but not as a lover; no woman will have him. This is
painful to him, for he has sweet, romantic imaginings, and an
enormous amount of love to give. He writes beautiful love ballads
which he, until just recently, passed along to Katherine’s husband
to sing. The women would listen misty-eyed with longing—but would
have sneered or laughed, had they seen the man who wrote the
words.

Hal’s compensation is laughter from his
audience, and affection from those with whom he travels, but it is
not quite enough. He will confess to me one day that he is lonely.
He will confess nearly everything to me, in time. Beginning with
that one conversation, Hal becomes my special friend.

He gives Henry no concern for, fond though
Henry is of him, he views Hal as not quite a man, and therefore not
a threat. He looks, after all, like a gargoyle or a monster.

Henry does not treat Hal as I would like.
There is always a touch of dismissive condescension in his
attitude, as if there were no soul behind the hideous face. I try
to shame him, but Henry does not change.

Hal often wanders over to our hut in the
winter, or settles in front of our fire on the road while I cook.
He touches my heart with his kindness and shyness, and he amuses me
with his wit and his poems. He composes most of the ballads the
minstrels sing, turning his acute observations into riotously funny
lyrics that he brings to me first. I am his best audience. We talk
for long periods of time, and through the years will become as
close as family and love each other as dearly.

Although I do not know this as I face him, we
have a history together. He was twice my spouse, and once my twin,
and has long been involved with me in some respect or another. He
is still a part of me now. I often wonder why I should feel so
strongly toward him, and think it is merely compassion. His face
makes me sad for him.

But it is more than that. I do not love him
out of pity. There is a real intimacy between us, and the reason
for it is that we have unknowingly perpetuated one past identity as
identical twins, easily the most emotionally intimate of all
relationships. We find early that we can read each other’s
feelings, as twins do. We are comfortable together. We think alike,
and we fall together in a rhythm and a harmony that cannot be
purposefully designed.

Hal very soon becomes dependent upon me, and
likes having me near, just to talk. He seems to need me as my
children do, and there is enough room in my heart for him. I would
have had room for him, no matter what the circumstances.

I do not know that he pretends I am his wife,
and my children his. It is his livelihood and his destiny to be
laughed at. He faces this with philosophical good humor, but in his
dreams he is handsome, and I am not repulsed. This is the one
secret he does not divulge to me.

It is in our next life that a far stronger
passion will erupt between us, and we will marry, this time out of
choice rather than at the arrangement of our families, as was the
case two times before. Hal will indeed be handsome, and I will be
powerfully attracted by his beauty, just as he once wished. Henry
will be our child. We will not have long, and it will not be long
enough for us. During the dark days of the first wave of the
plague, Hal will be the first of us to succumb, then I will follow.
The incompleteness of the pairing will strengthen our resolve, and
we will be impatient to be together again. We will return as
lovers.

Henry will choose to separate us in order to
reclaim me.

But I have told that part of the story.

۞

Henry and I are both hot tempered, and
amused by verbal battling. We have sniped at each other since
infancy, and cannot quite break the habit. Henry likes to throw
things in order to make a point, reveling in the theatrics of an
argument, and I like to prick holes in his masculine pomposity. We
shout and bicker, in jest most times, usually providing diversion
and amusement to those who surround us. We often dissolve into
laughter, for our arguments tend to be absurd rather than
heartfelt, and are intended to sharpen wits rather than to wound.
We call each other “old woman” and “old man” before we reach the
age of twenty, and parry incessantly. We are a loud family, and the
children are equally sassy and high spirited. A few of them have
Henry’s temper. I am often pulling them apart, cleaning bloody
noses and wrapping sprained fists, Henry’s among them.

I love them all so much.

•
~
۞
~•

The scenes shift once more, and I now see a
stretch of road and a time that makes me want to turn away. I feel
a bittersweet pang of longing and loss, for the scene makes me
remember one of the few truly painful episodes in that entire life.
It lasts a fleeting second. We are in Belgium and I awaken, dizzy
and sick as the sun rises. I leap up and race to a tree, where I
double over and vomit. I have already had three children, and I
know what this means. A quick calculation and the knowledge that
Henry and I were not prudent sends a hard arrow of fear into me. I
conceived in Holland.

It is just cold, I tell myself. We can dress
the baby against it. It is just smoke from the fire. We will keep
it out of his tiny lungs. We will buy a cow for milk and butter, a
goat to feed my smallest boy, and a sheep for meat so I do not go
hungry and lose my milk for the infant.

In preparation for this, I am hoarding coins,
and have refused Henry’s pleadings that I sew him a new shirt. We
cannot afford the cloth. I agreed to share the cow with Emma to
defray the cost, and refused every nonessential expenditure, but I
still cannot risk being a penny short. I mend Henry’s old shirt
instead.

I cannot grapple with the concept of disease,
which always seems to spread among the children in the wintertime,
so I do not dwell upon it. Had I thought about that, I would have
been terrified for my three older ones as well. The youngest of
these was only just born in Belgium the year before, and is still
at risk. I decide to strap this newest child to my chest as if we
were traveling, only tucked beneath my kirtle and wrap. I will keep
it close to me, and always warm. I will not worry and I will not
fret.

I will wrap the other baby as snuggly as I
can, and hold him close to me through much of the day. The oldest
two will be kept indoors, and placed before the fire. My chores
will remain undone, or Henry can do them for me while I tend to the
smallest ones. The fire will be kept burning clean, and the chimney
cleared to prevent a back draft of smoke. I will follow my mother’s
advice to keep a cauldron of water on the flames when I am not
cooking, so the air does not get dry.

I pray at every church along the way, and
keep a holy relic tied to a string around my neck.

We arrive in the village, and are welcomed
with the usual fanfare. The obvious advancement of a pregnancy
causes some glances, but the women make cheerful comments to me and
knit little garments that they give to me with tender looks. I hug
my little ones, and hold up the tiny dresses to show them, but I do
not tell them there will be another child, and I do not choose a
name.

Henry has stayed close to my side since the
morning I awakened ill. He is cheerful and does not speak of his
fears, but as soon as we arrive in the village, he begins
plastering the sides of the hut with straw and mud to keep out the
chill. He does this, uncharacteristically, without my having to
prompt him to it. He overfills our sleeping palate with hay, and
takes our small savings to pay a weaver for some extra woolen
blankets. He borrows a goat from Father Martin, with promises to
return it in the spring. He comes back with Emma and a fine cow
that will stay in a barn not far from us when it gets cold. He ties
a fat sheep to a long rope, and lets it wander near the hut.

I suspect he stole the sheep.

I feel the pains in mid-January during a
blizzard. Henry takes the children to another hut, and stays with
them there. His mother and my own arrive and bustle about while I
writhe on the palate and moan. The day passes, and the baby does
not come. I pace back and forth across the room and, when it is
time, I squat on the birthing stool and push.

The difficulty of the birth is a surprise to
us all, for I have never had such a problem before. When she comes,
finally, she is red and beautiful, and on an impulse, I name her
immediately and call her Gabrielle, after the angel Gabriel. I do
so as an act of faith in God, not even waiting until she is wiped
clean before saying the name. My mother and Henry’s turn and stare
at me, and I look back, stubborn. This child will have a name, and
she will be loved.

She lives. She stays strapped under my
bodice, and the two of us pass through our days wrapped in a
blanket, only coming out of it long enough to change her rags. The
careful precautions Henry and I took, and the prayers we said in
our own hearts, rewarded us with a smiling little girl who is
cutting teeth at the time the caravan is packed to leave. She
grows, and learns to crawl in Belgium, and toddles her first step
in Flanders, far earlier than we expected.

We fuss over her and spoil her because we did
not expect to keep her this long. We expected a fever or the croup
to take her away during the winter, and feel blessed and grateful
that she escaped. She is our only girl, and a beauty.

Henry often holds her up and talks to her
about the young men he will have to shoo away when she is older. He
carries her on his shoulders, leaving the other children to me. He
makes her little toys, and holds her on his lap. She is her Papa’s
little pet and favors him, and in return, he worships her. The boys
have to settle for the time he can spare them when Gabrielle does
not claim his attention, and they have to share that time three
ways.

Henry would have denied it, as he loved all
his children fervently, but all who saw him knew he was soft and
silly with his little girls, and at the heart of it, preferred them
to the boys.