NB Although all of the great houses and historical figures are real, current period characters are purely from my imagination and have no link with anyone living or dead.

Part 2 The New Born

They put the boy on a gurney and then in the ambulance, draped a blanket on my shoulders and sat me in a seat in the back. My mother got in the front with the driver and we were off to the hospital in Colchester where I had been born. It looks as if the same venue would be the confirmation of my re-birth.

At the hospital my mother explained that I had been definitely her son this morning and they had the birth records to prove it. They gave me a full, and very embarrassing, examination and an ultra-sound. The results came back that I was girl, a real girl and had all the parts a real girl had. My blood, however, was exactly the type it had always been. No-one would believe that I had been changed by a spell, though, and my mother was given some strange looks and was taken off by a shrink to see if she was hallucinating.

When she got back I was sitting in a chair, wearing a hospital gown, and she got the nurse to take a few measurements and then rushed off to get me something to wear home. I did ask “Not a dress, please” so, when she got back, naturally she had bought a skirt instead. She took me into a bathroom and dressed me in a bra and panties, a summer top and a denim skirt and, when I stepped into new pink sneakers I was able to be released as fit, healthy and able to bear children.

She rang my father to come and pick us up and, while we were waiting, we asked about the lad that had come in with me. They said that he, too, was declared fit and that they had taken care of his hair. He was in a room not far away and, when we went in he took a look at me and said “Princess, thank you, my Princess. Your kiss saved me from my eternal damnation”. He looked a lot cleaner and, I shuddered to think, even quite attractive with his buzz-cut. Damn, it looked as if that ‘all girl’ bit was already kicking in.

My mother said “He looks about your old size” and produced my earlier outfit from a plastic bag. We got him into it and he did not look happy with the shorts. “Men do not wear such flimsy raiment” he cried and my mother said that we would get him something better when we got him home. He was totally enraptured by the hospital as we walked out of it, looking as if he had never seen the like. That was nothing to what he acted when we got outside and my father opened the doors of the car for us. My mother sat in the front and the two of us new-borns sat in the back. He needed help with the seat belt and, as we pulled away, he started shaking so I reached over and took his hand, giving it a squeeze. He looked shocked and whispered “Princess, you would touch a lowly vassal such as me?”

He then asked “Horses, are the horses invisible, what sort of world have I woken to?” I told him not to worry; we did not need horses to move us these days. My father asked “What can you tell us about yourself, young gentleman?” The lad had a bit of a think and then said “I was born in a manor called Estaines Parva. My father was some sort of nobleman and my mother was a chambermaid. When he decided to marry he sent my mother and I to work for a gentleman of his acquaintance, a Thomas Paycocke. We had to walk all the way and it took several days, going due east most of the time. On the way my mother was insistent that I use my fathers’ surname in future and made me repeat ‘I am Tristan DeHavilland Bourchier until I was able to recite it in my slumber. Her name was Anne DeHavilland.”

My father said “Bourchier was the second Earl of Essex and he married Mary Say in 1512. He had quite a good career and was a Knight of the Garter. So, how did you end up as a frog?” I had to stifle a giggle at that and my father looked seriously at me in the mirror. Tristan then said “Your Highness, I am sorry to say that it was because of boyish stupidity.” My father said “You do not need to call me Your Highness, I am no nobility” to which Tristan replied “But your daughter here is a Princess, the witch said that it would only be a Princess that would wake me with her kiss.”

My father was driving very carefully and then asked “Do you remember how you had the spell cast on you and do you remember the exact words of the spell?” Tristan said “Well, sire, I was sent to Bocking by my master Thomas to collect some rolls of baize which had been ordered by one of the local lords to refit his billiard table. There were two other lads with me and we had a horse and cart. We collected the baize in Bocking and, as we started to return home, I spied a nice little orchard with some juicy apples ready for the plucking. I told the others to carry on and that I would catch them up and jumped the fence to pick a few apples. That is when a young witch stormed out of the house and caught me. She screamed at me about stealing apples and looked back at the house where an older woman was standing at the door. The older woman nodded and the girl put the spell on me. The last thing I remember was that I would live for eternity trapped as a frog until I was kissed and the only person that could free me must be a princess. No! She said that the person shalt be a princess.”

My father nodded wisely and even I could see the difference. The spell as cast would make the person who kissed the frog a princess, even if she was, at the time, a guy. That gave us one answer but left a lot more to be addressed. My father then said “You should feel right at home tonight, then. The house where you worked still exists but needed to be saved from demolition. You can sleep there for a while until we can work out your future.” My mother piped up “He is the same size as Brian so he can wear Brians’ clothes. We are going to get more for her now; I really cannot see her in those band tee-shirts.”

When we got to West Street Tristans’ eyes widened as he saw the front of the Paycocke House when we slowed to turn into the driveway of our own place. It was only then when I realised that we had been holding hands the whole way. I said “You can let go, now, we have stopped.” And I saw him smile for the first time and it made me catch my breath. My father drove up beside the house and we got out. My father plugged in the recharge connection and my mother went into our house to raid my wardrobe while my father and I took Tristan back over the road to the House. He was fearful as my father opened the front door with his key. I said “It is all right, we always go in this way” and he replied “All the years I was here, I never entered the house proper. It was not something that a yardman did.” We gave him the royal tour of the lower floor and the outbuildings. At one point he broke down into tears and said “This is the shed where I slept. I buried my mother under the floor when she died.” Back in the house we went upstairs and showed him the bedrooms. My father said he could use the Great Chamber and he went white, saying “Sire, I cannot use the masters’ room, it is not seemly!”

My father then sat him down on the bedside chair and looked him in the eyes. “Tristan” he said in a stern voice “You have every right to sleep in this bed. Firstly, none of the fittings in the house are original so it is not really the masters’ bed. Secondly, you are the only living male to be fathered by Henry Bourchier. When he died in 1540 he had only sired daughters. With his death the Earldom was extinguished. If you had lived, you may well have been made the Third Earl of Essex so you are of far better blood than the Paycockes who lived in this house.” Tristan smiled again and then said “That does not help me now, does it, sire?”

Just then I heard my mother call and I went to the top of the stairs. She had an old suitcase in her hand which I expected held every scrap of good stuff I had owned. She passed it to my father, telling him to instruct Tristan about how to wear modern clothing and to show him how electricity worked, the house having been fitted with smoke detectors and sprinklers, as well as some lighting and alarm systems. We left the men to it as she pulled me down the stairs and out of the house, saying “Sarah and Stella saw us get home and they popped in to get me tell you that you will be eating at their house this evening and that they had a lot of their old clothes for you to try on. It makes me laugh to think that I am telling my son to try his girlfriends’ clothes on but it will be a good help until we can get you into the shops to get your own.”

So she let me go along the road to the girls’ house where I was welcomed in. They had shown their parents the video of my change so they were not surprised at the new look but then said how beautiful I had become, which made me blush. That late afternoon and evening I was a clothes horse to a lot of items I had seen the two girls wearing in previous years and we giggled a lot. In the end I not only had a lovely meal with my new sisters but also came away with bags of used undies, tops, skirts, dresses and nightwear to last me months, or so I thought. I did start to learn, as the days went by, that a girl can never have enough clothes or shoes.

I was happy that I remained as Sarahs’ best friend Biff; even though she assured me that she was not a lesbian and was not going to change for me. Standing in her bedroom, totally naked, while the two of them were in their underwear, showing me how to deal with various items of female apparel, cemented the new normal. We were now all girls together and I have to say that when they asked about Tristan, I had butterflies in my tummy as I told them the story.

Marianne Gregory © 2022