Loving Luther

by Allison Pittman

  Before I could stop myself, I tasted garden dirt on my tongue as I clapped a hand over my mouth to stifle a laugh. “No one has ever said—”

  “I may lack the youth of that fool Baumgartner, but I assure you, if given the opportunity, I shall show myself more than capable of marital vigor.”

  Then I did laugh, right out loud and lustily, though I knew a more timid maiden would blush at the implication. Luther, I could tell, appreciated my laughter, rewarding me with an approving gaze that lapped at my indignation.

  “And I,” he said, “unlike Kaspar Glatz, do not live in a state of poverty by choice. I have nothing, Katharina, to offer a woman. He has money enough to buy a home for each season, and I maintain a single room, cold in the winter and insufferable in the summer. Never mind luxury. I can scarcely offer comfort.”

  “I seek none of that.” I spoke softly, not directly to him, as he had yet to offer me the little he had.

  He came to sit beside me and touched his knuckle to my chin, lifting my face, forcing my gaze. “I gave my life to Jesus Christ the moment I left the priesthood.”

  “As did I, even before I left—”

  “But unlike you, I live in a certain danger because of my decision. My actions. Always. A price on my head, a threat on my life. Dear friends of mine have been lost to this conflict with the Church. So to say that I would offer a woman—that I would offer you—my life . . . I have not even that to give. Daily I live only by Christ’s protection and grace. How can I give what is not mine?”

  “I ask you for nothing, Luther. You say you have no wealth; I ask for no wealth. You say you have no life? I ask for nothing more than . . .” I stopped and turned away, humiliated at the onset of tears and devastated at his gentleness as he untied the kerchief, setting free my hair, and handed it to me to dry them.

  “Nothing more than . . .”

  “Nothing more than what was promised. Freedom to pursue the life of my choosing. Not just a husband. I didn’t forsake my vows simply to gain favor in marriage. You didn’t either. But couldn’t it be that our freedom released us to find each other?”

  I remained still as a rabbit in the field, waiting upon his response.

  Finally, with a voice too soft to startle, he spoke. “It is my greatest joy, Kate, to find you. When we are apart, I hear your voice. It echoes without words, pleasant as the tune that beckoned me today. I long for your opinions, silly as they might be at times. I anticipate your face, and when I know I am to see you after some long absence, my steps quicken to find your company. My eyes do not rest until they fall upon your countenance. You are dearer to me than any friend.”

  My heart soared as he spoke, like the dove over the wall, but faltered at his conclusion, for he unequivocally defined me as a friend, and I knew after this conversation, I would have to be so much more. Or nothing at all.

  I took his hand, opened it, and laid my own within. I stared down, mesmerized by the sight of our flesh intertwined. “Do you know when I first heard your voice? Not from the confessional, and not that day in Torgau, when you asked about the women. Not the sound you make when you speak, but your voice? It was months before. Years, even, when I held a scrap of paper with your writing. ‘The Freedom of a Christian.’”

  “I remember sending that to you.”

  “Not to me directly, I know. But I was the first to read it, and somehow, I heard it in your voice. God whispered it to me, calling forth such a longing to understand. I wanted nothing more than to talk to you. And as I questioned, I felt you answer. Your letters, your messages, your translations spoke to me. Oh, my darling.” Slowly, I lifted my gaze to find him waiting. “From the moment I held your words, you have been my home.”

  I watched, intently, looking for any change in his countenance. Relief, consternation, enlightenment—anything but this mask of control. When he spoke, I sank at the familiar refrain.

  “I have no worldly goods to give you.”

  “In that, we are equal.”

  “And—” he held my hand tighter—“I will not mislead you in the matter of love. For I cannot say even now that I offer you the entirety of my heart.”

  “I know that.” And I did. I always had.

  He traced his finger along the thin gold band I wore. “I shall have to buy you a new ring one day. But until then, Fräulein von Bora, would you be content to simply take my hand?”

  “In what way do you mean?” I would not suffer another bout of misunderstanding. I deserved a true proposal in the midst of such indirection. A sweet breeze came, blowing cool against my neck and lifting my hair to bring it—a mass of tangled strands—in a veil to obscure my vision. Gently, Luther—Martin—smoothed it from my face, and there I found him changed.

  “As my wife, in every way that God intended.”

  In response, I took his hand and laid it to my breast. “You have my heart, Martin. Fully and completely. And for now, I am content to share yours.”

  He stood, drawing me to my feet, then closer still, into an embrace, and kissed me. Sweetly at first, fraught with trepidation. Finding no resistance on my part, he pulled me closer, his fingers tangled in my hair, my hands—their dirt long forgotten—touched to his cheeks. When he pulled away, I marked his transformation complete.

  “You shall have everything that is mine to give, my Kate.” I could not mistake the dimension of his meaning. Our kiss had awakened something he feared had lain dormant too long. Age—his or mine—had not tempered desire. “All I shall ask you to share is my joy, and my sorrow.”

  “That may be said of any marriage. I want more. I want to share in your thoughts. Your conversation.” I could see he intended to kiss me again, and I braced against him. “I want to know that my mind will hold a place in our home equal to any other part of my body.”

  “I assure you, I should like nothing more than to begin and end each day hearing your voice in prayer.”

  “What about those times when I am not in prayer?”

  “Well, then—” he kissed my brow—“I can think of no other sound more pleasing to punctuate the hours of our solitude.”

  I closed my eyes, content in his embrace. With him I could foresee no solitude at all.

  THE WHOLE WORLD RUMBLES beneath my feet, or so it seems. In truth I know it is the motion of the tumbril, the turning of the wheels—sluggish, with thick spokes clearly visible to all the eyes that line the road. It is a short distance, I’m told, but the throng gathered on either side makes the going slow. Their shouts surround us like a newly built wall, each word a brick.

  “Liberté!”

  “Fraternité!”

  “Égalité!”

  Within the proclamations, gleeful taunts of death. A cry for blood and damnation for the tyrants.

  There is a jolt, and I stumble forward, my fall stopped by the stranger beside me.

  “Merci, Seigneur.” I assume he is worthy of the title.

  He responds only with a smile, and I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen anything so gentle and beautiful. Though I am steady on my feet, he keeps hold of my hand.

  With a boldness that comes from waning time, I ask, “Will you hold my hand, sir? Will you hold it until—”

  “My child, it will be an honor.”

  Child. I suppose it is natural that he sees me as such. I am small, my brow not quite reaching the breadth of his shoulder, and no doubt the dirt on my face obscures my features. At any other time, I might have taken umbrage, telling him that I am no child. That I’m to turn twenty-one in the coming year. But we both know I will see no such milestone, and I merely thank him again.

  We roll to a stop, and the wagon’s tailgate is open. The others who ride with me—the ones whose features I’ve taken no pains to notice—are unceremoniously handed down. There is a shout when it is my stranger’s turn.

  “Evrémonde!”

  I don’t recognize the name, but I’ve been sheltered from much of the nobility. For his part, my stranger shows no eagerness to claim it,
as he does not so much as turn his head in their direction. Instead, he keeps a firm grip on my hand, and it is he who lifts me down, leaving the filthy, bloodstained guard to stand listlessly by. My stranger spins me aloft, and for a moment we could be at a dance, my feet waltzing on air. I get only a glimpse of the terrible machine, its blade hoisted high above. When my feet touch the ground, I see only the fine wool of his coat. I tilt my head back to look at his face, all kindness and strength, with the gray blanket of sky behind it.

  “Be strong,” he says.

  “But for you, dear stranger, I should not be so composed. I am—” Still, here, with the worst of all fates within reach, I am afraid to tell him who I am. What I know and have witnessed. “I am naturally a poor little thing. Faint of heart.” None of this is true, but I secretly hope for one last bit of mercy, for one of these gory monsters to pull me from the line and restore me to my innocence. “I suppose I should raise my thoughts to Him who was put to death, that we might have hope and comfort here today. I think you were sent to me by heaven.”

  “Or you to me,” says my stranger. “Keep your eyes on me, dear child, and mind no other object.”

  As he speaks, the rushing sound of the blade in quick descent ends in a sickening silence, and the crowd erupts in cheers. I hear this faintly, as if on the edge of a disappearing dream.

  “I mind nothing while I hold your hand, dear sir. I shall mind nothing when I let it go, if they are rapid.”

  “They will be rapid. Fear not!”

  We speak as if this is a quality to be admired, this seamlessness of justice, and not a system that has now given me a life to be measured in minutes. I want to close my eyes and indulge in the luxury of memory, but I can recall only my most recent hours, my own mind protecting itself from those days before I took my first step on the path that brought me to this place.

  “Brave and generous friend,” I say, tugging him closer, “will you let me ask you one last question? I am very ignorant, and it troubles me—just a little.”

  “Tell me what it is.” He sounds indulgent, welcoming, and details that I’ve guarded with silence until this moment pour forth.

  “I have a cousin, an only relative and an orphan, like myself, whom I love very dearly. She lives in a farmer’s house in the south country. Poverty parted us, and she knows nothing of my fate—for I cannot write.” This, too, like my claim of frailty, is a lie. For all I know I can read and write as well as he can, though his eyes hold an intelligence beyond challenge. I try to recover an explanation. “Even if I could, how should I tell her? It is better as it is.”

  “Yes, yes: better as it is.”

  I fear his attention is growing as short as our time together—our time on earth—and I pose to him the question that has plagued me since I first heard the pounding on the door.

  “What I have been thinking as we came along, and what I am thinking now—as I look into your kind, strong face, which gives me so much support—is this: If the Republic really does good to the poor, and they come to be less hungry, and in all ways to suffer less, she may live a long time, my cousin.” I think about my elusive birthday. “She may even live to be old.”

  “What then, my gentle sister?”

  My eyes fill with tears, the first since I fell to the filthy bricks on my cell floor. “Do you think that it will seem long to me, while I wait for her in the better land?”

  “It cannot be, my child; there is no Time there, and no trouble there.”

  My mind flies back to such a life. Long, listless days. Sweet grass and laughter. Hard work and deep sleep and no thought of yesterday or the next day or the next. What troubles had I known, other than a little hunger? It has now been days since I have had any taste of food, and in light of what awaits, an empty stomach seems something easily endured.

  I tell my stranger that his words bring comfort, and as I do, I sense an emptiness at my back, and I know my time has come.

  “Am I to kiss you now?” I ask, for it seems a fitting way to end a life.

  He responds, “Yes,” creating a long-held promise from a notion newly born.

  He bends to me, and suddenly his lips are soft on mine. His kiss erases the terror of the days behind me and strengthens me for the steps ahead.

  I turn, forced by a viselike grip on my elbow, yanked as if I’d threatened to flee. The shouts of the crowd are softened, briefly, as my crimes are read above the din. I don’t recognize my life in the account, but it must be true, for here I am, my face upturned to capture the autumn breeze. Each ascending step brings me closer to the giant machine, but also to some promise of freedom.

  “‘I am the Resurrection, and the Life!’” The voice of my stranger carries, but I don’t look back. I can’t. Instead, I scan the crowd, a blur of sunburnt faces, and I think I see—

  “A la mort!”

  The sea calls for my death. My blood. In the midst of all those open mouths, those fists raised in the air, there is one familiar face. He is motionless, his expression set with uncomprehending compassion. There’s no time to wonder how he came to be here. I can only hold his gaze, pleading.

  Tell her.

  Tell Laurette.

  My throat is cradled in the blood-soaked wood, my eyes forced down to see nothing but the gore below. I close them, entreating God to show me some beauty, something within this darkness to usher me to the Light.

  Show her to me, Sovereign Lord. Before I embrace her in Your Presence, give me a glimpse of these intervening years.

  And at the first touch of the blade on my flesh, my final prayer is answered. Her life. My life. I see it all.

  Author’s Note

  Dear Reader,

  It is just occurring to me now, at this minute, as I type this late in the evening and days past deadline, that I am going to meet Katharina von Bora Luther someday. She has been dwelling in the back corner of my mind since that summer night in 2014 when, frankly, I first heard her name. In the shorthand of my writing, I have always called this project Luther. But it’s never been about him. It’s never been about them. It’s been about her. And the day will come when I will meet her in glorified perfection.

  What is not glorified perfection, however, is this work of fiction. While I have tried to be true to the history and the biographical facts of the characters involved, I have taken some license with others to smooth the story.

  A few points of note:

  For me, the story fell together with this excerpt from Martin Luther to Jerome Baumgartner, dated October 1524, in which he writes: If you want your Katie von Bora, you had best act quickly, before she is given to someone else who wants her. She has not yet conquered her love for you. I would gladly see you married to each other.

  Throughout the portion of the story when Katharina is considering the essence of her salvation and her life as a nun, I bring her into contact with Luther’s writings. I tried to strike a balance between those writings that would best suit the story and those that would be true to the narrative chronology. If I failed on that part, I offer apologies to the Luther scholars and hope they will allow themselves to be swept up in the romance and forgive me.

  For all of Katharina’s days in the convent, I relied on research not for her specific order, but for the details of cloistered life for the surrounding centuries. I have included book titles at the end of this note. The ritual and dialogue for the ceremony in which Katharina takes the veil are born completely from my imagination.

  One purposeful omission for the sake of narrative is the fact that Katharina had another relative at Marienthrone. In addition to her cousin, the abbess, she had an aunt (some sources liken her to more of a cousin as well), named Magdalene (Magdalena), who was one of the twelve nuns who escaped that Easter night. Because the escape occurs about one-third into the story and my research gave up no real details about an ongoing relationship after, I opted to excise Magdalene from the story to better focus on Katharina. Now I’m thinking how really awkward that heavenly reunion might be.
. . .

  Every time a finished book falls into an author’s hand, we think of a million things we would have done differently. Better words, other scenes, different structure, stronger sequence. Given that this book was first nothing but a whisper followed by months of doubt, years of fear, and a constant undertow of anxiety and inadequacy, I’m looking at the final manuscript with a sweet sense of satisfaction. I plan to enjoy that until the book falls into readers’ hands, and then I truly hope to hear that you’ve become as taken with Katie as I am.

  Your Sister,

  Allison Pittman

  October 31—Reformation Day—2016

  The Habit by Elizabeth Kuhns

  Virgins of Venice: Broken Vows and Cloistered Lives in the Renaissance Convent by Mary Laven

  Convents Confront Reformation: Catholic and Protestant Nuns in Germany by Merry Wiesner-Hanks, translated by Joan Skocir and Merry Wiesner-Hanks

  Nuns: A History of Convent Life by Sylvia Evangelisti

  In Her Words: Women’s Writings in the History of Christian Thought edited by Amy Oden

  Katharina von Bora: A Reformation Life by Rudolph Markwald

  About the Author

  ALLISON PITTMAN IS THE AUTHOR of more than a dozen critically acclaimed novels and a three-time Christy Award finalist—twice for her Sister Wife series and once for All for a Story from her take on the Roaring Twenties. She lives in San Antonio, Texas, blissfully sharing an empty nest with her husband, Mike. Connect with her on Facebook (Allison Pittman Author), Twitter (@allisonkpittman), or her website: allisonkpittman.com.

  Discussion Questions

  What kind of faith examples does Katharina receive from the authority figures in her younger years—Sister Odile, Sister Gerda, Father Johann, Sister Elisabeth, Abbess Margarete? Who had a formative influence on your own early experiences with faith—for better or worse?