Was there healing in the smell of freshly cut grass and the gentleness of the evening sky? Nearby were haymakers in fields, working late. It was almost sunset as I walked through the rose garden. It looked so simple and so perfect, so very safe. Then the thought came back to me, and I wished that I had always been one of them, that I hadn’t chosen such a tortuous and impossible task. I breathed deeply as if absorbing their energy, receiving it from across the fields. It felt for a moment as if I were in the bosom of my father’s home, like I was six years of age.
At dinner, Abigail, daughter of Master Owen, sat on my left side at a long oak table, her breasts like a pair of milk buckets around her neck. She carried the spirit of the fields with her with her wheat-coloured hair and bale-shaped face. With an encompassing smile that swallowed me whole, she was the very fruit of the land.
“And how do you make a living, kind sir?” She laughed as she spoke.
I couldn’t help but smile and laugh with her. I replied in my slow and heavy English. “With words, with books, with my mouth.”
She tossed her long hair back and breathed deeply, heaving her bosom up in its red-and-cream dress. “I can see you are skilled with your mouth, sir.”
Something stirred within me; something moved between my legs. The girl’s father looked to me as if to say, “Take her and then you can really put our case to the queen.” What was I to do?
“My mouth is not the only thing I am skilled with,” I said with a grin.
“And your friend, the handsome one, is he skilled, too?”
“Not as skilled as his wife, who cut the tongue out of the last woman to touch him.”
“I see that you want me all to yourself.”
I stopped. It was as if a whiff of lavender hit me, and I was transported to the gentleness and scent of Marguerite. I stood up but realised I had exposed myself. Álvaro was in hysterics. Sir Thomas looked scornful. I had to stop myself, for there was one love for me and one love only. I made my excuses and left the table.
The next day we were off at dawn.
“Remember us to the queen,” Owen said as we left. I nodded, but he wasn’t satisfied. “And tell her, please, señor, that we are sorry.”
“Sorry?” I said as we trotted off, but he had gone.
We moved on, passing ancient villages with strange names: Strood, Darenth, Blackheath. In the distance, the city looked like a broad swath, with a grey haze piercing its middle by what could only be a river. Nearer to the city were villages: Camberwell and Kennington. We were storming, kicking up dust. Álvaro leant over to me and shouted above the din of the horses and the cheering.
“Have you ever felt this, Juanito?”
I turned and shook my head.
I got my first clear view of the city from Southwark near the great church of St Olave. There it was, London Bridge, with shops and houses so dense that the area was almost a town in its own right. My excitement was not thwarted by the smells of tanneries on the riverbank or the reek of horse dung, only by the begging children whose thin grey faces were so different to the ones we had seen on the road. Upon crossing the bridge, we were greeted by the distorted heads of traitors on poles. Surely none of them could belong to my own people?
After crossing the north arch of the bridge, we moved into the city with a clatter. Carts were stuck in the poorly paved roads—not paved with silver or gold. To our left side was a fish market with its small fishing boats and skiffs, some moored, others casting off. Men were on the streets, in the gutter, in the pavements, sharpening knives as flower girls traded and sang songs. A drunken woman bound by the hands, face down, screaming obscenities and thrashing violently, was carried off by four soldiers.
We trotted along streets with names like Corn Hill and Cheap Side. In the distance were the tall spires of St. Paul’s Cathedral. To our left, the streets seemed to roll downward towards the river like unravelled ribbons. Then we were at Bucklersbury, the house called The Barge. And what a fine house! Three wings jutted from the timber-framed building like welcoming arms. As we walked through the wrought-iron gates, the grand front door was flung open. Four young women ran towards us, chased by a group of barking dogs and an older woman with a stick. With their arms wide open, they shouted, “Daddy, oh my daddy! Home at last. We missed you!”
I wanted to be among them; yes, in that split-second, I wanted it forever. The girls became slowly aware that there were guests in their father’s party, one of whom they recognised, one of whom they did not.
“This is my wife, Alice.” Sir Thomas introduced me to a short, plain woman who was mother, or at least stepmother, to his bounty. Her face was like a storybook, and each of her lines seemed to be a chapter for each of her children with Sir Thomas.
“And these are my daughters: Margaret, known as Meg, Elizabeth, and Cicely, and this is my ward, Anne Cresacre. And this is my stepdaughter, also Margaret.” They all curtsied with no sign of a sly eye. He looked around. “And where’s my boy, handsome John, huh? Must be away making sailing ships from sticks.”
Was I right to think that here humility had found a way to reside among magnificence?
The supper—goodness me! It was the first of many alive with its many languages and poems in the great hall beneath a minstrel’s gallery. If only Marguerite had been there beside me. If only Papa had been there, regaling them with stories and the words of the great Ibn Gabirol. One day, I pray.
There was a smell of something, rose perhaps, from the six-pronged siphon that drew a scent from a burning candle under an ancient pewter bowl. We drank from Venetian crystal glasses, red and blue, and ate from French tableware, dishes in green and yellow and patterned with snakes and eagles. Sir Thomas stood to carve the side of beef, and the rich smell of the roasted joint and the meat juices made my mouth water. There was no talk of fashions or cloths of gold, of courtly gossip. This was talk of commerce, architecture, and universities.
It was elder Margaret, dressed in dark blue that looked almost black in the half-light, who caught my eye. She had light brown hair, a full bosom, and two keen front teeth that protruded slightly. Was she seventeen, eighteen? And already with a gold and ruby ring. She leaned forward and asked me of Erasmus’s translation of the New Testament into Greek. Should she undertake the same project and translate it into English? I was too pre-occupied with her to answer. Has ever a woman been so alive? I thought. Álvaro kicked me awake, but Sir Thomas had already beaten me to the answer: “Not if you want to keep your head, Meg. That is not going to happen in this land, never mind in this house.”
She ignored him—what pluck! She looked at me and nodded, as if demanding my answer, which was, of course, “Yes.”
“Erasmus has done a commendable job,” I told her with a smile. She seemed completely unaware that she had a bosom. It was as if she thought of herself as a girl with a flat chest. I was lost in wondering of how long her breasts had been there, pert and ample, curving gently upwards. I got another kick from under the table and remembered my Marguerite.
“It is my heartfelt belief that only through the discourse of many ideas in many tongues that we may progress,” I answered.
“Oh, he does have opinions, not just observations!” she said. “Do you believe the bible should be translated into English?”
Of course, diary, the bible should be available in English and Hebrew and Spanish and any other language, but I was not going to incriminate myself on my first night there. I replied, “The bible is revolutionary, Mistress More, for within it, men challenge kings, and kings challenge God.”
“Roper.”
“I’m sorry. Roper?”
There was a wave of laughter, Álvaro included. The laughter felt like a sudden gift of God, but it unsettled me. What had I missed?
“I am Mistress Roper, a very married woman, señor!”
Did I look disappointed? Relieved?
�
��Señor, are the English people not allowed to know that biblical heroes usurp biblical kings unless their particular priest sees fit to tell them?”
Thankfully, young Elizabeth More started singing an English ditty about King Harry. All laughed, but my respite did not last long. When it was over, Margaret struck again. “And what of Ferdinand and Isabella? To give us our queen, there must have been great monarchs of Spain, yes? To wrest the land from the Moors and the Jews, they must have been magnificent leaders, yes?”
I took a deep breath. Escaping from one fire, I found myself in another. “I’m very tired, my lady. I am sure they achieved much.”
My avoidance fooled no one.
“Do you say that they were great leaders or not?” Margaret asked impatiently.
“Answer the question,” Elizabeth ordered, a tooth missing in the upper right of her mouth.
“They have given us a daughter, the great Queen of England.”
“Come on, Juan Luis,” Álvaro chirped as if siding with them.
I went on, for what else could I do? “If they had united our country, then they would truly have been great monarchs. But with every victory, of course, there is a loss.”
“This sounds rich,” said Sir Thomas, scanning the faces of his daughters. “The Spaniard’s true colours are about to be shown. Listen.”
All at the table leaned forward as if drawn by a puppeteer from the minstrel’s gallery above.
“The Moors, not the ones gathered here at the table, of course, but the Arab ones,” I laughed. “They taught us much about science and astronomy. Medicine, too.” I was not brave enough to mention the achievements of the Jewish people. “Our nation, which once consisted of many nations and many voices, now consists of just one. You see, I am for many voices, a pluralistic world. To banish these people and others does not make Spain great, but makes the nations to which they are banished great.”
“I sometimes agree,” Margaret said. “In Utopia we would tolerate the Moors and the Jews, would we not, father?”
“We would indeed, but we are not living in a utopia, my child.” Clearly, his views had shifted since he wrote his great work. I looked at him with a quizzical glance. He turned away and uttered, “Here we send them to the Domus Conversorum.” A chorus greeted his last words as the girls sang, “To the Domus, to the Domus, we’ll send them to the Domus.”
“What is this Domus?” I asked, already knowing the answer from Álvaro.
“The house to where we send them,
To live for all their days,
Punished for blood-libel,
And their crimes against His ways.”
Elizabeth gave a stronger voice to the sentiments. “Unless Reginald Pole gets them first, then it wouldn’t be the safety of the Domus, would it?”
I couldn’t hold my tongue. “Is Reginald Pole one of the king’s men?”
The girls tried to talk over one another with hurried explanations. No, he was not a favourite of the king—more of the queen—and was studying in the Vatican, a Plantagenet and a potential royal pretender.
“Stop!” Sir Thomas yelled. “Honestly, girls, the way you get animated over a handsome and clever man.”
“Sounds like an ally of de Praet,” I said.
“Don’t make me laugh, Ludovicus. He’s cleverer by a country mile! Look at what happened to the Duke of Buckingham!”
“Yes, Father, you’re right,” Elizabeth said. “This country is a place for neither Jews nor Moors. That’s why we sent señor, the cardinal’s man.” She looked at Álvaro knowingly. “Sent him across the water to make sure he was not a Jew, as people said he might be.”
“I am God’s servant,” I said assertively. “I believe God brought me here to bring his true message to the princess.”
They all stood and cheered, and then the pretty one, Cicely, spoke up. “Please, Daddy, the song about childhood, the one you wrote that’s in the nursery.”
He stood and let out a throaty laugh and, with each line, recited his own verse:
I am called childhood, in play is all my mind,
To cast a quoit, a cock-stick, and a ball.
A top, can I set, and drive it in his kind.
But would to God these hateful books all,
Were in a fire burnt to powder small.
Then might I lead my life always in play:
Which life God send me to mine ending day.
There was much cheering and clapping, and then Margaret asked for a song of love. Sir Thomas, with a twinkle in his eye for Meg, obliged.
Whoever knows not the strength, power and might,
Of Venus and me her little son Cupid,
Thou manhood shall a mirror been a right,
By us subdued for all thy great pride,
My fiery dart pierces thy tender side,
Now thou that before despised children small,
Shall grow a child again and be my thrall.
At the end of that first night, Margaret Roper looked at Sir Thomas and declared, “I like him, Father. Seems he’s a good man.”
“I like him too, Daddy,” Cicely added. “Can he stay here forever?”
Sir Thomas looked to the minstrel’s gallery and said, “None of you likes him as well as I. I flew over that bloody ocean, incognito, to get him back, and Cicely, beloved, yes, if God is on our side, he will stay with us forever.”
As I write by the early morning light—not by the flickering of a candle when the rest of the town is sleeping—I feel that anger and gratitude are two uneasy bedfellows. Sir Thomas’s family are clearly not friends of my people, yet they welcome me like one of their own. They rescue me and give me a chance, and by doing so, give my people a chance. I am here on a quest, but God, if ever you grant me anything, grant me this moment of peace in the golden light of this new land. Let the birdsong and the roses imbue me with all their strength and light for the journey ahead. The path may be rough and full of broken branches and stones, but let me have this time of healing, of plenty, first. Amen.
10 June 1523
Well, diary, as I arrived in London, the monarchs departed, for they are bankrupting, it is said, every large house in the land. I wonder if they’ll go to the Owens in Chatham so he can apologise himself? As for me, I am left to sit and write by the window in the upstairs library, or in the pergola with its climbing roses that somersault and back-flip, just like my busy mind.
There are no letters yet from Bruges. I’ve no word of how she is or of the boy, Zeek, whose mother, on the day we left had brought him to our back door, with the simple words, “take him.” We arranged for him to go to the house of the Valldauras. There was no word of Señor Valldaura, with all his bruises and wounds. with all his bruises and wounds. There is nothing from Spain either despite my letters inviting them here, with my description of the hospitality and the length of the summer days. I’m left with the moment, and the moment, mostly, is a sense of joy. But this joy, this safety, it dulls me, and I need to shake myself awake. But it is hard when peace happens. What, diary? I am disloyal? I am selfish. All right, but let me illustrate my point clearly and show you how hard it is.
Yesterday, I walked out in the early morning, with its golden light peaking from behind the red-tiled roof, to the small pergola in the rose garden. There, amid the aviaries with their sweet finches from the land called Cuba and chattering green parrots from India, I sat down to write. I was deep in planning when I heard footsteps and a gentle tap tap like summer rain on a window. It was Margaret, known as Meg.
“Señor, would you care for tisane of hyssop to sharpen the mind, or cool cider to cloud it?”
“Both, of course!”
She laughed, for she’d found me unprepared.
“That’s funny to an Englishwoman—to ask for both?”
She smiled through her great front teeth and nodded.
Then, like her father, she changed demeanour. “What of Erasmus’s work?” she demanded. Margaret was off and running with her conversation! “How will you raise a tax to pay for your colleges? And an English bible—you support it, don’t you? Think of the discord, the revolts. What hope for the unity of the church if the poor can read it in their own homes without understanding it? They could not contextualise their own learning.”
“Well, my lady, that’s precisely it.”
“Precisely what?”
“Precisely the problem. All should have enough education to be able to discuss the teachings of the”—I almost said Torah but stopped myself—“the bible.”
Our conversation became a battle of questions while I sipped on her strong cider, ignoring the bitter hyssop. I tried humour. “What of the guile of Jacob? The stealth of Abraham? Shouldn’t the English themselves learn some of that? They could challenge the might of Spain?”
She took me from the gazebo and grabbed a rose. “Pretty, no?” She smelled it while looking at me. “Do you like to smell roses?”
Where was this leading? I needed to break her spell. “What do you know of the kol ishah, my lady?” I was testing her, but also risking my neck.
“I know little Hebrew, señor.” She sensed my change, declared that she must leave, and began to walk down the gravel path.
“But, Margaret Roper, what of your work?”
She stopped like a sheepdog that had remembered a lamb left on the mountain. Without turning, she took a breath. Had I won? I could see her shoulders rise and knew that her breasts would follow. She faced forward as she confessed that she was working on a translation into English of Erasmus’s Precatio Dominica, known in English as A Treatise on the Pater Noster. She calmed her breathing, turned, walked back to me, and placed her very white English hand on the radial aspect of my left wrist as she whispered, “The voice of the woman that in this world is little but a vibration.”
“That women like you will change into a song,” I said.
The Secret Diaries of Juan Luis Vives Page 10