Loving Luther

by Allison Pittman

  I told Marina nothing of the moments spent with Jerome by the fire, though she was well awake when I fell through the door. As she helped me with my gown, I knew she took my silence for a way to tamp down something of pleasurable significance, but I shared only the cruel things Frau Baumgartner said, and we spent the night side by side, speaking witty retorts to the ceiling.

  “Hold for a moment,” Christoph said. “There’s one thing missing. Something for your hands. To balance them. Right now they look ready to fly away.”

  “Your suggestion?” Marina asked, nibbling on a tart from the serving table.

  “Do you have a ring? Any sort, not even precious.”

  “You’re an artist,” Marina insisted. “You can’t just paint one on her hand?”

  He uttered a condescending scoff. “How can I, not knowing exactly how her hand will look with a ring on its finger? Maybe even a simple strap of leather . . .”

  “She has a ring.”

  I broke my pose completely to confirm the voice. Luther, looking as disheveled as I’d ever seen him, wearing the same road-worn clothing as the night before.

  “Good morning, Herr Doktor,” Marina said, offering a playful curtsey. He smiled at the deference and gave a soft kiss to her cheek.

  “And, pray tell, what jewels am I not aware of?” I asked, though I had some idea of his meaning.

  “I never said jewels. I said ring. And I’m certain you know of what I speak.” He took a piece of fruit from the bowl at the center of the table, cut into it, and used the knife point to spear the bite into his mouth. All as if he weren’t suggesting I take the ring I’d worn as a symbol of my commitment to Christ and wear it as some token accessory to appease an artist with minimal skill.

  “I can’t wear that again.”

  “Can’t you?” He spoke as if we were debating something as meaningless as the ripeness of the fruit. “By whose authority?”

  “By my own.”

  Ignoring me, he turned his attention to Marina. “Do you know where she keeps it?”

  Marina looked to me. She knew—the little white pouch fashioned from my final, hidden pocket.

  “Go.” If nothing else, I wanted her to fetch it at my behest, not his. “And, Christoph, find Frau Reichenbach. Perhaps she has something more suitable to be immortalized.”

  “I should have thought of that first,” he said, and left, newly inspired.

  Luther, meanwhile, took to filling a plate with what he could find on the table. Buns, fruit, even a spoonful of porridge gone so cold it wobbled as an intact mass.

  “It is a good thing for you the family leaves the breakfast out so late. Most laze-a-beds need wait for dinner.”

  “Is that what you think I’ve been?” He took a seat at the table and gestured that I might join him. I did, only so that we would not have to shout our conversation across the room.

  “I suppose I’m just surprised you didn’t rise with your bedmate.”

  “I was asleep before his arrival and rose before the cockcrow. Did he not wonder about my early absence?” Luther was teasing, something I’d grown used to over the course of our conversations. Trying, I knew, to elicit some news of what occurred last night. I confined myself to truth.

  “I did not see any of the family this morning. They departed before I stepped a foot outside my door.”

  He sobered, then quickly feigned objectivity. “Did they? Why, it’s not more than an hour’s ride to their home. Must have been some pressing business.”

  “Indeed.” I reached for a roll and pinched off a bit of crust. “Do you think it’s possible that I might be part of that pressing business?”

  “In what way?” That was the moment I knew he would never be able to hide any truth from me.

  “What did you tell him, Luther? About me?”

  “Only that I thought you suitable for introduction. Well matched in humor, intellect. Age.”

  “How well matched are we, exactly, in age?”

  “A difference that could be measured in months.”

  “More than a dozen months?”

  He squirmed. “Yes.”

  “In whose favor?”

  “Are you forgetting my preface? That you were well matched in intellect? That—that, my dear—is a field in which you are favored.”

  “Because he is still a student?”

  “Kate, Kate, Kate . . . aren’t we all perpetual students in life?”

  I’d picked my roll to pieces, wanting nothing more than to hurl the largest remnant into Luther’s face. Sensing my frustration, he moved his food aside and stilled my hand under his.

  “Listen, my girl. If you do not find him to your liking, you’ve no obligation to grant him favor. I thought only to facilitate an introduction.”

  I felt the stinging prick of tears and looked away. “It’s just that . . . it was a shock. Meaning, I would hope his feelings—if there are, indeed, feelings—to be genuine.” I withdrew my hand and pressed my fingertips to my forehead, a further attempt to keep my tears at bay.

  “One man cannot dictate the heart of another. So tell me—” he hesitated, gathering his thoughts, seeming to weigh whether or not to continue his question—“to the extent that good taste permits: do you find yourselves to each other’s liking?”

  I bristled. When I thought of the hours, days, now weeks that I’d lived in freedom, I owed him all. And time stretching back, to the ideas he planted in the minds of those who secured my rescue, to the bold message he delivered so that I might be a woman secure in my salvation, a follower of Christ and not a prisoner of the Church. I owed him my life, my breath. But this question, this simple inquiry to my heart . . . I perceived no debt.

  “I simply wish, sir, not to be made a fool. There are so many ways in which we are not well matched. And I do not have any worldly experience to measure my response to his advances.”

  Luther’s brows rose at the word advances, but I plunged on.

  “I haven’t the youth or the position for indiscretion. I cannot make a mistake; do you understand? And if you are leading me into a path—not of wickedness, but folly—know this: I will hold you to account.”

  “Why are you so frightened?”

  “Do you honestly believe, given any circumstances other than your direction, a man such as Jerome Baumgartner—” I stopped, not willing to give words to those moments that should stay tucked as dark memories of the heart.

  “Is he so much?”

  “He is young.”

  “As are you.”

  “And his family—”

  “No greater claim to nobility than yours.”

  “And he is . . . handsome.”

  The pause that followed stretched, like the abandoned canvas across the frame, its expanse filled with my every flaw. My eyes, at once too narrow and closely set. My nose with its peculiar point. My hair, listless without Marina’s intervention. All of me so very plain, even a witless artist knew I needed light and weight to capture an image worth painting. I expected Luther to reply with the Scripture meant to give comfort to all women who harbored my insecurity. Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised. No woman who had felt the touch, the kiss, the warmth of a man like Jerome wished to capitalize on her fear of the Lord.

  Still, he did not speak. Scripture, I’d learned, was always quick to leap to his tongue, so I knew he was searching for his own words. Comfort, encouragement. Condolence, perhaps.

  When at last he spoke, he dropped his voice to little more than a whisper, though we still had the great hall to ourselves, and half of it between us and the door, lest anyone stood on the other side to listen.

  “Were I to see you . . .” Something caught in his throat, and he began again. “Were I to see you in some marketplace, and be ignorant of your character and wit, I would say to myself, What a charming girl. Lovely in face, and enticing in figure.”

  My breath caught at the word girl.

  “But,” he c
ontinued, “I would make no move to speak. Because it stands to reason that, around some corner, in some other shop, there would be a young man better suited to your attentions.”

  “And then you would forget me?”

  “Yes. As I must. As happens with every man and woman we encounter who isn’t meant to occupy our days, or proves unworthy to do so. It may be, in time, that our young man is nothing more than one you pass in the marketplace.”

  “Our young man?”

  “If the match proves itself out, I’ll accept credit as God’s instrument.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  Before he could answer, Marina arrived, carrying the familiar pouch, with Christoph fast on her heels.

  “Frau Reichenbach would have you go to her room, if you like. Take your pick from what she has. And I’ll gladly accompany you. Help you choose what would be best.”

  “No,” I said, taking the pouch from Marina. “I’m wearing donated clothes, living under a borrowed roof. That must suffice.”

  I opened the pouch and dropped the ring into my palm. Simple, solid gold. Thin enough to be painted with a single horsehair strand.

  “Let me have that,” Luther said, and without question I gave it over to him. “Do you know why we wear such a ring, when it is meant to symbolize marriage, on our fourth finger? Because the ancient Greeks believed that, from that finger, an artery flowed directly to the heart. And so—” he turned my palm up and touched the base of my finger—“this point was the shortest distance to the seat of love.”

  Behind him, Marina sighed. “How romantic.”

  “So until such time, my Kate, as you find the man who would be worthy of placing such a ring on your finger, I suggest a new home for this one.” He took my right hand, then, and slid the band over the knuckle of the first finger. “You are no less a daughter of our heavenly Father, and as a Christian, no less a bride of Christ. But this is a placement of singularity and value.”

  There, at the Reichenbachs’ table, surrounded by the remains of the morning meal, I felt I’d been a participant in a ceremony unsurpassed by any I’d ever seen. Sealed to myself, exalted to my own esteem. Powerful in a way I could never put into words.

  “It’s just the thing,” Christoph said with dramatic reverence. “Quick, the light is perfect.”

  Back I went to the seat, my body leaning across the expanse, only now instead of folding my arms in casual repose, I rested one arm across that of the chair and extended my right hand, first finger slightly aloft, toward the window.

  “You’re gazing . . . ,” Christoph said as he worked. “You’re watching. . . .”

  Luther left the next day, determined to ride south, intending to riddle the route with sermons in an effort to restore peace. There was no conflict, he said, that could not be settled by the teachings of Christ and the Holy Word of God. He deemed his leaving to be an action to ensure the safety of the family, since his outspoken support of the aristocracy branded him as a target to those who fueled the uprising.

  I teased him a little, as we gathered in the front courtyard to see him off. “Will you come back, then, and entertain us with songs of your exploits?”

  “I hope to come back with reports of peace in our land,” he said.

  “I hope you come back with my horse,” Herr Reichenbach said to our amusement. “It’s the best I’ve got.”

  I worried less about Luther’s safety when I realized he would be riding with a company of men, armed and disciplined, as adroit with Scripture as they were with various weaponry. The armor of God, it seemed, would be sufficient to protect their mission, but sword and crossbow might be needed to protect the man. Looking at him atop his horse, with his patched coat and dirty stockings, I didn’t think I’d ever seen a man less likely to engage in physical battle. But the danger, I knew, was very real, a fact confirmed by Elsa’s grim expression.

  I could’ve admitted to feeling a spot of grimness in myself at Luther’s departure and sought distraction where I could. As such, I didn’t mind the time spent posing for Christoph’s art, not caring a bit about the finished work. My face was not likely one to be known to posterity, and I had little hope of the painting’s being displayed anywhere but the attic once Christoph found another master to take him under tutelage.

  Such distraction was necessary for the first two days after Luther’s departure, as I saw not a hair of and heard not a word from Jerome. I enticed Christoph to continue work on my portrait late into the afternoons just so I would have the chance to stare out the window, watchful of any sign of arrival. Hour after endless hour, my body posed in longing, my mind following suit, I relived the evening by the fire. Heard his words, felt his kiss. I studied my hand, now wearing its ring, and remembered the feel of his face upon it. I wrote an impossible script, giving myself bold and reckless dialogue. In some scenarios, demanding a promise of marriage before allowing any such embrace. In others, abandoning all inhibitions to declare my love.

  For it was, indeed, love. I knew it that night, had wrestled with it even during my conversation with Luther, and carried the burden of it for those two days. On the third, with the sound of a rider on the drive, even before he came fully into view, my love burst from the pocket of fear in which I’d kept it contained. Bounding from my pose, ignoring Christoph’s displeasure, I took myself through the front door, Marina on my heels. Jerome dismounted before the horse was at a full stop, ran to me—straight to me—and took my hands in his. Brought them to his lips. There I saw my newly donned ring, touched to the softest part of his cheek. His blue eyes, looking like the sky itself shone through them. Sunlight warm upon my face, more so when he smiled.

  “I’ve been away too long.”

  “Have you?” All of my imaginary recklessness departed the minute he stood in reach of my words.

  “I have, occupied by family matters that I won’t bore you with.”

  In my heart, I knew he was protecting me. Without fear of pride, I knew I must have been a topic of some conversation in the Baumgartner home because I was the object of so much unspoken opinion during our evening together here. I’d not be so vain as to say a battle was waged, but his mother laid plain the fact that her view of me differed vastly from that of her son, and while she may have been able to whisk him away in the predawn light, he was here now, in bright midafternoon.

  Behind me, Marina said, “Oh! Look who’s come to greet you!” Her words carried enough warning for Jerome and me to step away from each other as Herr Reichenbach and Elsa emerged, their voices raised in welcome and greeting.

  Reichenbach clapped Jerome on the back. “Will you be staying with us, my boy? Always a place at the table for you.”

  “For supper,” Jerome said, “if you’ll have me.”

  “And the night?” Elsa implored. “You know there’s room.”

  “I think not.” Here, he looked at me, and some instinct bade me drop my gaze.

  “Very well.” Herr Reichenbach took his wife’s arm, and they went off in search of the cook, to inform him of the newest guest at table.

  “Marina.” I worked my voice into a tone of authority, something I rarely used. “Would you go inside, please, and tell Christoph that I won’t be sitting anymore today? I’ll be—” I looked up at Jerome—“in the garden? Would that be a pleasant place to spend the afternoon?”

  Jerome took my arm with all the proprietary confidence Herr Reichenbach had shown taking Elsa’s. “I can think of nothing more.”

  With Marina dispatched, we began a slow stroll around the side of the house, the gravel path crunching beneath our feet.

  “What is so funny?” he asked, making me aware that I’d let a giggle escape.

  I told him about my childhood days at Brehna and the wooden shoes. “Perhaps that’s why the Reichenbachs have such a resounding surface on their garden path,” I said, connecting my thoughts. “So that we can hardly wander off undetected. Sister Gerda could follow our steps.” Then I had to tell him about Sister Gerda,
too.

  “Will you always be so concerned with the protection of your honor?” By now we’d turned a corner, and I knew we were out of view from any window in the house. So, too, were we safe from undetected discovery, as any would-be chaperone’s steps would sound just as loud.

  “Will you always make me feel it needs to be protected?”

  His eyes teased, matching my levity. “I hope to.”

  CHAPTER 20

  IN AN UNLIKELY turn of events, I found myself playing the part of the muse to Christoph’s continued efforts to perfect his skill. After completing my initial portrait, he declared a desire to paint a series of the wives of the patriarchs. For his first endeavor, I was to be Rebekah, and the fountain in the center of the garden would play the role of the well where she was discovered to be Isaac’s bride. Wrapped in yards of a fine, gauzy cloth and given a vase to hold upon my shoulder, I spent untold hours staring into the face of the horse groomer chosen to play the part of the servant who held out a handful of jewels. From the story, I knew the prizes to be a bracelet and a gold ring for the young woman’s nose.

  Christoph instructed me to look the groomer straight in the eye, intended to demonstrate an acknowledgment and acceptance of my fate. I complied, imagining him to be Luther, fulfilling such a divine errand in introducing me to Jerome. He had claimed me just as if he’d put a ring through my nose, leaving me no choice but to see God’s purpose. Posing for Christoph afforded me hours of contemplation. When my eyes lost their focus and my shoulder ached under its burden, my mind set loose, composing endless conversations I would never have.

  I imagined seeing my father, telling him, with appropriate humility, that I was living just as he always said our family deserved. My temporary home, my peers, my daily life—all of it fitting our family’s station. A life I might have enjoyed had I been born two generations earlier. I like to imagine he’d be pleased, selflessly thankful for God’s provision for his daughter. And yet, my clearest memory of my father remained his pale, puffy face at the convent gate. And nothing but silence since. When I searched the darker recesses of my heart, I knew my true motivation was to gloat to my stepmother, to let her see how far I’d risen above her expectation and desire. When I caught myself in those thoughts, I closed my eyes for as long as Christoph would allow, praying for God to forgive my pride.