+Bless me father, for I have sinned.

If sins bring blessings, then I am Heaven's Queen. No: Heaven will not have me. Nor Hell, you purse-mouthed dames, you pied and palsied guardians at the gates. Say my sins' blessings have made me Queen of men, of hearts, of pleasure, paid and paid and paid, rewarded for every deed committed in this world. Say Queen of destinies: like God, like the Devil, I shape your ends.+

My mother died when I was ten.

If at your death there is no priest to hear your last confession, to grant absolution of your sins, you may confess yourself: say a perfect Act and be so self-absolved. I have done this. I have, that near to death, done so at points that jointed and sealed my life, chambering my sins and names, like a nautilus. And after every time, surviving, I built a grander chamber, a larger hall, to hold my current self.

Did my mother know this trick? She never taught me, if she did. I learned it from a man.

My mother died when I was ten. Not at my hand, I swear. It was an accident. I would have loved her forever, if I could. She was light and silks and gold, and smelt of lilies. She was English born, from a noble house. She never told me which, but I found it out. Her Christian name was Anne. I never knew my father. I knew he was a man of blood; brave, my mother said, and dead before she birthed me. His shield protects us still, she said. Protects from Hell, Nurse grumbled. She died and kept him company.

I have small, glowing memories of her. She taught me how to dance. She gave me a pet cat and an ivory fan. We lived in a small stone house in the country, quite isolated, with a few servants and Nurse. She let me run free, freer than most girls, I suppose. I had nothing to compare. There were no other children, no religious, few men about, and those I was strongly cautioned to avoid. "Men are beasts," said Mother, once. Nurse must have agreed. She had a free tongue and never defended them, that I recall. My mother was wise in the making of cordials and potions, tisanes, tonics and tocsins, both. I learned plants from her, but not letters. I had no hand for healing. I dosed the cat and it died, snapping at me.

My mother's death was sudden. There was no estate. Nurse had gone ahead of her. Cook took me, scratching and screaming, away from our little home to the great, cold church of Lille. I ran, but not fast nor far enough. I was a scandal to the old men, the beasts in dresses who took me up. For the sake of my soul, they baptized me. For the sake of my soul, for their bitten hands, they walled me up -- with women, at least, with my own kind. I was eleven, penniless, powerless, immured in the Benedictine convent of Templemar. The Bene was a lie; the dicta ruled. When I ran from there, into the winter-barren countryside, I was beaten when I was caught. The third time, at thirteen, I was forced, as well. A herder offered me bread and cheese. They found me in a ditch, my hair in mud and weeds, my dress ripped away, my thighs bloodied by the beast, seeming dead. The new priest, I was told, wept over me. I don't recall.

I would escape. I would be free. I would find silks and lilies and gold, once more.

Having been forced, having been ruined, I slept with the older nuns, away from the virgin novitiate. My sister-jailor, my overseer, was the librarian, Mother Agnes. I learned to read. If Eve ate the fruit of knowledge and was expelled to the world, then so would I. I looked like her, naked. My hair was gold, like the painting in the chapel. My breasts were like apples. My eyes were blue, reflected in the silver plate. My face was oval, my nose was straight. I was a catalogue of sins, said Mother Agnes, and pinched my hip. My vows were urged on me early. As my hair grew back, I bribed Mother Agnes to let it stay. I braided it tight and coiled it away, out of sight. I coiled myself around this new Mother, this tree of experience, and sucked tales of men, of court, of other life. She lent me Boccaccio, bound as a missal, to read to her in her bed, while she sipped her own knowledge from my flesh.

I sinned. I confessed, most prettily, in quivering minutia, to our young priest. He quivered, too. The voice that soothed Mother to sleep heated up his cheeks. "Where?" he would ask, swallowing. "Here," I would whisper, guiding home his hand. "Oh, Father, brother, spiritual groom, deliver me from this house of sin. Show me the light, again."

I had, I swear to myself--the only God I trust--no object but freedom in mind. The boy-priest was innocent, a cage-raised fowl from the age of eight. My vows, inflicted as they were, were meaningless. His lay on his soul. He cried, "Oh, Christ, O Jesu," in the vestry, spending in my mouth, then wept. He cried through a quarter of the calendar, until the weather warmed, and then agreed, sighing between benisons. We would leave together, we would fly the country to the other side of France. We would find salvation in the great wide world.

I stole the vessels. I took the cup and patens: whyever not? Gold was owed me, gold was my right. I put them in his boy's hands and sent him to turn them into coin. As I live now, as I breathe, that was my one misstep. They never would have troubled after us, if not to reclaim their goods.

They beat him, poor Georges. They stripped him of his robes. They summoned the executioner of Lille, to mark us paid, to brand us with the fleur-de-lis. I'd no idea, then. We were held separately; when the jailor's clumsy son came with my dinner, he found me in my shift, undone, weeping piteously. I had to spread for him, I had to bleed again. But I was free.

+No. I will not speak of it.+

Did the jailor have a second son? No matter. Georges never told me the how of his escape, just that the price was high, and best forgotten. He found me working at an inn. We stole a traveler's bag, that very night, and ran. We'd both paid in flesh, in mutilation. We'd shed our names. We ran together, and no one followed.

In Berry, Georges found a curacy, near a count's estate. He was more than half-mad by then; he had no trade or skills. I said, having confessed, having purged his sin, he might be priest again. It pleased him and pained him, equally. He prayed, he abused his body. He cut the brand from his flesh and nearly bled to death. He called me sister and swore his love was pure. I made sure of that. I slept with a dagger in my hand. I began, again, to look for an escape.

I was sixteen. Six years without my mother, and it seemed an eternity. It was summer. The sky was blue. The fields were green. I knew an herb, a flower for comfort, a root for sleep. It grew where cattle had been pastured. While my "brother" was at prayer, in the little church, I hoisted my skirts and stepped over the gates, into a field of blossoms beside the roadway. They were so thick, so rich, their pollen stained my dress. I took off my cap and shook out my hair. My mother had shown me how to weave a wreath; I could hear her laughing as I worked my hands, as I crowned myself under the sky and the sun. I sat on flowers and clover thick as a carpet. I closed my eyes and breathed in the scent of lilies.

His shadow woke me.

The finest hand, the neatest foot, the surest seat on a horse of any man conceived. A nobility ingrained, inhaled, inherent in his blood. He was grave and beautiful. He was the first, the very first, to take my hand with gentility. He was the first, the very first, to kiss me on the lips. That first meeting, he only looked and spoke. He was the furthest thing from a beast I could imagine. I wondered if angels (archangels; he was, in all things also, a man of arms) were so well created. Fire, I discovered in time. Melancholy. He found I knew the poets and he opened his family's library to me. He asked nothing but my company. Andre, the heir, the next Comte de la Fere, approved of me. His family did not.

Georges's madness deepened. He abandoned cleanliness. If I did not wash his shirts or his body (flaccid, pale, meager now) he would have crawled with dirt. His sermons were more and more inflamed. He cathechized me on my sins, but there were none I could denounce. I was, I believe, in love.

By the fall harvest, Andre declared himself. Soberly, quietly, in the pavilion of his mother's rose garden, he asked me to become his wife. He must have mentioned love. He must have desired me greatly, to defy his father and his mother's plans. I was to have silks and gold, I was to have a home, again. I was to have the shield of his name and arm. He gave me his ring, a fine sapphire set in gold, and sent me off to tell poor, mad Georges to post our banns.

Cursed, unclean, and damned, was my brother's blessing. He wept, as always. The next day he was gone. Another priest wed us, hastily. On my wedding night--I had a wedding night. I feigned, with alum and a bit of sheep's blood in a bladder...but I always bled so easily--and it was so different, again, with a tender man--and again, it was so courtly, and so clean--I confuse myself. On my wedding night, and every night after, every chance to be observed by my chambermaid, I wore a band of lace around my shoulder, covering the brand. It was a vow to my mother, in memory, I claimed. Andre had no interest in my upper arm. He was curiously cold in bed, for a man so high-blooded in the hunt and with the sword. His sun shone on me, regardless, and I was never happier, since I was a barefoot child.

I warmed myself by his hearth through the winter. I did all in my power to please him and to carry the position I now held. When the spring came, when the sky cleared again, I was pregnant. I was sure of it. I was delighted (if sick and short of breath). A girl, I would have a little girl, to teach and laugh with me, to name after my mother. I said nothing to Andre yet. This was mine, precious, secret, mine; he had, in my belief, little to do with creating her. We rode out hawking, on the first sweetly temperate day.