Loving Luther

by Allison Pittman

  But then, even in the midst of repentance, I’d wonder—was it pride? Was it truly a sin to be happy, and grateful for that happiness? And yet, how could I ever reach back to people I’d left behind and share with them my happiness, when they had done everything in their power to deny me? When I gave my prayers of thanks, as I did to God every morning and every night on bended knees beside my bed, I thanked him for his provision. For this comfortable home, no matter how temporary, and the graciousness of my hosts, no matter how coerced, and all the small comforts I never imagined during my sparse existence at Marienthrone. I thanked him for granting me understanding of the gospel, and for Luther’s work in securing that for all. Those and more, my pious thoughts in prayer.

  Always, though, while draped in silks, playing the silent role of a woman on the brink of marriage, my mind wandered to Jerome. Not until I met him did I fully understand why the Church kept its consecrated brides of Christ locked behind convent walls. If one as homely as I could be brought to the precipice of sin, what chance would a beauty like Therese have of standing unscathed? Having just a taste of what it meant to be a woman in a man’s embrace, to experience the nascent longing that leads to a fulfillment of purpose, I found myself restless and unsatisfied during any moment spent away from Jerome Baumgartner.

  The joyous counter to that dilemma was the fact that I had very few moments spent away from him. He joined us nearly every evening for supper, along with a myriad of neighbors. On evenings when musicians entertained us in exchange for a meal, Jerome and I danced until we were breathless. Nights when we had no music, we walked the extent of the gardens in the moonlight. In either case, our bodies moved together in perfect concert. To be polite, of course, I danced with other guests, as did he, but our eyes found each other’s between every turn, and when the music was lively enough for a volta, I declined any other partner. Jerome would grasp my waist, lift me up, spin me nearly all around, and those tiny wisps of time passed like moments of pure flight. Sometimes when we walked in the garden, he would hum a tune and do the same, only holding me aloft longer than any proper choreography would allow. From her place in the shadows, Marina would offer sweet applause, and we would separate and bow. In Marina’s presence, he would kiss my hand. When I dismissed her to prepare our room, Jerome would pull me to the shadows, take me in his arms, and kiss me until my whole being felt like it was trapped in a volta spin.

  Rather than live as the perpetual houseguest on the charity of the Reichenbachs, I was eventually installed as something of a tutor, giving daily instruction in Latin to the children for two hours each afternoon. This was yet another aspect of my life to be arranged by Luther, proposed to the delight of the parents and despair of the children. However, I proved myself a competent teacher and felt I more than earned my keep.

  “Do you think the children would object if I were to sit in on their lessons?” Jerome asked one evening. It was the tail end of June, warm and near dark. Inside, a houseful of guests drank and danced, reveling in the summer solstice, mindless of the pagan roots of the celebration. The festivities allowed us to slip away unnoticed, and we’d walked clear to the back wall of the garden. “My Latin is deplorable. Always has been. Since I was a child.”

  “So long ago as that?”

  “Then again, I don’t think I would learn anything from you, either. I would be far too distracted.”

  I stood still, waiting for his kiss. He’d done so often enough in the weeks since the first that I anticipated the act. I marked the change in his voice, the trailing of the final syllable. There’d be a glint in his eye, an angling of his face. And always, a preceding touch. The tips of his fingers to my jaw, guiding my lips to his, as if they couldn’t make their way if left to their own devices.

  And yet, despite the routine, this kiss—like the first, like every one since—turned me into something like a molten taper, great globs of my resolve dripping away with each bit of his insistence. I sensed a wick, running down the length of me, fashioned from vows and prayer. It diminished with every minute spent in his embrace and now burned double-bright, threatening to drag me into darkness.

  “Wait.” I took a moment to catch my breath.

  His face hovered inches above mine, far enough that I could see its handsome planes, chiseled sharper in the moonlight. Somewhere behind me, a torch glowed, the orange light dancing in his eyes. Every warning I’d ever heard about the evil of men’s intent might have proved him to be the devil himself, if he hadn’t smiled and doused the flame.

  “There’s no one here.” He gathered me closer, as if those words and that gesture would serve to quell my fear.

  I pressed my hands against his doublet and held him off. “No, Jerome.”

  Looking chagrined, he backed away. “Forgive me, Katharina. For my forward behavior. I didn’t realize—”

  “Don’t apologize.” I kept my hand pressed against his coat, aware of the pulse at my wrist, how it beat against his heart. “You’ve done nothing I haven’t . . . permitted.”

  Relief washed across his face, and I saw for the first time what he might have looked like as a boy, newly released from guilt. I longed to comb the fallen black curls from his brow, but dared not bring any part of my flesh into contact with his, no matter how innocent the touch. I stepped away, allowing the darkness to cool my cheeks. Strains of music and revelry made their way even to this great distance. I forced my breath to match the rhythm and turned toward the laughter, wishing for a moment of lightness to descend between us.

  “Shall I walk you back?” When I declined, he led me to sit on the stone bench with only a pinch to my sleeve. He sat at a distance so respectable, the holy book from which the priest read at mass would fit between us.

  “Don’t be angry with me, Katharina. I couldn’t bear it.”

  “How could I be? Without turning against myself?” The need to soothe him took me by surprise, and I was glad of the expanse of stone, or I might have taken his petulant head to my lap. “It’s only . . . I don’t think this is what Luther intended when he arranged for us to meet.”

  “Really?” Jerome wagged his brows mischievously, becoming more and more of a boy. “Then you don’t know him as well as I do. He’s hardly the saint his followers would have you believe, and well aware of the workings—”

  “Stop!” It was the second time this evening—the second time since our acquaintance—that I put my hand up against him, but this time it was a playful slap in attempt to stop his words, and my breath was short from laughter. “You really are such a child.”

  “Am I?” He grinned, but made it clear he expected an answer.

  I sobered. Of course he was a man, every bit and breath of him. But I couldn’t say as much out loud. In that moment, the very word—man—carried a weight of sinful thought. I fought for clarity and composure.

  “The Apostle Paul,” I said, then repeated the name as Jerome appeared to protest, “says that there comes a time when we must put away childish things. And I fear that, these evenings, my actions with you . . . I have been childish.”

  “No.” He leaned forward, but kept himself behind our agreed invisible barrier. “You are a woman.”

  “Acting like—”

  “A woman.”

  He was close again, filling all the space between us, filling all my senses, and the only defense I had was my voice.

  “I haven’t been giving thought to the consequences of my actions. What you must think of me. What . . . my sisters. We risked everything, and here I fritter with this dalliance.”

  “Is that all I am to you, Katharina?”

  I’d hurt him, or was close to it. His eyes never left mine, and his lips remained parted after saying my name.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what you are because I don’t know . . . anything. I’ve never been a young girl, not in the way young girls are out in the world. I’ve never been silly.”

  “Do you feel you’re being silly now?”

  And there he voiced
my greatest fear.

  “I feel an obligation to Luther.”

  He broke our gaze, briefly. “As do I.”

  The summer night took on a chill, not from the perfumed air of the garden, but from my own lungs, filling with winter, forming a fragile, tight frost. “Is that, then, why you’ve been so liberal with your attentions?”

  He laughed, and I felt a tiny crack of warmth. “If anything, it is my fear of him that has kept my attentions at bay. He told me he was bringing a young woman here. Someone close to my age, bright. And that he thought we might get on well enough with each other. And I thought it would be enjoyable to have someone new to talk to. To dance with. But then . . .”

  Somehow, my hand was in his again, palm up, his thumb against my wrist. His lips against my pulse, and my heart a wild tumult within. The next I knew, he was on his knees, gazing up, and speaking.

  “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

  He bowed, touched his head to my knee, and when he looked up—this was new. This man, this touch, this look that turned his eyes to embers.

  “Allow me, then, to put away my childish behavior and present myself to you as a man. A worthy man of God, who offers you his hand in marriage.”

  A new burst of music came from the house, reminding me that I should be feeling joy, yet I wished with all my heart we’d stayed for the dancing.

  “You can’t mean that, Jerome.”

  He looked shocked. Ready to protest. “It’s what—”

  “Luther wants?”

  I’d touched a bit of truth, because he sank back, but then resurged. “It’s what I want.”

  “Why?”

  Back in the house, I knew couples were reeling, and I counted the measures waiting for his answer, wondering which he would choose. He wanted to marry me to be a part of Luther’s grand liberation. He wanted to establish himself as a man, independent of his family. We’d been too familiar with each other, and I’d ignited some level of lust that begged for marriage to legitimize it.

  “You’re trembling, my darling. Why are you so afraid? I thought—I’d hoped—you’d be happy.”

  “You mean you’ve thought about it before this minute?”

  “Truthfully? No. But now I can see nothing else.”

  I was melting again. Not with the flame of passion from moments before, but a gentle, loose puddling. What must it be like to come to such rash decisions? All my life, I’d lived without my own will, and the two commitments I’d made—to take the veil, and to leave it—came after months of agonizing thought. Here he could decide on a spur to propose marriage? As if I could respond in like time? My foot tapped to the music. Faster, even.

  “Your parents would never approve.”

  “My parents have no say in whom I love.”

  Then the music stopped, and I feared his last words would be swept away with the final notes.

  “Do you, Jerome?” Before meeting him, I’d never longed for a man to love me. So many mountains loomed ahead, an entire life for which I’d been ill prepared. How could I survive without such a promise?

  He answered as I knew he would—as I hoped he would—with a kiss. One that brought him up from his knees to sit beside me, then brought me to my feet, full against him. He trailed the words down the heat of my throat, until no other possible truth remained.

  “I love you, Katharina von Bora. I love you.”

  I said nothing because I could offer nothing but tears and disbelief until finally he pulled away, gripping my arms, holding me in a still, silent dance, and I confessed my own.

  CHAPTER 21

  IT WAS MY IDEA to keep our engagement a secret, at least until Luther returned and I could send word to my father.

  “I suppose it would be more appropriate for me to ask him for your hand,” Jerome said during one of our daily strolls in the garden.

  “My father gave up his authority to grant any kind of blessing the day he left me at the gate of Brehna.” I winced at the sound of my own bitterness. “Luther’s blessing carries a much greater weight. I’ll write to Father once that is secured.”

  Throughout the rest of the summer, the Reichenbachs included me in accepting all sorts of invitations to neighboring homes. During those times, Jerome and I sought to avoid suspicion and graciously conversed with the person seated near us at table. We danced with different partners, holding each other only with our eyes at the turns. Rumors, we knew, spun rampant around us, but we gave no outward cause for suspicion of either his intent or my character.

  We kept our plans from his parents, too, more at my insistence than his. Nothing seemed more fragile than this love, given only sporadic, stolen life. I likened it to a spider’s web, the thinnest filament stringing our moments together. Here in the garden, there in the shadows. Dancing and summer suppers. His mother’s great, bulging eyes tracked our every move, measuring the distance between us. She counted every word exchanged and visibly twitched at any inadvertent touch.

  “Mother has to think that it is her idea.” We were standing in the dining hall of his home, listening to poor verse being recited by a poorer poet. Jerome’s whispers landed just behind my ear, and it took all my strength to stand upright. “Wait, and she’ll see you often enough, in my company. In our home and in the homes of our friends. And she’ll think—well, what a lovely young lady for my Jerome.”

  I bit my lip not to laugh at the idea, and even that subtle of a response earned a withering glare. If anything, Frau Baumgartner was probably trying to decide just who had invited this lovely young lady into her home.

  During the stretches of days when we did not see each other, Jerome wrote to me. Single pages, folded and set with his distinctive family seal. Elsa had made it clear that no messages were to be given over to anyone in the household without her knowledge, so she knew of the frequent deliveries. She did, however, allow my privacy in the business of opening and reading, which I conducted in the confines of my room.

  My darling Katharina . . .

  My cherished Katharina . . .

  My beloved K . . .

  He wrote silly verses and intimate accounts of our time spent together. He posed questions for our next conversation and gave excuses for his prolonged absence, even though our days apart were never more than three in number.

  Family obligations will keep me from darkening your step this evening. . . .

  If I must blame a demon for keeping me abed, it is none other than the fourth glass of port our host forced upon me. . . .

  Mother is hosting a banquet in Father’s honor, and has demanded my presence, along with an apparently select few from our social circle. . . .

  This last one prompted the first chilly rift between my host family and me, as they, too, had been denied an invitation to the Baumgartners’ dinner. Mid-August, nearing summer’s end and Herr Baumgartner’s birthday, it was apparently an annual event, much anticipated, and socially imperative. This year, the summer of their remarkable hospitality, was the first in which the Reichenbachs had not attended.

  I learned this at dinner, the day I received Jerome’s note, after conversationally inquiring what would prompt a banquet in Herr Baumgartner’s honor, and why we would just be hearing about it now.

  “We’ve known about it for months,” Elsa said, her lips tight with civility. “Since before you arrived.”

  “Then of course you should go.” I skimmed over Jerome’s words. “He says, regretfully, that I have not been extended an invitation, but surely you—”

  “We’ve not.” Herr Reichenbach ripped the tiny leg from his quail and devoured it. He and Elsa exchanged a look, each warning the other, and then the meal resumed in silence.

  After that, I specifically set about to break Elsa’s rule about correspondence. Ignoring the ungraciousness of my actions, I instructed Marina to intercept any messenger before he met up with the mistress of the house and to bring direc
tly any letters addressed to me. In turn, I gave all of my responses to her, to be secreted away by any of the household servants sent out on errand. I only hoped that Jerome was taking similar precautions to keep the extent of our communication hidden from his parents.

  It occurred to me that I was in quite the same situation as I’d been in Marienthrone, with whispers and messages and unspoken aspirations. Only Marina knew—with certainty—my love for Jerome and his for me. Others might have guessed and gossiped, but no one ever spoke of it aloud in my presence. In fact, a growing silence began to engulf me. Conversations halted when I entered a room. Evenings fell to long, quiet suppers where guests and travelers once crowded around the table.

  Jerome’s visits became matters of awkward, unannounced calling. His invitation to supper was no longer unspoken or expected, and when he joined us, the conversation never ascended beyond cordiality. Just so, my own place in the house suffered a similar diminution.

  “I’m sure it’s just the summer coming to an end,” Marina assured me one evening. She was brushing my hair, now grown to rest comfortably on my shoulders, the stroke of the bristles creating a soothing effect. “People have harvests to oversee and houses to prepare for winter. Saw it all the time at the Brummbär. Nothing like the short days and cold nights to make a family want to stay closer to home.”

  “But that’s just it.” I failed to keep the petulance out of my reply. “I’ve been feeling—all this time—like I’m a part of the family. Maybe because I’ve never had family, but you have.”