The Heretic’s Wife Read online

  She picked up the child gingerly and, cradling it in the crook of her arm, bounced it gently. To Kate’s surprise, the squalling dropped a pitch and paused intermittently. “There, there,” Kate crooned as she bounced and rocked the baby.

  That was not so hard.

  The crying stopped and the baby opened its eyes. They were the color of the Madonna’s robe in the old illuminated Bible she had inherited from her grandmother, a pure and perfect virgin blue. Kate paused in her bouncing. The blue eyes shut and the tiny mouth scrunched again. Kate resumed her bouncing and her crooning and the world righted itself. The infant—which Kate with her limited experience judged to be about two months—fastened a gaze on Kate’s face and smiled. Both the gaze and the smile seemed wise with some primal knowledge, as if to say, I know who you are and I pronounce you worthy. A gurgle followed the smile. Then another.

  In that moment Kate’s heart grew about three sizes.

  She was still holding the child, exchanging tentative endearments in some ancient language known only between women and babies, when the mother came back.

  “So sorry. Thank you so much for watching my little Madeline.” She paused to catch her breath. “She was slowing me down. A cutpurse snatched my day’s wages, and I had to give chase.” She grinned and held up the thin little bag. Coins clinked inside it. “My name is Winifred. I’m a seamstress at the shop one street over and my mistress was out. I couldn’t leave the baby alone.”

  “Madeline? That’s a beautiful name,” Kate said. All her anger at the woman for abandoning the child on her floor had melted away. “She’s a beautiful child.”

  “Her daddy is a Frenchy,” she said, by way of explanation for the name, or perhaps the good looks, judging by how her face lit up when she spoke of him.

  The baby was still gurgling and Kate was still bouncing the child in the crook of her arm. She was momentarily distracted by the apparent fearlessness of the young woman, who couldn’t have been more than seventeen—Kate’s own age when the apprenticed printer with whom she’d exchanged only a few fumbling kisses was found with his hand in the bookshop coin box and sent away in disgrace. This girl already had a husband and a child and was chasing down cutpurses as though it were all in a day’s work.

  The woman reached out her arms. “She likes you. She doesn’t usually take to strangers.”

  “You are very brave—or very foolish,” Kate said, unconsciously drawing the child closer to her.

  “Oh, ’twas just a lad. I boxed his ears and sent him home to his mama a little wiser. He was probably hungry, but I can’t afford to feed him. My man would be that unhappy if I came home empty-handed. He works as a waterman in Southwark. It takes every penny we can scrape together to feed the three of us. A lot of people on this side of the river won’t use him ’cause he’s a foreigner.” Her arms still outstretched, the woman moved a step closer. “I’ll take her now. I’ve imposed long enough.”

  Kate reluctantly surrendered the little girl. “No imposition,” she murmured.

  Winifred lifted the baby into her arms, buzzing her on the nose with her own. “You were Mama’s good girl, but now we have to go. Your pa will want his supper,” she said. She exited the shop in a rush and a swoop, almost as quickly as she had entered it, throwing a “much obliged, mistress” over her shoulder.

  “Please, anytime,” Kate called to her retreating back. “No trouble. Really.”

  She stood for a moment in the doorway, not feeling the rush of cold air, her arms remembering the weight of the child. The lamplighter was at work and the beadle had begun his watch. Soon it would be dark outside, the night stretching out before her. She would light her own lamp, read a bit from a recent translation of Dante that they had for sale, careful not to smudge the pages, of course. Then she would eat some stale bread and cheese, maybe a bit of dried fruit. She did not cook much since her brother had married, been glad to be relieved of the burden these two years. Then she would bank the fire in the shop and go up the winding stair to her small bed—just big enough for one.

  First she had to sweep up the broken glass. She picked up the broom, but just leaned on it, wondering what had changed; whence came this sudden sense of loneliness and dissatisfaction? She thought of the poor women who slept in the shadow of St. Paul’s in whatever doorway they could find shelter. You should thank God, Kate Gough, she scolded herself. You have a roof and hearth—and books. If you have an itch to hold a child, there’s always little Pipkin—and you can give him back. When would you have time for books if you had a brood of squalling children and a husband? But she didn’t feel thankful.

  The girl—she said her name was Winifred. She would be home by now. She and her husband would eat their evening meal together and laugh about her catching the would-be thief. She might even tell her Frenchman about the bookseller who had watched her child.

  Was she nice? he might ask. Nice enough. But there was something sad about her. It was almost as if she wanted to keep little Madeline for herself. I felt kind of sorry for her.

  Little Madeline. Kate remembered the baby smell of her, the perfect little hand that clutched Kate’s finger as though it were a lifeline.

  Stop it, Kate!

  She whisked the broom more roughly than she meant to. A piece of glass scuttled across the floor and startled her, causing her to wonder if the red-eyed vermin would peer at her tonight when she blew out her candle.

  Blinking back tears of frustration, she couldn’t help but wonder for the second time that day, Where was a man when you needed one?

  The next morning Kate woke to the sound of pounding on the door. Maybe whoever it is will go away, she thought and rolled over to go back to sleep. The day was gray and overcast and spitting snow; she could tell from the small window on the wall set high in the eaves above her bed. Her bed was warm, and cold floors and a dead hearth waited for her downstairs in the empty bookshop. She pulled the covers up over her head.

  The pounding persisted.

  “Go away,” she shouted, but she put her feet on the cold floor and pulled her skirt over her chemise. Another customer urgently in need of a book. But it might be the only customer she had all day. She twisted her braid into a bun and pinned it and started down the stairs. Then the thought occurred to her that it might be the woman with the baby again. She had invited her to bring her back anytime. “I’m coming,” she shouted.

  But when she lifted the latch, her brother John pushed into the room and shut the door quickly behind him. Kate threw her arms around him, forgetting all about the woman and the child, then stepped back to look at him. His nose was pinched with cold and snowflakes dusted his cap and mantle. He looked so wan and tired, he must have traveled all night. No wonder he pounded so impatiently on the door.

  “Did you leave the books outside?” she asked, looking around for a satchel or a small crate. “They’ll get wet. We should bring them in. Right away,” she said, opening the door again.

  He reached over her shoulder and gave the door a push. It slammed shut. “There are no books,” he said, swatting his hat against his cloak to remove the snow, then hanging both on a peg by the door. “I didn’t buy any.”

  “Didn’t buy! Why on earth—” Then her thoughts caught up with her mouth. “You lost the money! Oh merciful saints, you were robbed! Are you all right?”

  He sighed wearily. “I did not lose the money, dear sister. I bought books, but on the way home I learned this is not the time to be bringing more Lutheran sermons or English Bibles into England. Fortunately, I was able to recoup some of the money I’d spent. I sold what I’d bought at a discount to an Englishman who was going abroad to live.”

  “That sounds like a very good business decision,” she mumbled. “Maybe we should get a bigger shop so we can sell more books below cost.”

  He did not answer her sarcasm with a witty barb of his own, as he usually did, but picked up the poker and stirred in the ashes, coaxing the coals to life, flinging on a piece of kindling from a bas
ket beside the hearth. His movements, usually so deliberate, were hasty, almost frenzied. The flames leaped up, melting the snowflakes from his hat and cloak. A small puddle formed on Kate’s beeswaxed floorboards as she fumed silently about the books. She had been looking forward to the new books, and their inventory was pitifully low—mostly what he’d been able to print in the back room, and that wasn’t much since he couldn’t get a license for any of the Lutheran materials that were their stock-in-trade. The fire was blazing now, banishing the morning chill.

  “Have you seen Mary and the baby?” she asked, changing the subject in order not to ruin his homecoming with her scold’s tongue.

  “No. I came straight here,” he said. He was rummaging in the book cupboards gathering up pamphlets. She recognized the Antwerp imprint on some of them. Those would be Tyndale’s—all they had left.

  “What are you looking for? John, really, I am glad to see you but you probably should have gone home to see your wife before coming here.” Then she added under her breath, unable to resist, “Especially since you have returned empty-handed.”

  He strode across the room and examined the pamphlets before striding to the fire and feeding them, first one, then another, into the fire.

  “John! What in heaven’s name—”

  The bright flames leaped higher, devouring the paper and ink that he’d smuggled in at great risk. He was already at another bookshelf, rifling its contents, discarding some, clutching others to consign to the hungry blaze. He picked up the last two of Tyndale’s English New Testaments and leaned again toward the fire, shielding his face from the heat.

  She grabbed for them too late. “John! Have you gone mad? That’s the Holy Word you’re burning! And the last of our inventory.”

  “I have to do this, Kate. They’ve arrested Thomas Garrett,” he said.

  Her hand froze in midair. Thomas Garrett was a bookseller to Oxford scholars and one of their chief suppliers. What smuggled shipments John did not meet, he bought from Garrett. The heat from the fire was sucking the air out of the room, but she found breath enough to ask, “What will they do to him? Does Cardinal Wolsey have him? Or the king’s soldiers?”

  “Same difference. Henry VIII, Defender of the Faith,” John said with bitterness, “will do whatever the cardinal says. Fortunately, Garrett had his wits about him enough to escape. But others have been arrested. They tortured a parson from Honey Lane along with his servant.”

  He paused and looked hard at her, his gaze locking with her own; suddenly they were children again, and he, ever the cautious one, was warning her away from danger. “Kate, Garrett sent me a message. I may have been named.”

  His voice was calm, but she saw the fear in his eyes and suddenly his anxious, hurried movements made sense.

  “But even if that’s true and you have been named . . . you aren’t in any real danger, right? The Church has never gone after the booksellers in a serious way. It would interfere with commerce. Pope’s pony or not, the king would never allow it.”

  But even as she stammered out the words, she was remembering the new laws against printing unlicensed works and disseminating Lutheran materials in particular. They had considered the edicts hardly more than a conciliatory nod to the clerics since they seemed to have more to do with commerce than heresy. “Aren’t you being overly cautious? It’s not like you are a Lutheran preacher or something. Our customers come to us, asking for the books. Surely, you would get off with no more than a fine or a threat to shut down the shop. If that happens, I agree, then we burn the books.”

  “What is Thomas Garrett, Kate, but a bookseller? That’s why he was at Oxford. And he found a ready enough market. Several of the students are being interrogated,” he said, stuffing another gospel onto the fire. She stepped back, away from the searing heat.

  “That was the Gospel of Saint Luke! You printed that one yourself.” She had a sudden vision of him bent over his press, laboring secretly at night in violation of guild rules for printing after dark. She gathered what was left in her arms, hugging them to her as she spoke. “Why can’t we just hide them until this passes?”

  “It’s not going to pass this time. They’ll not stop until they’ve made examples of some of us—lit a few fires of their own.” His voice was firm, determined. He held out his hands for the books she held.

  She thought of the translators in self-imposed exile on the Continent and the smugglers who had risked so much to bring these books to England. She thought of their own expenses tied up in the books. “You’re just going to give in to them, then? John, it’s wrong to burn the books. It is a sacrilege and an insult to those who’ve suffered so much in this cause. Cardinal Wolsey and his crowd burn books. We do not burn books.” She could hear her voice grow strident.

  John answered her in measured tones. “Burning the books is exactly what Humphrey Monmouth did two years ago when they raided the Steelyard and dragged him in. When they searched his home, they found no evidence. He was let go. I’ve Mary and the boy to think about. And you,” he said evenly, no temper in his voice, but his step was hurried, and the vein tracing the center of his forehead stood out like a blue cord. “If you are right and Wolsey and Cuthbert Tunstall find something else to chase, and forget about us, then we can print more.”

  And what will we sell in the meantime? How will we make a living without inventory? But she said nothing. He was the one they’d come after, not her, so she supposed it should be his decision.

  He gave a bitter little laugh. “A lot of the books Bishop Tunstall burned at St. Paul’s Cross he’d bought and paid for out of Church funds to make a greater show. Tyndale used that money to fund another and better edition. One with even stronger glosses against popery.” He reached to the top shelf where the Wycliffe Bible lay, the Bible that had belonged to their great-grandmother.

  She stayed his hand with a tight grip on his wrist. This time it was her tone that was firm. “Not that one, John. You shall not burn that one. It cannot be replaced.”

  For once, he gave in. Frowning, he handed it down to her. “Take it away from here, then. When they search this place, they need to find it clean of all contraband books—all, Kate, do you understand?”

  As she took the heavy Bible, she dusted the cover with her hand, encountering the roughened edge where the rats had chewed the edge of the leather binding. Nothing was sacred from the vermin.

  “That’s the last of it, I’m sure,” John said, looking around.

  “What about the Bristol shipment?” Kate asked.

  He shrugged. “I’ll not meet it, of course. Too dangerous. If I should be caught with this suspicion already against me . . .”

  All those Bibles dumped into the sea, she thought, all that labor wasted, all those dear-bought words turning into sea foam to feed the fish.

  The fire was already dying. Kate put down the Bible and picked up the broom to sweep up a few fragments of broken glass that she had missed in last night’s lamplight.

  “What did you break?” he asked as he put on his cloak in preparation to leave.

  “It was a jar I baited to catch a rat,” she said.

  He stood in the doorway with his hand on the latch, a little smile tweaking the corners of his mouth for the first time since he’d returned.

  “Did the rat get away?”

  “Damn vermin.”

  “You swear too much. You’ll never find a husband.”

  “Then I’ll spin at your hearth until I’m a gray crone.”

  It was an old joke between them. But lately she did not find it so funny.

  “Humph,” he grunted, as always. The smile stayed, as always.

  “Give Mary my love and kiss little Pipkin for me,” she said.

  They were both startled by the sound of a blunt object pounding on the door. “Open in the name of the king!”

  A glance and a nod and Kate grabbed the old Wycliffe Bible and fled up the back stairs of the print shop to her bedchamber. She heard a shout, and then muffled vo
ices. She recognized John’s well-modulated tones. Gathering her composure, she descended the stairs and entered the stationer’s shop just in time to see the beadle and two soldiers leading her brother away.

  TWO

  More is a man of an angel’s wit and singular learning . . . For where is the man of that gentleness, lowliness, and affability? And, as time requireth, a man of marvelous mirth and pastime, and sometimes of as sad gravity. A man for all seasons.

  —ROBERT WHITTINTON IN

  PRAISE OF SIR THOMAS MORE, 1520

  Friday was Sir Thomas More’s favorite day. On Fridays, after the daily mass, after the Te Deum, after the last chanted psalm, he did not don his striped robes and go to Lincoln’s Inn to lecture in the law or even to Black Friars where as Speaker of the Commons he would plead for parliamentary funding of the king’s French enterprise. Dressed in the scarlet hood and cloak of the powerful Mercer’s Guild, he did not take the short walk to the guildhall in Ironmonger Lane to report on his latest negotiations with the Hanseatic League. Nor did he adorn himself with the golden Tudor livery chain and sail his private barge down the river to Westminster to attend the king’s council. He did not even go to Oxford, where he served as steward, to pass judgment on the miscreant scholars there.

  Fridays belonged to him.

  After Sir Thomas had dismissed his family from the obligatory mass to their individual and sometimes raucous pursuits, he would remain alone in the chapel, prostrated before the Holy Rood. Only after his limbs were stiff with fatigue, and his thoughts as tangled as the knots on the little corded whip, would he take out his flagellum and begin to lay on his stripes.