The Heretic’s Wife

by Brenda Rickman Vantrease

  The message simply read, “Your Majesty, I await your pleasure,” and was signed “Humbly, Anne.”

  When the king appeared in person at her chamber door to escort her to the Presence Room, the expression on his face confirmed her choice. But when he leaned forward to kiss the tops of her “little maidens,” as he so fondly called them, she gently protested. “Time enough for that, Your Majesty. First we must attend to the business of the evening.”

  He held her out at arm’s length, and looked at her as though he could satisfy his lust with his eyes. “My lady, you are certainly a witch, and you have enchanted a king.”

  Her laughter echoed down the hall as she walked with him to the Presence Room where she would be announced for the first time as the Marquess of Pembroke. She wondered if any of her enemies would be there to witness her singular honor.

  When Anne led the king to her bedchamber later that night, the room smelled fresh and sweet. The window was open to the warm night air. The only sounds came from the whispered conversation between a passing breeze and the great oaks outside her window. The room glowed with candlelight, and rose petals had been scattered among the rushes and on the counterpane.

  Henry smiled when he saw it.

  Anne began to undress, removing her coif and tossing her head to better let the candle glow highlight her tresses.

  “Shall I summon your maid?” he asked.

  “No need, my lord. I’m sure Your Majesty can be relied upon to give any assistance necessary.”

  She peeled the sleeves away and then, untying her kirtle, stepped out of it. Taking his hand, she directed it to her bodice. His hands moved expertly among the laces until she stood clothed only in the diaphanous silk of her low-cut chemise. This time when he kissed her breast, she made no protest. His tongue was moist and warm against her skin. A fleeting thought of Percy crossed her mind, but she pushed it as quickly away, thinking it treaded on the fringe of treason to think of another man when making love to the king.

  “Shall I summon my gentleman of the bedchamber to assist me?” he asked, removing his hat. His voice was husky with desire.

  “No need, my lord. I shall undress you.”

  She lifted the gold chain from around his neck carefully.

  With considerably less ceremony he shrugged off his brocade doublet. “There is no reason to hurry, my lord,” she said, her voice breathy and low. She untied his breeches and then unfastened his codpiece, letting her fingers linger teasingly.

  “Your Majesty is very . . . majestic,” she said.

  When he was stripped to his braies and garters, she lifted her shift over her head and stood before him clad only in her unbound hair and the ruby necklace. She had a moment of unease. He had never seen her naked before. Indeed, no man had ever seen her naked, not even Percy. Her breasts were too small, she feared, though he had often complained of the queen’s.

  “Is Your Majesty pleased?” she asked in a very small voice.

  The room seemed suddenly very quiet. Even the oaks outside her window paused in their windy chatter.

  But she needed no words to tell her His Majesty was pleased.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Sing, O Muse, the vengeance deep and deadly; whence to Greece unnumbered ills arose, which many a soul of mighty warrior to the viewless shades untimely sent.

  —LINES FROM THE ILIAD

  QUOTED BY JOHN FRITH WHILE IN READING GAOL

  John Frith recognized the smell. He’d been there before. That foul odor of stale sweat and urine was coming from him. Yet it was nothing compared to the fish cellar, he thought ruefully. At least the stocks were in the open air. The rogues arrested with him had been released after being fined ten pence, which no doubt went into the pocket of the magistrate. But John had not the ten pence to pay the fine if it had been offered.

  He spent his first night in Reading slumped in the stocks, scheming between intermittent bouts of sleep how best to deal with this circumstance. When the morning fog rolled in so thick it seeped into his skin and clotted in his nostrils, he shivered until his teeth chattered. But by midday the sun had burned off the fog, and he could feel the warmth beating down on his head and the back of his neck.

  He kept his eyes closed most of the time, preferring the visions he conjured in his head to looking at his feet and the brown spot of tramped-down earth, the only things within his field of vision. Some tricks he’d learned in the fish cellar were helpful now. He created and then catalogued inside his mind pleasant images of his wife: Strong Kate, waving bravely from the harbor, blinking so he would not see her tears when he kissed her good-bye; Determined Kate, squinting over her needle as she sewed for the new baby, swearing under her breath as she ripped out an untrue stitch; Angry Kate, her eyes flashing with contempt when she talked of the heretic hunters; Sweet Kate, sharpening his quills, reading his copy, rubbing his neck—he imagined he could feel her hands on the aching muscles of his shoulders. He summoned the smell of her hair, the feel of her skin, the taste of her lips, until the constancy of her image became his only reality.

  By the afternoon his muscles cramped until his mind tricks no longer worked. He could not stifle his groans, and his stomach burned with hunger. He dreaded the whipping mandated under More’s new vagrancy law, but was anxious to get it over. The pain that would come would take precedence over the pain in his legs. Not a relief from pain, but a different agony that might be borne for a time; and if he survived the whipping, he would be free. More might no longer be chancellor, but the law was the law, and what he’d seen of the local law enforcement did not make him think they were inclined to mercy.

  His stocks were in the public square, and he considered shouting out his real name to a couple of passers-by, begging them to go to the abbey and tell them of his predicament. Judging from the abuse both real and verbal heaped upon him, however, he doubted the efficacy of such a plan. The fact that his name might fall on hostile ears also gave him pause. After all, he was a known fugitive. A strong man would survive a whipping; a burning he would surely not.

  By the third day, he had fallen back on his old fish cellar habit of reciting Homer to occupy his mind, verse after verse in the original Greek. Occasionally a Greek utterance leaked from his mind into his parched throat. Because he kept his eyes closed whenever passers-by approached so as not to invite abuse, he didn’t see the women carrying water from the well.

  “Poor man, he’s gone mad. He’s muttering gibberish.”

  “Give him a drink; he must be starved for water.”

  Hearing the compassion in their voices, John opened his eyes. He could only see their feet, shod in dusty worn clogs, and a bucket of water one of them set on the ground. He looked at the cool, clear water and thought of Tantalus.

  “We can’t give him water, Charlotte. It is forbidden.”

  He groaned.

  “ ‘A cup of water in my name,’ the Scripture says. It’s like giving it to Christ. Would we not give a drink to our Lord?”

  They were quoting Scripture. They were Bible readers!

  “Please,” he tried to say, but his throat was dry, and it came out in a croak.

  Gnarled hands dipped hastily into the bucket and held up a double handful of water to his mouth. He lapped it like a dog, until he could feel the roughness of her palm against his tongue. She scooped another handful for him, and he drank, until choking and coughing, he was able to spit out the words, “Please fetch the—p”—no, he could not ask for the priest—“the schoolmaster. Tell him a . . . scholar is . . . wrongly accused.”

  “He is mad,” the other woman said, “or cursed. Let’s go before someone sees us comfortin’ a vagrant.”

  “To be punished for giving a drink of water to a thirsty man, it’s an abomination, it is.” Then patting him on the shoulder, the voice belonging to Charlotte added, “We’ll pray for you. They canna punish us for that.”

  “The schoolmaster,” he whispered.

  He watched as the feet walked away, then cl
osed his eyes and tried to summon his visions.

  “His name is John Frith,” Leonard Cox, the schoolmaster, said to the magistrate. “I tell you, the man is a Cambridge scholar. The gibberish your spies heard him spouting was The Iliad in the original Greek. You’ve just about killed him. Let him go.”

  “Then why wouldn’t he give his name?”

  “I don’t know why. I’m sure he has his reasons. But I’m here to stand for his identity. He is no vagrant. His father is a landowner in Kent. He attended both Cambridge and Oxford and is a man of great reputation and learning, and you have him locked up in the stocks like a common criminal!”

  Prudence cautioned him not to add that under the law even a common vagabond should not be left to die of thirst and starvation. Best not to get the magistrate’s back up.

  But the magistrate must have read his mind. He scratched his head and answered defensively, “We were within the law. How do you know he’s who he says he is? That’s why we didn’t feed him. If a man gets hungry enough, he’ll be less stubborn.”

  Cox tried to control his temper. “I recognized him, that’s how I know who he is. Charlotte Bascomb said he asked to see me. I was skeptical, but when he started to talk I remembered his voice. He called me by name—we were at Cambridge together—and when I washed the filth from his face, filth put there by his abusers because you wrongfully put him in the stocks, I knew him immediately.”

  The magistrate appeared to consider before answering, and then motioned for the constable. “We’ll let him go, then, on your surety, but if you talk of this, you be sure and say that he refused to give his name, and he had no papers. We acted within the law.”

  “Yes, yes, I understand. It’ll not be held against you. Now send the constable straightaway before the poor man expires from hunger.”

  After a good meal and a bath, John was able, with Leonard Cox’s help, to get to the abbey where the prior greeted him warmly, expressing outrage when he heard of his treatment in Reading. The prior had spent a bit of time in the stocks during his year in prison, he said, and knew what that did to a man. He reiterated his support for the movement, but admitted that after the king had released him with a warning to be more orthodox in his teachings, he tried to be more careful.

  Yes, he still ran the underground movement, still held the Bible readings, but they were more cautious now about whom they trusted. He happily produced a purse with enough heft to support John as he made the rounds to the merchants and shadow “congregations” as they called themselves. But he gave a warning too.

  “Don’t be fooled,” he said, “by the fact that More has resigned. It is said he’s more determined than ever to burn out all vestiges of reform.”

  “How can a man of learning be so intolerant?” John asked.

  “I know. It’s hard to believe this is the same man who authored Utopia, who once championed humanist causes and new learning. He even agreed with Erasmus that reform was needed.”

  They were in the chapel abbey, where the prior was taking his tour of duty, the same as the other monks. It was his day to rub the carved wood of the roodscreen with linseed oil and polish the gold and silver of the altar vessels: the elaborate jeweled chalice, the paten, the ciborium.

  “Do you not ever wonder,” John asked, pointing to the stained glass of the Gothic windows, the gleaming gold of the altar, reflected in the multicolored lights from the sun’s rays, “what Jesus would say about all this?”

  The prior smiled. “I know what you are thinking, that we should sell the Church’s treasure and give the money to the poor, but I would remind you, dear friend, that our Lord said, ‘The poor you will have with you always,’ when Judas Iscariot objected to an extravagant and expensive form of worship.”

  “I do not need to be reminded of what the Scripture says, but that was in the context of Jesus’ anointment for his crucifixion. We celebrate a living Christ in spirit and truth by emulating His ways, not the ways of the woman who anointed him for burial with expensive perfume—or those of the temple priests.”

  The prior nodded in what might be construed as agreement. “Consider this too. As long as these altar vessels remain, I can go on with our mission. They give me cover. And they have other, more utilitarian uses. That purse I gave you? It will not be the first time a golden candlestick has been turned into printed Scripture. We have replaced this one with gilded copper. It sheds as good a light upon the host as the gold one and should the archbishop come—” He shrugged. “But they will all be gone soon enough. King Henry will not be able to resist such a treasure. Ironic, isn’t it? What was used to celebrate the Prince of Peace will go to fund war with France.”

  John held up the fake candlestick, hefted it in his hand. “Well, here’s one that won’t. I thank you. William Tyndale thanks you too.”

  The prior reached inside his cassock and pulled out a piece of paper, unfurled it on the altar.

  “Here is a map with a c where you’ll find congregations that will lend you support and be glad to hear you preach. Burn it when you have memorized it. Here is a document showing you as a messenger for the priory should you find yourself at odds with the vagrancy law again. You are welcome to rest here as long as needful.” He handed John the documents. “I understand you have taken a wife.”

  “I have. With the assistance of a priest from this very abbey.”

  “Has that proven to be a happy choice?”

  “A very happy choice. We are expecting a child. A Christmas blessing.”

  The prior smiled wanly. “Then, my friend, you need be especially careful. You do not want your child to be an orphan before it is born. More and Stokesley make quick work of burning these days.”

  Within two days John felt strong enough to begin his rounds. He left the abbey on foot, not wanting the expense of a horse. The first “congregation” was less than five miles back toward London. The last was near Southend in Essex. He could get a ship there for home and Kate. He would be back in Antwerp before All Saints’ Day, God willing.

  Thomas More looked up from the map he was squinting at, the map of rebel “congregations” that Bishop Stokesley had just delivered to him in his study at Chelsea.

  “I knew they were spreading, but I did not know there were so many,” Thomas said in disgust.

  “That’s probably only half. Tyndale’s books have done a lot of damage to the Church over these seven years. Would that Cuthbert had taken a firmer hand with him and not let him get away. My predecessor was too disposed toward combating enemies with words.”

  Thomas shifted the paperweight on his desk to anchor a corner of the map. Upon the completion of Thomas’s first anti-Tyndale polemic, Bishop Tunstall had given him the paperweight, a fly suspended in a giant blob of amber. “Don’t discount the value of words, Excellency,” Thomas said resentfully. He felt a need to remind the bishop of just how much his own words before Parliament had cost him.

  The blade of the bishop’s jawbone reminded Thomas of a dagger’s edge, and he possessed a will just as honed. In spite of his recent silence before Parliament, Stokesley was a formidable ally, stronger than Thomas had had in Bishop Tunstall. But he missed the fellowship of that former alliance.

  “Cuthbert meant well,” Thomas said. “He just lacked the temperament to follow through. He thought the enemy could be contained with words and argument.” He pointed to the mountain of manuscripts anchoring another corner of the map. “But you are right, Excellency, if words alone could do it, Tyndale’s vile pen would already have been stopped. I have answered every heretical argument, and yet the books and English Bibles with their profane glosses still seep into England, bringing the stench of an Antwerp shithole with them.”

  Stokesley pounded the map with his fist. “We must stop them now! Or there will not be enough oaks in England to make the stakes to burn them all. And it’s going to be harder since we have lost the cooperation of Parliament.”

  Thomas couldn’t resist one last jab. “God knows I tried. I lo
st the chancellorship because of it.” While you remained silent. The unspoken words hung between them.

  Stokesley answered quickly, “No man could have done more. You were very eloquent. But you can be sure the heretics know of this development. Their arrogance is stronger than ever. One of them has slipped back in—a bold and arrogant move.”

  Thomas’s ears perked at this. “Is it a name we know? Who is it?”

  The bishop smiled, obviously pleased to be imparting this new knowledge his spies had gleaned. “It is said that he is one of William Tyndale’s closest friends, though I did not recognize his name. He was arrested for vagrancy in Reading”—he pointed to the map spread out on the desk where Reading Abbey was marked with a larger X than the rest—“but unfortunately let go by the local magistrate when the schoolmaster identified him as a former Cambridge scholar.”

  Thomas’s pulse quickened. “Was his name John Frith?”

  “I think so. You know of him?”

  And so should you, my illiterate friend, More thought. Here was another difference between Stokesley and his predecessor. Tunstall was a scholar and a supporter of the new learning in classical studies. That was one reason Tyndale had approached him about a translation for the English Bible in the first place. This new Bishop of London rightly presented himself as a man of action and not of words. “He is one of the young scholars turned heretic who survived the Oxford fish cellar,” Thomas said.

  “Ah. I thought I’d heard the name before.”

  “As well you should. He writes quite prolifically against the doctrine of Purgatory.” Thomas was gratified to see the stain of embarrassment on Stokesley’s face. He stood up and began to pace the room, his mind whirling. “We must catch him this time. Not only will we stop the profane lies spewing from his pen like venom from the fangs of a viper, but he will lead us straight to Tyndale. We could burn the two of them, back to back. Such a fire would scent the streets of paradise with the burning fat of a bountiful sacrifice.”