by Nell Gavin
He will pretend to me that he had drunk solely in celebration, and was worried not at all.
It will be an easy birth and a beautiful, healthy babe who will survive and reach his manhood, then have children of his own. Few children survived. The ones we carried with us amounted to less than one third of the children actually conceived by the women in the troupe within the last five years, and even these will not all grow to adulthood. I am blessed in that I can look back upon this birth with joy.
We camp for a week until I am ready to walk. I pad the baby with rags, tie him to my chest with a shawl, and sing him lullabies as I follow the carts down the road. The others in the troupe hear me, and Emma joins me softly, singing a harmony. Another joins in, an octave lower, and a fourth adds a high trill, like a bird. Still another pulls out her flute and plays along.
Hearing this, the men cannot resist it themselves and they add their voices, vying with each other to be heard over the din, out-performing one another, throwing their arms about for theatrical emphasis. The air is filled with loud, shouting voices that are bellowing words intended to be soft and sweet for a baby’s ears. It makes me laugh, and I shout the words as well. The baby himself seems to enjoy the clamor, and stares about himself contentedly. Henry boasts and struts, singing more loudly than all the rest, occasionally pausing to kiss his wife, and gently stroke his baby’s head.
۞
“And he loved your babies,” the Voice interrupts. “All of them. You never saw a man grieve the way he did over the three who died.”
The three that died were little girls, not boys. He cared not whether he had boys or girls then. It was all the same to him.
“He loved your little Elizabeth, did he not?”
“Stop!” I order fiercely, defensively. “Stop this!”
The Voice recedes, sending me a signal that it has made its point.
Henry loved Elizabeth more than I. I never loved her at all. I never could.
۞
We immediately name the baby Peter, after the saint. I choose the stronger-sounding Germanic version over the softer “Pierre” out of preference, not even waiting to be certain he lives through the winter before declaring it to all. We take the risk that he will live, and call him by his name, investing more love in him than is prudent, trusting that he will not die and that we will not suffer a larger pain for having given him an identity too soon.
Still nearly children ourselves, we play with him as if he were a doll, and he grows, smiling and affectionate. He is handed juggling balls at the age of three, and sits behind a harp at the age of five. I teach him leaps and somersaults during those short periods when I am not pregnant. Henry teaches him how to remember lines and make his voice large so that all can hear it. Emma teaches him to sing notes and rounds, and Hal teaches him to deliver funny lines and to make faces, and then uses him as a comic foil in many of the acts. Other children follow and are equally loved and trained.
I will bear Henry 14 children in all, one or two years apart, and of these fully 11 will survive. It will be a lifetime full of blessings. It will be necessary for us to build a third cart, and buy a third horse, and then a fourth, just to hold the swelling population of small children within the troupe. We will shelter them in three more makeshift tents, and in the village we will need to build a larger hut to house them. Henry will purchase some hunting falcons, for we will need them to find enough food to feed them all as the daily catch with traps and arrows alone will come to be too lean. The children will all perform early in cunning little costumes and will bring in coins and loud applause, for even the smallest few of them will flip and leap through hoops when they are only two or three years past learning to walk.
Henry and I are deeply in love but do not ever notice this, since we have never experienced life without each other. We have never in our lives said “I love you” and we never will, for love, we know, is not the point of marriage. We live from day to day being gentle toward each other, fretting and fussing over one another, aching and impatient to couple when we are prevented from doing so on days when it rains too hard for the woods or is too cold, but we do not know that it is love. We think it is simply “marriage” and we conclude that marriage is good.
When I grow old, I will retire with Henry to the village where our parents await us now, and our children will continue the tradition, following their children in the cart, singing songs and juggling.
Henry will discover upon my death the depth of his emotion, and he will die himself within months, as I would have had he gone first. For now, there is no other life, and no other possible mate for either of us, and we accept this without question or examination. We will never know any lovers but each other, and will never even wonder what another would be like.
Well, Henry will wonder about Katherine, but in this life he will never know.
Others grew up in the troupe in the backs of carts as we did, traveling as these new children do while the parents walked behind. There are new members however, who joined us out of a desire to perform, as a risky escape from serfdom or personal trouble, or to follow spouses met in tiny villages where we had camped.
Katherine is still new to the troupe, having joined us in Holland. She is finding it difficult to adjust. Even though she seemingly knew in advance she would not care for the life, she chose her husband from among the actors who travel with us. We speculate, finding her all the more fascinating in that she will not tell why she chose him, or why she left a comfortable life for one that displeases her.
The theory among the women is that she selected her husband for his beauty. Although most of the unmarried women with us have tried to win his attentions, none was successful, presumably because all except Katherine were pale and wanting, compared to his splendid self. The women view Katherine as an icon of sorts, for she has beauty and has won the man most coveted by the others.
Among the men it is said she had troubles with her family, and sought a fast escape. Her husband just happened to appear at the right time, they say. They do not appreciate, most of them, the power of a man’s appearance, and they look for other reasons why a beautiful woman might choose a man. Each of them thinks that Katherine would have preferred him had he found her first, or were he eligible to sweep her away. This number includes Henry. Henry is smitten with Katherine.
Katherine’s husband will not say what her motives were in choosing him, nor does he much care since it appears that his plans to leave the road and live in her large house have fallen through. He simply avoids her company as much as he is able.
To Katherine, this life is difficult, the costumes garish, and the travel a grueling displeasure. She does not understand our need to move from town to town, and is scandalized over the manner in which we all perform our marital duties and the abandon with which those duties are performed. She has no empathy for the excitement we feel as we stand before an audience, or for our pleasure when a crowd erupts into applause. She seems embarrassed when townspeople look at her traveling with us. Still, she will not go home.
She is tall and graceful, with yellow hair the sun has bleached to almost white. She frets over the freckles that have sprouted on her face, but these give her much charm, and the men tend to be solicitous toward her, for she is lovely to see. She follows a husband who is indifferent toward her, and she keeps to herself, but has recently learned to say lines in the skits. Her increased involvement does not soften her feelings toward the life.
Soon she will run away and take refuge in a convent, telling tales of us as if we were all wild heathens who had captured her and held her against her will.
She is, as ever, Katherine.
I have attempted a friendship with Katherine. She is lonely and out of place, bewildered by the colorful personalities that surround her. She prefers silence to music, and solitary meditation to the society of loud, attention-hungry performers. She sees us all as inferior to her because she grew up in a house with servants, and was even taught to read and writ
e.
She never warms toward me, for I am younger, and am entirely too boisterous and loud for her. I would like to be her friend, but do not know how to coax her into intimacy. We were born into different classes and have nothing whatever in common.
I am in awe of her fine mannerisms and her refined speech. I emulate her, causing Henry to double over with laughter, which leaves me in tears he quickly runs to wipe. I tell Henry in tedious detail all the little I have learned about her, then press him for details on what it is she says when they speak. He listens with interest when I tell him what I know, and pretends he is not eager to tell me what she has said to him.
She seems to have a tolerance for Henry, who can draw upon his acting skills to behave much like the people in Katherine’s social class. They have long conversations at times, and exclude me, but I do not mind because Henry is mine and would not leave me. I have no fear of Katherine. I can see she wants none of these men and the life they would offer her. She already has a man like that, and is not pleased. Instead, I am grateful that I am married to someone who might come back to me with gossip about her, and tell me all he has learned.
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.
۞
&
nbsp; 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.
Chapter 3
•~۞~•
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.