To Fight

My fingers are strong.1

Physically, that is all you can say for me. I am a woman, in fact a lay-dee (emphasis on the lay, as in layabout); and so when my brother was learning to ride and hunt, I was taught more ladylike pursuits such as embroidery, and playing what my governess would doubt call a pianoforte. Delicate pastimes, hobbies for those who have evenings to waste; “skills” perfectly devoid of any practical application. In fact I believe that was the point of occupying me with such useless distractions: to rob me of the tools to defend myself.2

I irritated the husband with my insistence on learning to count and write. My education – my true education, I mean, not the feeble facile of one I was given as a child – displeased him, but he tolerated it. I started to teach my not our, never our) daughter the same; but he couldn’t handle the “pollution” of a child.3

I was forcibly removed from my home and sent far away, while Maria stayed at the husband’s house, under his jurisdiction. For a few weeks I mooched around the house (read cottage) he provided for me.4

Then I realised that, in a man’s world, I must become a man to wield power.5

I cut my hair and bound my breasts. I searched for men’s clothes; none of the reputable dealers would sell to an unaccompanied woman. But I searched in the darkest shadows and soon enough found those who will sell to any. Only my face is still female; but most see my clothes and look no further.6

I fled my husband-provided hovel and lived as a man, working for myself, drinking and swearing with the other men, just like those born boys. I was happier then than at any other time, though I can’t pretend that it wasn’t hard. And I missed my daughter intensely.7

Eventually I owned a sizable amount of money. After procuring a few items from the very same dealers that sold me my clothes, I took a coach to the city and took lodgings opposite the husband’s house. Under the façade of a writer who needed time alone to work I watched his house, noting the time that the lights went off, memorising the servant’s movements. I watched Maria come and go, spirited away to who-knows-where; I guessed meetings with carefully vetted friends. From silhouettes at windows I discerned her bedroom: on the left, at the front of the house. Just across the corridor my husband lay, sometimes with the mistress I often saw.8

Last night I inserted my lockpick into the servants’ door and twisted until I heard a slight click. From there it was simple enough to head upstairs and creep along the upstairs corridor. Just at the end there was the door I knew was Maria’s, and behind it, my daughter, presumably sleeping; my daughter, the creature I loved above all others, the object of every daydream I had ever dreamed: daydreams of her grown and happy, of the grandchild she may one day bear, the intellect that I knew would match the King’s himself.9

But when I was just a metre from her door a maid, carefully holding a candle, slipped out of Maria’s room and closed it gently behind her. Instantly I flattened myself against the wall, praying to the shadows; but she saw me anyway.10

To be as strong as a man, I must be as ruthless.11

Before the maid could cry out I swung my fist, weak muscles helped immeasurably by the second item bought from those who will sell to any: a knuckle duster slipped casually over my fingers, blunt spikes on its points leaving spots of blood on the maid’s head as she slid to the floor with a thud and a slight cry.12

The candle rolled from her hand. I stamped on it, grinding out the flame with my boot, and knowing more than ever that the knuckle duster was my symbol of freedom: the object that would give me strength and power to match any man’s.13

When I looked up from the candle, Maria was standing in the doorway.