by V L Perry
I was not in the mood for a theological debate, and refused to be drawn out. “But how can the Church know when Easter will be each year?”
He had shown me a calendar, a large brass disk with a smaller disc set in, all etched with numbers and symbols, attached to a sundial. When each disk was turned in opposite directions, it was possible to align the numbers and cycles of the sun and moon to know which day would fall when.
“So you can tell the future after all, Master Kratzer,” I said. I watched him dial the brass thing but did not touch it; this was another kind of magic. There were many kinds, I was learning.
“No,” he chuckled. “I only provide assurance that the future will arrive as scheduled. What we do with it is up to us.”
In the Low Countries there was a legend of a doctor who conjured the devil to bargain his soul in exchange for knowledge of all things on earth, above and below it. Of course the English had not heard of it, but I thought of it each time Kratzer showed me some new device or asked some outlandish question. There were things in this world I would never understand.
Still, I learned to keep track of the phases of the moon, and to reckon time by the heavenly bodies. I could see the benefit: they would always be there, after all, while things made by men might not.
On Easter night the moon had been in its three-quarter phase, with only a thin slice pared off it, like a cheese. The banquet of roast lamb and boar, spinach pastries and sticky marchpane cakes lasted until the moon was only a pale shadow in the blue sky of early dawn.
On the first truly warm night of the year, when the Lady had one of her fêtes, the moon was a golden sickle against a black velvet sky scattered with diamonds. Tom Seymour and I stood under the pear trees in the privy garden for a quarter of an hour, looking at it.
When Jane pulled me into the gallery to whisper that the Holy Maid of Kent would arrive tomorrow for her interview with our mistress, the moon was in its new phase, dark and hidden.
We knew she’d been summoned, but did not know if she would answer, or when. Usually she did not travel far from Aldington; instead men traveled from all over the kingdom and even from the Continent to hear her oracles, and she received them in her bedchamber—always men, Lady Exeter said. The Holy Maid would keep them waiting outside half the day, then throw open the doors and shriek at her visitors to repent of their many sins—she knew who had buggered his groom, who had been glutton enough to eat meat on fast days, who had slipped pennies into his pocket instead of the almsbox. After they begged forgiveness and promised never again to abuse the mercy of God, she told them of the wonders and delights of Heaven, with its silk robes and streets laid with gold and pearl.
In fact Heaven sounded a great deal like a royal court. I was not at all sure I’d want to spend eternity there.
But now she was here, the figure standing before the Lady’s velvet chair in the presence chamber hardly seemed one to strike fear into the hearts of Bishop Fisher or Cardinal Wolsey. Yet they had been frightened by her prophesies, as had the king; underneath their stern reprimands and dismissals, they were afraid.
She was dressed in the plain black habit of the Benedictines, which hung straight from the chin to the floor. Her black hair was loose under the long white veil wound about her head with silken thread; her face and hands, pale as milk, making a striking contrast against her dark costume. Her eyes, though, were as dark and piercing as those of the lady she faced. And she was so small, hardly more than a girl. The gossip in Kent had not mentioned that.
The Lady’s own gown and kirtle were shining black satin, the underskirt shot through with silver thread. Today she wore no jewelry, and her hair too was loose under a white hood with a matching veil. That was her sense of humor. Behind her, two on either side, stood Lady Wingfield, Lady Exeter, Lady Rochford, and Meg. Full ceremony.
When the waiting became like a cord about to break, the Lady rose and dipped a graceful curtsey.
“You sent for me, lady,” said Elizabeth Barton. Her voice was surprisingly deep. “Why do you curtsey to me?”
“I thought one of us should do so to the other,” the Lady replied. Someone—Meg?--smothered a giggle.
“The queen is not present, nor any other person of rank to deserve such courtesy.” The voice that reverberated into every corner of the chamber could not, surely, be coming from that girlish figure. She was a practiced public speaker, after all. Kratzer had once said something of a Greek who practiced oratory with pebbles in his mouth.
The Lady parried the thrust. “Do you not then owe courtesy to those whom the king has raised up? For as God has appointed him to reign over us, the king’s conscience is as the will of God decrees. To challenge His Grace’s conscience is to challenge his divine authority to rule. Which I am sure so a holy woman as yourself does not mean to do.”
“It is out of the love I bear His Majesty that I strive to warn him of his folly. For God has indeed set him on the throne, though he has been blinded by lust and witchcraft. Both his soul and those of his subjects stand in peril unless he puts away his concubine and returns to Queen Katharine, his true wife in the eyes of God.”
“You might speak to me as though I’m here,” said the Lady. “How can I, lowly as I am, thwart the will of God? Whatever happens can only be His will.”
“Is it His will that the Infidel should hold Jerusalem? That children should die at the breast and the evil flourish while the good suffer? God smiles on those who heal and protect lawbreakers from the evil of their own misdeeds. Or punish them,” she added pointedly.
“So God speaks directly to you, and not to His Grace.” She always enjoyed a good argument; it might have been one of her evening debates with her brother or Henry Norris.
The Maid shut her eyes and began to rock back and forth; the chamber filled now with an odor like sweat. I saw Madge’s eyes grow round, and Mary Howard and Ann Saville clutched one another as the voice issued forth, if possible deeper than before: “Non faciet Dominus Deus verbum, nisi revelaverit secretum suum ad servos suos prophetas.” She moaned and struck her cheek with her fist.
“`The Lord does nothing without first revealing his secret to his servants, the prophets,’” the Lady said. “Your Latin is quite good. I will quote you another: Quoniam quasi peccatum ariolandi est repugnare et quasi scelus idolatriae. `Rebellion is as the sin of divination, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry.’ I too have read Scripture…aye, read it for myself, and not had it placed in my mouth by the priests to further their own ends.”
Elizabeth Barton stopped still; there was a long pause. “I am but a messenger, madam. You risk your own damnation, and that of the king...”
“Enough of this.” The Lady seated herself, folding her long, white hands. I did not bring you here to argue our positions, Dame Barton, but to offer you a place here at court. In my household, as lady-in-waiting.”
None of us even dared gasp; the silence in the chamber was like a living thing. “Anyone here can tell you that I do not extend such offers lightly. Those who share a household may call themselves a family, and these—“she gestured to us—“are my own.”
It was touching, though I knew better. Surely she could not mean to bring this creature among us, surely this was part of another elaborate plan.
The Maid jerked as if shot, then stiffened. She held her arms out from her sides, her palms turned outward. “Madam,” she said, in a voice much changed. It was trembling. No, her whole body was trembling, her tentlike garment rippled with it. For a moment I caught Jane’s frightened eyes. “Madam, I cannot…oh!”
The words seemed choked by her tongue, which flapped about like a red fish. She collapsed to the floor—not gracefully, as one would do in playacting, but hard as a dropped armload of firewood. I saw her temple bounce against the polished floor, saw a bruise raise and swell like bread dough, already turning the color of a plum.
The Lady raised a hand to stop Lady Exeter from rushing to help the thrashing woman on the floor. No one
else moved. Elizabeth Barton’s eyes rolled back to the whites as she hooked her fingers into her eye sockets, pulling the lower lids down almost to her cheekbones. Her white legs flashed wildly from under the black wool. Suddenly her whole body froze and she rolled onto her side, stiff as a corpse.
The fit itself was false; she was too aware of her own body, too much in control of it. But still it was…convincing. I could understand how others had been taken in by her. It was not her performance itself but her words that caused a cold prickling up my back, made Madge gasp and start to weep.
Raising herself on her hands, spittle flecked around her mouth and in her loose strands of hanging hair, she spoke in that terrible deep voice that seemed to come from far away: “The king is hellbound within six months if this marriage comes to pass! You know it yourself—the devil himself keeps watch in these chambers! He leaves his mark for you to find. Remember the book, madam, remember the card! Separate from him immediately and beg God’s forgiveness, else the dogs shall lick thy blood!”
The rest of us stood rigid with shock while Madge sobbed quietly. The Lady did not even raise her voice over the Maid’s hysterics:
“Indeed, you are well-informed about the goings-on at court, Dame Barton. News travels fast and far. Particularly between Devonshire and Kent. Isn’t that so, my lady of Exeter?”
Lady Exeter gave a jolt, and looked as if caught in a snare. In that instant, it came together in my mind: her ceaseless promotion for her son, Edward Courtenay. His close friendship with Edward Neville, the last of the Plantagents. Her family’s powerful holdings in Devonshire, where rebellion and pretenders abounded….
“You came here today to warn me, madam,” continued the Lady, stepping over to the prone figure. Her great hooded eyes narrowed a bit; she looked almost sleepy. “I have listened. And now I return the favor: To prophesy the king’s death is treason.” She was very close to the other woman’s ear, spoke almost caressingly. “Think not that you can frighten him now as you may have done before.”
She straightened up. “Piety is one thing. But treason, especially cloaked in piety, is quite another. I tell you this, Dame Barton, because I believe you are an innocent misguided: leave the governance of the kingdom to the king, and leave the king’s conscience to God.”
Lady Exeter had recovered her composure, and looked haughtily cool. The Holy Maid of Kent glanced at her a moment before getting slowly to her feet, unsteady as a new colt.
“I can only do as the Lord bids me, madam. `When God Himself speaks, who can dare refuse to prophesy?’ The Last Judgment is upon us, and you hasten your own damnation!”
“You would indeed do better to follow the Lord’s bidding, rather than the scheming of those who care nothing for you,” the Lady said. “You would be better off here with us. Safer. Think on my invitation. It is always there, whenever you choose to accept it. And may God bless you,” she added, almost as an afterthought.
After the guards had escorted Elizabeth Barton away, the Lady let out a long sigh.
“I could almost ask you to bring me a washbasin, Meg,” she said. “At this moment I feel distinctly like Pilate.”
“What did she mean?” Jane asked me later when we were alone among the tapestries.
“Pilate washed his hands before the crowd after he condemned Christ, saying he was innocent of Christ’s blood.” I never stopped being surprised by how little Scripture she knew. “Anyway, not everything she said was divinely inspired; she stole that bit about the dogs from Peto’s sermon last week.” She must have close spies at court to get word of it so quickly.
“I know that,” she said impatiently. “I meant about the Last Judgment.”
Just after Easter we’d begun to hear more and more references to Christ’s return; repentance and judgment increasingly cropped up in sermons. Lady Rochford had interrupted Meg’s reading of Boccaccio to declare that the world would end by fire, not pestilence. Word spread of the criers in the marketplaces who warned that next year, fifteen hundred years after the Crucifixion, would be the year of the great judgment, when all those in purgatory would be released into heaven. Kratzer had told me of Stiefel, the German Lutheran who insisted the Second Coming was fixed for a date next October. Luther mocked him as a madman. It was getting increasingly difficult to sort out the madmen from the rest of humanity.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Tis terrible to see God’s word put to such ends.” Jane shook her head.
“Do you mean Peto?” I tried to tease her. Much about Jane remained a mystery to me; her brothers were as fervent Reformers as you’d find anywhere, though she usually kept silence on her own views. Not today, though.
“I mean all who twist and alter God’s truth to suit their will. Better listen to sermons and leave Scripture reading to the priests.”
“Jane,” I said with a grin, “do you know that Jesus condemned the priests?”
She rolled her eyes. “You always have an answer.”
Inspired by the Holy Maid’s performance, the Lady announced we would perform a play by Marguerite of Navarre. Mary Howard would be the Wise Woman, Lady Rochford the Superstitious Woman, and Meg the Worldly Woman. The Lady herself would play the Woman Ravished by Love of God, who did nothing but sing. She had all the best lines.
Jane and I were assigned minor roles in the chorus, and got a length of silver tissue each for our costumes, which we could keep afterward.
Kratzer and I finished Utopia. I didn’t know what he did with it; he never published it. Next he set me to copying out passages of Plato that he’d already translated. It was dull work, except for one thing: the writing that unrolled behind my moving hand took on a new form. It looked less now like Kratzer’s cramped, clerkly hand and more like my own. It slanted across the page as if in a rush to spill onto the page.
I’d had more opportunity to look around Kratzer’s outer room as well, since the Lady had asked me one or two passing questions about what he kept there. There were more books than I’d first known of; he kept them in an old leather trunk with brittle straps. He usually had the books for our lessons out when I arrived, and never opened the trunk in front of me.
More than once I found Hans Holbein in Kratzer’s quarters, the two of them deep in discussion in German about papers and instruments; once I caught Holbein saying something about drawing up plans before they saw me and straightened up.
“So he visits Kratzer often,” the Lady had said when I mentioned this to her. “What do they talk of?”
I had no idea; the few times I’d heard them, they had spoken in a low, mumbling dialect I did not understand. Holbein had simply bowed to me and gone out, and Kratzer had acted as though there was nothing unusual about these visits, which seemed to take place at all hours of the day or evening.
“Kratzer receives letters from the continent, and occasionally travels there,” she said. “He must be keeping in touch with old friends, or perhaps his family.”
I didn’t know; he never mentioned family, but then we didn’t talk of ourselves. Lately we’d been working on readings from the ancient Greeks, about the nature of goodness and friendship and so on. I had the feeling he was trying to continue the conversation we’d had during Utopia, though he never said anything directly. The books also talked of many other strange things, such as men who lusted after boys. I decided not to mention that part.
Has anyone else been to see him? No, though at times I had seen both Holbein and Kratzer talking with Dinteville, the French ambassador. Yes, they frequently talked together at banquets. Did I know what they might be talking of? No; they changed the subject whenever anyone came close enough to hear. Had anything else unusual come to my notice? Was anything, for example, missing?
My skin prickled at that; some of Kratzer’s instruments, usually hung on the north wall, had been disappearing of late. But perhaps he was using them.
It was coming clear to me that whatever the reasons she had arranged for me to be in Kratzer’s quart
ers, my own education had little to do with it.
He sent and received letters from Antwerp, Rotterdam, Vienna. Would I be certain to see if I could see any of those letters or plans myself? It would be most interesting to know who he was in touch with on the continent; she had so many friends there herself.
My stomach felt like a knotted cloth. Aristotle said friendship is often based only how useful one person finds another. I had thought she might have chosen me because she saw some likeness between us. I had been a fool.
Only later did it occur to me to wonder why she had enlisted me and not Cromwell, who knew everything that was said and done at court; surely he had access to all correspondence. And there could be only one answer, despite their merriment together at banquets, their common cause of reform: she did not trust him.
So. Summer came, and our learning circle was dispersed. She knew better than to try to keep their attention focused on poems and Scripture when sweat beaded their foreheads beneath their hoods, and sweet breezes called them out to the gardens and parks. She herself spent most days outdoors with the king, taking private Mass early with him and hunting and hawking from dawn till late afternoon, then feasting until after the sun had sunk. We had only to attend her at dinner, unless they stayed the night at one of the royal hunting lodges or the house of an eager nobleman.
I continued with my copying of Aristotle.
It was on the day I finished his books on friendship that Jane and I first quarreled.
The royal art collection hung in the long gallery at St. James’s palace, between the king’s and queen’s apartments. Some days it was kept locked, but on others—like this fine May afternoon, soft as a ripe pear—one could spend hours admiring the portraits, each one overhung with a green cloth.
The gallery itself was like a hallowed place, our footfalls silent on the green carpet as we walked. Somehow it seemed almost magical to see the stiff countenances painted on wood, the skin and fur and fabric looking as soft and textured as the real thing. Jane stood rapt before a portrait of Beatrice of Milan, whose hair ribbons and pendant necklace seemed almost to reflect the light in this gallery here in England. I nearly reached out to touch the painted sleeve of the Lord Chancellor’s doublet, so perfect was its sheen.