by Anne Boileau
“Nördlingen, of all places. I thought it was a peaceful, well-run town.”
“It was peaceful and well-run. That’s what is so alarming. Once these peasants are roused out of their torpor, they’ll stop at nothing. To think that Thomas Müntzer was one of my pupils, here in Wittenberg! He incited them, encouraged them to read rebellion into the words of the Gospel. They seem to think I was in favour of their rebelliousness. They’re nothing but a band of uncouth thugs.”
“Oh dear. Our poor baby, what a world he’s coming into!”
“What a world, indeed. I don’t want to scare you, dearest Wife, but the signs are there: revolutions, tempests, the plague. The stars are not propitious. Last Thursday the full moon rose huge and blood red. Crowds gathered in the town square, transfixed by the sight, and they were afraid. I did not want you to see it. They took it as a sign that Apocalypse is coming and I think they may be right. God is angry with us.”
“But don’t you think He might forgive us, just as an angry father forgives his children when they’re sorry? You always say we should love and trust the Lord, because he is kind and loving towards us and not angry or vindictive. Didn’t Jesus take the burden of our sins on his own shoulders?”
“Yes, we must pray that Jesus will intercede for us. I sometimes wonder whether mankind have gone too far, learnt too much, overstepped the mark. That we humans have gone beyond what God intended for us. The Spanish, for instance, have discovered a vast new country south of America called Mexico. A Spaniard called Cortez and a few men with horses conquered it five years ago; I’ve just read an account of it. The natives are a brown-skinned people called Aztec, they have an emperor and live in cities with elaborate buildings and streets and gardens. They’re skilled craftsmen too with vast amounts of gold and jewels but they have no horses, imagine that, Katharina! No horses! So when they saw the Spaniards mounted on horses they took them for supernatural beings. Also, these people are heathens. They have not yet heard the Word of the Lord, and are innocent of any Christian understanding. The Spanish are already building a great cathedral on the site of their pagan temple, called Tenochtitlan, in fact they’re replacing the existing temples with churches all over the country. So the Church will be gaining many thousands of souls.”
“The Church of Rome that is.”
“Yes, but still, it’s our God, the true God, and Jesus Christ the Saviour.”
“We missed you at lunch. Did you eat with the Cranachs?”
“Yes, we wet the baby’s head, so to speak. Anyway, now and then I need a rest from Rörer and the others hanging on my every word.”
“But you enjoy it, you love sitting at the end of the table pontificating.”
“I do not pontificate, you insolent woman! Pearls of wisdom fall from my lips. But that Rörer! I’ve never met a man who could write so fast, he uses a special set of symbols and only he can transcribe what he has scribbled.”
Georg Rörer is my husband’s amanuensis. He’s a thoughtful man, very modest and so quiet, you scarcely notice his presence; however, you notice when he is not there, and I am grateful to him for keeping my husband’s study and affairs in order. During meals he writes down many of the remarks Martin makes at table, which have come to be known as Table Talk. You may have noticed that I have written one of these remarks at the beginning of each chapter of this book. Rörer eats in the kitchen before the main meals are served; Dorothea grumbled about it at first, until I pointed out that he is secretary to the Doctor and spends all mealtimes writing in his notebook, and we mustn’t let him go hungry! Now I think she’s come to enjoy his company as she bangs about with her enormous saucepans or tells Agnes to turn the spit above the range or kneads dough, her arms dusty with flour.
“Thank you for that book, it’s marvellous. How hard you’ve all worked to get it done. And I love the illustrations. Dearest, would you read me a passage, before I have my nap?”
“What shall I read?”
I leafed through the book and chose a passage from the Book of Exodus.
“Here. This page, please.”
I snuggled down under the feather quilt and listened to Martin’s deep voice as he read to me from his own translation of the Old Testament.
A man from the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw that he was a fine baby, she hid him for three months. When she could hide him no longer she got a papyrus basket for him and plastered it with bitumen and pitch; she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds on the banks of the river. His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him. The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her attendants walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to bring it. When she opened it she saw the child. He was crying, and she took pity on him. ‘This must be one of the Hebrews’ children,’ she said. Then the child’s sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, ‘Shall I go and fetch you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse him for you?’ Pharaoh’s daughter said ‘Yes.’ So the girl went and called the child’s mother. Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, ‘Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will give you wages.’ So the woman took the child and nursed it. When the child was weaned, she brought him to Pharoah’s daughter and she took him as her son. She named him Moses, ‘because,’ she said ‘I drew him out of the water’.
Even when he speaks quietly in the intimacy of our bedroom, Martin’s voice booms with power. He intones and enunciates with unusual clarity and force. I wonder whether his magnetic power, which attracts the people in such droves, is not partly due to the sound of his voice and the way he commands the attention of a crowd. Here in Wittenberg church, for instance, where every Sunday he delivers his sermon, this large church can be packed from wall to wall; but they don’t shuffle about, whisper, sneeze, scratch or shift their feet as is usual in a church service. They stand quite still with their eyes on him, and Martin’s voice reaches into the farthest corner of the church. So while I get annoyed with him, especially with his lack of financial sense, I feel proud and privileged to have time alone with him; scholars, students and noblemen travel miles to hear him speak, to be in the same room with him and, if they are lucky, to speak personally to him. I and I alone share his bedchamber, and his bed!
And it is not only the learned and high-born who seek him out. Simple people too – peasants, labourers, cobblers, fishwives, widows, sweepers, beggars – flock to hear him preach and gather in the streets to watch him pass by.
In 1521, when he was summoned by Emperor Charles to the Diet of Worms, he was promised safe conduct for his journey. His progress turned into a triumphal procession. Supporters decided to travel along with him, and the train grew as it progressed, until it must have resembled an Arab caravan. Wherever he went he was welcomed and given hospitality. In Leipzig the Magistrate greeted him publicly in the square with a ceremonial cup of wine.
In Erfurt, where of course he had lived, both as a student and a monk, the Rector of the University received his ‘entourage’ at the city gate, as if he were a prince. He got down from his covered wagon and the crowds cheered him along the streets as he walked across the famous Krämer Bridge to the church. They ushered him into the church and he went straight to the pulpit and began to speak. The building was packed, every aisle, every little corner. As always, the crowd were quiet and attentive. But then panic nearly broke out when a creaking sound followed by a loud crack rang out from the wooden gallery above; the structure was groaning under the weight of too many people. There might have been a stampede but Martin kept his head; he held up his hand with all the authority at his command and said: “Please, good people, stand quite still. Nothing evil will happen. The devil is trying to frighten us.” The crowd calmed down and sat very still; the gallery stopped creaking and Martin finished his address. Then he told them to leave quietly and in good order, one row at a time, and all was well.
Philip told me this story; Martin tends no
t to tell me stories in his own favour. He may be stubborn and overbearing and maddening; he can have a filthy temper. He worries too much about his health. But Martin is not a boastful man. So the stories I hear from him tend to be about those occasions when he might have been seen as weak or vulnerable or fearful or failing in some way, as when he was so fearful in the thunderstorm when his friend Max was killed.
I slipped away into delicious sleep as his voice intoned from the Old Testament. The old Hebrew, rendered into my own mother-tongue, a tale of ancient Egypt transported into modern Saxony. Moses was a Wittenberg baby, left in a basket in the reed beds beside the Elbe. But who was Pharaoh’s daughter? And who was Moses?
Chapter 20
A New Life
My time is drawing near. Frau Wischnau the midwife is awaiting our call and Barbara and Tante Lena are to take it in turns to attend me. Tante is an herbalist but has no experience in childbirth. Barbara has had four confinements herself, all attended by Frau Wischnau; the midwife is over fifty, and has been delivering babies since she was eighteen, having learnt the calling from her own mother – in fact, most young people of some standing who were born here were delivered by her. She’s highly thought of among the women of Wittenberg.
She has been calling in to see me since I’ve been confined to my bedchamber; she listens to my abdomen with a cow’s horn ear trumpet, to hear the child’s heartbeat. She feels my tummy all over, to find out how the baby sits; she looks in my mouth and eyes, and down there. She asks me how I feel, and if she has time she gives me a massage with soothing oils, especially around the neck and shoulders, my feet and ankles. Her hands are strong and kind, her manner gentle but matter of fact. Babies are being born all the time, all over the world, she says, it’s completely normal, and this one will be the first of many fine babies for you, good lady. You’re a strong, healthy woman, not yet too old. I see no reason to worry. With her skilled hands and quiet voice, she smooths my anxiety away. She’s just left, but thinks it will be tonight or tomorrow morning.
I’ve been praying to Saint Margaret, the patron saint of childbirth. But when I asked Martin to join me, he said it was better to pray directly to Our Lord. He doesn’t believe in praying to saints to intercede. But what does Jesus, an unmarried man, know about such things? Can he understand about the heaving struggles in my abdomen, the darting pains in my lower back? My breathlessness, the need to urinate, the swollen ankles? The sense of being prematurely old while still in my prime? The sudden eruption of tears at the unlikeliest events or remarks? Did Jesus know about such things? So in Martin’s absence, Tante Lena joins me in asking Saint Margaret to intercede on my behalf. She was a woman and several times a mother; she understands.
I may die and leave a motherless child. I may survive but my baby be born blue or die as an infant. Or, much worse, it might be an evil thing, the Antichrist, our punishment for a sinful union, as our enemies have predicted. Their taunts and mutterings eventually drove Martin to keep me confined for my safety, for the safety of the child. I turn the pages of my book. When he gave it to me only eight weeks ago the pages were creamy white and quite blank, except for his own dedication on the flyleaf. Now I have only three blank pages left; what a lot I have written! Page after page is filled with my writing, the product of how many goose quills, of how many pots of ink? Yesterday I numbered the pages with great care, and it comes to one hundred and ninety-six. I have written densely too, as neatly as I could, but occasionally I have had to cross things out.
When I was trimming my first quill I planned to write my story, but it has become entwined with Martin’s, as my life has. A memory comes to me, clear as crystal. I was very small, four or five years old. I was standing on a stone bridge over a river in some very old town, I don’t know where it was. I was with my parents, but my brother and sister were not there. My mother lifted me up onto the parapet so that I could look down to the river below. “What do you see, Käthchen?” I saw a river, but it was two different colours. Two rivers, flowing side by side in the same channel, on the left murky and brown but on the right clear and translucent, fish and frondy weeds visible. My Mother said: “It’s a confluence, that means the place where two rivers flow together and become one. You can see the difference in the water, one of them is flowing from low country, from the plains; that’s the muddy water. The other river has come down from the mountains, and the water is clear and clean.” I watched it flow beneath us, the clear and the murky, side by side, and felt my mother’s breath as she kissed the top of my head. I think that the rivers kept their separate identity for so long because of the different temperature; the mountain river must have been cooler; gradually, further downstream, with eddies and swirls, they would have blended and became one.
My story is a bit like that. Living most of my life in a convent, I learnt to put myself and my own wishes last. I was part of a community and that community was dedicated to the service of God. However, after three years of life outside, I have discovered a sense of ‘me’, of Katharina von Bora; I am a separate, distinct person. I have learnt this about myself: I have strength, I am attractive to men. I have the range of skills required for a woman in my position. I am me, a married woman, and as worthy of respect and of God’s love as any man.
When I became ‘die Lutherin’ the Lutheress – as some people choose to call me – Martin suggested I retain my maiden name. I think he likes the fact that I come from patrician stock. But I have married a giant. His personality, his voice, his presence, his fame, fill up a room, a house, a church. No, they fill the whole of our little town – so that when he goes off on his travels the town seems in a sense diminished. Inevitably, my life has been subsumed in his. I don’t mind. I am proud to be part of his life. I think of our two rivers as our two stories so far. Rising from very different sources, but flowing towards each other. Now, we have reached confluence. For a few months our waters flowed side by side, discrete, the colours still distinguishable; but now our waters have coalesced and we are as one. My story is his and his is mine. The birth of our first child, if I am spared, will be the living manifestation of our union.
The pains began at dusk yesterday. Joachim was sent to fetch the midwife. The preparations are made: jugs and bowls filled with boiled water; clean sheets and towels folded neatly on the chest; and in the corner, the Cranach’s crib of carved oak with new stitched linen awaits its new occupant. Barbara came over and conferred with Tante Lena. My husband was banished from his own bedchamber, for this is women’s work.
The pains wash over me like waves. The tropical shell which Herr Koppe gave us holds within it the song of the sea. Occasionally, when I want to calm down, I sit very still in a quiet place and hold it to my ear; then I pretend to myself that I’m on a sandy shore, the wide horizon stretching before me, the waves washing at my feet. But these waves of pain are not the gentle murmuring kind which you hear in the shell. This wave is ten feet high; it rolls in with a roar, and tumbles over me, engulfing my whole being, crashing in white spume on the beach. Then it recedes and I’m left gasping like a stranded fish, my eyes staring at the wall of our bedchamber. With intense clarity I see the edge of my bed, its damask drapes hanging down. I see, and smell, a bunch of yellow roses – for steadfastness – in a vase on the mantelpiece. On the book shelf I read the titles: my grandmother’s yearbook, our September Bible, the Pentateuch. Where is my husband now, is he keeping watch? Is he praying somewhere for his wife and unborn child? Or is he trying to concentrate on his work in his tower room?
Another wave. I groan, my brow is damp with sweat and Barbara’s cool hand soothes me with a fresh linen cloth. Then again sweet respite. My own dear Mother, who handed me over to be fed by another; was she ill following my birth? I see her now as she was in my dream, running on a cloud with two angels, learning how to fly. But the image is chased away as another wave engulfs me in pain and I bite onto a towel. How small my hand looks, lying on the pillow in front of me. I think of Father, and the time when I s
howed him a fairy garden I made in the roots of the oak tree; he said it was beautiful. It was our secret, his and mine.
And so, for several hours, I withstand as best I can the waves of pain, then surface and notice again my attendants, their kindness, their affection; in my mind’s eye I recall people and places I have known. Sister Clara, consoling me when I was forced to wear the red felt tongue; my pet owl Eule, flying silently out of the dark to land on my windowsill when I called his name; I had to leave him behind when I went to school. My father’s horse Conquest, breathing sweet hay-breath into my neck as I reached up and stroked him behind his ear. My sense of betrayal, of treachery in my little sister, as she wheedled and simpered with our Stepmother. Stepmother’s cold grey eyes turned on me.
The pains are worse now and more frequent. Frau Wischnau tells me to get up and walk about, and helps me to my feet. My past life recedes into mist. I can do nothing but concentrate on this, on atoning, as Martin would have it, for Eve’s transgressions. I have watched cows calving and mares foaling and goats giving birth; they all suffer, as we must. Forget about Eve, this is what happens to any mothers to be. I must labour with all my might to bring a new life into the world.
It is June 7th. I am alone in my bed. They have left me to sleep. But I am not alone. A little bundle lies beside me in the carved oak crib, wrapped up like a sausage in white cloth. Swaddled. I lean down and grab it inexpertly, pull it up onto the bed in front of me. The swaddling has come loose; the whole bundle is unravelling. I try to wrap it up again, but I’m clumsy and ham-fisted. So I pick it up anyway and clasp this creature awkwardly to my breast. Oh yes, untie your nightgown first. Try again. He’s no fool, he knows exactly what to do. He latches onto my nipple and my breasts swell up, brimming over in response to him. The baby clamps on with primeval power and sucks and sucks. My milk flows. And I weep. Warm sweet milk, hot salt tears. I am the centre of the world. I am my mother, my grandmother, my great grandmother, in a chain of mother–child–mother–child stretching back into a time when our language was quite other. Only two words: Mother and Milk. When people did not read or write.