3. To Kiss A King

Tudor times, and women.

 “I’ve never heard of someone like you, who can remember things that happened before they were born,” Peter told Janie Cobweb as they approached the end of their road, thinking she must be making up something ridiculous.

It had been a long but wonderful walk, partly across country, and the effects of the drinks they’d had at the wedding reception had just about worn off. Once or twice they had paused, once for Peter tyo relieve himself against a sturdy oak tree’s trunk whilst Janie giggled and pretended to peep, and a second time for a nice long kiss that seemed to take them both by surprise but lasted ages and that neither of them really wanted to end.

“I remember a king who kissed like that, once upon a time,” whispered Janie, “I met him in the woods, and couldn’t he snog!”

“A king?” asked Peter, trying not to sound shocked though he was surprised at the turn of the conversation.

“And a powerful king at that,” sighed Janie. “He was really little more than a fat slob, but one with a crown on his head.”

“And you kissed a fat slob?” grinned Peter.

“I kissed the crown,” Janie told him. “I was young in those days, having only rejuvenated a handful of times.”

“Rejuvinated?” queried Peter.

“It’s what I can do. When I find myself getting wrinkled and beyond redemption,” she said as if she was weary of explaining the obvious, “I go back to when I was a kiddie again, and I’ve done it dozens of times now. And if it does you any good, you’re among the better kissers!”

“I’ve never heard of such a thing!” he thought, and she must have heard it because,

“Very few people have,” she said.

“So you kissed a king?”

“I was young and foolish and he was fed up with his first wife because she didn’t give birth to a son. He really, really wanted a son to call him daddy! He used to go riding and hunting in the forest and one day while he was resting he came upon me. I was a teenager and overflowing with hormones, and he stuck his tongue right down my throat!”

“Urgh!”

“Well, you just did the same and I swear you’re a much better kisser than he was.”

“Are we talking about a King Henry, by any chance?2

“You guessed? Yes, we are. The eighth, as you’ve probably concluded. Anyway, he fell for my teenage charms … I was only fifteen, or that’s what I’d have told him if he’d answered, but he wasn’t to know that, and if he had known he wouldn’t have cared. Anyway, my fifteen was really a lot more than fifteen if you add up all my rejuvenations. Then, snogging over, he sweet-talked me into climbing on the back of his horse with him in front of me and together we made for a cottage in a village clearing in the forest, closely followed by some trusted servants of his.”

“The dirty old man!” whispered Peter.

“And he was dirty! He stank, you know. Oh, his clothes might have been cleanish, but underneath them was his skin, and I can promise you that wasn’t. And his breath! But the people who owned the cottage were used to his visits and went out of the way for a forest walk when he popped in with a woman. I hate to think of what sort of lass he thought I was, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. After all, he was a powerful king and I was just an ordinary girl on the look out for a king to bed. There! I’ve owned up to it. I knew he’d be where I was lingering and I knew what he’d do!”

“But he didn’t know that you knew?”

“He probably guessed. He wasn’t exactly a simpleton, you know, and he was no great lover. In fact, he was pretty ordinary, I’d place him on the poor side of average. It was all over in mere minutes, no messing about before hand, you know what I mean, just bang, bang and time for sleep!”

Peter wasn’t too sure what she meant but kept his uncertainty to himself.

“So that was your one foray into the love lives of royalty?” he asked.

“Well, not only one. No, there have been others, but this one sticks out because soon after that he married, after a great deal of lying and cheating and to-ing and fro-ing to Rome and the Pope, who was in charge of the love lives of royalty because, and this is important, kings were absolutely convinced that they had been chosen by God to rule over their people. That was their raison d’etre, if you know what I mean. So believing that, he believed it was an almost holy right for him to take any woman he wanted to bed with him and have his evil way with her. In his mind it was all part of God’s purpose and had nothing to do with his own greed.”

“So he had it all his own way?” asked Peter.

“He did, and didn’t I know it. I might have had the shape and apparent innocence of a fifteen year old, but as I’ve explained I was more than that. I knew what I had to do, and the minute he dozed off I scarpered! Because if I was still there when he woke up there was a chance that he might have had me arrested and sent to the gallows! After all, I had besmirched a king!”

“But you got away?”

“Of course I did. I’m still around, aren’t I? And I hope it doesn’t make you feel jealous, but I managed to seduce one of his men at arms, who were never too far from him, before I made a clean getaway.”

“Why are you telling me all this?” he asked.

She smiled at him and kissed him briefly as they walked slowly along, by then not so far from his home, though he had no idea where she lived. The matter hadn’t even crossed his mind.

“Because the real story isn’t about me or the king, but about what he did next,” she said quietly, “he married a woman from a high family, the Boleyns, the daughter Anne. I met her, you know, and she was a sweet woman, dangerously ambitious for the times, and she played a dangerous game. As I said, the king was no great shakes in bed and she had all the hormones normal women have, and actually wanted more than he could manage. I don’t know whether it’s true that she formed a relationship with her own brother, and I think it’s probably not, but Henry hadn’t been married to her for long and decided to move on to another woman, still in the search for a son to carry on his name when he was dead and gone. It was all about sons, and daughters didn’t count for anything back then. Anyway, you see that path over there…” she pointed, and in the same way as it had happened earlier, a path, blurred as if it wa smade of fog, appeared before them.

“What’s that?” he asked, fearing what the answer might suggest.

“That path leads to a place where you will see exactly what happens to a queen that pleases herself in exactly the same way as he’d pleased himself with me,” murmured Janie, “and it tells us an awful lot that’s been wrong with the human race for more years than I’ve been alive, and still is.”

“What’s that?” asked Peter, though he had guessed.

“Come down here with me,” said Janie Cobweb, “ and you’ll see why some of you men are so vile!”

© Peter Rogerson 07.05.22

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