Threads by Nell Gavin

Author:Nell Gavin [Gavin, Nell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Nell Gavin
Published: 2011-06-20T04:05:43+00:00

Chapter 2

•~۞~•

The next scene I am shown is two years after the wedding. It is another autumn, and again we are heading toward Antwerp and home, but at this moment have stopped to rest. The jugglers practice while Henry and the other actors rehearse their lines a short distance away. I play upon my flute with three other musicians, and Emma plays chase with the children.

We rest frequently for my sake, for I am heavily with child. The going is slow, and we must make it to our village before winter sets in. We have fallen behind even the loose schedule we keep, and are shortening our stops along the route.

None of the children traveling with us is mine, as yet. I am carrying my first, a son, who will be born in two weeks’ time under a tree with Princess Mary and Emma attending the birth.

I am now 15 years old, and Henry is 17. Our parents have chosen to remain in the village, and no longer travel with us. We are hoping and praying that we safely arrive to present them with a living grandchild, whose existence was not evident when we started out in the spring.

We are too young to seriously consider that Henry might return alone, as some husbands have before him. Still, as the birth draws nearer, Henry has grown more reflective and more solicitous toward me, and there are traces of fear in his eyes. He awakened screaming on two occasions this past week, startling everyone. Most in the encampment then stayed tensely awake and prayed for him as much as for me. He will shriek in the night several times more, while we await the birth.

We do not have the same relationship we had as children. Our roles changed the instant we knew each other as man and wife, that day in the woods. We still bicker and argue, but we are each here only for the other, and know this now. We sleep together in our tent with our limbs entwined, stripped of clothing so we might feel each other’s skin, sometimes giving in to the temptation to couple in the encampment despite the fact that, out of consideration for others, it simply is not done. We do it with hands over each other’s mouth, furtively, silently wrestling, swallowing the sounds. And we do it facing each other, each moving into that place in the other’s eyes where we meet and rise above ourselves. It somehow makes the act more potent for us, and harder to be silent.

After the birth of this first child, though, we will be forced into the woods again, for the children will sleep with us when they are small, and there will always be small ones. We will even find moments when we are certain of privacy and can hang our clothing on a bush. This is a scandalous and sinful way to perform the marital act, for God is watching, but we do it anyway, praying

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