The Heretic’s Wife Read online

  THE

  HERETIC’S WIFE

  ALSO BY BRENDA RICKMAN

  VANTREASE

  The Mercy Seller

  The Illuminator

  THE

  HERETIC’S WIFE

  BRENDA RICKMAN

  VANTREASE

  ST.MARTIN’S PRESS

  NEW YORK

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THE HERETIC’S WIFE. Copyright © 2010 by Brenda Rick-man Vantrease. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.stmartins.com

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Vantrease, Brenda Rickman.

  The heretic’s wife / Brenda Rickman Vantrease. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-312-38699-3

  1. Great Britain—History—16th century—Fiction. 2. Illumination of books and manuscripts—Fiction. 3. Bible—Translating—Great Britain—Fiction. 4. Heretics—Fiction. 5. Wives—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3622.A675H37 2010

  813’.6—dc22

  2009045299

  First Edition: April 2010

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Julie with memories of London

  and the search for Sir Thomas

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am grateful for the scholarship of several historians upon whose work I relied in finding my story. Their understanding, erudition, and insight into the religious strife of pre-Reformation and Reformation England proved invaluable to me. They are as follows: Peter Ackroyd in The Life of Thomas More, Benson Bobrick in Wide as the Waters, G. R. Elton in England under the Tudors, Carolly Erickson in her biography Great Harry, John Guy in Tudor England, and Brian Moynahan in God’s Bestseller. Reading their works inspired and enabled my search for the individuals, both celebrated and uncelebrated, who participated in the struggle for religious freedom.

  I wish to express my appreciation to my publisher, St. Martin’s Press, and the fine people who work there. I am especially grateful to my editor, Hope Dellon, who acts as midwife to my books and holds my hand during their birthing. Like any good midwife, she knows when to say “push a little harder” and when to say “well done.” Much appreciation is also due my agent, Harvey Klinger. His efforts on my behalf have far exceeded any reasonable expectations. And of course, I wish to thank my readers. What a joy it has been to hear from people near and far and know that together we have created a work of shared imagination.

  I have been blessed with supportive family and friends, too many to name. I love them all and wish them to know their words of encouragement are like pearls to me. My ongoing friendship with my writing pal for more than a decade, Meg Waite Clayton, author of The Wednesday Sisters, remains a professional and personal resource even though she now lives a continent away. Most of all I wish to acknowledge publicly the tireless and enthusiastic support of my husband, Don, for this and all my efforts. Finally, I thank my God for putting all these people in my life.

  THE

  HERETIC’S WIFE

  PROLOGUE

  LONDON,

  APRIL 1524

  William Tyndale patted the breast pocket of his jerkin for the twentieth time since leaving St. Bart’s Fair. Still there. But of course it was. Even the pettiest thief among this lot would not risk the stocks to steal a book worth no more than three shillings. It had probably cost no more than ten pence to print, but it was priceless to him.

  He strode down the middle of the street to avoid the slime-filled ditches, ignoring the jeers and catcalls from the drunks and painted women who groped each other in the shadowy doorways of Cock’s Lane. He kept his head down to avoid direct eye-to-eye contact, and wondered how many of them could read—not the book he carried in his pocket, of course, but in English, in their own language. If he could provide enough cheap copies of an English New Testament to scatter on the refuse-laden street, would some literate, hell-bound soul pick one up and read it? Just one soul!

  But not today—and not ever if the Bishop of London who had refused him patronage had his way. William quickened his pace in anticipation of the moment he would be alone in his chamber to compare Erasmus’s Greek edition to the Vulgate, the only translation allowed by Rome.

  A light rain fell from a leaden sky as he passed Smithfield. Its damp smell carried an odor of butchered meats and fresh blood from London’s slaughterhouse. The mist was always thicker here. Close. Smothering. Was it a fancy of overwrought imagination to think it carried the ghosts of long-dead Lollards, martyrs burned in this very field by Wolsey’s predecessors simply because they challenged the iron dogma of Church doctrine?

  Old wives and children claimed that the ghost of Sir John Oldcastle, a nobleman and a Lollard who disseminated contraband English Bibles, had hung about this place for the last one hundred years. But William knew Sir John had not died here. He had been hanged and then burned less than a mile west, where all traitors were hanged. And yet, the swirling miasma of this place bothered him much, for the memories it evoked—and the persecution it presaged. He’d heard it said that Wolfsee—that was the name William had given Cardinal Wolsey—was not a “man-burner,” but he quaked in his soul at the very thought of it. Like a frightened child clinging to a favorite toy, he patted again his breast pocket. The promise of his mind’s delight gave him courage as he hurried from that hateful place.

  The clamor of bells chased him down Cheapside toward the Steelyard by the Thames where he was to meet his benefactor. He covered his ears—the bells of St. Mary le Bow, the loudest bells in a city of clanging bells, and he had the misfortune to live within earshot.

  Damnable peals of vanity!

  The same Bong! Bong!—that interrupted his preaching at St. Dunstan’s—Bong!—and scattered the wagtails that roosted peaceably outside his chamber window—Bong!—scattered his thoughts, too, as he labored over his translating. He broke into a trot, as if by walking fast he could lessen their clamor.

  As he turned into Cousin Lane, he recognized the brawny figure of Humphrey Monmouth, resplendent in the usual fur-trimmed doublet and silk hose that his wife Bessie made him wear, pacing impatiently before the large carved doors of the hall of the Hanseatic merchants. William had no idea why his patron wanted him to meet with a gaggle of wealthy German traders. Their talk of wool and profits was so much babble to him, but he was keenly aware that he owed Humphrey Monmouth the very roof over his head and every morsel of sodden meat and swallow of small beer that slid down his gullet.

  The pressure of the Erasmus Greek Gospel stuffed into the too-small aperture of his jerkin pocket beckoned mightily. What good fortune to have found it at the fair. The Greek Gospel, like Erasmus’s Latin translation, was not banned because only elite churchmen and scholars, men who embraced the new learning, could read the ancient Greek and Latin, but neither were they widely circulated. He longed to immerse himself in the text, but Monmouth had spotted him and was beckoning urgently.

  As William entered the arched gates of the great stone hall with his benefactor, one glance showed him this was a company of wealthy men. Ample light filtered through large glazed windows at one end of the hall, but the torch lights had wastefully been lit in their sconces, their glow picking out the silver threads and jeweled rings and gilt chains of the merchants sitting on wooden benches around the hall’s perimeter. Fresh herbs, scattered among the rushes on the floor, spiced the smell that powerful men gave off when engaged in negotiations. One of the merchants looked in their direction and with a thick German a
ccent shouted, “Monmouth! Bring Master Tyndale here.”

  Startled that they knew his name, William suddenly remembered he was capless and smoothed his hair back with his hands, which, as he was acutely conscious, only accented the knobby expanse of his brow. Monmouth pushed him forward toward the table centered beneath the merchants’ coat of arms.

  A burly man with a red-gold beard and the assurance of a Viking lord leaned over the table and grasped him by the hand, addressing both him and, judging by the loudness of his voice, the entire gathering. “Monmouth has told us about you, Tyndale, and we are all anxious to hear what you have to say.”

  William’s gaze darted about the hall. All eyes looked in his direction. As conversation muted to a faint murmur, he tried to remember when he had last trimmed his beard or changed his shirt. The bells of St. Mary le Bow ceased their clamoring, and the silence deepened. A pulpit jutted out from one wall—he’d heard the merchants held devotional services here. Were they expecting him to preach? Monmouth was a regular worshipper at St. Dunstan’s, but he’d said nothing about William preaching to the merchants. He’d just said, “Come with me to the Hanseatic meeting.”

  William glanced uncertainly at Monmouth, who was grinning as if he were delighted to find his verbose protégé suddenly wordless, and swallowed hard. “I’m afraid . . . that is . . . I feel unprepared to . . .”

  Monmouth laughed. “I didn’t bring you here to preach to my brothers, William, but to meet some like-minded souls. We are engaged in the same cause as you. We are a merchants’ league, true, but we are also known as the Fellowship of the Christian Brethren and, along with certain Merchant Adventurers abroad, we plan to paper England with cheap printed copies of an English Bible. With your help, we can win England for Martin Luther’s reformist cause—” He paused and waved his hand in a sweeping motion to gather in his comrades as he winked. “And we’ll make a profit at the same time.”

  When the merchants’ huzzahs and applause had died down, Monmouth continued. “We have a plan . . . and if you sit down and relax—Master of the Table, bring Master Tyndale a cup; he looks parched enough to drink a barrel—we will tell you your part.”

  William sank onto the velvet cushion of a high-backed chair and made a pretense of sipping his drink as he listened with growing incredulity. The merchants told him how they’d been long engaged in the importing of Martin Luther’s writings, and now they had a plan to circumvent Cardinal Wolsey’s prohibition on the printing and publishing of English Bibles. Under their proposal, Tyndale would simply do his translating and his printing on the Continent. And the importing and distribution, well, they could see to that: false manifests in legitimate cargo, single sheets of Scripture in a bolt of cloth, a barrel marked FLOUR and filled with Bibles—it was not William’s concern.

  William looked at Monmouth, whose grin had vanished, the seriousness of his demeanor, like his burly physique, at odds with his fashionable togs. When he spoke his voice was firm.

  “This is not without risk to you, William. Wolsey’s reach goes way beyond this little island. And there are others. The king’s councillor, Thomas More, is dedicated to maintaining the pope’s control at any cost. Should you cast your lot with us in this venture, you may incur the wrath of some powerful enemies.” He put his hand on William’s shoulder. “Do not give your answer in haste.”

  William merely nodded, trying to show considered thought. If he had heard aright, here was a whole company of patrons offering him what the Bishop of London had refused him—a chance to translate the New Testament into English. It was the commission that his heart profoundly desired. As to powerful enemies, he’d already had his mettle tested when he was tutoring Lord Walsh’s children in Little Sodbury. The prelates there had not backed him down with their threats.

  A burst of affirmation and encouragement broke out among the men, then settled to a polite murmur, giving him time to consider. Monmouth walked away and engaged the other officers in conversation, his voice low.

  What was there to consider? William was hardly able to stifle his exultation. A pox upon the Bishop of London! An image of Cuthbert Tunstall happening upon a Tyndale translation of the New Testament flashed through William’s mind. He imagined the bishop finding his translation at a bookshop in Paternoster Row, picking it up gingerly as though he were handling some noxious thing, opening it up with his ring-choked fingers—only to see Tyndale’s imprint. What he would give to be there to witness such a moment! Finally, the Bishop of London would see that the scholar he had snubbed had succeeded without him. Pride goeth before a fall, he reminded himself. It was enough that God had provided the way. God and Humphrey Monmouth.

  Three days later, William Tyndale left for Germany. In his pocket he carried twenty pounds from the Hanseatic merchants of the London Steelyard, along with Erasmus’s Greek New Testament. He would use it and Luther’s German Bible to make his own English translation—not to further the humanist cause, not as an exercise in the classics for the “new learning” of the intellectual elite represented by Erasmus and Sir Thomas More, but to do for Englishmen what Luther had done for his countrymen. He’d allotted himself one year—six months to learn the German language and six months to make his English translations. In the land that did not burn Luther, he was sure to gain the freedom to print.

  As he boarded ship in Bristol, he patted the pocket of his leather jerkin to feel the bulging outline of the Greek New Testament. When he returned he’d be carrying another in its place, and this one would be in English.

  William had forgotten all about the Smithfield ghosts and their warnings.

  ONE

  MARCH 1528

  Let it not make thee despair, neither yet discourage thee, O reader, that it is forbidden thee in pain of life and goods . . . to read the Word of thy soul’s health; . . . for if God be on our side, what matter maketh it who be against us, be they bishops, cardinals, popes . . .

  —FROM WILLIAM TYNDALE’S

  THE OBEDIENCE OF A CHRISTIAN MAN, 1528

  A scream reverberated against the walls of Gough’s Book and Print Shop and echoed down Paternoster Row. An ugly, devil-eyed rat scrambled inside the baited jar, clawing to get out. When no manly presence asserted itself, Kate Gough closed her eyes, sucked in a deep breath, grabbed the fire poker and brought it down with such force she almost lost her balance. The jar shattered. A streak of gray scuttled behind a large codex on the bottom shelf of the book cupboard.

  Damnation! All she’d got for her trouble and fright was a glob of grease and ashes and a pile of broken glass on her floor. Where was a man when you needed one—though Kate could boast no man in her life save her brother John, who had gone off to the Frankfurt Book Fair on some grand adventure. All two of her suitors, the miscreant son of a spice merchant and a journeyman thief, had slunk away when they learned she had no dowry and that the business belonged to her brother.

  “Nasty, evil creatures,” Kate murmured—under her breath since there was no one to hear.

  Even had she not encountered the marauder eyeball to eyeball, there was evidence aplenty of another invasion: ragged corners of leather bindings, chewed pages, loathsome black pellets on the deal boards of the bookshelf. The poker thudded to the floor, masking the creak of the door, but as she bent to pick up the largest shards of greasy glass, a sweep of cold rushed in.

  “Just look around,” she called over her shoulder. “I’ll be with you shortly.”

  She picked up the broom beside the hearth and swept the mess into a pile. “I’ve broken a bottle and wouldn’t want someone to step on the bits,” she called.

  “Please, it’s urgent.” It was a woman’s voice.

  Kate felt her hackles rise. How could the purchase of a book be urgent? “Shut the door, please, you’re letting in the cold. I’ll just be a minute more,” she repeated, trying to keep the edge out of her voice.

  “Please. I can’t wait. Just watch my baby. I’ll be back. Soon. I promise.” The woman’s voice was low and
breathless, as though she were being chased.

  Baby? She said she was leaving a baby!

  Kate whirled around in time to see another streak of gray—this one larger and in skirts—darting out her door. “Wait! I—” But the woman was as fast as the rat had been. “Wait—come back!” she shouted to the skirt and shawl disappearing around the corner that led into St. Paul’s courtyard.

  “By all the painted saints and the virgin too,” she muttered to herself, forgetting all about the rat and the shattered glass, forgetting about the broom in her hand as she looked incredulously at the bundle on the floor. It moved slightly inside the swaddling. How dare the woman! How presumptuous and careless and stupid to leave her child with a stranger! Kate didn’t know anything about caring for babies. The only person she’d ever taken care of was her dying mother and she’d not been very good at that.

  What if the woman was lying? What if she didn’t come back for hours? Her next thought made her breath catch in her throat. What if she didn’t come back at all! She was probably one of the destitute women who loitered around the steps of St. Paul’s, their eyes as hungry as the pigeons who pecked for food scraps left by the vendors on the dirty paving stones. The bundle writhed a bit and made a sucking noise. Why hadn’t the silly woman taken it to the almshouse or to the nuns at Black Friars? Why did she have to leave it here, for God’s sake? Oh Holy Virgin, it is starting to cry.

  “Shh, shh, don’t cry. Please, please don’t cry,” she begged. “It’s not good to cry, crying never helps,” as if the infant could be reasoned with.

  Kate stood the broom beside the door and, kneeling on the floor, peered at the child. “You must not cry. It is not allowed,” she said, pulling back a faded, but clean, blanket to reveal a doll-like face and a rosebud mouth working itself into a scrunch of rage. One tiny, perfect hand broke free and pumped the air. The creature let out a thin, high screech, and then another, until its tiny body writhed in rhythm to its squalling.