It oughta be a movie: Silence, by Heldris of Cornwall
This thirteenth century semi-Arthurian romance1 featuring a female (or at least AFAB) knight contains some truly fascinating takes on gender for the period. Besides the titular knight, Silence, it also contains their parents’ love story, which is unusually sweet and well-balanced between the parties, even by today’s standards. All that, of course, only makes the “happy” ending more of a gut-punch! I was of course expecting that Silence would either die or go back to living as a woman, because that’s the kind of ending a medieval audience would accept. Silence doesn’t die, but…the person they are dies, in a more upsetting way than had to be the case. However, one could easily adapt this as a more positive feminist and/or queer tale by tweaking the very end, and I’d quite like to see that done (indeed, I’m somewhat tempted to do it myself!)
1.Merlin appears in
it, but Arthur does not
If you want to avoid further spoilers…just stop here and go read it! But I’d say it is still worth experiencing the work itself even if you DO know what happens.
(Note: The image above is one of the more boyish depictions of Jeanne d'Arc - jeez, was it weirdly hard to find a version without long hair or
boob armor, neither of which are historically accurate! - by an artist called Dashinvaine.
I could see Silence looking something like this, but blonde. "La Pucelle" has been hypothesized by some to be trans or non-binary. As with Silence, medieval conceptions of how
gender worked were different enough that it is really hard to be sure how a person from that time period might choose to label themselves if they lived today - but it is certainly possible.)
The prologue to the poem seems weirdly out of place, not closely matching the themes of the main story. I can only assume Heldris didn’t get paid for his last poem, because it is all about what penny-pinching misers lords today are! He claims to have gotten it out of his system, but still shows a tendency to digress when kings and lords in the story are properly rewarding their followers or spreading their wealth around where others can enjoy it by hosting big feasts and such.
Once the story gets going properly, we are introduced to king Evan (or Eban). His realm is prosperous, but then one day his party is attacked in the woods by a dragon, who kills and eats 30 of the king’s men. Cador goes to slay the dragon, for the king had promised as a reward the hand of any non-betrothed woman, and Cador is in love. But when it comes down to it he’s scared to claim his reward, fearing it would look high-handed and make the girl, Eufemie, hate him. He faints from the dragon fumes, and the king makes a similar promise to Eufemie, who is a healer, that she can have any man she wants if she cures his nephew. And she of course is already in love with Cador, but also too shy to say so. Much Shakespeare-comedy-style pining ensues before they fumble their way to an understanding and Eufemie says:
“I shall let you know that Love has captured me/ If I can be cured by a kiss/then I am certainly being cheated/if my sweet friend doesn’t kiss me.”
They are married, with the king gifting them inheritance of the lands of Eufemie’s father, which she couldn’t have inherited as a woman. Eufemie gets pregnant, and Cador is very sweetly excited and nervous. But he’s also worried about that inheritance law. The two agree that they’d like their child to inherit regardless of sex, but that’s unfortunately not possible. So they form a plan to have only one attendant for the birth who will announce that it is a son. That’s what happens, and Cador nervously waits for an opportunity to go check the actual result. The baby is (so far as they can tell) a girl, but they stick to the plan to raise the child as a son, figuring - like the khagan and his wife in ‘Clear and Muddy Loss of Love’ – that if they have a son or the king changes the law they can make Silence a girl again.
Silence grows up in a house in the forest and, though their father had explained that “he was a girl”, has no trouble following a boy’s training:
“In order to build up his2 endurance/ and teach him to ride, the seneschal/ took him through woods and streams…He took him out often in the scorching heat/in order to make a man of him./ He was so used to men’s usage/ and had so rejected women’s ways/that little was lacking for him to be a man/…When they practiced wrestling/jousting, or skirmishing/he alone made all his peers tremble."
2. And yes, the author mostly calls Silence “he/him” and uses the masculine form of the name!
But at around age 12, unsurprisingly, Silence hits a gender-related existential crisis, dramatized by an argument between Nature and Nurture. Interestingly – and a bit oddly, IMO – the author seems to hold that bad nurture can corrupt a good nature, but a bad nature can’t be improved by good nurture (if you have a bad heart, you have a bad heart, and it will eventually show). It is a bit unclear how or if he means to relate this to gender roles! Never mind…note Silence’s responses to the direct arguments!:
“’Desist from all this!’ said Nature/‘Go to a chamber and learn to sew!/That’s what Nature’s usage wants of you!/You are not Silentius!’/ and he replied, ‘I never heard that before!/ Not Silentius? Who am I then?/…But this I know well, upon my oath/ That I cannot be anybody else!/Therefore, I am Silentius,/ as I see it, or I am no one.”
But the author betrays the uncertainty by slipping into calling the youth “she”… until Nuture counters, and it is no work at all to persuade Silence that “a man’s life/was much better than that of a woman.”
Still, Silence worries that he won’t grow to be strong or brave enough to be a knight, nor does he know how to be a woman if thrust into that role. Meeting a couple of minstrels, he decides music is a usefully ungendered skill:
“If you are slow at chivalry/ minstrelsy will be of use to you./ And if the king should happen to die/ you will be able to practice your art in a chamber;/ You will have your harp and viele/ to make up for the fact that you don’t know/ how to embroider a fringe or border./ You will be less bored/ in your captivity”
So, concealing his identity (further) he runs off with the minstrels, aiming to essentially be their servant and apprentice.
Silence’s parents are devastated the disappearance and his dad decides to ban all minstrels from his land on pain of death. Meanwhile, Silence turns out to be really good at music and, after leaving behind his now murderously jealous seniors, reunites with his parents and gets brought to court by King Evan. This is not such a good thing as it seems, since Silence catches the eye of the queen3, who gets angry in a dangerously petty way when the young minstrel refuses to sleep with her. She even suspects that Silence is gay, so…ma’am, why are you taking personal offense if you think he isn’t interested in ANY women? Because it IS clearly personal offense, not “I need to report you to the inquisition”!
3. Eufeme, not to be confused with Silence’s mom Eufemie
After some resulting shenanigans, Silence ends up at the court of the king of France, where he becomes a highly renowned knight:
“There never was a woman less reluctant/ to engage in armed combat…Silence had no regrets/ about his upbringing, in fact, he loved it./ He was a valiant and noble knight.”
Hearing word, of Silence’s skills, King Evan asks to have Silence sent back with 30 men to help him put down a rebellious count. A very exciting battle scene follows, in which Silence defeats the count and saves King Evan’s life in the process: “God was on Silence’s side, as you can plainly see/ for he won the war”
But then the queen ends up trying again to seduce Silence, who says this time that he can’t because he’s given his heart to another. It’s actually a bit of a shame that this seems to not be true – but more on that in second! “Trembling with anguish and impure rage” the queen tells her husband that Silence has been hitting on her again. To get rid of him, King Evan sets Silence a seemingly impossible task: Capturing the wizard Merlin, who has been living wild in the woods for years and who, he himself once prophesied, would never be caught except by a woman’s wiles. After wandering around for six months, Silence chances on a mysterious old man who tells him how to trap Merlin (as you do in fairytales).
The psychic Merlin keeps laughing at people as he’s brought back to court, royally pissing everyone off. But, after explaining some simpler cases of why he was laughing, and having his assertions proved true, he prepares to tell the king the big funny secret. This has Silence sweating:
“‘What a fool I was,’ he said, ‘why did I bring/ Merlin here? What a catastrophe!... Because of him, I will lose everything/ for he will reveal/ what I have done that is contrary to nature. / I thought I was tricking Merlin, / but I tricked myself. I thought / to abandon woman’s ways forever/ but Eufeme has ruined any chance for that’”
However, Eufeme and a certain nun are afraid too, and with good reason: At the same time he reveals that Silence was born a woman, he tells the king that the nun is Eufeme’s male lover in disguise.
OK, so this is where things get upsetting (duck out now to avoid final spoilers)…
The king has both the nun and Silence stripped – presumably in front of everyone! – and “found everything in its proper place”. The king asks Silence for an explanation (no word on whether anyone has given them any clothes!), and Silence answers that they had concealed their birth sex on the instruction of their father because of the inheritance law, and that was why they didn’t reveal it even to defend against the queen’s accusation of rape. Now…while I totally believe Silence would say that in this situation – the king would probably buy it – Silence has not, to this point, been written as a person who values property over their own life. Rather, what Silence seems to value is the freedom that their masculine identity affords. The king, in return, re-establishes women’s right to inherit, and Silence thanks him. That would be a happy ending, as far as it goes. But then the queen and the nun are executed, and Silence is not only dressed in women’s clothes but three days later the king marries her. Think about that. Three days after being forced to completely change gender presentations, Silence has to marry a guy at least 30 years older who just had his last wife drawn and quartered, who publicly stated that he thinks the only role of a woman is to keep silent, and who, in marrying Silence, just claimed that hard-won inheritance! We never hear Silence’s thoughts again after this switch, and the narrator ends by noting that Silence should be praised more than Eufeme is blamed because being a virtuous person is difficult for women. So…ouch.
Adaptation issues:
There is a lot of great material here for a “retelling” novel or screenplay, if you cut out the weird prologue and the occasional misogynistic asides – but that could be accomplished just by dispensing with a narrator. The main issue is the ending. I have three ideas on how it could be changed to be less depressing to a modern audience without taking it totally out of the mores of its time period (Although you could do that too, of course! I just found working within medieval limits an interesting challenge).
1. The one Heldris COULD HAVE written, damn it! (AKA the 'Twelfth Night' version)
If we accept that Silence really IS a woman, there was another option for how to handle the reveal right there: the love that Silence lies about to the queen! Suppose that Silence, though doing really well as a knight and generally enjoying that role, had developed feelings for one of her comrades in arms. She now feels torn, because of course in this setting she can’t be with him AND live as a man! Then we could have the Merlin sequence, but the king not only reinstates Silence’s right to inherit as a woman, but gives her the same boon he gave her mother: the privilege to name whoever she wants as her husband. She’s even more nervous to actually ask than her parents, because this comrade only knew her as a man. But it turns out that he isn’t shamed to have fought under the command of a woman and thinks this new version of her is pretty cute. The end.
2. The great escape
In this version, it all plays out as in the original story – except for a slightly longer timeline to the wedding, because who plans a royal wedding in THREE DAYS?!? - but we actually get to see Silence’s distress at the king’s plan. He tries for a while to adjust, but finds that he cannot get used to dresses, hates how he looks in veils and wimples, and is bored out of his mind, music or no music. So he rips up the wedding dress, braids it into a rope, climbs out the window, and legs it to Spain, where he takes up minstrelsy again – it being a less conspicuous position than top knight. The end.
3. The “double trans” version
This one isn’t my favorite, as there are a lot of difficulties involved and it isn’t a fully happy ending…but if you wanted to dig into the angst it could be interesting. As in version 1, Silence has his property rights restored and is expected to now live as a woman, but is not forced to marry the king, who instead says “she” can marry whatever man she wants. As in version 2, Silence is struggling with the forced detransition, as well as who to choose – since the king will surely want him to choose someone soon. Meanwhile, the AMAB nun (let’s call her Joan) is not the queen’s lover, but just a nun who happens to be passing through court, and who says that she was disguised to investigate a person she suspected of being behind the assassination of her family. She presents the proof to the king, who has the man executed. However, Joan finds life even harder as “John”, since while it makes sense to people why Silence would “pose as a man”, despite her explanation they still kind of think Joan is a coward or a perv or both.
As it happens, Joan’s family estates abut Silence’s, and after they’ve retreated back home under the excuse of putting those estates in order, but really to try to escape the stress a bit, they happen on each other while riding in the woods with a trusted companion (eg. the steward who raised Silence, and some equivalent for Joan). They commiserate, and Silence proposes that he name Joan as his chosen “husband”, so neither of them has to take a spouse who doesn’t respect or understand them. Joan protests that that would be a scandal that lowers Silence’s status. Silence counters that it has already been lowered, and to gain a spouse who won’t make him a prisoner and who understands who he really is, he’d gladly play the “irrational woman swayed by her heart” card.
I’m not sure if I would have them actually fall in love or not; Silence in the story comes off potentially aromantic, since he/she/they never show any interest in anyone, and that could be an interesting angle. Regardless, after some wrangling they get married. Joan finds her reputation as coward/perv saves her from getting called up for military service, giving her time to develop a different plausibly masculine talent – perhaps scholarship. Silence entertains lady visitors with his musical talents while they sew, but spends many free days riding and hunting (which ladies of the time could do, if accompanied). However, when alone, the two find ways to let the mask drop a bit to be “Joan” and “Silentius”.
