Katharina Luther

by Anne Boileau

  Our real wedding night, however, was the following night, the first time we lay together alone. Usually it is the bride who is shy, the groom who knows what to do. With us, it was the other way round. He was the shy one, awkward, unwilling or unable to show me affection. And though in his head he knows sex within marriage is not sinful, he was nevertheless paralysed with guilt; after all, he had fought for so long against his sexual urges, training himself to resist such temptations, that he found it difficult to put such inhibitions aside. I taught him how to kiss, with open lips and tongue. I stroked him, coaxed him, teased him. At first he sweated, almost as if he were scared of me, so I would leave him in peace and we would turn our backs and sleep.

  While I did not come deflowered to our marriage bed, I did know more about such things than he did. I, a woman of twenty-six, a one-time nun, with no property and no dowry; he a man of forty-three and one-time monk; a priest, a thinker and writer, a man whose fame had spread throughout the world. He is my superior, not socially but intellectually. He knows the Bible off by heart and has Hebrew and Greek and Latin; but it was I who taught him the language of the night. Little by little, he thawed, relaxed and began to respond to my attentions.

  To start with we slept together chastely. I did my best to cope with his bad dreams. Gradually he grew familiar with the landscape of my body; his hands grew bolder, less clumsy. I embraced him, stroked him, explored him all over, his tummy, his back, even his feet, his knees; I came to love his musky smell. At first his member remained soft as a cow’s teat. Little by little, though, the trust between us grew; we would wake together in the darkest hours and his guilt would melt away. One night I woke and he was snoring softly with his back to me. Stroking him gently, I sensed he had woken; with growing excitement I felt, for the first time, his member stirring. I touched him, coaxed him, stroked him and he grew hard for me. And so it was, after three weeks of marriage, that we became man and wife in the true sense.

  From then on, his nightmares became less frequent, his dreams less troubled. We made love and slept easy as a couple, our legs entwined. Our love, like a tender seedling, sent out leaves and grew and grew. Before long, another life was growing within me.

  Chapter 17

  Broad Beans

  Ein Schluck Wasser oder Bier vertreibt den Durst, ein Stück Brot den Hunger, Christus vertreibt den Tod.

  A draught of water or beer slakes thirst, a slice of bread hunger, but Christ banishes death.

  It was July and most of our lodgers had left for the summer recess. Some had gone home to their parents, others had set off on their travels to Italy or France or even to Greece. This world tour was ostensibly to further their understanding of the ancient world, but we suspect their main motives are to have a good time and sample the delights of foreign food, foreign customs, new landscapes and beautiful women.

  “Make sure you tell us about everything when you come back to Wittenberg. And I don’t mean just the classical ruins.” The young men shuffled their feet, blushing; they knew he was teasing them.

  Our household was unusually quiet that week. Dorothea had taken a few days away to visit her ailing mother. We had no house guests. I relished the peace and turned my back on all the chores I could be doing; I sat down at my desk and wrote a letter to my father. I wanted to share my good fortune with him, and wondered if I might travel over to Lippendorf to visit him, but Martin was against the idea, saying the roads were too dangerous.

  Black Cloister

  19th July 1525

  Dear Father

  The silence from you has become too deafening for me to ignore. I wrote to you a few weeks ago to tell you about our wedding.

  My dear Husband Dr Martin Luther is a good man. We are happy together and now that the University is in recess I have some peace and quiet to reflect on my good fortune, and to write some letters. We were sad that you could not make the journey for our wedding, but I do understand that. I would like to visit you and Stepmother, but the roads are too unsafe at present. So let me tell you a little of our life here in the Black Cloister.

  I sometimes think of this place as a ship, and I must steer it through the stormy waters, the tidal currents, the doldrums; with my crew I must make sure the sails are trimmed, the tiller well-greased, the food and water in good supply, the course straight and true. Of course I have never even seen the ocean, let alone been to sea, but when I was little you used to tell me stories about sailors and the great wide ocean, and sometimes I imagine what it must be like. Leonard Koppe, who trades in herrings, gave me a seashell from tropical seas; if you hold it to your ear you can hear the sea, and when I do that I pretend I am on a beach watching waves breaking on the sandy shore.

  Dear Father, I’m sad that we have met so seldom over the years. I am not angry with you for sending me to the Convent, you thought it was best for me. But I wish you could have visited me more often. Just four times you came over in all the fifteen years I lived there. I am sorry too that you did not write to me as often as other fathers did.

  I was touched at your wedding gift of Mother’s little book of seasons. I cherish it, and keep it by my bedside. But I sense that you and Stepmother do not approve of my husband, or my marriage to him. Why not? He is probably the most famous commoner in Germany, if not the whole world. From far and wide his admirers travel here to little Wittenberg to meet the great man, to hear him preach, to sit, if they are privileged, at our table and listen to his table talk and ask him questions. What do you have against him? Is it because he is the son of a copper miner? Or is it because you disapprove of his doctrines? Or do you blame me for breaking my monastic vows? If so, please remember the day when I was admitted to the convent of Marienthron to be a professed nun. I was only fifteen, not yet a woman. I had seen so little of the outside world, and knew nothing else. How could I understand what I was promising or renouncing? We girls hardly knew what Chastity meant, and Obedience and Poverty had always been part of our lives in any case. Was I ever offered an alternative to becoming a Bride of Christ? I cried when my head was shaved. You gave away my sisters in marriage at the same age, but for me you chose the habit and veil.

  I write to you now in the hope we might meet so that you can meet my husband. Perhaps when the roads are safer he and I can travel over to Lippendorf together? Dr Luther is a good man, and he loves me. I’m sitting now at my desk in our bedroom, looking out of the window at a tall elm tree. Barbara Cranach has just called round and brought me this fine paper from Italy. Martin has given me a bunch of goose quills and a bottle of fresh ink. So dearest Father, please accept this letter as an olive branch, to disperse the cold silence between us. Turn back to your daughter, your eldest child. She wants, more than anything else, your love and recognition. Please give my love to my brother and sisters.

  Your affectionate daughter K.

  Recess or not, there were plenty of jobs to do, what with the goats, the pigs, the poultry, and the kitchen garden. The broad beans were ripe and overdue for picking; if you leave them too long they become tough-skinned and dry.

  “Martin, would you help me pick and pod some beans?”

  “Oh Kathe, dear girl, I have work to do.” Already he had a foot on the bottom step of the stairs leading up to his study in the tower. Once he disappears up there to his work, the sun courses round to the west before he reappears. This month I am trying to keep him away from his study, at least in the afternoons.

  “The University is in recess. Melanchthon and Aurogallus are both away. Surely you can allow yourself a little time off?”

  I put my arm through his and smile at him. I wish he would take more exercise and fresh air. His skin is pale and drawn. All that poring over old Greek and Hebrew manuscripts exhausts his eyes; he must constantly refer to his huge old wordbooks, other translations, earlier versions of the same text. His headaches, though less severe than before, still afflict him.

  “You always say you like gardening. Now’s your chance. Come on, dearest, I need your he
lp. And I want to talk to you.”

  “You manipulative woman, how can I say no? I am undone, a serf in my own house!”

  He relents with a laugh and puts his arm on my shoulder; together we walk to the kitchen to fetch two bushel baskets. How much easier we are with one another now that we have discovered the delight, the warmth and affection of the marriage bed. He joked the other day to Philip, saying: “I know what being married is like: it’s waking up to see pigtails on your pillow.” But as he said this he caught my eye and winked. We both know it’s a lot more than that.

  We go out to the walled vegetable garden; the sun’s already hot. The soil in Wittenberg is loamy, black and fertile; it’s been worked and tilled for hundreds of years. We have rows of baby carrots, kohlrabi, spinach, beetroot. In another bed are peas supported by birch twigs, runner beans forming green tents along a row of canes and twine; and three rows of broad beans. Rhubarb pushes up in lush clumps in the shade of the north-facing wall, though it’s grown too stringy now for anything but wine. In another bed are rows of baby leeks, red cabbages and broccoli coming on for the autumn. Soon the onions will be ready to pull and dry. Along the south-facing wall we have several trained peach and nectarine trees, which will be pruned in the winter; and the central path is shaded by pleached apple and pear trees. This garden and its produce are vital for our large household.

  The old caretaker, who worked here with the monks and stayed on, does his best but he’s slow and frail. So Martin has put me in charge of the garden and the men now, and I have plans to improve the layout. The herb garden needs to be extended; we’ll do that this winter, and sow and plant next spring. Barbara has offered to advise us, they grow such a huge range of herbs for the apothecary.

  “The blackfly are bad on these,” says Martin as we pick the beans.

  “I know, I’ve shown Joachim how to wash them with soapy water but it doesn’t make much difference. But the beans themselves are fine.”

  We snip and pick and fill the baskets. Above us, fledgling swallows test their wings and twitter for joy. A song thrush sings from the top of a walnut tree. Our baskets are full. They creak as we carry them back to the courtyard and set them down beside the table in the shade of the old pear tree. Tölpel drops down in a pool of shade, panting after the effort of sniffing round the garden in the hot sunshine. I fetch two bowls for the beans and lay a sack on the ground for the pods – the pigs will have them for supper.

  The two of us sit, enjoying the unaccustomed quietness, breaking open the leathery pods to reveal soft, white down, and nestling within each pod a row of pale green shiny beans. They plop into our bowls and the soft empty pods drop onto the sack; we talk. My plans for a herb garden; whether I should dry or pickle these beans. Dorothea and her ailing mother; our student lodgers on their journey to Lucca and beyond. Then Martin says:

  “I’m going to write to my father this afternoon, I owe him a letter.”

  “That’s funny, because I’ve just written to my father. I wish you could meet him.”

  “My parents and I were estranged for far too long. It is a terrible thing. You should try to make it up with your father and his wife. And I want to meet my in-laws. It’s ironic really. You disobeyed your parents in running away from a monastic house, whereas I disobeyed mine by going into one.”

  “Tell me, Martin, what was the true reason why you gave up the law and became a monk?” (Barbara had told me briefly about a thunderstorm and his friend being killed, but I wanted to hear the story first hand.)

  So Martin began to tell me about that fateful day, which changed so profoundly the course of his life.

  “I was the oldest child and my parents realised from very early on that I was exceptionally gifted. I sang in the church choir in Eisenach. I won prizes for Latin and writing and learning verse by heart. My Father channelled all his hopes and ambitions into me and my future. I think my brothers and sisters resented me, saw me as the favourite and it’s true, Father had his plans for me: I would become a rich and powerful lawyer or even Mayor of a large town like Erfurt or Eisenach. I would do all those things he, a copper mine surveyor, had been unable to do. But he was never satisfied. If I came second in a test at school, he would say: ‘And why didn’t you come top?’ If I was not picked to sing a solo in the choir, he wondered why not, and told me I should try harder.

  “The parents stood over me as I did my homework or practised music, and beat me if I showed signs of flagging; sometimes I heard them after I was in bed, discussing my progress. I longed to live up to their ambition for me; and yet, however brilliant my marks, however glowing my school report, Father was never quite satisfied.

  “One day, my parents’ grand plans for me were overturned at a stroke. I was twenty-three, and was studying for my Masters in Law at Erfurt University. We had been studying very hard, with assignments and end of year vivas imminent; I suggested to my friend and fellow student Max that we visit my family for a few days’ respite from our books. My brothers and sisters were still living at home then, and the fatted calf was killed for us; we had a jovial and relaxing reunion. Mother cooked, Father opened the best wine; they wanted to hear all about our life in Erfurt; not many miners were able to boast that their son was studying for a Masters in Law. We sang rounds and played cards and sampled the various hostelries of Mansfeld with my brothers until late into the night. All in all, we’d had four amusing and relaxing days.”

  “And nice to see your family, and have a rest from student life.”

  “Yes, it was. Straight after church on Sunday 2nd July 1505 – the date is etched on my memory – Max and I set off to walk back to Erfurt. As we reached Stottenheim the sky grew dark and a wind got up. We could hear church bells in the valley ringing to warn of an impending storm. But we needed to cross the hills to get back to Erfurt.

  “We did consider staying a night in Stottenheim, but decided to carry on. Dear God, how I regret that decision even to this day!

  “Just as we reached the top of the pass the heavens opened. In one minute we were soaked to the skin. There was a flash of lightning, followed at once by a ripping clap of thunder. As we dashed towards some overhanging rocks, our cloaks over our heads, a thunderbolt struck. Like a devil’s trident, it hit Max on his head. He fell to the ground, lifeless. I dropped to my knees beside him and shook his shoulder. I turned him over and Kathe, I can’t describe it to you, his face was black! Smoke was rising from his coat and his body was hot to the touch. I smelt scorched flesh! What could I do? Where could I hide? I screamed into the driving rain and rolling thunder. I gazed up with dread at the jagged flashes in the sky. God was angry, surely He would take me next! I fell to my knees on the top of that hill, clasped my hands in the pouring rain and prayed as loudly as I could:

  “‘Saint Anne, Mother of Mary, intercede for me, please! I promise you, I will devote my whole life to God, if only you’ll pray to the good Lord to spare me!’ The storm raged on and I crouched like a shivering fugitive beneath the rocks, my teeth chattering, staring through my tears and the pouring rain at the corpse of my friend. Barely an hour before, we had been walking along singing and exchanging ribald jokes.

  “Then the rain stopped and the clouds rolled away, revealing a clear blue sky. As the sun warmed the sodden ground, steam rose from Max’s lifeless body. I scarcely remember how I stumbled down the muddy path, how I reached my lodgings. But my kind landlady must have put me to bed with a hot bottle and sent a message to the Council; a search party went out to bring back Max’s body.

  “I went down with a fever and the doctor bled me regularly for several days, and put me on a regime of white dittany infusions and beef tea. As I convalesced and began to grasp what had happened I became confused: I was worried about my law assignment, and the impending oral examination; but at the same time I could not banish from my mind the promise I had made to Saint Anne. Was it binding? What, in fact, had I promised her, if I should be spared? What did ‘devote my life to God’ actually mean? Did
it mean I should become a priest? Or a monk? Or simply continue with law and lead an exemplary Christian, if secular, life? No, that was clearly not enough, it meant renunciation of ambition, it meant the taking the cowl, of vows of humility, obedience and chastity. My heart sank at the thought of such a commitment. That had not been my intention and it was certainly not part of my Father’s plans for me.”

  “Didn’t you think you could quietly forget all about the promise you made? After all, no one else had witnessed you making it except poor dead Max.”

  “Ah, you say that. But God was my witness, and Saint Anne.”

  “Yes, of course. Indeed.”

  “But yes, I must admit, I was tempted to sweep it all away, try to forget about my pledge. But I knew I would never be able to forgive myself, and doubted whether God would forgive me for such treachery. So the following morning I went to see my Father Confessor and told him everything. Of course he had heard about the storm, and Max’s death and my illness; in fact, I gather he had visited me in bed when I was feverish. But could he know about my promise to Saint Anne? As I walked across the town to the cathedral, I hoped and prayed that he would say ‘never mind, my son, your best course will be to forget you ever said such a thing and resume your law studies.’ But he did not.

  “‘My son, you pleaded to Saint Anne to intercede on your behalf and save your life. She did intercede for you, the proof is here, you were not struck down by a thunderbolt, you are alive and well; this means that Saint Anne’s prayers saved your life. I ask you, should you renege on such a promise? You pledged to devote your life to God, so now, if you continue to pursue earthly ambitions, can you really live the rest of your life with a clear conscience? It is not for me to tell you what to do but simply to offer spiritual guidance. However, if you do decide to honour your promise to Saint Anne, (and it must be a decision made of your own free will, with your whole heart) then I suggest that it be to renounce all worldly pleasures and take the vows of a monk. Pray to our Lord and he will guide you to the right decision at this time. You may go now, my son, and may God be with you.’”