Threads: The Reincarnation of Anne Boleyn (40 page)

I learn from these women that I can earn more
if I ply my trade in the Valley of the Kings. It takes courage to
go there, and I wrestle with mine for a long while before seriously
considering the journey.

I have long heard about it. It is a village
of tomb robbers and criminals who are not averse to also earning
riches from prostitution. Over time, an area around this village
grew into a notorious brothel with row upon row of tents that teem
with teetering, drunken soldiers and wandering workmen. It is
dangerous, the street whores say, and the women there are hardened
and cruel. The very worst men I have seen on the streets are what I
can expect to find in the Valley: drunken brutes, gangs of thieves,
military misfits, and social pariahs . . .

There is construction going on in the Valley,
as the pharaoh has commissioned a new pyramid. The women go where
men are most apt to be found and, during any massive construction,
there are always scores of men nearby who are anxious for
entertainment.

For my entire life, there has been ongoing
building, men who build, and women who follow them. The brothels
seem as enduring as the structures that loom above them, and
certainly as enduring as the thieves who plunder them. The Valley
is a place where campfires burn until morning, where music is
played, and women dance while fights break out around them. It
bursts with life after sundown. The free men linger with their
wages after the slaves have been led away at day’s end, and the
rougher elements all find their way there. They pour vat after vat
of fermented drink, and rut like animals among the women who are
there to service them.

My father threatened me with the place when I
was growing. It was, he said, where they send useless daughters.
Now I am faced with going there of my own volition. I have no
remaining family, and no other place offers me escape from my
husband.

I am terrified but I go, and I bring the
children with me. It is a long walk, and takes two days. I struggle
with one child strapped to my back, and the other led for short
distances by the hand until she cries to be carried. At night we
sleep in a doorway, and we stop to beg for food along the way. For
the final leg of the journey, we ride on a donkey whose driver I
pay with my body. My husband does not know why we have left, or if
we will ever return. I slipped away while he slept.

When we arrive, it is nearing dusk and, shy
and timid, I look about me. I feel out of place. I am a matron with
two small children, primly watching from the periphery.

I am not a whore. I am not like these people.
Surely they can see this. Surely no one suspects I have done this
before. I will only stay until I earn enough money to live another
way.

There are shouts already coming from a knot
of men who are placing bets on a game of Senet. The players hurl
the casting sticks, and their audience erupts into either triumph
or frustration at the resulting throw, depending upon which player
they have bet. The women are primping themselves and gossiping for
a short time before nightfall when the workmen leave their shifts
and their own day begins. Caravans of donkeys are arriving with
water, food and drink, and urns are carried into tents while the
drivers scream and haggle with a woman over price. Huge shiny-black
Nubian guards wander back and forth with whips held and ready,
weaving in and out of the growing crowd. Torches are lit, and a
fire is built in the pit as the sun sinks. Men appear from nowhere,
growing louder and louder as the first vat of drink is emptied.
Someone has begun to bang a drum, and three women climb onto a low
platform where they dance suggestively.

I find a woman who will let me use a tent for
a price. I pay her in advance, then settle the children inside and
stand in front of the tent to wait. It does not take long, and I
have a customer whom I invite inside.

As we slip through the entrance of the tent,
the children softly stir on the mat. Katherine opens her eyes and
smiles at me before going back to sleep.

I cannot work in front of my babies. I had
not given any thought to that before.

I tell the customer to wait, and I go back
outside where I see a whore standing in front of the tent next to
mine.

I ask if she knows of a place where children
might be kept. She eyes me suspiciously and tosses her hair. I look
at her closely and cannot immediately pinpoint what it is about her
appearance that disturbs me, but I press on with my request. I have
no time to search for someone else.

“Please,” I say. “They are babies. I have
someone waiting for me, and he will pay me enough to feed them, if
he doesn’t grow angry and walk off.”

“Leave them with me until you finish,” the
whore says grudgingly. “I expect a slow night anyway.”

At the sound of the voice, I stare. It is a
deep voice, a man’s voice. I realize this is not a woman, as I had
first thought. I blush. He is merely dressed as a woman with
kohl-painted eyes and earrings of gold. I have never encountered a
man like this before, although I had heard that they exist.

It is Henry.

I cannot stop to think about what he does in
his tent, or whether I should look for someone else. I have a
customer and no time. As for Henry, he has offered to help me on an
impulse, uncertain of why he should be generous to me, speaking the
words without thought, regretting them as soon as he hears them
spoken. We say nothing else about the agreement, and go through
with it despite our misgivings.

I race back and grab both sleeping children
at once. I hand Katherine to Henry, who holds her as if he has held
little children before. He holds her as a mother would. I follow
him into his tent with the larger child, and we lay them down side
by side on his mat. I decide it is safe to leave them with him. I
can see he will not molest them, for he is a fancy man, not a true
one, and he holds Katherine gently, and with sureness I have never
seen in a man. He will take care of them, and I know this. Had I
any initial inclination to feel contempt toward him, those feelings
are buried under gratitude.

I smile at him and whisper my thanks, then
run back to my customer who is growing impatient.

When the customer leaves, I return to Henry’s
tent and find him inside of it, squatting beside the mat, watching
the girls with a soft, wistful look on his face. He pushes
Katherine’s hair back with his finger, then starts upon seeing me.
He quickly covers his gentle expression, and rises.

“You may leave them a little longer, if it
suits you. But next time you will need to find another place for
them so that I can work as well.” He walks toward the entrance of
the tent with mincing hips, opens the flap and peers out. He turns
back to me. “I can find you a small tent we can set up behind
these. We can take turns watching the children when we aren’t busy.
And when we both are, I have a friend who can stand guard.”

I am speechless. My inclination is to recoil
from him, or even to curse him, but I am alone and afraid, and have
already received glares from the other women who neither
appreciate, nor do they admire my modesty and moral superiority.
Plus, there is need. I have children, and I need someone’s
help.

The gods sometimes send strange soldiers to
protect us.

He is about the sort of soldier I might
expect. I sigh.

“I will see to it tomorrow,” he
continues.

The offer is selfish. He is one of those who
feels he should have been born a woman, and has always dreamt of
having a child as a woman would. Now, given an opportunity he never
expected, he intends to steal secret moments when he can hold the
girls and stroke them, and sing to them. He raised his younger
sisters until he was driven from his home by his father when his
taste for men became evident. Fathers drive out or kill sons such
as he, and Henry left under threat of death. He misses those
children, and misses having a child to tend.

He has considered the situation and views it
as good fortune. He hides from me the excitement he feels, for if
he shows me any, I might remove the children out of spite. He
expects me to do this anyway, and thinks he is buying only a very
short respite from his loneliness.

“Why would you do this for me?” I ask. It is
not typical of people to do good for one another, particularly
strangers. “What is it you want in return?” I ask with narrowed
eyes.

He rolls his eyes and gives a dramatic shrug.
“I may run out of kohl and have to borrow some from you.” He pats
his hair, and sighs as if he is bored.

“I will happily give it to you,” I say
solemnly, meaning more than I say.

•
~
۞
~•

After a few months, I fall into the life as
if I have known no other. I meet all the other women who work as I
do, and develop relationships with them of both friendship and
enmity.

We have differences, and we reconcile them
like whores, arguing with shrieks and scratching nails, reasoning
with fistfuls of each other’s hair. Our disagreements are debated
in the dust while other whores watch and cheer, and laughing men
place bets on who is stronger.

In addition to the animosity between the
women, there are stabbings and poisonings of brutal customers, and
valuables stolen. In return, customers have been known to kill
women on occasion, sometimes for good reason, sometimes over
something trivial, sometimes over something that had nothing to do
with the whore. It is easy to kill a whore—her life is worthless.
She leaves the world unmourned, and a man cannot be faulted for
beating one into the grave if he has had a bad day. Henry is
particularly at risk because of what he is, and is sometimes
bloodied and beaten for the amusement of a crowd. It is always I
who helps him up and cares for him after they leave him on the
ground. He is my friend, and I have only a few of those.

There is little of the sisterhood I found on
the streets. The whores brag, and criticize each other, and think
of ways to attract more men than the others on their row, steal
each others’ customers, and tell vicious lies about each other to
the both the whores and the men who use them.

It is not to my advantage to act as though I
feel I am better than the others in the Valley. It is not wise, I
find, to compound this insult by having too much success in finding
customers. The cruelty is then turned upon me, and is vengeful.

By accident, I have learned a trick. There is
a gland that excretes a sex hormone, and I have somehow learned to
activate the gland at will. It has an immediate effect and is as
potent as a drug, when sensed by a healthy male. I am aware that I
am controlling my attractiveness to men, but do not know exactly
how or why, and am unable to teach the trick to others or explain.
It is not, I know, entirely my appearance or the feminine skills I
learned on the streets. It has something to do with the way I
“think”, for when I think a certain way, I have greater success in
luring customers.

I remembered this trick as Anne, not knowing
I remembered. It accounted for much of the irrational appeal I had
for so many men and, partly, for Henry’s insanely persistent
pursuit of me. It was the main reason I was ever described as
“beautiful” by anyone.

Having learned, and not even knowing that I
am doing so, I activate the gland each time I am on the job. As a
result, I always have customers, and there are women who are
furious with me for it. Competition is stiff in the Valley, so I am
pulled into the dust and clawed several times, saved on those
occasions by Henry, who has all the strength of a man and no
patience with women. They get the full force of his fist before he
carries me away and tends to me. His consistent loyalty in the face
of my attacks, and the impact of his blows, eventually send a
signal to the others that I should be left alone. Those who were
most envious attempt to make friends with me as a means of coaxing
me into passing along the overflow of customers to them, and
perhaps divulging my secrets. Thus, I get by more or less safely
throughout the years after surviving the initiation during my first
few months.

In that jealous environment, free from the
servitude of my marriage, I develop a mean tongue and, if I grow to
dislike another whore, I use it against her with little constraint.
In particular is one who has a disfigurement that, even had I liked
her, I would have found comical. I often scoff at her with shouts
that she is a misfit, and should find work at something that does
not require beauty. Each time she passes, I laugh at her, for she
has a hand that looks so silly! It has six fingers. She spits at
me, and I shriek at her then convulse into laughter again.

“It is all in good fun!” I shout. “You need
to learn what is funny!”

I make a few friends among the other whores.
My sister Mary is one of these, as is Emma. These two in particular
are good-humored and philosophical about the life, comparing that
which they have to that which they left. They find the life to be
satisfactory. They are not slaves, nor are they bound to brutal
men. If they are beaten, Emma reasons, they at least have something
of value to show for it afterwards. They are free, and independent,
and they have money of their own. They have friends. They have good
times.

“Things can be worse,” Mary notes cheerfully.
She was enslaved as a child, and forced into service by the age of
eight. She has known no other work than this since then and, when
she was lost by her master in a wager, she went with a shrug to the
man who won her until he abandoned her. She then came here and was
still tasting freedom. She liked it.

Emma cares little for the opinions of the
righteous.