The Heretic’s Wife (42 page)

“Oh?” Richard looked surprised.

“A just ruling,” Sir Thomas answered the unasked question.

It was a silver vase of unremarkable quality. It would bring a few pounds in the marketplace. He would sell it and give the money to the almshouse. He wrapped the vase back up, and closed his eyes to sleep a little during the long trip home.

Captain Lasser considered Kate Frith as she ate her fish stew with less enthusiasm than he had remembered. Noting the restlessness in her hands, he thought her changed in some way he could not quite fathom. He wondered if she was happy in her life of exile. Her husband seemed much the same as before, as though he’d drunk some magic elixir from a perpetual fountain of cheer. He wore that same infectious warmth of personality that made him a hard man to dislike—though there was that something in Tom’s mind that tried. Really tried.

“So you found employment with the Antwerp countinghouse? Is it sufficient? I could speak—”

“Oh no, I assure you we are managing. Even though the Kontor is just a subsidiary countinghouse, they have more than enough work, but it’s not the work I want to be doing. As soon as my friend Tyndale returns to Antwerp, I’ll have more than I can do.”

“I’m surprised Tyndale could afford to pay you. I mean . . . I know his translations and tracts sell; I’ve shipped enough of them, but they are cheaply bought, and he probably has some trouble finding printing at market rate given the risk to the printer.”

“Oh, I don’t expect pay. Some things one does just for the good of it,” Frith said, a little pompously, Tom thought. “I’m hoping to save enough so that when he does come to Antwerp, my wife and I will have enough to manage. So far there’s just the two of us.”

Tom noticed the way Kate closed her eyes at his words, just a slow blink really, but she also looked away from her husband, as though she could not bear to hear those words.

Embarrassed at intruding upon some private pain, Tom too glanced away. Outside the porthole, where blue sky should have been, sheer cliffs rose in a wall of rock. “We’re entering the gorge. The channel is narrow here. I’d best go up on deck.” Then he added, “You might want to come with me. The view of the cliffs is as splendid as any cathedral.”

“I want to visit with Endor a while,” Kate said. She did not look at her husband as she added, “You go on up, John.”

It sounded to Tom like a dismissal, but John seemed not to notice as he gave his wife a perfunctory peck on the cheek and followed Tom up the ladder.

“I am pleased to see you again, Endor. Have you been well?” Kate said after the men had left.

Endor nodded solemnly and, breaking into a smile, reached for Kate’s hand and patted it as if to say yes, she was well and also pleased. She picked up Kate’s wine cup, with a question in her eyes.

“No. No more wine. But I would like some water.” Then realizing that fresh water might not be easily come by at sea, she added, “If you have any.”

Endor smiled and nodded, then taking Kate’s cup placed it beneath the spigot of a small wooden keg mounted on the wall. Kate had assumed it contained ale.

“Will you sit with me a moment?” she said as Endor handed her the water.

Looking surprised but pleased, Endor sat at the table opposite Kate, not settled back in the chair but perched on its edge like a bird about to take flight.

“I think about you often.” Kate reached inside her bodice and pulled out the emblem of Saint Anne that hung around her neck. “I have this to remind me of you.”

Endor smiled and nodded.

Kate returned the necklace inside her chemise, feeling the cool metal as it slid between her breasts, then placed her palms straight down on the table to stop the fidgeting of her fingers. Her index fingers rubbed ever so slightly against the smooth ridges in the boards of the table. Not knowing how to begin, she inhaled deeply of the sea air mingled with the smell of linseed oil and old wood. Endor looked at her expectantly. The muted sounds of the water, lapping against the ship’s hull, punched into the silence.

“We have something else in common now, Endor,” she said. “I too have lost a child.”

Endor’s hands reached across the table and covered her own. They were rough and strong and comforting. The cup of water sat just to the right of their joined hands.

“It was a great grief to me,” Kate said, trying to keep her voice from breaking.

Endor nodded and closed her eyes, then gave her head a little shake as though shaking off the memory.

Kate slid her hand from beneath Endor’s and picked up the cup, took a sip. It was clear and cool and still full almost to the brim. She could see her own eyes reflected in it as she lifted it to her lips. There was no other way to say it but to ask. Just ask.

“Is that what you saw in the water before, Endor? Did you know that I would lose my child?”

Endor’s eyes grew wide, her mouth pursed into a tight line. She withdrew her hand from the table and scooted closer to the edge of her seat, poised ready for flight. Kate remembered how upset she had become before. She should not ask her to do it again. It would be a sin, not just a stain upon her own soul but on Endor’s soul as well. And it was prohibited. Like trafficking in English Bibles, a burning offense. Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live, the Bible said. But surely Endor was no witch. She only had a gift. Maybe it was God who gave her the gift. There was nothing evil about her.

Kate set the cup down in the middle of the table.

“Will I have another child?” she whispered.

Endor did not move. This time it was Kate who stood up and turned away upset. She should not have asked, had determined that she would not. The words had just slipped out. “I’m sorry. I had no right—”

A tug on her sleeve urged her back down. Endor nodded, then wrapping her hands around the base of the cup, pulled it toward her. She stared into the water. Kate held her breath, but Endor just gave a little shake of her head. Then she closed her eyes and stared unblinking into the cup again, her face a mask of concentration. Kate was unconscious that her own eyes were unblinking in sympathy with Endor’s until they began to burn and water. Endor smiled, her sharp little chin nodding rapidly. She held up one finger.

“One child,” Kate said, her breath scarcely coming. “You saw one child.”

Endor nodded then pointed with two fingers to her eyes, then to the porthole, then back to her eyes.

Kate shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

Endor pointed to her eyes again.

“My child will have . . . eyes—”

Endor pointed to the map on the wall mounted beside the water keg. It was a blue map of the world.

“My child will have . . . blue eyes!”

Again the sharp little chin bobbed. “But John has brown eyes and mine
are green . . . how . . . oh, what does it matter? I don’t care if it has purple eyes. Thank you, Endor. Thank you,” she said, hugging the woman to her.

Endor nodded and shrugged as if to say it was a small thing.

Later that night, Endor lay awake contemplating the spangled velvet sky through the slice of night outside her open door as she listened to the night sounds: the scraping of anchor ropes against the hull, the creak of the boards, the laughter of the night watch as they played at dice. Not these familiar sounds but a little pinch of guilt chased away her sleep. Since that last time when the captain had asked her to gaze into the bowl, she had prayed for the gift of second sight to be removed. It brought great trouble to her heart. Not trusting in the prayers, she had not looked long enough into still water again to see the visions.

Until tonight.

Endor could feel the woman’s pain in her own heart. How could she not give what comfort she could? And yet it seemed that the silent and unknowable God who had flung those millions of stars across the heavens had heard her prayers after all.

For all Endor had seen in the still water was the reflection of her own blue eyes.

The cabin was dark when John came back. The moonlight, filtering through the porthole, lent a ghostly presence. Kate was asleep on the narrow bed, her hair spread out across the pillow. Except for the rhythmic movement of her breathing, she might have been a dream. He lightly touched her hair. She stirred but did not waken. He yearned for the feel of her body next to his, just as he imagined the Greek lord of the underworld must have yearned for Persephone, or David for Bathsheba, Menelaus for his stolen Helen. She was almost irresistible.

Almost. For all John Frith needed to quell his manhood was the memory of the bloody dress lying in a sodden crumpled heap on the floor and the vision of Kate’s face, red and swollen with tears, the sadness in her eyes that lingered still. He knew she thought it was selfishness on his part whenever he pulled away, selfishness because he was so caught up in his work and his goals that he did not want to share his life with children. That was why she kept bringing up Luther, reminding him without putting it into direct words
that the great Dr. Martin Luther had children and he still found time to work.

He spread the blankets on the floor and lay down on them, trying not to disturb her. He did not want to see the accusation in her eyes when he turned away from her. He could hear her even breathing, softy exhaling into the stillness of the room, as he lay awake, listening, too, to the sound of the ocean’s breath as it kissed the ship. He longed to press his mouth against hers, sucking her breath into his body, drawing her spirit in to make it one with his. He wanted to possess her soul so that there could be no division between them.

He slept fitfully and dreamed he was Ulysses, alone, shipwrecked, floating on a wide plank in an endless ocean. He drifted toward a longed-for shore that he could see but never reach. Just before dawn, he woke to find her lying beside him on the floor. She whispered his name and he opened his arms to her. She was Bathsheba. She was Persephone. She was Helen. She was irresistible in her wooing.