The Heretic’s Wife (5 page)

By burning Luther’s books you may rid your bookshelves of him but you will not rid men’s minds of him.

—E
RASMUS OF
R
OTTERDAM

T
he daffodils were blooming in the window box outside Gough’s Book and Print Shop, but neither their brave yellow blossoms nor the thin sunlight lifted Kate’s spirits. Not one word from John since the day two weeks ago when they had taken him away. He would have gotten a message to his wife, or to her, unless he was dead—or in prison. Each day they waited, thinking he would be home today or tomorrow. Today and tomorrow and more tomorrows came and went, and no John.

Her sister-in-law came to the shop every morning. When the door opened sharply at nine bells, Kate didn’t even have to look up.

“Tell me he’s not dead, Kate. Last night I dreamed I saw his body in a winding sheet. Tell me John is all right,” she said, her large brown eyes overflowing while the two-year-old squirmed in her arms.

“He’s not dead, Mary. I would know if he were dead,” she said, reaching for the boy who held his arms out to be taken. “That’s just your own fevered brain conjuring demons from your fear.”

What she did not say was that at this very minute he could be undergoing the most grievous kind of torture or languishing in the Lollard prison, a
horror she had first heard whispered about as a child. The Lollards had been persecuted for two hundred years, since John Wycliffe first called the Roman Church to account for its abuses and dared to call for the Scriptures to be translated from Latin into English so that every man could discern the truth for himself. Her family had been engaged in that struggle for liberty for almost as long.

She buried her head in the boy’s blond curls, feeling its softness as she brushed the bone of the skull underneath with her lips. So hard, and yet so fragile. The baby smell of him reminded her of the baby Madeline.

“If they had killed him, we would have heard about it,” Kate said to reassure herself as much as Mary. “Why else do it, if not to noise it abroad to strike fear in the hearts of their enemies?”

“They say that Wolsey doesn’t like the killing. That he gives them a chance to abjure . . . but I’m not sure that John would—”

“John would abjure for you, Mary. And for his son,” she said flatly, remembering the resolute look on his face as he had burned the books. “He would for you.”

“And you do not approve.”

“I don’t know what I would do in his place. But I know what our father did. He died in the Lollard prison because he stood fast for his beliefs. He would not deny that a man should have the right to read the Gospel in his own language, and he would not proclaim allegiance to a Church that taught false doctrines.”

“And is that what you would have your brother do? Your father wasn’t the only one to suffer. What about you and John? What about your mother? She didn’t die of weak lungs. She died of grief. Whenever you speak of your father you have that same look of . . . worship on your face that John has.”

At the word
face,
the boy put his hand on Kate’s cheek and repeated the word as though they were playing the game they often played: nose, hand, face, ears. Her heart clutched with affection at the touch of his hand on her face.

Her sister-in-law persisted. “Would you do it, Kate? Would you recant?”

“I said I don’t know what I would do, Mary,” she said, feeling resentful that her sister-in-law was pressing her. “It would be as though our father died for nothing. And those before him. Our family has always been involved with reform. You know that. We grew up on stories of martyrdom and heroism. We inherited those stories along with that big old family Bible.” She
looked down at Pipkin squirming in her arms. “But I do not have as much to lose as John.”

Kate liked to think she knew what she would do, but who could ever know? Many brave men had broken under torture. How could a woman hope to endure?

“Air,” said the child, pulling on Kate’s hair.

“Here, take your little wiggle worm back,” she said as she disentangled his hands from her hair, then reached for her cloak on the peg by the door and struggled into it. “I’ll be back in time for you to go home before dark. If anybody asks for a Lutheran text, just say—well, you know what to say.”

“I’ll say we no longer sell those. They are illegal,” she said, her chin thrust out, her eyes snapping with fire.

Mary might be a gentle soul, Kate thought, but she had a streak of determination hard as iron.

When Kate did not correct her, Mary asked, the harshness of her tone softened, her eyes once again soft and moist, “Where will you look today?”

“Maybe down by the docks. The Hanseatic Merchants League. They might have heard something.”

“Some ting.” The boy nodded, his face grown suddenly as solemn as the two women he trusted.

But Kate turned her back. She could no longer bear to look at him. She opened the door and headed out to begin her search as she had each day for two weeks. The sharp March wind bit her neck, forcing her to pull up the squirrel-lined hood of her cloak. There was no such protection for the cold that squeezed at her heart.

Kate learned nothing about her brother from the Merchant Adventurers at the Steelyard except how widespread the sweep had been.

“What about the shipment from Antwerp?” Kate asked the sergeant at arms.

“Ruined. It was off-loaded while the carrier was still out to sea, but don’t worry, mistress. There’s more where that came from. Print and paper are cheap. Lives are not.”

“Will there be no other shipment, then?”

The merchant grinned. “There’s already another on the way. By the time it gets here in late April, the king’s men won’t be watching the Bristol docks.
They’ve already caught Garrett. He’s in a cell at Ilchester in Somerset, poor sod.”

“But won’t they want to know his source?”

“The king doesn’t want any trouble with the German merchants.” He grinned. “He wants good English wool on the backs of rich burghers on the Continent. He’ll not be looking to break the trade agreement. Unless we rub his nose in it, he’ll just go after the English smugglers and distributors.”

“Who will meet the next shipment with Garrett arrested?”

“Some of the booksellers are meeting it directly. If you find your brother, and he’s still got the stomach for it, tell him to check in with Sir John Walsh in Little Sodbury.”

“If I find him.”

“Don’t worry, mistress. They’ve just cast a broad net. They’ll let the small fry go—sooner or later. The jails are already full. I heard they’ve even got some of the Oxford students who bought from Garrett locked in the fish cellar beneath Cardinal College. They’ll put the fear of the pope into them all and send them home.”

“What about Master Garrett?”

“Well, now, they may be more reluctant to let him go. He’s considered a major distributor—and somewhat of a preacher. And he’s already been warned. Once you’ve been warned . . .” He finished his sentence with a shrug.

Now John will have been warned, Kate thought. But she couldn’t think about what that might mean. First she had to find him.

The fish cellar stank. And not just from its name, the aptness of which lent sufficient foul odor, but also from human excrement and mold clinging to the damp walls and something else he could not name. It might be fear, his good sense said, the collective fear oozing from the pores of himself and the five other fellows from Cardinal College who had been detained on suspicion of possessing Lutheran books. John Frith recited Homer in the original Greek—aloud—to keep from going crazy in the filth and the darkness. But this last week his able chorus had fallen off.

“My God, man, will you give it a rest. Clerke is sick,” came a voice from the darkness.

“I know. I smelled it. I’m sorry. But we can’t give in. They
will
let us out. Even Dean Higdon can’t keep us in this stinking cellar without a trial! He’s just trying to frighten us. Let us ripen a little.”

“He’s doing a damn fine job, then.” Sumner’s voice. It was Sumner he worried most about. He’d been sickly before they were locked up.

“We must keep faith,” Frith said, trying to sound assured. “The steward will make his rounds soon, and then we’ll be let out with a threat and probably a public scolding in chapel.”

“Humph! I’d not pin my hopes on the steward. Thomas More is a heretic hunter. He’ll be the last to let us out.” Bayley’s voice.

“How do you know that?” Frith asked.

“Garrett told me. When he was staying over Christmas in quarters with the choirmaster. He said he knew Bishop Tunstall and More were after him.”

“Sort of ‘buy my books and by the way they may get you killed.’ Fine time to tell us,” Frith said a little snippily.

“Would it have stopped you?” Bayley asked.

“You have a point,” Frith said, brushing the gray salt from his cloak as he removed it and handed it to Sumner. “Put this around Clerke. A man shouldn’t be sick
and
cold. We can’t lose heart. The cardinal and the dean and even More will not want it known that the college is ‘infected’ with heresy. Why do you think they shut us up here instead of a public gaol?”

“May be that the gaols are full,” Sumner said weakly. “Or may be they just intend to let us rot here, like this stinking fish.” He pointed to the barrels in the corner.

“Ah no, Sumner. We’ll not rot here. Don’t worry. There’s enough salt to preserve us,” Frith said, trying to lighten the mood. “They’ll let us out when they think our Lutheran fever is sufficiently chilled. Maybe tomorrow. I’ll bet you my Herodotus
and
my Virgil that we’ll all live to see old Thomas More and Wolsey laid out in their Roman funerary clothes. Now”—as if their incarceration were a mere inconvenience to be borne with equanimity—“this time you are Ulysses and I am Telemachus.” And he started his recitation again.

“Firth, you’re either a fool or you’re a saint. I don’t know which.”

I don’t know either,
he thought. But whichever, he was already quite ripe and more than a little chilled. And it had only been three weeks.
Be still my heart, thou hast known worse than this.
But John Frith found scant comfort in Homer’s words, for in truth when had he known worse?

The afternoon shadows were lengthening when Kate made what she thought was her last call of the day at the palace of the Bishop of London. The cleric who answered the door frowned in recognition.

“Bishop Tunstall is in conference today.”

“But he was ‘in conference’ yesterday.”

“As he will be tomorrow. Look, mistress, I do not mean to be unkind. I assure you I have given him your message, and he says he knows nothing of the matter. He says you should petition the sheriff or the Lord Mayor of London.”

“I have already done so. Several times. I’ve bribed the wardens of Newgate and even the Old Compter. They know of no John Gough.”

“The Fleet?”

“The Fleet too.”

Kate tried to soften her tone. She knew the cleric would not respond to harshness. He was young and had a kind face. “Please. A man doesn’t just disappear. My brother was a good citizen . . . is a good citizen.” She would not speak of him in the past tense. “He is a bookseller and printer of some reputation.”