The Heretic’s Wife

by Brenda Rickman Vantrease

  She droned on about some business adventure her husband was involved in, but Kate only half heard. It did trouble her. Not the fact that John had not yet mentioned it, but the fact that it sounded dangerous. And she would be separated from her husband for the first time since leaving England.

  It was a sunny June day at Chelsea and well past three by the sundial in the garden. Margaret Roper had waited long enough to be summoned to a picnic with her father. On beautiful Fridays in June they usually dined down by the river. She had told William when they married that every day of the week belonged to him, except Fridays. Friday afternoons belonged to Sir Thomas.

  She always looked forward to their conversations, but especially today. Today he was sure to mention her book. It was now officially published, bearing the king’s license, and they were free to discuss it. When no summons came, she decided to take matters into her own hands, and went in search of Dame Alice. She found her in the great kitchen, harassing the cook.

  “Where’s Father? It’s Friday. It’s a beautiful day. Has he been summoned to Westminster again?”

  Alice removed the lid from the great soup kettle hanging in the fireplace and ladled herself a taste. She frowned. “It needs salt and more flavor, maybe a touch of sage,” she barked. “And this time send some cool buttermilk with Sir Thomas’s dinner. It will not hurt you to go down the ladder steps into the cellar. Send the boy.” She gestured with a nod of her head toward the urchin tormenting the rooster that strutted around the open kitchen door. “He has little enough to do to keep the hearths in summer. He wants exercise.”

  “So then Father is at home? Why are we not—”

  “You can ask him yourself.” She was busy ladling the soup, adding a crusty hunk of still-warm bread, wiping a pewter tankard for the buttermilk with the snowy linen of her apron. “He’s in the study. As always. You can take his food in to him, not that he’s going to take time to eat it. He even neglects his devotions. I am that vexed with him.”

  It was clear that she was “that vexed” with something.

  “I suppose we should be patient,” Margaret said. “We should have expected now that he’s lord chancellor the king has full claim on his time—”

  “Fiddle-faddle. ’Tis not the king’s business keeps him in his study night and day. The king is off on a hunting trip. Has been since March. ’Tis his own obsession. Heretics—heretics roasted, fried, or flambéed—that’s all he thinks about. I think he would send them all to hell himself, even your husband, and be glad of it if he had the power.”

  “William is no heretic! Just because he keeps an open mind . . .”

  The boy returned with the buttermilk. The cook had wisely disappeared into the pantry until the storm that was Dame Alice in one of her moods blew over. She snatched the pitcher from his hand, sloshing a milky drop onto the table. The boy retreated as his mistress filled the tankard, then assembled the tray and thrust it out at Margaret.

  “Here. See if you can distract him from this obsession.”

  A few minutes later, Margaret knocked tentatively on her father’s study door.

  “Who is it?”

  She recognized the tone he used when he did not wish to be interrupted.

  “It’s Margaret, Father. I’ve brought your dinner,” she said above the scratching of his quill. She did not wait to be told to enter but shouldered her way into the room. The habitually tidy chamber was in disarray with books haphazardly strewn across every surface, some facedown and opened as if marking a place, manuscript pages spread out to dry. Even the window ledge was covered. She had never known him to be so careless with his books.

  “Just put it down, Meg,” he mumbled. “I’ll eat it later.”

  “Where?” she asked pointedly.

  He looked up then, and she was shocked to see his face. Dark circles ringed his eyes. His cheeks sagged.

  “Father, are you unwell?”

  He put down his pen and began shifting some of the books to clear a space on the corner of the desk. “I’m fine. Just busy.”

  “Alice prepared the tray herself,” she offered as she set it down.

  He picked up the goose quill, dabbed it in the inkwell.

  “Shall I sit with you while you eat?” she asked, and bent to remove a couple of open volumes from the chair.

  “Don’t touch those,” he said curtly.

  She saw that the one on top bore Tyndale’s name.

  “You are writing a refutation of Master Tyndale? I thought you finished that weeks ago.”

  “It is another. The heretics do not sleep; neither shall I. That devil Tyndale skips about the Continent, wreaking havoc as he goes. In the meantime I must provide an antidote for the poison flowing from his pen.”

  A skin was already forming on the creamy soup as it cooled. “Surely Master Tyndale stops to sleep and eat.”

  “There will be ample time for that later,” he said evenly, but she could tell she was trying his patience.

  “What about the king’s business?” she asked.

  “The king has no greater business than the pursuit and burning of heretics,” he said flatly.

  She looked around the scattered books in the room, hoping to see hers. “I’ve obtained the king’s license to publish my translation,” she said.

  “I know,” he muttered. “I have a copy here.” He cast a cursory glance around the room. “Somewhere.”

  He’d already returned to the document before him. He wrote rapidly, rarely stopping to consider or pausing to scratch out a word, as if everything he wanted to say flowed fluently from his brain as effortlessly as rain.

  “It’s Friday. I was hoping we could share a meal and . . . perhaps discuss . . . my translation.”

  He did not even look up. “There will be other Fridays, Margaret. We will discuss it later.”

  There could be no answer to such a profound dismissal.

  TWENTY-TWO

  There is no bond on earth so sweet, nor any separation so bitter as that which occurs in a good marriage.

  —MARTIN LUTHER

  Kate was on her hands and knees scrubbing the deal floorboards of their bedroom when she first felt the pain in her back.

  “It’s nothing,” she said aloud to the sketch of the ugly old woman. Then she muttered into the answering silence, “We should get a cat. At least I could talk to something that moves.”

  You’ll be glad enough for the silence when the baby comes.

  Now she was hearing voices—her mind carrying on both sides of the conversation. She was more desperate than she thought.

  I should practice singing a lullaby. That way John won’t come home unexpectedly and hear his mad wife talking to herself. She started to hum, and then she realized she knew no lullaby. And she didn’t know anything about babies or their care in general—not the first thing. Maybe John knew. He seemed to know everything, though she thought surely there must be some knowledge one could not get from books.

  She scrubbed at a patch of green paint on the varnished boards, scratching at it with her fingernail. That patch of paint had been bothering her for weeks. John had even mentioned it once. She brushed a line of sweat from her brow with her forearm and scrubbed harder. If she hurried, there was still time to finish this and freshen herself and get to the town market before he came home. She went over the list in her mind: wine, a good bottle of French—she’d been saving a sixpence a week since she’d first begun to think she was pregnant—and beeswax candles, and fruit and cheese and freshly baked bread and maybe a bit of smoked fish and a pie, yes, custard pie from the pie shop at the end of High Street, an extravagance but it was to be a celebration.

  She tried to imagine the look on John’s face when she told him. John, you are going to be a father. No, too blunt. The poor man might swoon. John, I think I might be pregnant—I don’t know for sure. It’s been ten weeks. Better. Less final. Give him time to get used to the idea.

  She scraped the last bit of green and wiped it on her apron. What
if he doesn’t like the idea? He would never say; he would be too mindful of her feelings. But she would know. She would be able to read it in his eyes.

  Another wave of pain struck across her back and into her groin—familiar but more insistent. It felt almost like . . . She stood up carefully and going into the garderobe checked for bleeding. One small bright spot, that was all. Not that uncommon, Mistress Poyntz had said, warning her about what to expect. She sat down on the stool and waited a few minutes, then checked again. No more blood. Probably just a warning that she should leave off the hard work.

  She emptied the pan of mop water into the street below the window, careful to look each way, shouting in her halting Flemish “look out below,” before she flung its contents. She’d been more careful with her slops and dishwater ever since she’d hit a dandy alighting from his carriage. She suppressed a giggle, remembering the indignant look on his face and the bits of egg clinging to his pointy beard and fine starched ruff as she shouted her apologies. She’d had one brief moment of fear—before John charmed away his choleric humor—that her hapless victim might challenge her husband to a duel. Imagine having to kill a man—or be killed—just because your wife was clumsy with a pan of dirty dishwater. It was good they dueled with words and not swords, though John had assured her later, with a bit too much bravado, she thought, that he could handle himself with a blade.

  There was enough time to freshen herself. The shadow from the jeweler’s shop across the street was short, its glass emblem in the shape of an oversized diamond still glinting where the sunlight hit it. She splashed a little fresh water into her bowl, and lathering some soap, applied it to her hands and arms and face. God bless Quentin Massys for installing an ingenious series of lead pipes and a hand pump—a luxury most did not have. They never drank the water, preferring the fresh, clear water from the public well only a couple of furlongs away to the dank taste of the piped water, but it was fine for washing up and would be a godsend when the baby came.

  She was running a comb through her hair when the hard pain hit—a pain so sharp it snatched her breath away. She had to clutch at the bedpost for support. That felt like more than a warning. Maybe she should forget the market, go to see Mistress Poyntz. She would know what the pains meant.

  Another pain bent her double.

  And another.

  A warm rush between her legs, and Kate Frith knew there would be no celebration when John came home. A third pain crumpled her into a ball on the floor.

  John Frith heard Kate’s sobs from the foot of the stairs, which he took two at a time. He’d never heard his wife cry, not once, not even when the floods came, not even during the long winter nights, when he feared she was so homesick, and now here were these great wrenching sobs that did not cease when he flung open the door to find her dressed only in her shift and curled into a ball on their bed.

  “My God, Kate, are you hurt? What’s the matter?” he asked, fearing whatevery good husband fears, that some intruder had broken into his home and violated his most prized treasure.

  But a hasty glance showed the chamber to be undisturbed, more tidy even than usual. He sat down beside her on the bed, and she raised her head to look at him, her attempt at an answer no more than a shake of her head. Her eyes were red and swollen with crying. Her hand clutched at the cheap tin amulet Endor had given her as though it were a lifeline and she a drowning woman—a veritable picture of despair. This was his fault, he thought miserably. He’d been too distracted, had not paid enough attention to her, had thought her stronger in mind than she was simply because she never complained.

  He brushed one damp strand of hair away from her eyes and touched her chin, lifting her face. “What is it, my angel? Have you had bad news? Have you hurt yourself in some way?” He became aware of a sickly, sweet smell in the room. “Are you sick?”

  Then he spotted the dress crumpled in a heap on the floor, its crimson stain gleaming darkly.

  “I am going to get a doctor. Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

  She rose up then and reached out her hand to grasp the sleeve of his shirt. Her voice was raspy with so much crying. “No. It’s too late. What can a doctor do now?”

  “Too late? What do you mean?” But a glimmer of understanding was beginning to dawn.

  She took a deep breath as if the very air held some quality of strength. “It was a child, John. I lost our baby.”

  “But—”

  “I should have told you,” she said softly, “I wanted to wait until I was sure,” and then the tears started again.

  God, how he hated those tears! He could not bear to see her cry. “I don’t care about the baby,” he said. He gathered her to him and kissed the top of her head, but she pulled away and looked up at him, searching his eyes as if she were rifling through his soul and did not like what she found there. A deep frown creased her forehead, and the faint blue line on her brow was no longer faint, but stood out like a cord. He could almost see it pulsing.

  “You don’t care about the baby!”

  “That’s not what I meant. Of course I care about the baby, but its soul has returned to God. I only have one of you.”

  Her face remained a mask of misery and something else—concentration perhaps—as she asked, “You don’t think the baby’s soul is in limbo then?”

  “I don’t believe in limbo; you know that. Every human soul exists with God from the beginning, and the innocent soul returns to God. What could be more innocent than an unborn child?”

  Not exactly the doctrine of Holy Church, but it made more sense than what they taught—and it seemed to give her comfort. She sighed a ragged breath, but the tears had ceased. Finally, he’d said something right. “Will you be all right? Shouldn’t we call a doctor anyway?” He looked down at the bloodstained dress. “Will the bleeding stop on its own? Are you in pain?”

  “What good can a leech do?”

  He did not refute the logic of that. “Merta. I’ll get Merta then. Or Mistress Poyntz. They’ll know what to do.”

  She put her hand on his sleeve as if she wanted to give him reassurance, comfort. “John, there is nothing to be done. It is nature’s way,” she said between sniffles. A long pause. “I’m sorry . . . but I . . . wanted it so . . . so much.” Each word was an effort, and the sobs began again.

  He put his arms around her then, noticing for the first time how fragile she felt. He’d always thought her such a strong woman. Had she lost weight? That seemed hardly possible when her appetite had been so ferocious—Of course. Now he understood.

  “There will be others, Kate. We will have another, you’ll see. My sister miscarried at least twice, now that I remember.” It had seemed such a casual thing when it was reported. He wondered if there had been so much blood, so many tears. “But you must get healthier first. Lots of good red wine to build you back up.”

  That made her cry even more.

  “Really, angel, you shouldn’t take on so. You’ll be even weaker.”

  She gave one little shudder and the sobs lessened. He held her until she fell asleep, then he got up and cleaned the mess on the floor, bundling the dress up so she would not notice it the first thing when she awoke.

  As he was mopping up the blood from the floor, he noticed that the splotch of green paint on the floor had disappeared. It had been bothering him for weeks. Now it seemed such a silly thing.

  In the weeks after the miscarriage John was more attentive. They went to the English House less and walked down by the river more. He held her hand and called her his angel, but he’d made love to her only once since she lost the baby and then so carefully she’d almost missed it.

  “Really, John, I’m not some porcelain doll.”

  “You need to conserve your strength.”

  At least that was his excuse. Or was it that he really didn’t want a child, didn’t want the responsibility of a child, thinking it would take away from his work? But she tried not to think of that, tried to be cheerful for his sake. Someti
mes she would go for several hours and not think about the lost child. Then she would wonder about it and why she could not be the one to bring it into the world and what that might mean. But not wanting to worry John, she kept these thoughts to herself.

  By the time John announced he was going to Augsburg to the conference convened by the emperor to hear the Lutheran Confession and possibly find William Tyndale, Kate had forgotten all about the trip. Disappointment must have shown in her face.

  “Why don’t you go with me?” he asked.

  But Kate wasn’t altogether sure that a trip on the water was what she most wanted right now.

  “They say the Rhine River Valley is spectacular. And since I translate for the Hansa Counting House and Augsburg is on one of the Hansa trading routes, we should have no trouble getting cheap passage.”

  When she didn’t answer immediately, remembering how seasick she had been on the Siren’s Song, he seemed to be reading her mind. “As I recall you’re pretty good at river travel.” He smiled broadly and the tucked wing of her injured spirit fluttered a little, threatened to unfold.

  She remembered their time together in the tiny little berth on the Siren’s Song when they had made love to the rhythms of the sea, how close they had seemed, just the two of them against the world.

  What was that concoction Endor had given her to drink? Ginger tea. Yes. That was it. She remembered seeing the ugly little root in the spice market. She would lay by a goodly supply—just in case.

  The trip to Augsburg was a disappointment, though the Rhineland scenery had been as spectacular as John had promised, and there had been no seasickness. The boat was smaller than the Siren’s Song, having only one square sail and a crew of four. It was one of the boats especially built by the Hansa shipbuilders for the merchants of the Hanseatic League who traveled the inland waters, so in spite of its size, there was a passenger compartment—with a bed big enough that John, after kissing her affectionately good night and snuggling with her briefly, could turn over and sleep the rest of the night without ever touching her. Babies were not made that way, she thought, as she lay awake long after she heard him snoring.