The Heretic’s Wife (36 page)

But one did not refuse a king.

“There is one more gift, for our special friend, Lady Anne.”

He bade Anne close her eyes and placed a small velvet envelope in her hand. But before she closed her eyes she’d seen the look exchanged between Neville and Brandon and it was not a look that warmed her heart. She fingered the little envelope, trying to recapture her excitement at the thought of another present from the king—too flat for a ring or even a jewel of any size. It felt like a small square with sharp edges.

“Don’t look yet,” he said. “Just open the envelope.”

She slipped her fingers in the velvet pouch and took out the small flat thing, feeling the smoothness of its surface and the sharp pointed edges. She heard a little intake of breath from Neville or Brandon, she didn’t know which.

“Open your eyes, my lady, and look at your king’s gift.”

Anne opened her eyes. And what she saw distressed her so she could not stop the welling tears. She dropped her gaze so the courtiers would not see.

It was a miniature portrait of Henry, beardless as he was now, so it was a recent likeness. He had shaved his beard for the Christmas revels. It was a perfect miniature likeness, his little-boy mouth, his chin slightly cleft above its fleshy throat. He was wearing a simple surcoat and a featherless black hat and a single gold chain. The watercolor image was set against a dark blue background and framed by a thin gold circle within a red rectangle. And it was within that rectangular border that Anne found the source of her tears.

Gilt angels at the corners, both top and bottom, carried golden letters on
a scarlet background:
H K.
Top and bottom. She could see them clearly through the tears.

Henry and Katherine.

“Your Majesty, I cannot accept this. I do not deserve such a token of your and the queen’s generosity.” The hated object swam before her, the king’s image distorted through her tears. “I feel the evening has quite overcome me. I must bid you good night.”

She curtsied as quickly as she could and backed out of the chamber, then picked up her skirts and fled from the king’s presence. The sound of his rage pursued her down the hall.

“I’ll have that painter whipped for such an insult,” he shouted.

But all Anne could think about was the smug look on Charles Brandon’s face.

This is not my doing; but would to God I could in this way, give liberty to enslaved consciences and empty the cloisters of their tenants!

—M
ARTIN
L
UTHER ON HEARING THAT NINE
REFORMED NUNS HAD ESCAPED FROM AN
A
UGUSTINIAN CONVENT
. K
ATHARINA
V
ON
B
ORA WAS ONE OF THOSE NUNS
. (1523)

D
uring the winter Kate went out less. Catherine Massys turned the lower floor, where Quentin’s art school had formerly met, into two small shops. A chandler leased one, and she ran the other herself, offering artist’s tools for sale: pigments and canvases and sable brushes. It was a good way to be rid of some of her brother’s inventory, she said. The artists in his school had come to rely on him for supplies, but she didn’t intend to give them out for free.

On cold, gray days Kate enjoyed sitting with her in the shop, struggling over the unicorn tapestry. They talked of women’s things: the new caps offered for sale in the shop window across the street, the slight measure the Venetian cloth merchant gave when measuring silk, but they talked of other things too.

It was from Catherine Massys that Kate learned just how much greater a foothold the religious reformists had gained on the Continent than in England and that Dr. Martin Luther, the man who started it all and whose
theology Kate had come even more to embrace since her exile, was a married man.

“Sometimes his wife travels with him,” Catherine said, “and the children too. I saw her once.”

“But I thought Luther was a monk. A priest,” Kate said.

“You do not approve of priests who marry?”

“No. I mean, I suppose I always thought of him as too . . . devoted to marry. The lonely monk in his cell. Of course, I see no reason why the clergy shouldn’t marry. Saint Paul said it was better to marry than to burn.”

“Burn?” Catherine’s brow bunched when she didn’t understand some English idiom.

“With lust,” Kate answered. “Feel tempted by . . . you know . . .”

Catherine smiled and nodded. “I understand. Burn. Like fire burns. An all-consuming love. English is a poetic language,” she said. Then, “Do priests marry in England . . . or do they just . . . burn?”

“Some marry.” Kate thought of Cardinal Wolsey, who rumor said had a wife, and Bishop Cranmer, who was said to carry his wife around with him in a box. “But they keep it secret.” Kate picked at a knotted thread. A small hole was beginning to appear in the tip of the unicorn’s horn where she’d picked it once too often. “What’s she like, this wife of Martin Luther?” she asked, tugging at the fibers as if that could make the hole go away.

Catherine shrugged. “I only saw her from a distance. She is younger than Dr. Luther by half. Small oval face, plain clothes. Eyes wide apart, and looking more wise than pretty. Her mouth a little . . .” She pursed her own mouth into a pout to show what she could not say. “Her name is Kate, like you. Kate von Bora. A great family, but they disowned her when she broke her vows.”

“Broke her vows? She was a nun?”

“She ran away from a cloistered house with eight other . . . nuns. After converting to Luther’s ideas.”

An apostate nun and a renegade priest living together openly as man and wife. Kate wondered how they managed to stay out of prison.

“She must really be committed to the Lutheran cause to marry a man twice her age because of his writings.”

“Or maybe, as you English say, she just ‘burns’ for her Martin.”

“Maybe,” Kate said. Her face flushed just thinking about the way her heart leaped and her flesh quivered at John’s touch. She was aware of Catherine’s amused smile.

“I’m glad you are happy here with your new husband,” Catherine said, then added after a brief pause, “and I’m glad you’re living in my house. I think we might become friends. I meet with a few women every Friday. We study the Bible together. Maybe you would like to join us. Two of the women speak some English. They would like to practice on you.”

“Do you meet at the English House?”

“No. We meet here. The Flemish women would not be admitted to the English Merchants’ House, and besides, they sometimes bring their children.”

“Is it safe?”

Catherine shrugged. “Safe enough. Nobody will bother us. The authorities consider us harmless, just gossiping hausfraus.”

“I’ll look forward to it,” Kate said. She stood up and moved to the window, watching for John to turn the corner. “I’ve been meaning to tell you, I saw the altarpiece in the cathedral. Your brother was very talented. The figure of the dead Christ looked so—”

“Very, very dead?” Catherine’s mouth pursed of its own accord this time. “Quentin was talented. But sometimes I think his pictures to be a little too . . . real.”

“The sketch in the studio of the old woman—”

“If it . . . disturbs, I will remove it. It was an oversight to leave it. His sons took away all the paintings. The unfinished sketch, they perhaps didn’t think it was to be valued.”

“No,” Kate said. “Don’t take it away. I’ve come to live with it. Like a melancholy but kindly ghost. Was it the portrait of a real woman?”

“No. At least I don’t think so. I think it was meant as a commentary on old woman’s vanity.”

“Old woman’s vanity! What of old man’s vanity!” Kate said, without taking time to edit the scorn from her voice. “Quentin Massys should have painted their withered calves in fine silk stockings and skinny haunches sheathed in gold brocade, their squinty eyes leering out of pockmarked faces at every full bosom that bounces in front of them—”

Catherine’s sharp little laugh echoed in the shop.

“Forgive me,” Kate said, realizing too late how rude her comment sounded. “I didn’t mean it as an insult to your brother.” Having abandoned the delicate unicorn’s horn, she stabbed at his neck with her needle. “I should learn not to give voice to every opinion that walks through my head.”

“No. It is . . . honest talk. Quentin admired honest talk. He preferred
people with opinions. He hated empty faces. He would have painted your portrait with your eyes wide with . . . umbrage. It was just the kind of thing he did best—any kind of emotion. The portrait of the moneylender and his wife, in it the greed shows in their faces.”

The stamping and neighing of a horse drew Kate’s attention to the window. “It appears you have a customer. I should probably take my opinions and my round-eyed umbrage upstairs. John will be home soon. He should not have to seek out his wife when he comes home. I’ll look forward to Friday,” she said over the jingle of the bell above the shop door.

Kate was able to meet only a few times with Catherine Massys and her little group of Bible women before the torrential rains began. But it was enough for her to know it was something she wanted to keep doing. Though they prayed and sang and even debated in Flemish, two of the women spoke fair English, translating for Kate when the discussion of the Lutheran Scriptures became lively, even asking for her opinion. And she could guess at the content of their prayers. Some of the women silently mouthed affirmation of the words Catherine prayed out loud. Kate knew enough Flemish to know that the words were not from any prayer book or Roman liturgy. These prayers were ardent and earnest and personal. She could tell by the way they hugged their children to their hearts as they prayed.

The second week, at Catherine’s suggestion, Kate brought her Tyndale Bible and after Catherine read from the Gospel of John—from Luther’s German Bible since there was no Flemish translation—Kate read aloud from the Tyndale English Bible. “ ‘I am the Vine. Ye are the branches . . .’ ”

The third week Kate taught them to sing one of Luther’s hymns that she had copied from John’s translation. The little choir numbered a dozen women’s voices and made quite a joyful noise unto their Lord, singing each verse of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” first in English and then in German with more sincerity than melodious tone. As they sang the last verse, Kate was reminded how much she and John had in common with its German author and his Kate—not the least of which was the danger they all courted. These women, who suckled their young as they worshipped, were developing a kind of liturgy of their own. And Kate was sure it was not a liturgy of which the Church prelates would approve.

“We will not be harassed in Antwerp as long as we do not celebrate the mass,” Catherine had assured her, but still when they were singing and the
large iron knocker sounded on the barred shop door, Catherine waved the women to silence. Kate could see the fear in their faces, and she was afraid too. In England a man could be whipped or worse for saying the Lord’s Prayer in his own language. What would John say, she wondered, if his wife were arrested for illegal worship? Would he be proud of her or would he be angry? One thing was sure, he would be worried. She could spare him that at least. Sometimes she wished she knew less about the dangerous waters he and William Tyndale waded in.

The fourth week the rains began and the deluge continued unabated until the low-lying streets and gutter sewers flooded. The women could no longer meet. Only the highest streets farthest from the river stayed dry. One soggy day wept into the next. Each day, fewer and fewer desperate or hardy souls ventured into the waterlogged streets, and most of the first-floor shops had to close.

Since she could no longer keep the shops open, Catherine Massys went back to her home in Leuven. Quentin’s son sent a servant to collect the six shillings in rent. He spoke no English. Watching his futile attempts to sweep the water from inside the shop each time he came, Kate was glad their little nest was on the second floor. She looked out her large windows at the empty, flooded streets and thought this must be the way Noah’s wife felt and wondered if the rain came down in sheets like this across the Channel in England. John inquired, and word from the English House was yes, it was raining in England “like the end of the world.” The Thames could not hold all the runoff from England’s rivers and the undercroft at St. Paul’s was below water. That meant the print shop was probably flooded too. She wondered what she would find when she went back there—if she ever went back there.