Soon to be published!
Bare Breasts and Cannon Balls
Anne's Story
Chapter I
I Enter the World
I had heard the story
of my birth before. It was only a tale, of course, and a strange one.
But that is the way of tales. There are other parts to my story even more
unlikely, but I have lived them and can attest to their truth. Still,
to understand the circumstances of my birth is to accept the conditions
of my life, so I will lay the story down as it was told to me. It was
Papa who first related the tale. He said his wife was away when Mama started
labor in her attic bedroom. Mama had come into service at the manor house
of Homefield, which was outside the village of Blackwater in the county
of Cork, when she was only a girl . I think Papa loved her and not his
wife, for he stayed with her in her room and kept the fire going until
I came squalling out. The only other person present was Cook. Papa thought
Cook might have been my Mama's mother, but he was never sure. Cook was
like a mother to her, whether she was her real ma or not.
"The
boy has red hair like his mother!" Cook exclaimed, bending down to hold
a candle between Mama's legs.
"Ha!"
I thought when Papa first told me. I had fourteen, or maybe fifteen hard
summers behind me then, and I still had Mama's dark red hair. I was strong
and bold, and I could ride and hunt and shoot and fight. But I wasn't
a boy. Only Mama, Cook and Papa knew. And sometimes Papa forgot. I know
it.
He
told me the story of my birth one fine autumn day when we were riding
together through the beech woods at the southern edge of the farm. "I
could see a pattern where the firelight shone through the eyelet embroidery
on your Ma's petticoat," he said.
"Your
Ma was a great one for having her petticoats over her head. . . but that
night . . . it was strange, lad . . . along with her yelling and the smell
of the birthing I could hear every pop and crackle of the fire and each
drop of the rain striking against the window. What a time. It's like you're
smarter on some days. Something happens and every sense lights up and
you can always remember exactly how it felt and sounded and smelt and
looked."
He
pulled his big roan up and ran his hand in a rough caress along her neck,
which was the color Mama's hair had been.
We
sat together at the edge of the woods, now clad in the deep yellow gold
of autumn. The air was damp and soft. The breeze only hinted at the sharp
winter to come as it blew through the fields of dry corn stubble. Gleaming
in the distance, the outline of the big house shone through a soft haze
that gathered at the end of our long alley of giant elms.
Inspired by his words I began breathing in great draughts of air, identifying
the smells. There was the pungent fragrance of beech mast stirred beneath
horses feet . I t mixed with an acrid scent of peat burning in a near
cottage. I listened to the soft sloughing of hooves moving through leaves
while the cries of a family of rooks nesting in the distant elms sawed
across the fields. Papa guessed my intent and laughed, "No need to memorize
the moment, my lad, those that matter will always be with you."
Papa
was a gentleman. He raised me to be a gentleman, with all the necessary
skills and strengths, yet beneath the polish of his surface I knew him
to be deeply tender. This gentleness, coupled with his fine sense of the
delicacy of things, made him an admirable companion. Often he would point
out to me the most subtle of differences, whether he was analyzing the
fine points of a particular pony or the exact content of a passing thought.
He sought a certain refinement in all things and never stinted on quality.
Nor
did he stint on my education . I had the best tutors available to a country
landholder. If I showed interest and talent for a particular subject the
proper individual to fuel my efforts would be found even if it meant sending
as far away as Dublin for a young scholar to oversee my studies.
I shared Papa's fascination for the ancients, although unlike him, I had
little gift for Latin and Greek. He did not chide me when my language
tutor complained of my lassitude, but only made certain that the books
I wished to pursue were available in translation in his extensive library.
I
had read about immortal Zeus, whose habit of dalliance with human women
provoked the life-long enmity of his wife Hera towards the offspring of
these liaison. Was not I, like the semidevine Hercules, the product of
such a union? And was it odd that my Papa went to such extremes to protect
the secret of my birth from such a dangerous hatred?
It was rumored that when Papa's wife found he was engaging the maid in
amorous pursuits, she, like Hera, swore to have revenge on her errant
husband, and, I suppose, to serve herself a bit of the same pie.
Cook told me that the Mistress had sneaked up the back stairs one night
and watched Papa and my Mama through the keyhole of Mama's chamber. The
next night she sent the maid, my Mama, out on some errand, and substituted
herself, dressed in the maid's petticoats and cap. When I first heard
the story I tried looking through the keyhole of the little room myself,
but I couldn't see the bed, only the washstand and a square of ragged
blue carpet. Would a man like Papa, with his sensitive touch and great
attention to detail, be confused by petticoats and a maid's cap? Cook
said he must have honored his wife from the rear and never saw her face.
Shortly
after my birth, Papa's wife sent Mama and me away with threats of vengeance
if we ever sought to claim our rightful place. But a short time later
his wife was revealed to be pregnant herself. Papa didn't believe her
story about the maid's cap and petticoats either . S o he sent her back
to her family in England, where she came from. Papa, like Zeus, was proud
and not to be tricked. He thought himself cuckolded by the village blacksmith,
a dark, somber man known to please the ladies, although not clubfooted
like Hephaestus. I've never heard if the child born to her was boy or
girl. Papa's marriage had been an unhappy one, anyway. His wife was a
sour woman with a long face, and Papa had left her to herself for some
years, or so Cook said.
Until
I was five or six Mama and I lived alone together in a snug two room cottage
outside her home village across the river, some miles away from Homefield.
Although Papa made frequent secret visits to us, I didn't know who he
was until the day he brought the pony.