The Heretic’s Wife

by Brenda Rickman Vantrease

  Suddenly the squawking chickens, the muddy path leading to the front stoop of the cottage, the oxen in the plowed field, and the sheep huddled in the pen beside the ramshackle barn all stood out in dismal relief. How shabby it must appear to someone seeing it for the first time. But this was Kate, she reminded herself. No need to be embarrassed. After all, Mary’s parents were well-off as far as country folk went. But Kate had always lived in the city. One got used to one’s own brand of squalor and tended not to see it.

  She should rush out and greet her, she thought, should welcome John’s sister to Clapham Farm. But she stood rooted to the ground, wishing she’d changed her apron and put clean breeches on Pipkin. But Pipkin decided for her. Breaking free, he hurtled forward and flung himself in the direction of Kate. Dear, familiar laughter rang out as Kate scooped her nephew in her arms.

  “Pipkin, I was afraid you might have forgotten me!”

  The sight of her wide smile, the sound of her voice warmed Mary’s soul. Yet as she rushed forward to greet her sister-in-law, she noted that she carried no valise.

  And that was a relief. This household could not stand one more strain on its tissue-thin fabric of domestic peace.

  “Where is John?” Kate asked after she’d gone into the house, after she’d met Mary’s parents, after she’d drunk the cool glass of buttermilk Mary’s mother had offered for refreshment, and they were alone in the small bedroom. Mary sat with Pipkin in the rocking chair her father had made and Kate perched on the edge of the bed.

  “He should be back soon,” Mary answered. “He went to cut wood. He’s probably taking his time. It’s hard for him here, now that the weather is growing cooler, cooped up with my parents all day.”

  “But it’s working out, isn’t it? You look well. Pipkin seems happy.” But Kate had noticed little things, like how small the holding was and how dreary and sad looking. Even the sheep grazing in the little enclosure looked more lonely than peaceful. It was hard to imagine her brother here. But Kate tried to keep the anxiety from her voice as she asked, “Is John getting better?”

  Mary glanced away, out the window, where the twilight was turning the sky to deep purple, as she answered. “We are fine. Pipkin loves it here. He likes the sheep. He calls them ‘woowies.’ She patted the child in her lap who after his initial greeting had grown suddenly shy around Kate, as though he were confused by her presence here. He snuggled closer and buried his head in his mother’s bosom, refusing to look at Kate until he’d drifted off to sleep. “And John is—” She was interrupted by the sound of John’s voice in the other room and Mary’s mother calling them to supper. “Well, you are about to see for yourself.” She reached out her hand and touched Kate’s sleeve beseechingly. “Please, Kate, don’t mention anything about . . . you know . . . my parents don’t understand, and John is just now beginning to—”

  “Maaarry.” The mother’s voice was insistent.

  Rolling her eyes in frustration, Mary laid the sleeping child on the bed between them. Kate felt her heart constrict a little as she realized how much she’d missed him. And if she went away with John Frith she might never see him again, might never see any of them. She gently touched her lips to the child’s forehead and followed Mary into the one large room that served as gathering place and eating area.

  John was stacking wood beside the hearth. She said his name.

  He stood up and looked at her. He still held a stick of wood in his left hand. With his right hand he swept back his blond hair—longer and thinner than she remembered—a familiar gesture he often made when he was confused. She had to fight back tears at the sight of the hard lines around his eyes and the frown lines on his forehead that intersected with the scar above his right temple. How could a man age so much in such a short time? She spread her lips in a smile. He must not see her pity.

  “Kate?” he said, wonderment in his voice, as though he, like Pipkin, found her presence in this setting an incongruity. For a moment she was back outside Fleet Prison. The memory of it made her dizzy with despair. This place was paradise next to that.

  “Hello, John.”

  “Kate!” The stick of wood thudded against the hearth as he closed the distance between them in one stride. He hugged her to him with a strength that surprised and pleased her. “We have been worried about you all alone in London. Are you all right?” And then holding her at arm’s length and not waiting for an answer, “You certainly look all right. They said there was a visitor. I saw the carriage. I just thought it was some toff whose horse had thrown a shoe or something. How did—”

  “A friend loaned it to me. Just for this visit.”

  “A noble friend. And here I was worried about how my little sister would fend for herself.”

  The light tease in his tone reminded her of the brother she’d known before everything went so wrong.

  “Let’s eat before the food gets cold,” Mary’s mother said, ladling something that smelled of sage and onions onto the plates. “Father, get the chair from our bedroom for our guest.” The old man dutifully put down the willow twig he was chewing.

  “Where’s the pip?” John asked.

  “He’s asleep and pray he stays that way so we can eat in peace,” Mary said under her breath as she took her seat.

  “Here ye be, mistress.” Mary’s father stood behind the chair he’d brought and waited for her to sit as though she were the queen and not the sister of the man he seemed only to tolerate. Amazing what power a noble crest carried, she thought.

  “Thank you so much, but I really shouldn’t impose. The coachman will probably be anxious—”

  “We’ve enough for the coachman too,” Mary’s mother said, filling a plate with the steaming concoction and propping a large slice of crusty bread on the side. She handed it to John to deliver to the coachman. “Now sit down, everybody, and eat.”

  Kate took her seat. Mary’s mother was a hard woman to stand up against, and she had to admit the stewed rabbit and root vegetables smelled delicious.

  John returned quickly. “Don’t worry about the coachman, Kate. I took him a blanket for his shoulders and told him where to feed and water the horses. He’ll be fine for a while.”

  “For a while!” Mary’s mother’s eyebrows shot up in indignation. “Surely you’re not thinking of going back tonight. With all the highwaymen who might be about. There’s been reports of wolves in these parts too. You can share with Mary, and John can make a pallet by the fire.”

  “Yes, please, Kate. It would be cruel to leave and not give us a chance to visit,” Mary said. “Mum’s right. The coachman can quarter in the barn loft with the ostler. I’m sure he’d prefer that to taking his chances on the road at night. Your friend would probably prefer her coach and team not be put at risk either.”

  “This is really delicious, Mistress Clapham,” Kate said to change the subject.

  John put down his knife and looked at her hard. “The coachman should go back without you. London is no place for a woman alone, especially one whose brother was arrested for Lutheran sympathies—”

  “We want to hear about your friend. Don’t we, John?” Mary interrupted.

  Kate understood. It wasn’t just talk of religious matters that Mary wanted to avoid. Mary didn’t want her here on any kind of permanent basis, even though from the very beginning, when John first brought her to the little bookshop on Paternoster Row, they’d always got on.

  He’d met her at a fair in Reading and could talk of nothing but her sweet voice and gentle manner. John had gone there to sell books and buy supplies, and his bookstall was next to that of a balladmonger where Mary and her mother had paused to purchase a broadsheet. Not knowing the name of the song she wanted or all the words, she’d sung a few measures for the vendor. From that very moment John had been enchanted.

  “My daughter will not marry at fifteen,” her mother had said, but still they must have thought John a good enough catch that over the next two summers they allowed their daughter to make extended
visits to her aunt who ran a boardinghouse in Reading.

  John found many excuses to make the run to Reading, and at the end of the second year, he’d brought Mary home as his bride. She and Kate had taken to each other like sisters, though Kate guessed that two women in a household was one too many. She had offered to move into the little storeroom above the shop.

  And if two was to be avoided, three would never do, she thought as Mistress Clapham hovered. Kate indicated that she did not want a second helping with a shake of her head. She decided to assist Mary in her diversionary tactic. “The coach belongs to Lord and Lady Walsh from Little Sodbury. They loaned it to me so I could visit you.”

  John raised his eyebrows. “Lord Walsh of Little Sodbury? The one who imports—”

  “The same,” Kate interrupted with a glance at Mary. Kate could feel her own shoulders tense in sympathy with Mary’s. “I met the shipment that you could not.”

  “My God, Kate, do you have any idea—”

  “Let’s not spoil this fine meal with arguing,” Kate said. “Besides, I have happy news to tell you, John. At least I hope you will think it happy. I am to be married. This time next week I will be the wife of John Frith.”

  Had those words really come out of her mouth?

  “Married!” Mary leaped up from the table and wrapped her arms around her sister-in-law, almost upsetting a tankard of milk. “Kate, how wonderful! Who? When?”

  “I’m afraid it is very sudden. John”—how strange it seemed to call him by his first name in that familiar way, when she’d always thought of him as Master Frith—“John is leaving for the Continent within a week and has asked me to go with him.”

  “But why the haste?” Mary’s face clouded for a minute, then she lowered her voice as if imparting some shameful secret. “You’re not—”

  “No, Mary, I’m not. John Frith is—”

  “I know who he is,” her brother said flatly, pushing a bite of stew onto his spoon with his knife. “He was a shining star at Oxford. Our supplier, Thomas Garrett—you remember, Kate, the one who was arrested at the same time I was—often spoke of him.” He seemed not to notice the scowl on the face of his father-in-law, or maybe he did and that’s why he said it, for surely he would know Kate remembered Thomas Garrett. “Frith is a Bible translator, like William Tyndale, a friend of Tyndale’s. He’s probably going to join him. That or he is a fugitive.”

  Mistress Clapham sucked in her breath, her eyes popping in surprise.

  A wailing sound came from the bedroom.

  “Oh my. That’s Pipkin,” Mary said, relief in her voice. “He’ll not hush until he gets what he wants. And I’m the only one can give it to him.”

  “I’ll help with the cleaning up,” Kate said.

  “Nay. There’ll be none of that. You’re a guest. You go sit by the fire and talk with your brother. Who knows when you’ll see him again.” Mistress Clapham nodded meaningfully at her husband. “Squire will help me.”

  Squire looked a bit surprised but recovered quickly, mumbling, “Quite right,” as he picked up a dirty plate and looked at it with a puzzled expression before setting it back down.

  John got up and, ducking his head under the low-hanging beam that marked a boundary of sorts between the eating and sitting areas, indicated that Kate should take the bent-willow chair closest to the chimney. He sat on the hearth in front of a smoked ham hanging in the inglenook and dodged a braided rope of onions and bunches of dried herbs as he stuck another log on the fire. The flames sucked at it greedily.

  “So you’re the keeper of the flame,” Kate said, trying to steer the conversation away from dangerous waters.

  “And not much else,” he answered.

  Kate was aware of Mistress Clapham’s murmuring and the occasional grunt from “Squire.”

  She and John talked of small things: the weather when she left London, how pretty the countryside was. Bucolic was the word she used; lonely was a better word, she thought.

  “I sold the Wycliffe Bible to Henry Monmouth,” she said when the murmuring in the kitchen died down, and the lantern had been extinguished, her host and hostess having gone discreetly off to bed.

  “What did you get for it?”

  “Ten pounds.”

  “Ten pounds! Bless Henry Monmouth. I’m glad I didn’t burn it.”

  “I spent some for food,” she said, “but I was going to use the rest of it to buy inventory to keep the shop open. Now I suppose I’ll use it for a dowry—if that’s all right with you, of course.”

  “Lulay, lulay thou little child,” Mary’s sweet pure soprano drifted in. The wood shifted in the firebox. She waited for him to answer. John poked at the fire again, sending up showers of sparks.

  “So do I have your permission, then?”

  “And if I said no—what then? It’s a dangerous life you’ve chosen, Kate, to tie your destiny to such a man. But no more so, I suppose, than trying to make it on your own, smuggling contraband.”

  “And is this, then, the life you’ve chosen? After months of this country life, you are content to stay buried in this backwater, cramped like pickles in a jar?” When you could be doing so much for the cause our father died for—but she did not say this. What right did she have to gainsay his choice?

  “Content? If a man’s not content in his soul it really doesn’t matter where he lives. Mary’s father has promised us a piece of land. There’s a fine stand of poplar down the road a piece. Come spring I should have enough timbers for roof beams and a frame. Things will be better when we have our own place.”

  “Do you plan to farm then?”

  He gave a little half-laugh. “Nay. I’m no farmer. But there are a fair number of illiterate yeomen within the surrounding area. I’m a decent scribe. We’ll get by with that and what we can raise.”

  “I’m happy for you, John. I really am,” she said, thinking how he’d settled for so little.

  The fire was dying down. No sound came from Mary’s bedroom. Pipkin was probably asleep, his cherub’s body curled inside the too-small cradle beside the bed or nestled against the warm body of his mother, waiting for his father to join them. It made a lovely picture in her mind. Maybe John had not settled for so little after all, she thought, suddenly bone-weary and a little frightened. How did she know what awaited her on the Continent? She hardly knew John Frith. Here was at least a home and a warm hearth. Here was love and intimacy. But she couldn’t think about that now. All she wanted was to sink into sleep. “Are you sure you’ll be all right to sleep here?” she asked.

  “I’ll be fine.” He indicated a blanket and a pillow piled in the corner. “I sleep here most nights anyway—if you can call it sleep. I don’t want to disturb Mary with my restlessness.”

  “And why are you so restless?” But she knew.

  “It’s not what you think,” he said, his voice suddenly vehement. “I did the right thing by denying my Lutheran involvement. The apostle Peter once denied our Lord. Three times. And three times, Christ forgave him. ‘Feed my sheep, Peter,’ he said. He looked down at his hands. “I’m just trying to figure out how to ‘feed the sheep.’ ”

  “Don’t think I judge you for your decision, John. How can I? When I think of what you have sacrificed for those two sleeping in that room. It’s just that you were always my hero.”

  “It looks as though you may have found a new hero,” he said somberly. “And I pray John Frith never has to face that same choice.”

  She opened her mouth to speak but didn’t really know what to say. He stood up. “I’ll check on the coachman to make sure he is warm and dry in the stable,” he said.

  When he did not come back she tiptoed by the firelight into the next room, stripped down to her shift, and climbed in bed beside her sister-in-law. She lay awake a long time listening to Mary’s rhythmic breathing, listening for the sound of her brother returning. Finally she drifted off to sleep, trying to summon John Frith’s warm smile to chase away her fears.

  FOURTEEN
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  For how many men be there whose sons in childhood are greatly disposed by nature to paint, to carve, to embroider, or do other like things . . . which as soon as they say it, be therewith displeased and forthwith bindeth them to tailors, weavers, cloth-dressers, and sometimes to cobblers.

  —SIR THOMAS ELYOT ON THE

  LACK OF ARTISTS IN ENGLAND FROM

  HIS BOOK THE BOKE NAMED THE GOVERNOR

  After his third visit to Hampton Court in as many weeks, Thomas More was glad to be back at Chelsea. It was Friday, and he had finished his early-morning ritual, returned his instrument of penance to its box, and fortified himself to face a scourge of another sort, Dame Alice’s tongue. “What’s the use of having a husband at court, if he is such a close-mouth,” she’d grumbled at breakfast when he professed to not having noticed what Lady Boleyn wore, what she looked like, and other trivialities with which women concerned themselves.

  “Gossip is a sin, Alice,” he’d retorted in his most long-suffering voice. “And court gossip is especially pernicious.”

  But even her fractious company and incessant inquiries were more to be desired than being in the cesspit that was Henry’s court. Better Alice’s whiplash tongue than watching the king of England fawn over his black-eyed Lutheran whore whilst his good Catholic queen languished in Greenwich. Thomas entered the sanctuary of his study, and taking up the book on his desk, sighed heavily. Here was another unpleasant duty.

  On the morning Thomas was leaving Hampton Court, the vicar-general had quietly pulled him aside. Someone within the very household of a lawyer on the King’s Bench had deliberately broken the law. Thankfully, before Thomas could comment on such an outrage, the vicar-general had thrust the little codex in his face and demanded, “What make you of this, Master More?”

  A quick glance showed the slim little volume to be an English translation of Erasmus’s Treatise of the Paternoster. And it was translated by his own daughter Meg! Her tutor, Richard Hyrde, a man in More’s employ, had written the preface. But the vicar-general pointed out—even as More’s heart was swelling with pride at his daughter’s accomplishment—that its author, Margaret Roper née More, had neglected to gain ecclesiastical permission to publish it. The vicar-general thumped the title page where the imprimatur cumprivilegio a rege indulto should be and was not.