~ Third Reactualized Life ~
Lady Margaret Faulford-Gleecks
1509 - 1540
Tudor England
Lady Margaret -- "Mims" to her family and closest friends -- is the incarnation I know least about (and therefore find most intriguing). She never learned to read or write, so there are no diaries or correspondence left behind. She posed for only one formal portrait in her lifetime, but she disliked the results so much -- it made her look 'porcine,' she complained to her sister -- that she never allowed the painting to be put on public display. None of her children survived her -- they were all stillborn or died in infancy -- so tracing her genealogically has proven difficult.
It's almost as though she resists reactualization, even from the grave.
What I do know about her is this: she was taught from birth that women were inferior to men. Indeed, she was raised to believe that women were instruments of the devil, authors of original sin who enticed men away from God, and that her only function in life was to marry and bear children. Aside from religious training, she received no formal education.
When she was nine years old, a local cleric took her into a coat closet and kissed her full on the mouth.
When she was eleven years old, she took the tailor's son into the same coat closet and kissed him full on the mouth.
When she was thirteen years old, her parents chose for her husband a wealthy land owner's son, a priggish lout named Cecil Gleecks. Cecil, a contemporary of King Henry VIII, fancied himself a ladies man, and was proudly and publicly unfaithful to Mims on more than one occasion. She once received a report that he had been observed in flagrante delecto with his mother's seamstress, a young woman named Roberta, who later bore him a daughter out of wedlock. When Mims herself proved unable to produce a viable heir to the Gleeck family fortune, Cecil started a rumor that she had been seen in a coat closet with her own brother, kissing him full on the mouth. She was immediately arrested. Fourteen days after her arrest, following a sham trial that lasted approximately ten minutes, Mims was taken to the town square and beheaded.
Subsequent incarnations (myself included) still feel the cold steel of the executioner's blade against the back of their necks sometimes. Especially when we're standing in a coat closet. [And most especially when we are being kissed full on the mouth.]
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~ in life, hope: in memory, truth ~