“Your mother wasn’t alone. She had you. And you had . . . him.”
“When I woke up, my only words were to ask for my mother. And as for him . . . Now, I have Christ himself within me.” She held a hand to her breast. “The Holy Ghost indwelling. Isn’t that so much more powerful than an angel at the door?”
“I only meant . . . Sister Gerda didn’t have what you have. She could never have had a life outside the Church. But you—”
“What makes you think I want a life outside the Church?”
“I don’t want to leave you behind.”
“Well, then, that makes you selfish.” A pretty, small smile softened the insult. “And intolerant and cruel. I’ve done nothing to hinder your endeavor, have I? Even though I think you are misguided and wrong, I’ve guarded your secret. Why? Because I respect the vows I took enough to know that no woman should live them halfheartedly.”
“On that, at least, we agree,” I said, feeling for the first time in well over a year that we might have a kindred spirit after all.
“Believe me when I tell you there is nothing out in the world that interests me. I understand now—and I have for a long time—that I cannot do penance for my mother’s sins. Your Luther writes about the freedom of a Christian. This is how I choose to live. Please do not beg me to go, and I will not beg you to stay.”
“But we might never see each other again.”
“Of course we will, silly. I told you long ago that we wouldn’t always be best friends in this world. I’ll always love you, but I won’t be by your side. We’ll see each other, just as we’ll see Sister Gerda, and you’ll see your mother.”
We hugged again, an embrace filled with a new form of comfort this time. Not mourning a past, but reconciling a future. I thought back to the morning I met her, when her quick thinking saved me from my first punishment. I knew, come Easter Monday morning, she would stand before the abbess, pummeled with questions about Girt and me and the others. Where we’d gone, and how, and by what power. And I could picture the scene, as if it played out before me on a stage. Therese, silent and resolute. Her hands clasped behind her back. Her features unreadable. Unlike when we were children, she would choose silence over a lie.
In the distance, the bell rang, summoning us to an untimely chapel, certain to be an announcement of Sister Gerda’s passing. Therese and I rose together and walked side by side, for the last time in our lives.
PART IV
Torgau Reichenbach Household, Wittenberg
SPRING–SUMMER 1523
CHAPTER 14
THE TARP THROWN over the wagon’s bed shielded us from any curious onlooker lurking on the side of the road.
“I’d be far more suspicious of the person who found himself spying on humble farm carts in the dead of night,” Sister Margitta said, complaining anew of the pain the rough voyage caused her aging hip.
“It won’t be long now.” My assurance was born of Hans’s promise that we would arrive in Torgau by morning’s light, and the spaces between the wagon slats had taken on a hopeful shade of gray. We’d passed the night in utter silence—or at least as much silence as a group of women poised at the point of a new life’s journey could muster. When the smoothness of the road allowed, we spoke in prayer, claiming Christ Jesus as our protector and the Holy Ghost as our guide. More often, the ruts and rocks made the wheels clatter and the boards creak, and we stifled our outbursts behind our hands.
So many years of silence had trained us well.
We rode in a cart once used to transport barrels of pickled herring and as such was wide and deep enough to allow some measure of comfort. Despite the thick layer of fresh, sweet-smelling straw kindly spread across the bed, my legs were cramped, my feet numb, and the base of my spine a solid ball of pain. Still, I owed a word of thanksgiving with every turn of the wheel. When I opened my eyes, I met the morning light that had found its way through the tarp and the slats, and I was greeted with the shadowy images of my fellow refugees. Twelve of us in all. How serious they all looked, clutching one another’s hands or gripping their veils or staring dejectedly into the emerging shadows.
Ignoring every ache in my body, I rose on my haunches, just enough to elevate my head a bit above the others. “Sweet sisters,” I said, hoping my voice sounded stronger than I felt, “we have reached the dawn of a new day. Our first day of freedom, to love and serve our Lord Jesus Christ as we wish. Listen—do you hear my voice? Do you realize that here, huddled in this cart, I can speak to you more freely than I ever could within the walls of Marienthrone?”
The wagon slowed; the road became smooth.
“And listen. Do you hear? The sounds of life. People, merchants, farmers.”
“Strangers,” Sister Ave piped from the corner by the wagon’s gate.
“The farmer’s wife is our sister as much as we are to each other,” Sister Margitta said, her voice as uneven as the road beneath us. “And the men our brothers.”
“And what are we to be to them?” This, again, from Ave, making me wonder if she should have been chosen to make this journey at all. She was young enough to cling to childish petulance, and old enough to know the fear of uncertainty.
“God alone knows that,” I said. “Our lives are in his hand, and I believe he is to be trusted more than the pope, wouldn’t you say?”
This brought a wave of laughter, albeit of a nervous sort, and by the time it died out, the wheels had stopped turning.
“Oh, sisters.” Whether by habit or some new sense of fear, I dropped my voice to a whisper and reached out to either side to take the hands of Margitta and Girt. One, withered and delicate with the brittle bones of waning days, the other thick and strong with a lifetime of labor before it. Soon the silence filled with masculine voices in greeting. Small talk about the journey, the weather. That they’d been blessed with a cool night and dry roads. That the woods had indeed been dark, but the path familiar.
“And the women? What about the women?”
Somehow, I knew it was Luther. His voice tinged with impatience, forceful enough to bring all other conversation to a halt.
“Not a peep from them.” This, Hans, who seemed amused at his report.
“You speak as though that’s a trait to be admired.” Luther again, and I found myself biting my tongue to keep back a retort. “Shall we see what all this fuss has been about?”
The next I knew, the tarp rustled above my head, raining down bits of straw and dust, and I looked up into bright morning sky.
“Sisters of Marienthrone—” again, his voice, with exaggerated grandeur—“may I welcome you to Torgau?”
I gripped the top of the wagon and used it to pull myself to my feet. At least, I assumed I was on my feet, as I could feel nothing of a surface below. Peering down, I saw a man dressed in simple, dark garb. His face was broad and kind—nothing even my limited experience would call handsome. But his eyes glistened with authority and triumph.
“You must be Herr Doktor Luther,” I said, giving no thought to what I would say if, indeed, he wasn’t.
“I am,” he said, then laughed. “You seem eager to escape the cart.”
Pain now sparked in my feet, and I stamped them, encouraging circulation. “I am.”
The tailgate had been lowered, and I inched my way along the edge of the cart, hoping to have full feeling in my feet before jumping. Like sheep at the cliff’s edge, one after the other, the sisters descended, some on their own power, others—like Sister Margitta—with unconcealed trepidation.
“Not so eager, then?” Luther stood at the gate, hand extended.
“Doesn’t Scripture tell us that the first shall be last?”
“You are the first, then?”
“In a sense, I suppose.” I bent at my knees, braced my hands on the lowered gate, and—ignoring his gesture of assistance—somehow got myself to the ground with as much grace as possible. My feet wobbled, my legs threatened to buckle, and my wrist took an uncomfortable twist as I tried to hold
myself steady.
“Whoops, there,” Luther said, stepping forward but stopping short of touching me. “We don’t want the first to be fallen.”
“I am Katharina von Bora.” How strange my name sounded, spoken aloud like that. All alone, stripped of any meaning or connection. Suddenly, I was six years old again, dropped into the home of a stranger, though I was fairly certain I wouldn’t spend this evening curled up in Luther’s lap. “I signed the letter we sent.”
“So you were the first to sign it?”
“I wrote it.”
A statement of fact, nothing more. Certainly not worth the rocking back on his heels, or the thin, approving whistle that came through his barely exposed teeth, but his admiration sparked a fuse of pride in me, and I was glad for the wimple that hid the flush I felt.
“Quite eloquent, I must say. You are a woman of words.”
“Just a woman. Though I don’t suppose we’ll be seen as such. Here, away.”
“And why not?”
He was challenging me, inviting further discourse, reminding me of the hours spent in catechism with Sister Elisabeth. I looked around at the sea of stained white robes, so unbefitting this environment, and ran my fingers along the edge of my veil.
“I imagine we’ll be objects of curiosity for some time. Pity, maybe? Hostility from those who will see us as having betrayed the Church. Sacred vessels. Brides of Christ. Abominations. Faithless, fallen.”
Words poured forth, and somewhere midstream I realized this was the longest uninterrupted speech I’d ever had with a man outside of a confessional. Luther, as one familiar with the sacrament, merely listened, his face unchanged, leaving no hint of his approval or disapproval. To my left, the sisters gathered like a cake newly sprung from a pan, holding the huddled shape from the night’s journey in the wagon. I alone had stepped free.
“Some of us,” I continued, hiding my own anxiety in the collective, “have no recollection of what it means to walk in a marketplace. Some have never handed money to a merchant or purchased cloth. We don’t know patterns, or how to even begin to appear—”
“Are you bemoaning your lack of vanity?”
The humor in his voice pierced me—not in any painful way, but in a manner that deflated my worry and afforded enough space for me to take a deep breath before responding.
“It is not vanity, sir, to wish simply to dress in a way that represents our freedom. I should think you would understand, having played such an instrumental role in attaining it for us.”
“Remember the words of our Savior, as recorded in Matthew’s Gospel. Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?”
Not even the quoting of Scripture could tame the smugness from his demeanor. The words of the Gospel rolled off his tongue as easily as the lyrics of tavern singers from my earliest memories with my father.
Frustration ignited within me, its heat no doubt coloring my cheeks. “I’m afraid you have me at quite the disadvantage, sir. I’ve not been given such unfettered access to the Scriptures. So while I am steadfast in my faith that he will provide all I need, I lack the words to engage in such an argument.”
To my surprise, he laughed—a great guffaw that caused the now-entwined sisters to startle.
“Oh, my, Katharina von Bora,” he said, chuckling through each syllable of my name. “I have known you for less than a quarter of an hour, and I can say with all honesty that I doubt you have ever—or will ever—lack words for any circumstances.”
A collective giggle came from the sisters, Girt’s loudest among them. I turned my head, expecting to silence them with a glare, but unable to control a smile.
“Well, I find myself in obedience to one part of the Savior’s command,” I said. “I’ve taken no thought. Nothing beyond escape. And now . . .” To my horror, my throat stung with the threat of tears, and if Luther doubted anything would render me unable to speak, he hadn’t taken into account the weight of all these women. They stared at me, not challenging, but searching. Girt, usually such a bluster of confidence, chewed her bottom lip. Of all, she had the most promising future, with love and marriage on the horizon. But what of pretty Ave, naive and unaware that there could be any darkness in a human soul? Or our oldest, Margitta, bent with age, knowing nothing but a life lived under the weight of a veil?
My eyes scanned the gathering, and I silently named each one.
Sister Girt.
Sister Gwenneth.
Sister Margitta.
Sister Magdalena.
Sister Maria.
Sister Anna.
Sister . . .
The next face became a blur, nothing more than a swath of flesh within the veil’s frame.
“Sister—” I spoke out loud, hoping the sound of my voice would bring the features into focus. Though I stared intently, doing so only made each individual woman blur. Nothing but white, a solid mass. And my legs began to tremble.
“Katharina?” It was Margitta’s voice, unmistakable in its quaver. “Are you all right?”
Everything disappeared. The sisters folded into a cloud, and the other souls surrounding—the onlookers who had gathered within my periphery—became a single multicolored ribbon wrapped around this tiny bit of earth. At the edge of hearing, men’s voices spoke in low, concerned tones. My mind emptied, save for the echo of Luther’s words from the moment before.
Take no thought for your life. What you shall eat. What you shall drink.
No, not Luther’s words. The words of Jesus Christ. Recorded and written, meant for comfort in just this time. Not unfamiliar at all. At least, not in form. But in meaning—until now they had been something akin to chastisement.
Take no thought of what ye shall eat. What ye shall drink. Because the Church would provide. Just enough to stave off hunger. Except when there wasn’t enough, and there’d be no recourse for more.
Or what ye shall wear. For you take on the robe, the wimple, the veil. Identical to your sisters. Set apart from the fickle fashions of the world.
Take no thought. And I hadn’t.
A hand steadied me, grasping my arm. A strong hand, a man’s hand, and a voice that sounded as distant as it seemed the first time I ever read his words. With his touch, everything—my balance and my thoughts—was restored.
“There, now.” Assurance, without patronization. “You all must be quite exhausted. Let’s get you something to eat, and to drink.”
“And to wear?” I said it without a single thought of its impertinence.
“Even so.” He dropped his grip, but hovered close and whispered words for me alone. “I know your fear. I may understand it better than any person alive. I know what it is to lead, and to bear the weight of those who follow. But our God is mighty in strength to take on such a burden. For now, take a moment to feel his pleasure in your obedience.”
He leaned away, scanned the crowd, and raised his hand to beckon a stout, red-faced woman from its midst.
“Frau Dunkel,” he said by way of introduction. “Take the ladies inside now, get them something to eat, and then show them each to a bed to rest. It’s been an arduous journey, as you can well imagine.”
“Aye, Doctor Luther,” Frau Dunkel said, her gaze and her voice full of reverence for the man. She began a purposeful stride out of the yard, moving as if she were a knight leading a charge rather than a smallish, round woman herding a crowd of weak and frightened nuns. Silently, we followed, nodding our veiled heads to the villagers who parted themselves like the Red Sea of Moses.
She led us into a long, low-ceilinged room lit only by the morning’s light streaming through the windows. A dozen rough-hewn tables were set in an orderly pattern, all square with four benches tucked beneath.
“This seems a fine establishment,” I said.
“Haven’t had a soul in here for days,” Frau Dunkel said, every hint of the civility and deference she’d
shown with Luther gone. “Got six rooms upstairs been sitting empty, waiting on your lot to arrive. Sacrifice for Christ, he calls it. Empty pocket is what I see.”
“I am sure your hospitality will not go unrewarded.” This from Margitta, whose strength appeared to be waning with each passing moment.
“This life or the next,” Frau Dunkel said, unsoftened. “Take yourselves a seat, and I’ll have some food brought out directly.”
The habit of silence clung to the sisters as we moved throughout the tables, pulled out the benches, and sat—hands folded in our laps, eyes cast down. Within minutes, the room was filled with noise as Frau Dunkel and a trail of girls—each a nesting-doll replica of her mother—burst from the kitchen, carrying trenchers heaped with bread and stacks of precariously balanced wooden bowls. These were the charge of the youngest of the girls, and she maneuvered through the tables with a practiced ease, saying, “Good morning, miss. And welcome,” as she placed a bowl in front of each of us. The girl couldn’t have been more than eight years old, pink-cheeked and bright-eyed, her hair an unremarkable shade of brown tied messily at her nape with a scrap of ribbon.
She was followed by an older girl, thinner and slightly taller, who carried a steaming crock of stew, which she ladled into each bowl, spilling nary a drop in the process.
“It’s lamb,” she said, responding to the silent question raised when Girt leaned forward to inhale the enticing scent. “Fit for Easter Monday, don’t you think?”
I thought of Sister Gerda, who would have been breaking her fast this morning had she been alive. She would have been delighted at the beauty, poise, and grace of these girls.
Another delivered the bread; two more brought cups to be filled with sweet, fresh water. Frau Dunkel herself carried nothing, only stood at the door and directed her charges in a voice of strident affection.
I, like all the sisters, remained motionless in the midst of the bustling service, and still after each bowl and cup had been filled. I had no memory of ever lifting a spoon without directed instruction. Someone needed to rise up, pray the blessing over the food, and give permission to eat. But who? Margitta, the oldest, seemed the most logical choice, but I could not catch her eye. So this, too, would fall to me. I braced my hands on the table and was about to stand when Frau Dunkel’s voice rang out.
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