Threads: The Reincarnation of Anne Boleyn (42 page)

A plan has already been put in place for
still more lessons when he returns again. His next experience will
be in West Africa, where he will be sold by his family into slavery
to European merchants who will take him to a country referred to as
“new” (although we have both been there before, long ago). He will
arrive and find a wife, then will be sold and taken away from her.
He will find another woman, and be sold away again. He will have
poor luck in keeping wives for some time to come.

As part of the plan, he will be charged with
the crime of rape, and tried before a judge and a jury as biased
against him as the trial he held for me was biased. He will be
hung, and hanging beside him will be others I remember from my own
trial, also lynched for crimes they will not commit.

I wonder: What would Henry’s murderers think
if they knew they were hanging a king? It is a fanciful thought,
but one that amuses me. I am not as amused as I think I might have
been in life, had I been reassured at the block that Henry is
destined for the noose.

All this will seemingly be for no reason
other than the whims of people who do not like skin that is black.
It will be another strange fancy of another strange society, that
skin color determines worth.

My thoughts wander, here, to what I have
learned about life. I recite these conclusions to myself, looking
toward the Voice for validation, and then guidance.

In every society, I know, there are class
structures of some kind, and most take this further. Each
society–each group within each society–chooses something with which
to assign inferiority. In China it is the time of birth and the
size of feet. In Europe it is the Jews; in England, the Irish.
Among the powerful, it is the powerless; among the rich, it is the
poor; among the men, it is the women. In this “new” country, that
will also be true.

In reverse, there is often a vehement hatred
by an oppressed group toward the ones it sees as representatives of
oppression. The oppressed view their own feelings of contempt as
nobler than the contempt they receive, and more justified. They
view their own hatred as right and pure. They nurture it, and
bequeath it to their children, and sometimes see to it that it is
carried on for generations.

Neither side sees the humanity in the other.
Both sides are equally wrong in this.

To what purpose is such hatred generated?
Even if it is seemingly justified, it heals no one. If its object
does not understand, or does not personally deserve a punishment,
it is an injustice and a crime. To what end is such punishment
served, except to bring it back upon oneself? What is the cure for
it but forgiveness?

Can a beheaded wife understand that the
hatred she feels toward her husband exceeds the hatred he earned
with his fractured mind and muddled judgment? Would she have been
called upon to forgive him, even had his mind been sound? These are
the questions placed before me, and I toy with them.

What I am thinking now, with this passing, is
that I cannot be vain about my goodness and virtue, or smug that
another has been entrapped by weakness to which I am not at the
moment susceptible. My virtue can be taken from me.

I cannot applaud another’s punishment,
however amply justified, or assume the role of judge and administer
punishment in vengeance. When I encounter those who are paying for
grievous sins, I must show compassion and mercy, and not compound
their suffering for, truly, it is my own. We are all on the same
path.

“You are learning,” the Voice says softly,
like music. “I am proud.”

The same is true in reverse. Virtue is
learned–or is it earned? Upon close examination, it appears to me
to come at a dear price and be quite hard-won. It is truly
something to admire.

I think now of Hal, who once preferred
soldiering and used it, not to defend, but as a convenient excuse
to destroy. He killed and raped for pleasure, without thought for
his victims or the pain he inflicted.

When his punishments came due, Hal endured
the manifestations of his cruelty by repeatedly suffering physical
weakness, deprivation and emotional isolation. He found himself
repeatedly on the receiving end of barbaric or emotional cruelty as
vicious as his own. The anguish was the same. The blood now drawn
was his, in equal measure to the blood he once drew.

We learn compassion from pain, and thus did
Hal. In time, it transformed his desire to harm others into a
desire to nurture, protect and appease. His taste for blood was
transformed into revulsion—even a fear of it. Along the way, he
developed humor and kindness, and earned the love and deep
affection of his peers.

He also earned a future far more pleasant
than his past, and I am very pleased to know this, because I love
him.

•
~
۞
~•

“Shall we cover it again?” the Voice
asks.

I say nothing. I have heard it all before,
many times. I go over it within myself without assistance: a poem I
have memorized by rote.

Now, however, I hear the meaning behind the
words.

A part of me always clung to the myth that I
could live among whores as a whore, but not be of their kind, not
really.
I
was in the Valley as a result of tragic
circumstances, whereas the other women were there by choice. It
mattered not what tragedies had brought them there, for tragedy was
always behind it and every one of the women had been driven there
by desperate circumstances and suffering. Yet, I felt my own
tragedy was more tragic than theirs, my degradation more demeaning,
my reasons more honorable and my fall from a greater height. I felt
that they “dirtied” me by association.

In the past, I focused on the discord and the
arguments and the thievery, or on the scorn I received from
respectable society and the contempt with which I was viewed by
most of my peers and customers. I bristled with indignation and
defensiveness when faced with the scenes. I was bitterly resentful
of the circumstances that forced me into that life, felt hatred
toward my husband for driving me into the streets, and responded
with fury to the suggestion that I should feel kindly and
sympathetic toward the women in the Valley. I even rejected the
suggestion that I was, in fact, really one of them.

There is none of that now. With this viewing,
I am philosophical. My husband eventually learned I had value, but
then had to value me only from a distance, all the while enduring
my derision and disgust. There is no point in holding onto anger
toward him. He is not the same, for he has grown.

As for the women in the Valley, I peered at
them through self-centeredness and self-pity. I saw their
experiences as less painful than mine, and viewed them as less
victimized than I was because I was not wise enough to draw a fair
comparison, nor fair enough to respect their pain.

At the same time, I demanded respect for
mine. I now see their humiliation, and understand what they felt
and why they were there, and know that most of them were as unhappy
and as victimized as I was. I now know that my pain is
not
more sacred, my suffering is
not
more noble, and the
injustice I endure is
not
more ill-deserved than someone
else’s.

I see, and I know that people were cruel and
spiteful and hateful at times, but so was I. I now see, and now
know they simply had not learned, as I had not learned, to cherish
one another.

That is the only lesson we all are meant to
learn: to cherish each other. It is the one that takes us down a
road so long the end seems out of reach.

And finally, I must take this lesson and
expound upon it. It is, in its way, like a child who stops
believing in fairies but still believes in trolls, if I learn a
narrow lesson then reject it in a broader scope. Can I expand what
I have learned to include other inclinations toward unfairness or
injustice, and eradicate those within myself as well? Can I see
that it is not just this one type of person toward whom I must feel
empathy, but all types? And can I be moved to assist and show
patience, rather than to pass judgment? In time I will see it and
live it, for I must. If I do not, I will be forced to learn
tolerance again and again by passing through life as the very thing
I now ridicule, despise, or most condemn.

“Do you see how they have changed? You can
still recognize them and they are still struggling, but can you
see? They are trying as hard as you.”

What I see suddenly amuses me. I look around
and see one person after another, all of them.
All
of them!
They were,
all of them
, fine ladies, or courtiers, or
royalty in this past life. The entire Valley, it seems, was
transported, en mass, to Henry’s court.

I feel a giggle rising. The Voice joins me
and between us we send out barrages of laughter, pealing like
musical notes into the space that surrounds me.

I would give anything to solemnly ask
Katherine her opinion of these scenes. I saw a number of her ladies
there, where they most certainly did not conduct themselves with
the propriety Katherine demanded at court. I can envision her
squirming with denial and distaste. Oh! I could never have designed
such a punishment for her, when we were at war!

I would give anything to face Henry with the
intelligence that he, a vain and womanizing king, was once a
half-man who dressed in women’s clothing.

And then, I would like to go back to the
Valley and point out to the men who beat and bloodied Henry that
they would one day cower in the face of his displeasure. They would
bow before him, and do virtually anything to gain his good graces
and keep their lives.

Were I alive, I would most assuredly be
hiccuping now, and that thought makes me convulse with even more
merriment.

I have not wanted to laugh with such abandon
since I came here, and it heals me. I have always loved irony, and
life, it seems, is designed around it. One just never knows who one
is meeting in life, where they have been, or where they are
going.

•
~
۞
~•

As a child of the Horse, with unbound feet, I
was sold in marriage to a man who worked the fields. I worked
beside him, stooped over, with infants strapped to my back until my
spine grew curved from the constant weight and I could no longer
walk completely upright at all. Year upon year, from before dawn
until well after dusk, I toiled. My world was narrow, and within
its confines there was no music, and little laughter.

I had enough to eat, and several sons.
However, I did not even live long enough to earn the honor of being
“the” mother-in-law, for my own outlived me and I was her servant
until my death. So were the wives of my sons, though, as is custom,
they should have served me.

My husband was the youngest son of seven and,
as his wife, I had to answer to the elder brothers and all of their
wives. In addition to them, I had to serve my husband’s mother, who
had given birth only to sons. Birthing seven sons and no daughters
was clear evidence of her superiority. As a result, she felt honor
was her due, and she showed no kindness.

Her kindness, what little she had, decreased
in incremental portions toward family members of lesser importance.
It was bequeathed, in small measure, toward her older sons’ wives
(whom she treated as well as she was capable of treating anyone),
then was meagerly meted out to the wives of the younger sons. It
was completely withheld from me, substituted with vengeance as
repayment for my having been born to a better family than she. I
did not come from peasants; I became one when I married her
son.

My mother did not bind my feet in infancy, as
she had my sisters, knowing from my horoscope that I could only
find a husband who would want me as a worker of the fields. When
the time came to find a husband for me, my father bartered for the
best, then settled for a man who would take me. It was the fate my
parents had known I was destined for all along.

Being the only daughter who could walk
without assistance, I performed household chores with our servant
from my earliest years. I was ordered about by my beautiful,
crippled sisters who patronizingly told me they “envied” me my
huge, ugly feet, for I did not know the pain and discomfort of
being bound. They soaked their twisted feet, and had me change the
rags that bound them, pretending that they would exchange places
with me in order to know how it was to run. It was shallow
kindness, and the contempt beneath it was not well hidden; my feet
were clear evidence of my inferiority.

My sisters found well-situated husbands
early, and moved away to large houses. They were each assisted down
fine hallways by devoted servants who held their elbows as they
took beautiful, mincing baby steps on feet that were a perfect
three inches long. They all had sons. One even had a son in the
year of the Fire Horse, a most propitious time for the birth of a
male. There was much feasting and celebration over the birth.

I, of course, did not attend.

During that same year, I had a pregnancy
myself, my first. I worked the fields until the pain grew too
difficult to bear. I begged leave of my husband, and walked beyond
the fields to a stand of trees where I squatted and gave birth
without a sound, placing a stick between my teeth and biting down,
so as not to disturb my husband as he worked.

I had been told by my mother-in-law to not
return home with a female.

I caught her shoulders in my hands as she
squirmed out between my legs, biting the stick and pushing my bare
foot into a sharp rock to shift the pain away lest any cries bring
irritation to my husband, who was still planting. She wailed while,
exhausted, I sat down and leaned back against the tree. I stretched
her across my lap and sawed through her cord with the sharp edge of
a painted bone I wore on a string around my neck. There was no need
for me to do this. I had an obligation to kill her, and it hardly
mattered if she was cut loose from the afterbirth before I did the
deed. I reasoned that I was too tired to kill her now, and would
hold her to keep her quiet while I rested for a time. This would be
easier if she was unattached.