The Secret Diaries of Juan Luis Vives

by Tim Darcy Ellis

  William Roper

  Who had reported me? The nurse? I threw the letter in the fire and banged my fist against the plaster wall of the small kitchen. What new dangers would I be facing now?

  I planned my escape. I would take a barge downstream to St. Katherine’s, board a merchant vessel, and pay my way to safety. I would be in Bruges in four days

  * * *

  On the first night at the palace, I heard something strange outside my door. It sounded a bit like a simpering dog, and my first thought was that Henry, the smart hound, had somehow followed me here. I put my ear to the door that was arched into a rounded apex. I barely heard the words. What was I to do? I slowly opened the door as if opening Pandora’s box.

  It was Maria Salinas, the queen’s lady, clutching her psalter. All I could gather was that I was needed immediately. Looking back, perhaps I should have tied her up and fled down the drainpipe, but I was moved by the distress in her face, her gentle “Por favor, señor.”

  I followed her down the gallery to the queen’s privy chamber, where I found her surrounded by a sea of candles. She looked smaller than ever, a face of frowns and lines that formed sharp angles.

  “Ludovicus Vives,” she called. “Is Spain not your homeland? Is the Lord Jesus Christ not your saviour? Am I not your queen?”

  “Yes, all of these things,” I replied.

  She was on fire. “Then promise me that you are still my brother.”

  “I will always be your brother,” I replied.

  “I know you’ve met with the king. He says you support him, that you sway to the teachings of Leviticus and Jewish law.”

  “Your Majesty, I support him only as far as the scripture is ambiguous. He does not know of any secret conversations.”

  “You have not told him about my relations with Prince Arthur? About the lost baby?”

  “No, Your Majesty. He knows nothing of it.” I lied. Her face lightened.

  She still believed my lie. She clasped her hands together and smiled vaguely. “Then there is still time and hope. I knew you would never betray us.”

  She walked to the window and pulled the curtains apart. She looked across the gardens with their ice-sculpted bushes and frozen fountains. I held the curtain back and felt very brotherly to her. “I knew your love for me was deep.”

  What was I to do? I had one foot in each camp.

  “Sign this,” she said as she threw me a scroll of paper.

  It was a sheet written by Sir Thomas and Wolsey proclaiming that, with the Spanish ambassador of England, I supported the queen’s case as it was to be put before Cardinal Campeggio of Rome. It proclaimed my belief in the legitimacy of the marriage and my allegiance to the queen and princess.

  I tried to make excuses. I said that I must leave court immediately. My wife would soon be in labour. The queen would not be dissuaded.

  “Sign, my brother, if you love the princess and me,” she cried frantically. “If you love your country, then sign.” Involuntarily, my hands working independently of my spirit, I signed. Was I signing my own death warrant? Was I betraying my own father?

  “No, Lady, I cannot.” I threw the quill down and made for the door. She could not help my people. My allegiance was to the king, who could.

  “Señor, you have sisters in Valencia, no?”

  “Yes. Eva and Leonora, good Christian women.”

  “And another I think, known as Beatriz, the warrior Jewess, who hides in a cave above Valencia.”

  “What do you know of Beatriz?” I asked.

  ‘Señor, if you are my brother, then she is my sister. What wouldn’t I do for my sister? The other two are safe, but Beatriz Vives—her life hangs in the balance.”

  I sat and held my head in my hands.

  “I’ll not send you there because there is a price on your head in Spain.”

  This was news. I’d been right to avoid going home all these years.

  “But I can smuggle her out safely to Bruges, Antwerp, Salonika—anywhere you ask if you just sign.”

  “You promised me that with my father,” I said.

  “I knew nothing of the gravity of his situation or of Pole’s treachery.”

  The king had promised me no Jew would be torched in his realm, but if I allied with the queen, there was a chance that my fractured family would be whole again. I signed that sheet of parchment and was out.

  I made it here, to Houndsditch by nightfall. I would be on my way to Bruges, to the loving arms of Marguerite, the following day.

  Álvaro asked, “Which way did you bend. For Henry the King or Catherine the Queen?”

  “Perhaps we should close this synagogue, for a while. The king gives me his word, but that was before I signed for the queen.”

  “You signed to save your sister at the cost of our future?” he replied. He sat me down at the beer-stained table.

  “No. I have the word of the king, his promise. He sees our position and supports us as far as he can.”

  Benjamin Elisha looked on as he put the Bellarmine jars away.

  “She is my own sister. Have I not suffered enough? The queen knows where she is… in the cave. Forgive me, but—”

  “There is nothing to forgive, Juanito.” He stood up and hugged my shaking body. “You did what you had to do.”

  “We are done for,” I said suddenly. “We will never know peace in the land.”

  “That is not the truth,” he said. “We must keep the flame alive until the proper time.”

  I didn’t share his resolve, for surely this could only end one way for the secret Jews of London now that I had double-crossed the king.

  “Álvaro, we can board up the inn and take everyone to Bruges or Antwerp. Louis de Praet is a changed man. We can create our new homeland there and leave this fight for other people, for other days.”

  He got up and turned for the stairs. “Good night, Juanito.”

  I followed him, but he shut his bedroom door and turned the key.

  I hastily packed my chest with my clothes, books, and papers, and put what little coin I had in a silk purse. I would creep down to the cellar and leave them behind a loose brick. Tomorrow I’d be gone.

  3 February 1529

  We made for St. Katherine’s at dawn. It seemed as if the chorus of merchants and mariners had kept rolling through the night like an endless performance on a giant stage. By my side were Álvaro, Sarah, and Henry the hound, who I was taking with me, for Zeek needed a friend. Álvaro put his hand on my shoulder and Sarah smiled, gently. Though I feared that their days here were numbered, they had a calming peace about them.

  “You know, Juan,” said Sarah, “the greatest commandment of all is you shall not be alone.”

  There was a trio of Arabs—blackamoors they’re called—who greeted us at the bottom of the steps.

  “Españoles con su perro,” they shouted, meaning “Spaniards with their dog.” They tried to sell us raisins and dates in wicker baskets, and when that failed, they tried to sell us brass mirrors. At the far end of the dock, low in the water against a grey sky, was my boat, laden and ready. I could taste the freedom.

  Each stride brought me closer to the promise of home, a warm bed, loving arms, and sweet kisses. I was a few steps ahead of the others, and when I turned around, I saw them. I froze, numb. Surely this could not be real, not now, when I was so close. Six guards of the king, with pikes and shining helmets, stood upright like bell towers, watching everything. Were they here to check for smugglers or to make sure customs were paid? The leader pointed at me with a silver dagger. “Vives, known as John Lewis, there is a warrant on your head.”

  Sarah rushed up to Álvaro. “Do something!” she yelled, kicking and screaming her way through the guards.

  They formed a tight wall around me. All I could feel were heavy hands all around me. I smelled a leath
er gag and wristbands. My hands were dragged behind my back, and my shoulder popped. A gag was forced into my open mouth as they lifted me up the steps. They put me in a cage on wheels that screeched through the streets, horses whinnying like ambassadors of the yetzer hara.

  All was dark when I heard a portcullis lifted. Where else could this be but the very home of the axe: The Tower of London. If the noblest and bravest had lost their heads here, what hope would there be for me, a coward, a liar, a Jew?

  I was dragged up stony stairways and thrown into a whitewashed cell. I heard someone say it was called the Lion Tower. How appropriate, I thought. They took off the gag and wristbands, and my left shoulder throbbed. There was a narrow slit for a window, but I sat huddled in a corner, not daring to peer out of it. Eventually I looked up and saw men with hammers and nails on Tower Green, bringing in pieces of timber and erecting a shabby scaffold and a gibbet. I sat in the frozen desolation of the nothingness.

  My gaoler brought me cooked mutton and water, but I did not eat, preferring to simply pray. My gaoler was the famous Master Kingston, and though he smelled like an old unwashed scarf, he had a strange peace about him. He tried to comfort me, but I found no solace in his words.

  Would I say the Hebrew prayers my father taught me for this moment? Would I swear my allegiance to the Christ in the hope of saving others? Would I be dignified, or would I struggle and have to be carried up? What would my wife know of my last moments? Would Zeek ever forgive me?

  The cries of a young man brought me out of introspection.

  “No. In God’s name, no!” a man screamed in the cold late afternoon air. “I am innocent. I have not wronged. Help me, Mother!”

  I stood on my stool and peeped through the window, dreading what I might see. There was a young man in the flower of his beautiful youth on Tower Green, perhaps not more than seventeen, a little older than the boys I taught at court. He had a shock of red hair and a piercing scream that hit every one of the hundred or so onlookers.

  They dragged him up the ladder, beneath the gibbet. And then there was calm. He looked to be praying. His hands were tied about his back, and he started kicking, but his head was already in the noose. The ladder began to topple, and another redhead, a woman of thirty years screamed loudly. “Not my boy! Have mercy!”

  They pulled the ladder away with a thick, hard chop, like the slap of a wave against a vessel in the ocean. Had his neck been broken? It was quick, and I slumped to the floor.

  I taught young men the beauty of the philosophers, and I taught young women the art of the poets, but this is how it ended for those not blessed by wealth and comfort. What kind of barbarous world was it that we lived in? I was, in that moment, quite happy to be leaving it.

  Master Kingston came to my cell later. It was dark and cold. He brought me two blankets and a Latin bible.

  “You will not be here long, sir,” he said.

  So, I thought I would be next. I thought of my wife, of all the things we should have done, of all the kisses I would not have, of all the closeness missed. I wouldn’t feel her breath, wouldn’t see her breast rise and fall, and wouldn’t hear her laughter ever again. I thought of all the women I had ever loved and the trouble it had caused, and I laughed. I thought of Ana in the hayloft, of Adeline in Montmartre, of Meg, but it was totally clear that it was Marguerite whom I really loved. Would she ever know it?

  “Tell me, Master Kingston,” I said, “who was that young man?’ I asked.

  “Ah, yes, the redhead. Better not to remember their names,” he said, his voice calm like the low tide on the muddy bank of the river.

  “What was his crime? Was it a heinous murder?”

  “He stole lead from the roof of St. Katherine’s Hospital. He was caught in the dead of night, claiming he and his widowed mother needed money to feed his young brothers.”

  These are the consequences of poverty, left to the charity of the church to mend? A young man steals from the church to feed his family and ends up with his head in the noose. I blessed the day I spoke out about poverty and thanked God that my words had met with the black ink of the press.

  “Pack your things,” he said. “The king’s men will be here within the hour.”

  What use was there in packing? Would it save Master Kingston the job after my execution? I looked to Tower Green and could see the gibbet and the empty noose swaying in the breeze. It was dark. Would they kill me secretly so it wouldn’t look bad for the king?

  On the hour, they arrived, a small army with pikes and swords. My breathing grew shorter yet louder, my chest constricted as if in a harness. There could be no escape. The certainty of my fate hit me. I had no powers of persuasion. “How is it to be done?”

  Kingston looked at me kindly. “They will take you by barge to an undisclosed location. It will be done there.”

  Who would be there? Would it be the new Spanish ambassador? Reginald Pole? Would there be an auto-da-fé and a bonfire?

  The men rushed in, put a black sackcloth over my face, and drew a rope across it, forcing my mouth open so I couldn’t speak. My hands were tied behind my back again, and the pop from my left shoulder made everyone laugh. I tried hard not to trip, to do this with grace, to make Mother proud as I marched past the cells of other men and out into the courtyard. It was then that the searing pain from my shoulder burned and travelled up my neck and down to my fingers. I guessed I was being taken through the traitor’s gate, for I could hear the lapping of water. My feet were shaking as they bundled me onto the barge.

  What reason did they have for not simply tipping me over the edge and letting me slowly sink to the bottom—for saying it was all a terrible accident? Again and again, I repeated what my father had told me to say if ever this should happen: “Sh’ma Israel, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad - Listen Israel, the Lord is your God, the Lord is one.”

  We travelled upstream slowly against the tide. That was all I could tell. The oarsmen worked hard against the tug of the tide. We must have passed by Chelsea, and I wondered if anyone was watching from the great house of Thomas More—and if any there cared? Perhaps it was Roper and his spies who had orchestrated this for invading the chamber of Meg?

  The boat came to a halt. When I was lifted up and thrown onto a timber jetty, the pain from my jaw and my shoulder felt like it belonged to someone else. This person was jostled on rough cobbled paths, and I hoped he wouldn’t trip. His wretched shoulder hung limp, like a dead man’s arm. Every bone in his poor body was bruised. He heard a gate being opened and then women’s voices, gasps as he was taken out of the wagon and marched through a maze of chambers until he was dumped in a cold, damp cell.

  It was only then that I came back into my body. There was a simple rush light in the wall, a stone floor, cold as ice, a black cloth that I could barely lie under, a pile of straw, a pitcher of water, and a barrel for a piss pot. After all my time in the English court and the nights of passion on a four-posted bed in Bruges—after all the letters to Erasmus and the conversations with Sir Thomas More—this was what I had left. What futility lay in possessions. What greater a possession than liberty.

  Time passed. I looked out from a small window the size of a hand and saw a winter garden with one man working the frost-hard mud, smashing through it like he was carving granite. In the distance was a flimsy village with timber-framed buildings and a small church. Smoke billowed from the chimneys. I could make out figures walking hurriedly, jumping on horses, and riding into the distance, into freedom.

  It started raining the next day and thankfully warmed a bit. Occasionally, one of the sisters, with a wide-brimmed white hat she’d hold onto with one hand, would dart out. She gave orders to the young man digging the rose beds in the rain. I spent hours imagining their conversation. That scene was all I had, and it played over and again in those first few days.

  When the rains ceased and the frost returned, sculpting the gardens
into a kind of mythical scene from a Norse saga, the young girls emerged. They were wringing sheets and linen and hanging it on a line that the young man had put up. He stood in the distance and looked at them. It seemed as if his every sinew ached to approach them, but there was obviously a line that he could not cross. They looked to him occasionally, and when he saw them, he looked down, consumed by his digging. Each day there were a few hours of pale English sun that dried the sheets. From this distance I couldn’t see their hands, but they must have been red-raw, like my body. I called to them, but my weak words were lost on the wind.

  After three days of solitary starvation I became delirious and sweaty. Three burly young men entered my cell. One pinned me to the back wall with a gardening fork, one placed some items on the floor, and the other took my things away. The one with the pitchfork backed off, still facing me. I couldn’t help but laugh, for what could I, the soft-fingered academic, the peace-loving Jew, do against them?

  But what bliss that visitation was! They brought me fresh straw, a new barrel, and a new pitcher of water. Best of all, they brought bread, milk, and mutton bones with fat and gristle. I knew I must eat slowly and make the bread last, for I’d been told in moments like this that it can swell up and stick in your throat and kill you quickly. I had to choose life, however hard that was in my early days.

  Time passed, but how much time, I do not know. How many days had I left? Was this the glorious finale of the Jews in England? Surely Álvaro and Sarah could not have survived? I sat with my knees drawn up until they seemed to fuse to my chest. The silent men came and went, and one day I finally heard voices.

  “Vives, Vives, Vives.”

  “Yes, that is my name.”

  “You let the king down. Why? He promised you everything. You’re a treacherous Jew.”

  This went on for days, the words drummed into my head, an unending verbal torture. Was I an experiment in sanity? Were they trying to weaken me so that I would say the things they wanted to hear? If so, it was working, for the voices brought me out of prayer and meditation. The questions took me back to the torture of self-reproach. I’d turned my back on my family at seventeen for fear of the dungeon but look where I had ended up! I’d turned away from my wife and our adopted son to fight someone else’s hopeless cause. I’d caused the death of my father and been no help to my sisters. I had worked to get the king’s support and then lost it within a day. And what of the secret Jews of Houndsditch? Where were they now? In a worse prison cell than this? On their way to the stake? On their way back to Spain?