The Heretic’s Wife

by Brenda Rickman Vantrease

  “Mistress Frith. You have my sympathy,” Sir Thomas said.

  “Thank you, my lord, but it is not your sympathy I am seeking. It is your intervention.”

  He sighed heavily. The candle nearest him flickered with his exhaled breath.

  “Then you’ve come to the wrong place, I fear. The Church has already condemned your husband.” He looked apologetically at those gathered around the table and not at the woman at all as he explained. “I have no jurisdiction in the matter.”

  “I do not understand matters of legal jurisdiction, sir, but if you say it is so then it must be so, because you are reputed to be an honorable man.” She paused as if weighing her words like gold.

  Meg thought the quiet pleading in her demeanor quite at odds with the proud creature she’d first encountered in the little print shop.

  “But your daughter has told me of your charity and compassion and that you are a man of great influence. All of England knows you to be a man of importance.” She looked at Margaret then, as though pleading for some advocacy from that quarter. “I am here to beg for some small measure of that compassion your daughter spoke of, to beg you to use your influence with the bishop.”

  Her father’s answering smile was like a splash of cold water in Margaret’s face. Had he always been so . . . cold?

  “My daughter, like most devoted daughters, I expect, harbors an exaggerated sense of her father’s importance. I’m sure you would speak well of your father, Mistress Frith—though I have heard he died in prison.”

  The woman flinched visibly, but she remained silent as he continued.

  “I can do nothing for you or your husband, and frankly I would not if I could. John Frith is a heretic who has done much damage to Holy Church. As a Christian I can only celebrate his burning. His death will serve as a warning to others.”

  Meg turned her face away. She could not look at her father, could not bear to see the hatred she saw there. Nor did she look at Kate. She stared at the piece of meat on her plate, congealing in its juices, and wished she had not lived to see this day. Meg glanced up to meet her husband’s gaze, and she knew this moment marked the end of all her childhood illusions. There was absolute silence in the room, interrupted by the scraping of Sir Thomas’s chair as he stood up.

  “But to show you that I am not altogether devoid of that compassion of which my daughter spoke, I will offer you shelter,” the great man said. “We will not send you out into the night. There are many wolves that roam the woods between here and London.”

  The woman seemed to visibly grow taller. She tossed back her head and glared at the man from whom she had just begged mercy. Margaret saw a glimpse of that Kate Gough she’d met in Paternoster Row. “I will take my chances with the wolves, my lord,” she said quietly. “For they, being no more than wild beasts, have as much of Christ in them as you. They only kill to survive. You kill for the joy it gives you.”

  Margaret held her breath, willing the woman to hush.

  But Kate did not. “For all your learning, you know less of Christ than the poorest plowman who carries Tyndale’s English Bible in his pocket.”

  Did she not realize—or care—that she was completely in his power? It was madness to say such to a man one thought was devoid of all compassion. The smell of the roast meat on her plate blending with the fear and tension in the room made the gorge rise in her throat. But when she looked up at her father, she was surprised to see he did not look angry. Kate Frith’s words somehow seemed to have pleased him.

  “Tyndale! You speak of the translator as though you know him. If you would give him up to . . . the bishops, perhaps I could use my limited influence to see that your husband does not suffer in the flames . . . overlong.”

  The woman looked at him in disbelief then, spitting upon the floor at his feet, verily hissed at him. “I will not give him up even if you burn me. My husband shall not die for nothing, and when you close your eyes tonight, Sir Thomas More, may the knowledge that you have hounded many good and righteous men to their deaths sear your heart like the white-hot flames they died in.”

  Beside her, Meg heard Dame Alice gasp. She looked up at Kate then and glittering behind the tears she saw a courage she envied—and something akin to pity. Kate smiled at her, a smile that carried a weary resignation. “I pray, Mistress Roper, that you never know the hurt other wives and daughters have known,” she said. “My English Bible teaches me to forgive. I will pray for the strength to forgive your father.”

  “Take her to the porter’s lodge,” Sir Thomas said, his tone as sharp as a honed sword.

  “Please, Father. She is distraught. You can understand . . . a desperate woman will say anything. Pay her no heed. Let her go with William and me. We will watch her tonight and take her home tomorrow.”

  His eyes were hard as he answered her. “She will spend tonight in the porter’s lodge. If she is of the same stubborn mind tomorrow, Barnabas will take her back to London.”

  As Barnabas led the woman away, Meg’s father lifted the lid on the salver and took out a portion of meat for carving. “Do not look so distressed, daughter. It was a disturbance of no consequence to you. Now, pass your plate if you want more.”

  Kate spent the night locked in the porter’s lodge, unmolested, though the shackles on the wall haunted her with ghostly images. How many tortured souls had groaned against that wall? She saw her brother shackled there, his head slumped forward on his chest. She saw her husband there, his beautiful smile, the most charming smile she’d ever seen, twisted in pain. She saw herself there.

  The servant who had restrained her brought her bread and milk, but though her stomach hurt from hunger, she couldn’t swallow it. She had been a fool to come here, a fool to think she could save a man who would not save himself, a fool to think she could wring compassion from a stone. She did not sleep, but teetered between a savage anger at a God who did not shelter His servants from peril—from the fury of evil men, from wrath like a dark rain falling from a smoke-filled sky—and desperate prayers to that same God to lighten John’s suffering if he could not be saved.

  In the morning, the great man himself brought her a bowl of steaming porridge. She turned her face away, unable to abide the smell of it. He shrugged and set the bowl down.

  “Now that you’ve had time to consider your husband’s inevitable fate, I thought you might reconsider. I remind you that if you agree to cooperate and draw Master Tyndale out of the English House so that he may be delivered to the proper authorities, I shall use my influence to see that your husband does not suffer a slow and agonizing death. The official who ties him to the stake will strangle him. He will lose consciousness quickly. It will be over in a minute or two.”

  The nausea that had been threatening her then overwhelmed. As she bent over and splattered the contents of her stomach on the stone floor, he shrank back. Too late. Little specks of vomit covered the hem of his fine linen robe. She had enough strength left to laugh.

  “I shall take that as your answer,” he snarled, his visage filled with hatred and disgust—the face of the real man behind the mask. Kate wondered if Margaret Roper had ever seen that face.

  “Take the creature to Newgate,” he said. “She can rot there—until the devil comes to take her down to hell, where she can join her heretic husband.”

  Tom Lasser left Croydon without satisfaction. No, the archbishop had done all he could do. He’d given the man a chance to escape and he had refused, and no, he did not know where he was being kept, not even when the execution was set. Once Frith was found guilty, the king’s soldiers would carry out the sentence.

  Ecclesia non novit sanguinem. The Church does not shed blood.

  Nor did the Constable of the Tower have any knowledge of the details of the execution. Sir Humphrey at the Steelyard had no more knowledge of Frith’s whereabouts than the captain did. Have you been to the Lollard Tower, he’d asked, his brow wrinkling with worry. But Tom had gone there first.

  He could not go
back to Kate without some little bit of hope to offer her. He was on his way from the Steelyard to make the rounds of the other prisons when he saw the smoke spiraling up from the river’s edge—from the very direction of the wharf where he’d docked the Siren’s Song.

  By the time the captain arrived, the sails were on fire and the mainmast was burning. His men—God bless their black hearts—were still on board, scurrying, carrying buckets, beating at the flames with blankets.

  “Fire,” he shouted to the dockworkers he passed. “A crown to any man who will fight to save my ship.” The most desperate among them, a goodly number, picked up buckets, pails, pans, anything they could carry, and clambered on board. “How did it start?” he shouted to the first mate as side by side they slung bucket after bucket after bucket of seawater on the flames that were by now licking at the deck.

  “Most of us were asleep below when it started. Watchman said it was a flaming arrow.”

  By the time night fell, Tom and his crew collapsed on the deck among the charred embers of the fallen mainmast. The ship was still afloat, but just barely. Her sails were gone, her hull charred in places, even her name obliterated by soot and ash, but she was still a ship. His ship. And she could be restored.

  In his exhaustion he thought of Kate Frith and how she was waiting for news. But he had no good news to give her. Bad news could wait until morning. God willing, she was already asleep in her bed above the shop.

  He awoke about midnight with Endor bent over him, shaking him awake. She was grunting at him, distraught, trying to tell him something, finally handing him Kate’s note. He shook the cobwebs from his brain and leaped to his feet.

  FORTY-ONE

  The air longs to blow noxious vapours against the wicked man. The sea longs to overwhelm him in its waves, the mountains to fall upon him, the valleys to rise up to him, the earth to split open beneath him, hell to swallow him up after his headlong fall, the demons to plunge him into gulfs of ever-burning flames.

  —SIR THOMAS MORE WRITING

  FROM TOWER PRISON ON WILLIAM TYNDALE

  Will you take a message for me?” Kate beseeched the guard who brought her the bowl of watery soup from the alms house. “To a sea captain named Tom Lasser? His ship is docked at the Steelyard. The Siren’s Song.”

  “Do I look like a messenger?” the guard growled. The soup slopped from the bowl as he slapped it down.

  “Captain Lasser will pay you for the information. He is a very generous man. Please,” she pleaded. “Tell him Kate Frith is locked up in Newgate.”

  The sight of the soup sickened her. A green skin was already forming on top of it. She pushed it away so she did not have to look at it. Time might be when she was glad to see even that. But not yet.

  The guard glanced at her, then at the bowl. “I’ll leave it, ’case you change your mind.” The ring of keys jingled in his hand, the door slightly ajar.

  He is too big. You’ll not even make the yard.

  “Frith? Popular name,” he said. “We had another Frith. He didn’t stay long.”

  Kate’s heart missed a beat and then another. “You said ‘had’?”

  “He left this morning.”

  Her breath was trapped inside her chest. “Was his name John? A young man? Not yet turned thirty?”

  “Hard to tell under all that beard. Don’t remember his first name. Strange one.” He circled his forefinger beside his temple, a gesture of derision. “Talked to himself. Gibberish mostly.”

  “He is not strange. He is brilliant. He is a gentle wonderful man whose only crime is providing people with books they can read in their own language.”

  “A relative of yours?”

  If John was here when she was brought in, why had she not sensed his nearness? “He is my husband,” she said.

  He looked at her sharply, as if she suddenly interested him.

  “Do you know where they took him?” she asked.

  His expression softened, and he looked away.

  Please, God, let that not be pity in his eyes. “Tell me where they took him. I have to know!”

  “Smithfield. They took him to Smithfield,” he said soberly.

  His words rang in her head like the bells of St. Mary le Bow, the floor beneath her undulating with each word. Smith field! Smith field! Smith field! The walls swayed to the rhythm of the words in her head. The world was disintegrating around her, all the hope stringing away thread by thread, leaving her mind a tangled mass of raveled wool.

  Somewhere a woman was screaming.

  This was no ordinary Friday for Sir Thomas: 4 July 1533. A day of celebration. A day of atonement. The only day more worthy of celebration would be the day the flames consumed William Tyndale, stopping his vile pen forever. He hoped it would be soon. He hoped, too, that he would be alive to see it. Cuthbert had warned him that Cromwell was investigating the Holy Maid of Kent for treason. Thomas had met with Elizabeth Barton on more than one occasion, which fact Cromwell was sure to uncover. Parliament had turned against the Church. Even the bishops had lost their courage—cowards all. It was only a matter of time. He was already preparing his family for the inevitable, even staging a mock rehearsal of his arrest one night as they sat at dinner. It had been instructive to watch their reaction.

  But he would not think of that today, he thought, as carrying his flagellum, he entered his private chapel. The sun would be at its zenith now. They would be lighting the fire. He closed his eyes and inhaled as if he could draw into his lungs the smoke from the burning wood and hair and flesh. He lifted his little knotted whip and felt the first sting of pain across his shoulders. Then again. And again, until a shudder of ecstasy passed through his body.

  John Frith felt strangely calm as the soldiers led him and the young apprentice Andrew Hewet, who was to die with him, to the single stake just outside the London Wall. The sun, as if unable to look full upon such an abomination, hid its hot July face behind a smoky haze in a pale sky. John whispered to his companion the words Tyndale had written in his last letter. “If the pain be above your strength, remember, Andrew, ‘whatsoever ye shall ask in My Name, I will give you.’ Pray to the Father in that Name, and He shall ease our pain.”

  John had clung to those words these last days as a drowning man clings to a piece of driftwood in an empty sea, praying that his courage would not fail, that his demeanor would give strength and comfort to the other man. The apprentice nodded tight-lipped and closed his eyes as they led him first up the rickety wooden platform and bound him to the stake, his back to the bulk of the crowd.

  When it was John’s turn, they tied him back to back with Andrew, facing the crowd. As John’s bound hands encountered his companion’s, he felt the trembling in Andrew’s hands. John grasped two of his fingers with two of his own. “Blessed are you when men shall revile you and persecute you for My sake,” John whispered. The trembling did not stop.

  As they secured his neck and waist to the pole, John looked out at the crowd. Except for the rector who was in charge of the burning, no familiar face looked up at him. That was a good thing. This final loneliness he could not share. If he should be forced to witness the horror on Kate’s face, that horror would enter into his own heart, and he could not then endure what he must. He thought of her safe and far away, as though the woman bent over her needlework in the English House in Antwerp was someone he’d loved in another lifetime. Tyndale had promised to look after her. And when Tyndale followed close behind him, Captain Lasser would be there for her.

  The rector gave the nod and the two soldiers, one on either side of the stake, stuck their lit torches to the outer brush. The crowd murmured as a single chorus, with one brave voice calling out above the others, “Let them go. They have done nothing wrong.”

  “Have no more pity for them than you would for dogs,” the rector admonished the crowd.

  A wind came from out of nowhere and ruffled John’s beard, blowing a lock of hair across his face and whipping his loose robe. He was glad he’d inse
rted the two shillings that were to have been his passage home into the hem of the plain linen garment. It would stay weighted until the brush caught the hem. By the time his robe burned away, the flames would cover his nakedness.

  “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” he shouted as loudly as he could. He would go to his death with the English Scriptures on his lips.

  The faces in the crowd looked up at him with wide eyes: some curious, some fearful, some stunned, not wanting to be there but unable to leave. Some gloated. He could see it in the way they licked their lips. Some held tears. Others looked away. He pitied them all, and prayed for grace to forgive the rector and Bishop Stokesley and Thomas More. He could not go to God with hatred in his heart.

  “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Even he was surprised that his voice could ring so clearly with no hint of the trembling he felt inside.

  The wood had been stacked high in a pyramid shape and the platform smeared with pitch. He grasped Andrew’s hand more tightly as the flames leaped up among the dry tinder with a popping and a shower of sparks.

  “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy,” Andrew’s voice behind John shouted. The flames caught their garments.

  “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God,” John answered. “Blessed are they—” But the heat and smoke stole his breath away and he could answer no more.

  He felt Andrew’s hand go limp in his and was glad.

  “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” a voice in the crowd shouted.

  But John did not hear.

  The Steelyard was not much out of his way, the guard thought as he finished his shift and left for home. The woman had said the captain would pay. But even if he didn’t, her circumstances had stirred something akin to pity in a heart as callused as his hands. Her keening and hysterical weeping had landed her in the women’s ward with the other madwomen who had to be chained. But by the time the matron came, she had let herself be led away like a lamb. He had seen other women who went into the madwomen’s ward with that same fixed stare. They only came out in a dirty winding sheet.