“What did you—?”
“Oh, not to me, of course.” He laughed, deeming the misunderstanding a trifle. As if in a divided second of time my future hadn’t been secure.
“Oh,” I said, my composure as unstable as my step. “I only thought—”
“I meant, as a theoretical state. Do you want to be married? Would you want to be someone’s wife?”
“God said it is good that I do so.”
“Yes, yes.” He held my arm tight, still. Guiding my steps closer to his. “But is it what you want? Do you think it would make you happy? Would you have been happy with young Baumgartner? Don’t you think by now you would have run out of things to say to each other?”
I smiled. “There are many ways for a couple to communicate.”
“Saucy girl. Now, answer my question. Is it the desire of your heart to be married?”
“It is.” Never before had I been so grateful to be in a public place. We shared the street with a multitude of people, and for all they knew, we were discussing the pattern of the clouds against the sky.
“And do you still harbor feelings for the young man? Or is your heart open to the affections of another?”
“I have no claim to Jerome, and no control of my heart, other than to love God.”
“But you’ve heard nothing from him?”
“From Jerome? Nothing. From God? He speaks to me in der Krimskrams. Bits and pieces here and there, telling me to listen. And wait. And trust him to meet all of my needs.”
“And you need a husband.”
It was a statement, not a question. Whether its truth came from God’s command or Luther’s sense of duty, I could not tell.
“Someday, maybe,” I said. “But for now I am content.”
“Are you?” He didn’t believe me either.
“I’ve been working with the gardener, preparing the soil to plant. He’s given me my own corner. I also have my own pig to raise, and their cook is teaching me too. More than just roasting hazelnuts. Next time you come for dinner, I’ll prepare something for you. I think you’ll be impressed.”
“So, you’re preparing yourself to be a lady of some great house, then?”
I laughed. “Or the wife of a pig farmer.”
“Perhaps a great pig farmer.”
“If he were kind, and he loved me, I could ask for no more.”
We’d arrived at the Cranachs’, and I sensed my steps slowing. I didn’t want to go in. Despite the feasting that awaited, the music and the dancing and the laughter and games, I knew the minute we walked through the door I’d be pulled away. Or he’d be pulled away. No doubt, a handful of guests among the horde came to celebrate a wedding as an excuse to see the fugitive monk who had called the Church to task. To me, though, he held no celebrity. I’d grown comfortable with his presence beside me. Our conversations and comfortable silence. I wanted a few more minutes, a few more steps. An afternoon, or more. More.
I didn’t want to lose him to those less deserving.
I didn’t want to lose him at all.
CHAPTER 28
But I did lose him.
I lost him to the summer, with its long days and mild evenings—time for him to travel to neighboring towns and villages, where emerging Protestants called for his teaching. I lost him to the pulpit and the hours dedicated to preparing the sermons he preached behind it. I lost him to his friends, who called upon him to be the guest in their homes and at their tables, who kept him as a hostage of hospitality for weeks at a time. I lost him to his enemies, those who saw his journeys, his teaching, his fellowship as a threat to not only the Church, but his loyalty to our country. I lost him to the Scriptures and the hours spent toiling in translation.
Most of all, I lost him to himself.
For me, he became a fleeting shadow. Cordial and proper. Almost paternal. Talking to Luther became something like talking to a priest on the other side of the confessional screen. Only, instead of listing my sins, I listed my accomplishments from the time since our last visit. I learned how to coax the sweetness out of berries too tart for strudel. I survived the butchering of my first hog. I completed my reading of the Gospel of Mark and prayed for the time when all who had a desire to read it could do so.
Nothing reached him. He remained passive and polite—frustratingly so—and distant in a way he hadn’t been since he first handed me down from the wagon in Torgau.
By autumn, Barbara Cranach and I had become close friends, and I asked her if she’d noticed a change in Luther’s demeanor.
“With me, I mean.” We were working side by side, bundling herbs to dry. It never ceased to amaze me how a mistress of so fine a house as this dedicated herself to any task at hand.
“He’s a mercurial one, that man is,” she said, wrapping a bunch of basil with thin brown twine. “Always has been: bold one moment, and then the next—like he’s realized just how far afield he’s gone. His followers don’t like to think he has a weakness of any kind, but he does. He has fears, just as we all do.”
I gathered a fresh bunch of the herb and smelled its sweetness. Unable to resist, I pinched off a leaf, put it in my mouth, and bit down, hoping the freshness would flavor my words—conveying my questions while masking my intent.
“Is he afraid of me, do you think?”
“Of you? Why should he be?”
“Not of me, completely, but of what he might . . . feel for me?”
It was the first I’d spoken aloud of such a possibility, and if nothing else I owed Barbara Cranach a debt of gratitude for not bursting into laughter at the thought.
“He cares for you a great deal,” she said. “I know that.”
“I know that too. I’ve always thought of him as a dear friend.”
“And he thinks of you as the same.”
“Yes.” I took the length of twine she gave me and began twisting it.
“But you wonder if there could ever be more between you?”
“Yes.”
“Would you like there to be?”
A pause. “Yes.” I swallowed the basil, felt it catch in my throat, making it impossible for me to say anything more in the moment.
“We’ve all said that he should marry. That he cannot speak out against imposed celibacy on the clergy while he himself abides by it. I can’t imagine you wouldn’t make as fine a wife as anybody. I can have Lucas speak to him, if you like. Make your case.”
“No!” Thankfully, I’d swallowed the herb, or I might have choked on it before stopping her. “I would never want that—to be an obligation. I only wondered if—”
“If he cares for you?” Her kind eyes sparkled with the question, and I knew for a moment what it must feel like to have a mother.
“Something like that, yes.”
“Oh, my girl.” She set aside her task. “Think of all that is in our Martin’s head and heart. His life is a gift to so many people. He doesn’t live with the same luxury that we do, finding our own path. He’s forging a path for . . . for everybody. Those who will love and follow him, as well as those who won’t. Left to his own devices, I wouldn’t be surprised if he never marries, only because he cannot justify the time to pursue a woman in courtship. But for you, there’d be no pursuit, would there?”
The grin that accompanied her question was almost wicked, and I felt the color rising on my cheeks.
“I like him,” I said, in some attempt to maintain my composure and pride. “That is all. And I suppose I was worried that I’d done something to make him uncomfortable. Because he’s seemed ill at ease of late. I wouldn’t want to be a distraction.”
“Well, if it’s any comfort, I don’t know that you could be a distraction.”
I said nothing, because her words weren’t a comfort at all. Only proof of what I suspected: that Luther saw me as nothing more than any other person—man or woman—who supped at his elbow and sat across from him by the fire, listening to his teaching and searching out his wisdom.
“Please,” I said, to
uching my idle hand to her sleeve, “say nothing to him—to anyone—about this conversation? Sometimes the spinster in me gets ideas, and I don’t think about the consequences of sharing them. Having spent so many years in silence, I suppose I haven’t mastered the art of casual conversation.”
She smiled at my little joke, though she was far too intuitive to accept the truth of it. “I shall be like a stone. Your confidence, unbreakable.”
It was a crisp, cold night in late October when I first had reason to question Barbara’s fealty. Luther arrived, late afternoon, hours before supper and invited to stay—a familiar pattern. I hadn’t seen him since voicing to Barbara the truth of my affections, so I well understood the knots in my stomach. My confession to her served as a confession to myself, and seeing him in this new light gave him a glow that made it impossible to look either at him or away.
“Herr Luther.” I greeted him with a dip of my head and a dip of my knees. More formal than necessary, but a fitting cover for the imbalance I felt. An excuse to avert my eyes. When I did look up, as I had to, he was glancing away. Equally formal.
“Fräulein.” Not Kate, and he spoke as if we were being introduced for the first time.
Throughout the evening, he conversed around me, as if obeying some silent instruction to include me. He was kind. And polite. Complimentary of my cooking, but refusing seconds, even though the last time he’d eaten my Semmelknödel, he’d challenged von Amsdorf to a duel of Scripture memory for the last one. von Amsdorf bested him with a recitation of the entire Sermon on the Mount, as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, and looked about in triumph as he ate the dumpling that had long grown cold during the contest. Luther had moped and made me promise to make the dish again upon his next visit. Shortly after our overly formal greeting, I’d excused myself to the kitchen, doubling my ingredients to fill the shallow bowl that now sat—half full—in front of him.
“Not hungry?” I prodded, looking from the Semmelknödel to him.
“Perhaps later.” He spoke distractedly, as if it weren’t already nine o’clock.
He did, however, avail himself of a third glass of wine, and a fourth; and once, in a brief moment when the glass was not in his hand, we caught ourselves both staring at the dancing reflection of the flames in the cut glass. For me, at least, it seemed like Luther and I were the only ones at the table, consumed in a careful avoidance.
“It’s late,” I said, pushing my chair from the table.
“Might I speak with you first?” Luther exchanged a look with Cranach and Barbara that assured me there was some secret being kept. The apprehension that had plagued me since his arrival turned into a spark of hope.
“You can speak to me as much as you like.” I attempted to make my voice light. “It might make for a nice change to the evening.”
He met my quip with silence, then asked if we couldn’t go into the front room.
“What could you possibly have to say that you couldn’t say in front of our hosts?”
“Not all revelations require an audience.” This from Cranach, who displayed no hint of curiosity.
“There’s a fire laid,” Barbara said, her expression inscrutable, leaving me no closer to knowing if I should feel suspicion or hope.
Luther downed the last of his wine and, perhaps as nothing more than a gesture of goodwill, took a dumpling with his bare fingers and popped it—whole—in his mouth.
Because this house was, by now, as much a home to me as anything, I needed no escort to the front room. I led the way myself, saying nothing until I had occasion to thank him when he invited me to sit in the ornate high-backed chair before the roaring fire.
I spoke first, having grown impatient with his reticence. “Is everything all right?”
“It is, I believe. Or it will be, God willing.”
“Don’t be cryptic, Luther. I’ve had enough of secrets in my life.”
“Ah, Kate. Forthright as ever.” His response was patient, indulgent, and brimming with protection. “That quality gives me hope that you’ll forgive me for what I’ve done.”
I turned to ice despite the fire and sat back. Waiting.
“I took it upon myself to bring a certain matter to a close.”
“What certain matter?” Though I knew.
“I wrote a letter to your young man.”
“I don’t have a young man, unless there’s something else you’re not telling me.”
Indulgence, again. “Baumgartner.”
“It’s been over a year.” I fought for calm. “Why would you—?”
“He spoke you a promise. And as far as I know, he’s never formally rescinded it. Unless there’s something else you’re not telling me.”
“You know I’ve told you everything. I tell you everything.”
“Yes.” He spoke the word as if a burden.
“Can I expect the same from you?”
He shifted his weight and stared into the flames. They transformed his face into shadows, their hiss and pop filling in momentarily for words. “I wrote to him, demanding an answer on your behalf.”
“On my behalf.” I couldn’t look up, couldn’t lift my head under the weight of humiliation. Of course I knew Jerome’s answer. I’d known it since Christmas. I’d known it, really, since the night he left me in the garden. Please, God. Let this be the last I suffer this rejection. I returned to my unanswered question. “Why would you do this?”
“Because I had to know.”
A bitter laugh escaped me. “I could have told you.”
“I had to know for myself. I told him there might be others—”
My head snapped up to look at him. “Others?”
“One other, I’d say.”
I didn’t speak. Couldn’t speak, for fear the sharpness of my tongue would slice the ribbon of promise wrapped around his words.
“I couldn’t very well encourage a suitor—any suitor—to court you if there was a previous understanding. No matter how tremulous.”
“Tremulous? Jerome’s proposal would need to strengthen itself tenfold to be tremulous. Looking now, it seems . . . silly.” But I couldn’t delay the inevitable. “Did he respond?”
“He did.” Luther took my hand in a warm, dry grip, telling me everything I needed to know.
“Well, then.” Unwanted, unwarranted tears spilled from the corners of my eyes, and I took one hand away to wipe them with the back of my wrist. “Whatever shall I do with my dowry? There’s enough to buy a good goat, at least.”
“Don’t forget, Kate. I asked not only on your behalf, but on behalf of another.”
“Ah, yes.” My tears stopped. “The other suitors.” I gave emphasis to the plural.
“If there were another—just one other, mind you—with whom I feel you would be suited . . . do you think you could open your heart to such a man?”
“My heart is open to the Lord’s direction,” I said, trying to shrink beneath the formality of his words.
“Even if I warn you this man is no aesthetic match for Baumgartner? He is well beyond youth, and a few degrees from handsome.”
“Isn’t it possible that you are judging him too harshly?” I wanted to touch him, my palm to his soft face, velvet with whiskers and flushed with wine.
“Time will tell, my Kate. Time will tell.”
I could tell you now, I thought. Ask me.
But Luther was in the midst of his own thoughts, and despite our earlier conversation, they seemed to exclude me. I joined him in his silence, feeling welcomed to do so, and stole only occasional glances at his face, finding it far more pleasant in its shadows than I had only moments before. After a time Cranach and Barbara joined us, and I had to chastise myself for resenting their company in front of their own fire. They came with glasses of port, which I would normally decline, but everything about me felt so sharp, I needed its softening effect.
“Seems we’ll be seeing our first frost of the winter tonight,” Barbara said, obviously sensing a need to fill the hearth wi
th conversation. “Are you sure you won’t stay the night with us, Martin?”
“Thank you,” Luther said, “but no. I’ve work to tend to. Preparations to make.” At this he looked at me rather meaningfully. “Besides, if I were to become too accustomed to your hospitality, I might never be content in my own cold room again.”
“I’ll send a man ahead with some firewood,” Barbara said, and before Luther could protest, she’d jumped up from her seat and gone off to find him.
I knew at the same moment, a servant was in my room, laying a fire—a luxury I’d be loath to give up for any circumstance other than my own bed in my own home, preferably shared with a husband. And as of the last hour, the possibility of that husband being the man who sat across from me now. The port settled in my belly, a pooling warmth, bringing with it a contented drowsiness that bade me stare into my glass rather than lift it again to my lips.
“Very generous, and thank you,” Luther said to Cranach, who waved off the expression of gratitude as if insulted by its offer.
“Can’t have the great Luther frozen in his bed,” Cranach said. “Those who thirst for an end to your life would find it far too inauspicious.”
“This is hardly a fatal chill. We’ve been colder, haven’t we, Katie?”
The intimacy of the question caught me off guard and ignited heat enough to turn ice to steam upon my skin. But then, we’d shared experiences, hadn’t we? Not together, not concurrently, but we both knew what it was to be consecrated to a life devoid of even the most basic of human comforts. To sleep on hard mattresses in cold rooms, with empty stomachs and burdened hearts—all the while thinking it a sin to ask for more.
“Indeed.” I took a sip of wine, relishing the taste of luxurious rebellion on my tongue.
“When I was a little boy,” Luther said, “and I would complain to my father about being cold in the night, he would tell me to fold my body as if kneeling in prayer. To clasp my hands and breathe upon them . . .”
Loving Luther Page 27