The Secret Diaries of Juan Luis Vives

by Tim Darcy Ellis

  “Your work will be done in its proper time,” Álvaro declared. “B’yi-to. You can do no more here. You will not be safe. Go to Flanders. There you will know peace.”

  “But what of my great plan? What safe home for the Jews will there ever be? We will all be destroyed.”

  “It is not your great plan. We must make our own way for now and keep the flame burning. When it is ready, it will happen in England and in all the lands in which she settles. In this is our salvation.

  “But who will sing to the old ladies of the Domus when you’re gone? Who’ll be here to welcome our brethren who wash up on these shores?”

  “It’s not for you or me to answer all these questions, brother. There are others here in this house and others will come after us. What we put down here will guide them along the path.”

  Álvaro made to leave, but before he reached the creaky stairs, I asked questions. Why had the king not come for him? Why did he tolerate the Jews of Houndsditch if he himself was a fervent Christian?”

  “There is more to King Henry than history will remember.”

  “But why tolerate the Jews if he won’t even allow a bible in English?” I asked.

  “He knows he can call on us when he needs to, and he knows we are no threat to him, just to the old bastards around him. And we control the spice and wine trade from Portugal.”

  “But you’re not brave enough to force him to open his doors to us,” I added.

  “Toro Bravo, you dared where others would not and were prepared to pay for it with your life.”

  I had always considered myself a clever and cunning little fish. El Toro Bravo was an act. Perhaps I had been wrong about myself all along?

  “Still, Álvaro, I do not understand why he allows us to continue.”

  “Can you not see the turmoil and unrest if he opened the doors now? He knows that we have secrets that we will take to our grave. The queen’s miscarried son, for example.”

  “How do you know about Catherine of Aragon’s first son?” I asked.

  He walked to the back of the cellar, removed a loose brick from the wall, and uncovered a silken bag. He reached in and produced my papers. “These, I think, belong to you.” He then put his scrivener’s nimble hand inside the silk bag and pulled out a ring—the fourth ring. He held it up to the light of the candle, and it glistened as if it were a message from God.

  “Dear brother, it is a matter on the one hand of finance, on the other of God. Henry knows that one day we will bring great wealth into this country. He knows that he pleases God by having us here.”

  “So why will he not accept us and defy the pope and emperor?”

  Álvaro looked at me and smiled again. “Because unlike you, dear brother, he knows that this is not the proper time.”

  “But that time will one day come?” I asked.

  “Indeed, it will come.”

  * * *

  The next day, Álvaro and Sarah took me to the dock and said, “God be with you.”

  This time the hound would not be drawn from my side, knowing as only a hound can know that this was really goodbye. I thanked them for all they had done and hugged them, forcing my left arm up with my right. I didn’t care who saw or if my brittle bones might break.

  “We are family, a brotherhood,” Álvaro said.

  “And evermore will be so?” I asked.

  “Evermore.”

  Ghastlier than ever, though, that crossing! I shored myself up between Henry the hound and chests of English wool that smelled of the lanolin, the ocean roaring and rolling the beginnings of the apocalypse. I envied the gulls looking down at our frail boat. What an injustice it would be to have survived the king’s prison only to meet a watery grave! But we battled down the side of one final sheet of water and were jettisoned safely into the harbour.

  Henry bounced off the gangplank as if he knew just where he was going. The first night was spent in a tavern, recounting stories of the horrific storm. The next morning, I joined a group of wool merchants, and paying for my share of their armed guard since these were lawless times. An occasional squall sought us out, and although the rain was like arrows with the ice of the north in its quills, I didn’t care. I’d soon be home.

  I spotted the spires and towers of Bruges and yelled a “Hallelujah.” I jumped from the wagon, and Henry followed me. I kissed the very ground. I had survived.

  I made the Verversdijk by early evening. There was no guard. Everything was as it should be. I turned the handle and found that the front door was not locked. How things have changed. I let the dog go forward into the kitchen, the cooking smells proving too much for him.

  “Oh,” I heard, then “oooh” and “Pero—Enrique?” This was followed by a hopeful singsong of “Juanito, Juanito?”

  I waited by the door as Marguerite made her way to the hall with tiny steps. Were there tears on her cheeks? I stood there with a smile, body twisted as always, and waited. This was my home, and she was my true love. She ran towards me, black hair flying back. She threw her arms around me and placed her lovely forehead on my weary shoulder.

  Then there were other footsteps, tinier than hers. A smile broke out on Zeek’s face. “Papa, you are home. I didn’t think you’d come.”

  “Zeek, I promised you and Mama.”

  “But so too did my first Papa,” he said.

  “He did his best, Zeek, and I promised him that I would keep his promise for him.”

  We moved to the kitchen and sat at the table, its scratches and stains as familiar to me as the lines on my own hand. I told them I would never go back. What of the others though? The house seemed so quiet. Maria had married a good Christian burgher and led the double life. And so it was with Marguerite and Zeek, along with Nicolas, who was practising medicine at the new hospital.

  “New hospital?” I jumped in my seat.

  “The one that Louis de Praet built,” Marguerite said.

  I sighed. “Is it really true that he’s a changed man?” I found it hard to believe that the man who’d demanded a book in his name would actually have read that book, let alone act on it.

  “People change when they meet you, Juanito, and they see the good in you,” she said.

  “And señora?” I asked, but I knew in my heart that she had gone. It had happened in March. “May her memory be for a blessing,” I said.

  The bed saw lovemaking for three days and nights. We were drunk on love, and it was only because we had a boy and a dog that I got up and ate. How I needed this human touch, this warmth, this love. Nicolas came back from the new hospital and laughed at the two lovebirds in his own home.

  On the fourth day, Marguerite and I walked, arm in arm, along the riverbank. Zeek and Henry, best friends now, trundled beside us. As we made our way home, I pulled her tight and kissed her, telling her that I’d never let her go.

  “I received a letter from Margaret Roper,” she said.

  “What did she say?”

  “It’s all right. You can call her Meg.”

  “Why would I call her Meg?” I asked, my voice high-pitched.

  “She loved you very much,” Marguerite said without a breath of bitterness. We stopped dead on the cobbled path. There was no point in denying it, and the liberty of the truth was overwhelmingly good.

  “To save my life she has exiled herself from court,” I said, transfixed by the symmetry and tones of the cobbles.

  “Then she is my dearest sister,” my wife proclaimed. “I owe her a life.”

  “What did she say in her letter?” I needed to know.

  “To fatten you up and to keep you fat and warm because you’ve still great work to do.”

  We made our way home in silence. Henry and Zeek played with a ball in the backyard while my wife and I sat where the brotherhood had once sat, at the table that had become an anchor.

 
“Are you feeling stronger now that I mentioned her name?” Marguerite asked.

  I cast the net wide in my soul for an answer. “In the proper time, I’ll be strong through your love and no one else’s if you are patient with me.”

  “I promise you that, Juanito.”

  Later we nestled before the fire in the drawing room, with Henry’s head on my lap, Zeek’s on hers. These were like the babies she was never able to have.

  “Day by day, you will get stronger,” she said, “and time will show that you have not failed.”

  She leaned into my body as I played with her hair. This was no dream. This was real, was heaven on earth. And so, we put them to bed, the dog and the boy. We made our way up to bed and became lost in the honesty of pure being. I was home. I was safe. This gentle woman was mine, and I was hers.

  Part Four

  End of Days

  9 August 1529

  Thin-faced Louis de Praet was at the door, banging hard even as I opened it. He thrust me a book of blank vellum pages.

  “This gets you talking, I’m told.” He pushed past into my house. As he pushed, I noticed there was flesh on my body where there had been just bone. I also noticed that there was the old bounce in my step as I stumbled backwards. But where was he going with such ease, and why?

  “Señor, please. My wife is—”

  De Praet sat calmly at the kitchen table, the sacred space of the brotherhood. Marguerite, who was pickling herrings, became ashen-faced and fell back in her seat.

  “Stay out there,” she shouted to Zeek.

  She offered de Praet white-fleshed herring with dark rye bread. He looked at it with his one eye and grabbed it with his dirty fingers, munching on it like a dog.

  “To what do we owe this pleasure, Señor de Praet?’ I asked, smiling as best I could.

  “Let’s be frank. We are exiles, you and I. Wolsey kicked me into the ocean just as the king kicked you. Louis de Praet is thinking that he and this man Vives… can be of help to one another. Agreed, yes?”

  “But how?” I asked.

  I recalled the diamond seal of the Inquisition that had been stitched to his cloak and blazer, the prison cell in Bruges, the twisted, dislocated shoulder. The seals were gone, but my shoulder was still useless. What could this man want of me?

  “Something in your words reached me. You might not believe that because you think I’m a brute and a pig. I have been, and at times I still am. But you keep dedicating your works in this direction, and you’re safe to light your Shabbat candles and eat your challah bread.”

  This man was ever a man of deals, bargains, and negotiations. He had a pricing system for everything. It had once been a ruby rosary and a diamond crucifix for an old and battered Jew’s life. Now it was the printed word in exchange for freedom. Could I not bargain with him to improve the lot of my people? He must have seen the machinations in my head and intercepted my thoughts.

  “We can work together,” he said. “Look at our new hospital. Perhaps your poor-boy school will be next.”

  This was the deal, then: he would take credit for change, and I would be the silent voice that steered that change.

  “Of course, Señor de Praet,” I said with gritted teeth.

  “I must see to Zeek,” Marguerite said, stepping outside the back door.

  “I am very sorry,” I said. “She’s feeling faint, it’s her monthly course.”

  “Shut up, Vives. I killed her father. Is it any wonder she can’t bear the sight of me?” He laughed and shoved my left shoulder. I thought it would fall out of its socket again, but the shove seemed to push it back in.

  “Juanito, if I may use that name, exile has hardened me to the church, softened me to you. I can’t be remembered as a butcher.”

  With a sudden twist of his black hat that had a yellow peacock feather, he got up to leave. This was a man of action and deals. At the front door, I managed to squeeze in front of him.

  “We live as good Catholics, sir. You know that, don’t you? Remember the wedding at St. Donatian?”

  “Of course. Very good Catholics. By the way, her parents died of syphilis, if anyone should ask. The father gave it to the mother. Put it in writing or there’ll be trouble.” He kissed two fingers and placed them on the doorpost as if putting them on an invisible mezuzah. Then he was gone.

  So, I am to bargain with the souls and reputations of the dead in order that we may live. I cannot. Against my will, I find myself writing in this book he left me, although I have no stomach now for secrets or codes or magnifying glasses. If they find this, they find it. Let us all be damned.

  3 October 1529

  But they didn’t find it, and we were not damned. Nobody came knocking on the door in the small hours, turned us out of our beds, or searched beneath our floorboards. In fact, the early sound of the swallows calling in the nest outside the back portico is the only sound that disturbs our sleep.

  Some days ago, a letter arrived, crisp and addressed in a hand I knew as well as my own, with fine black letters slanting medial to lateral and imbued with extra ink on the downslopes. There was a familiar seal of wax that would have dripped from a bar he must have bought at Spitalfields.

  “What does he say in the letter?” she asked.

  There was no talk of the secret cellar of feast days or fast days. There was just a series of oblique messages from Álvaro de Castro: “We scarce have room for any more guests in the tavern”; “the children are learning the language of their fathers”; and “Moyses Ambrosius is sent back to Italy for sodomy of all things but swears he will one day be back.” He also wrote, “Zuniga is free and on his way to Charles V.”

  Would Zuniga be good to his word that he would help me and my sisters? Would we be safe for much longer? Must we up and move again? No, that is one thing we cannot do. We cannot wander any more.

  The king became impatient with Wolsey, and London was alive with talk of the witch, Anne Boleyn. Reginald Pole and his mother, the Countess Salisbury, took over the education of the princess and isolated her further. What fire will they ignite in her soul? I wrote something down:

  Álvaro, like a brother to me,

  Whose children are my children, will ever more be so,

  Will keep the flame alive in that country called England,

  That one day will be a safe place, a haven, a spring-pad

  Into the new World, where we can hold our heads up high

  And do no harm

  And breathe in peace, a brother to a brother, a father to a son, a brother to a long-lost sister.

  The next morning, I took the letter to the dock and walked home along the street known as Konewinkel. I passed the house of Johannes Van der Poel. A blackbird flew past and almost clipped my ear, and I swore it was singing, “Go on, be brave and enter. Go on Vives!” Would he be at home or in the workshops, spinning yarn and making money? I rapped on the door and waited.

  “You have a visitor, sir,” the maid called out. “He calls himself Vives.”

  “Show him in. Get him here at once!”

  I entered and saw his smiling face and shock of blond hair.

  “Señor! I am blessed! Promise me you are here to stay this time.” He shuffled away some papers and said, “Who needs these when I have you here, the master of words and papers?”

  I nodded.

  “Master Vives, that nod means that I can send my sons to learn from you?”

  “Yes, Johannes. You can send your sons, as many as you like! This will be my final resting place, though not too soon, I hope. And what of you, my brightest star, the one who brought me that leather-bound diary all those years ago?”

  “Juanito, you know Master de Praet delivered sermons on health, poverty, brotherhood, and how they relate to God’s message. He doesn’t show it, but de Praet is quite modest actually. We are about to open a house for t
he poor, and we’ve a tariff from the burghers and merchants, so there’s a new hospital with running water planned. Also, we’ve funds for our own college of physicians and our school for the poor.”

  “My goodness, it is a phenomenon, Johannes,” I said and hugged him tightly with my right arm. “Tell me, what will you do for the poor in your house?” I was intrigued, for I was ever a man of theory and not so good with action.

  “Get them a skill—an apprenticeship paid for by the taxes. Whatever happens—a peasant revolt or an English invasion—they’ll still be able to work, feed their wives, and train their children.”

  The poor wouldn’t be eternally trapped. I was lost for words.

  “It is all because of you, señor, and your example and—”

  “And what, Johannes?”

  “I wronged you long ago, tried to expose you because I didn’t realise the strength of words.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Things like this happen,” I said.

  “I have tried to imagine what it was like for you and your family and have tried very hard to make amends.”

  “But, Johannes,” I said, “you were young, and the young don’t understand the world. I’m not even sure the old do.” I needed him to know that I believed him. I reached out and touched his hand. “It’s all right.”

  “Yes, but it was words like mine that sent your father to the stake.”

  “I know this like I know my own hand, but the future is the country for us. That is the place we have to live in now, all of us under God’s great sky, one family, one brotherhood.”

  We drank to the future and made plans for his poor house and sharing the taxes with Antwerp, Ghent, and Louvain. He made me see that I had indeed done great work; he made me see that I was not too damaged; he made me see that there was great work to do and that there was no better time than now.