The Heretic’s Wife (70 page)

“I know it’s a lot to ask. I am already so much in your debt. I can never repay your kindness,” Winifred said after Madeline had been with Kate for a fortnight. “But it will only be a few more days. I’m feeling stronger every day.”

But Kate suspected from the bright pink of her friend’s usual pallid complexion that she was feverish. She would send Endor back with a tea of yarrow, chamomile, and angelica. “I love having Madeline,” she said. “She is a joy. Just concentrate on getting better.”

“There is one more thing . . .” Winifred lowered her voice so that Madeline, who had fallen asleep in her mother’s arms, would not hear her. “Just in case I . . . just in case anything should happen . . . there is a noblewoman by name of Countess Clare that I sew for. She lives in a large house near Bishopsgate, the first lane past Crosby Hall.” She looked down at the sleeping child, and stroked her hair gently, obviously trying to collect herself to go on. “When I first began to cough up the blood, I was frightened—my sister did that before she . . . before she . . .”

Kate nodded her understanding, so she would not have to say it.

Winifred continued in a whisper, still stroking the child’s pale hair. “The countess agreed to let Madeline go into service as a kitchen maid should anything happen to me. If she could just stay with you and Endor until she gets used to . . . the idea and you could sort of look after her . . . in the beginning. She might be lonely and . . .”

“I will look after her, Winifred. Don’t you worry.”

Winfired reached out with her other hand, the one not caressing her child, and gripped Kate’s. Her skin was alarmingly hot. “You have been so kind to me,” she said. “If I could beg one more favor . . . My Frenchy is buried in St. Dunstan’s churchyard. I know the priest there. He has agreed . . . all you have to do is ask.”

For a moment Kate did not trust herself to speak. St. Dunstan’s.
We buried his ashes in St. Dunstan’s churchyard.
She tried to swallow her emotions along with the lump in her throat, and prayed the child would not waken. “Of course, it will be done as you wish. But that’s just the fever talking. You’re going to get better. I’m going to get you something to help bring down your fever. If Madeline wakes up, tell her I’m coming right back.”

Winifred closed her eyes and nodded.

Kate returned in less than twenty minutes. The tea was still steaming. The child was still sleeping in her mother’s arms. Winifred slept too. But it was a sleep from which she never woke. She died two days later.

“You must be weary of always coming to my aid,” Kate said. It was a gray winter morning and she and Captain Tom stood alone beside Winifred’s grave.

The curate of St. Dunstan’s had finished reading the psalm and left. Kate could not bear to watch the grave digger heave the dirt on Winifred’s frail body. Cold numbed her and loneliness crept up from the grave at her feet. Her legs might have buckled except for the support of the captain’s arm behind her back, a support for which she was very glad. She was glad, too, that she’d left Madeline with Endor. The last thing the child would remember about her mother would not be this horrid scene but the comfort of Winifred’s beating heart as she fell asleep against her mother’s breast.

“I am very grateful, Captain. I do not know how I would have gotten through these weeks and months without you. But I know it cannot go on forever,” she said. “This is the last time I will summon you from your friends, I promise. I fear I have become a burden.”

“It is a small enough burden, Kate. I think I can bear it.”

“Your friend may think it no small burden.”

After Winifred died, and not knowing where else to turn, Kate had gone to the lodgings in Cheapside where Tom Lasser stayed when he was not in Woolwich working on his boat. She had prayed he would be there. But when he answered the door the landlord directed her to, she had blurted out her need and immediately wished she had not. From the candlelit interior of the intimate sitting room, a woman’s voice had demanded, “Whoever it is, Tom, send them away. I want you all to myself tonight.”

“By my friend you must mean Charlotte? She’s a widow from Lübeck who just happened to be in London on business. I have known her for a very long time. Her husband was a cloth merchant. Much older than she. He departed this life, leaving her rich and still young enough to enjoy it.”

“She is very beautiful,” Kate said, remembering the pouting, rouged lips of the blond woman who had peered quizzically at Kate over the captain’s shoulder as he shrugged into his doublet.

“Yes, I suppose she is,” he said. “She works at it very hard.”

By now the grave was half filled and no glimpse of the shroud remained. Kate tried not to think of Winifred’s thin bones bearing the weight of so much dirt. But when had she not borne a heavy weight, this woman with her frail body and heart of a lion, her life a struggle from its beginning to its end? So unlike the rich, beautiful widow from Lübeck. Where was the justice in that? Kate turned her gaze away from the grave, unable to bear the sight of it. Had Charlotte been waiting for the captain when he returned last night? Did he tell her how they had taken Winifred to the nuns to be washed and laid out in the chapel? Did he tell her he had paid for the burial service of a poor seamstress? He had given instructions to the nuns as though Winifred had been his own sister. “Tapers at her head and feet all throughout the night,” he’d said. He had paid for the grave, too, inside the churchyard, not in the pauper’s area. Did the beautiful widow from Lübeck know the heart of Tom Lasser? Kate wondered. Or did she care only about the handsome sea captain with his glib answers and flashing smile?

“I hope you were able to see her again before she left.” Kate felt her skin flush at the lie and hoped he did not notice.

“Oh, she hasn’t left yet. She’ll be here a while. She is making the rounds of the English shops. I’ll bring her around for you to meet her if you’d like.”

Kate would not like. She felt a sudden and quite unreasonable dislike for the blond widow from Lübeck with her pouting lips. “Don’t trouble her. I’m sure she would not be pleased. I recall that she said something about ‘having you all to herself.’ ”

A fine mist had begun to fall, deepening the misery of the day. John slept somewhere in this same churchyard. She had never seen his grave, not wanted to, yet suddenly she did not think she could leave this place without seeing it.

“If you’re ready to see it, Kate, I’ll show you.” As if he’d read her mind. “It’s right over there. Next to the wall.”

She nodded, ambushed by a sob. He guided her a few feet over from Winifred’s grave, just to the edge where a creeping vine clutched at the stone wall. Grassy weeds had grown over the mound. She was surprised at how large it was. “I thought you said—”

“There were a few bones left, scattered among the ashes. We put them in a box.”

She pointed to a simple cross, small but carved in stone, at the head. It bore no name. “Did you do that?”

He nodded. “We couldn’t put his name on it. It was all Monmouth could do to get him buried in the churchyard.”

He walked away a few paces, as she bent to trace the smooth stone with her fingers, feeling suddenly calm and at peace. “I miss you, John,” she whispered. “Take care of my friend Winifred. You would have liked her, I know. She was brave. Like you.”

Then she stood up and walked away to the place where Captain Lasser waited for her in the shadow of a yew. Neither of them talked as they walked back to Paternoster Row.

“Is Maman still in the ground in the churchyard?” Madeline asked a week after the burial.

“No, she has gone to heaven.”

“But I didn’t get to tell her good-bye,” the child said, pouting.

“You can tell her when you say your prayers. Just give God the message, and he’ll see she gets it.”

“Will she come back tomorrow?”

“Not tomorrow.”

It became a litany between them.

After about a week Madeline looked thoughtful. “Is Maman with Papa?”

“Yes, Madeline. She is with your father,” Kate said, relieved that the child finally understood.

“Will Madeline stay with Kate and Endor?” she asked.

“Madeline will stay with Kate and Endor,” Kate answered. She could not add
For a while, until you go to live in a great house in Bishopsgate.
The words would not come. Not yet. It was too soon.

“Good. Madeline likes it here.”

Madeline’s referring to herself in the third person became a pattern that lasted for several weeks, but Kate understood that it gave the child some distance from her loss, and did not correct her. Kate understood all about loss and distance. She was just now beginning to come to grips with the full reality of her widowed circumstances.

The countess had sent a servant by to collect the child three days after the funeral, saying she’d heard of the death of the seamstress and was informed by the curate at St. Dunstan’s that the child was with her.

“My lady wishes to know if the child is learning to sew,” the footman had said.

“The child does not sew, but she is bright. She is learning to read and write.”

“I think my mistress will only be interested in the sewing. The girl will probably start in the kitchens if she cannot sew.”

And end there, Kate thought.

She had put the footman off until after the New Year, pleading that the child was still grieving over her mother and was still too young to go into service.
No good can come from putting it off,
she chided herself after he had gone. What was she thinking? Her only support came from a man who would be leaving soon. How was she going to look after herself, let alone a child? Madeline would become just more attached than ever to her new home. When she finally had to leave, the pain would be greater—for both of them.

As the old year passed, Kate dreaded each knock on the door, half expecting the countess’s footman to show up to claim Madeline. Even if Kate could figure out a way to keep her, Winifred had said she had an agreement with the woman. Did that mean some legal obligation? What was she going to tell the child, if she had to send her away? But a week into the new year it was not the footman who showed up unwanted.

Kate’s first inclination after peering out the window was not to open the door, but before Kate could stop her, Madeline skipped to the door shouting, “It’s Captain. Madeline will open the door,” and straining on tiptoe, she lifted the bar with both her hands. “Oh,” she said in disappointment. “You’re not Captain,” as Margaret Roper stepped inside.

The child, suddenly shy, ran to Kate and hid behind her skirt.

“I’m so glad you answered the door,” Mistress Roper said. “I came right after your husband . . . died . . . and you were not here. I was worried.” She stood in the door, the cold air pouring in around her. Kate did not invite her in.

“Your father did not tell you, then?”

“He told me only that you had returned to London.”

“I returned to London. The great, charitable Sir Thomas delivered me to Newgate Prison. I was locked up with the criminally insane while my husband was being put to death. I would still be there were it not for the intervention of a good man.”

“Oh,” the visitor said, her face a mask of discomfort. “I did not know.” She held out her hand palm up as if begging Kate for something. “My father . . . if you could have known him before . . . he is not himself. He thinks only of heretics these days. He talks incessantly of Tyndale.”

“Then prithee, Mistress Roper, unless your visit is not one of goodwill as you say it is, do not remind him of my existence.”

“May I please come in? Just for a moment?” Kate nodded curtly, and Margaret Roper took a couple of steps forward, closing the door behind her. Kate did not invite her to sit. “I have learned a hard lesson about my father. You may be sure I will not mention you to him again. I hope you know that it was not my doing that your brother’s press was destroyed. I knew nothing of it. I asked my father to help secure his release. He promised me he would.”

“He was released. I am happy to say he lives now in a less hostile clime.”

Madeline must have sensed the tension between the women. Usually a happy chatterbox even in the presence of strangers, she clung silently to Kate.