The Heretic’s Wife

by Brenda Rickman Vantrease

  It always took a minute, one breathless, terrible minute before she realized where she was, before she felt first the boards beneath her and soft wool blankets. Not in a ditch then, not lying in her own blood, the world fading around her, wondering when she’d last said confession, thinking she was going to hell for how could she confess without a tongue, thinking she already was in hell. One long minute thinking her heart would not beat again before she remembered. She was safe. She was in the enclosure that He had built for her. It was a blessed place—the only space she had ever owned.

  It had only taken one week for the dream to find her there. But at least the waking was better. He had provided her a hammock like some of the crewmen slept in, but she preferred the nest of warm wool blankets on the floor. In her whole life she had never slept anywhere but on the floor or the ground, but she was glad for the hanging bunk. It made a good shelf to store her things. Though she could not see them in the darkness, it was good to know they were there: the bone-handled hairbrush given to her by her sister Meggie before she was sent away to work in the kitchens of the great house, a second shift, one spare blouse, and a cloak He had bought her for cold days. Her things—even the rags she used on her bleeding days folded neatly in the tin bucket she used for washing them—where nobody else would bother them. A private place. A safe place. With a door that latched.

  The ship rocked gently now and then still sheltered in the harbor. Pulling her blanket up over her head, she curled herself into a ball, but knew sleep would not return this night. Her fingers groped for the amulet that always gave her comfort after the dream, and then she remembered. Saint Anne was gone; she had given her to the girl. The still water had shown her the girl needed it more. God had already given Endor a protector.

  Endor. That was the name he’d given her when she followed him onto the boat. Tell me your name, he’d said, and of course she could not say, Ella. My name is Ella. He’d given her that little half-smile and said, I shall call you Endor. Now she thought of her name as Endor. Endor had a protector. Ella did not. Ella was dead.

  The night was still and cold. She opened the latch to let in the heat from the cook box, which sat just feet from her door. Its live coals banked in the ashes never went out. They would keep her warm on the coldest night. The ship was very quiet. The men had all gone to the tavern on the shore. She was glad. They would relieve their lust in the brothels. None ever approached her, but when they were at sea on the long runs to the eastern ports, sometimes she saw their hungry glances. She knew they thought she was bad luck, only suffered her because He made them—and because she baked good bread from the fine milled flour in the barrels below, flour destined for the kitchens of the noble and the powerful.

  Through the crack in the door she could see the black sky reflected in the black sea. She could not tell where one stopped and the other began. Wrapping her blanket around her, she went out onto the deck. It was her favorite kind of night, moonless, crisp and clear. Great crowds of stars spangled a black sky. God must live on one of them, she thought. There had been no stars on the night Ella died. God was not watching.

  In the ship’s quiet, the scurrying of little feet from the ship’s bowels where the cargo lay in boxes and crates seemed louder. But the rats did not frighten her like they had the girl. They were just more hungry creatures. Whenever one ventured into her enclosure, she beat it with her wooden clog until it returned to its place. Everything had a place. The enclosure was hers, and she would allow no intruders. Their appointed place was in the hold among the wooden barrels filled with fancy goods for the rich who did not pay the king’s taxes. If she closed her eyes she could hear their futile gnawing. They would not get into the iron-banded barrels, and it would take a heap of gnawing to get into the sewn canvas sacks. Most would have to be content with the tiny grains of spillage.

  It was the way of all things.

  But still the sound made her sad. It reminded her of Jemmy. Her brother used to catch the rats on the London docks and bring them home in a handmade cage he’d rigged. The money he made from selling them to the lord mayor’s chief rat catchers they used to buy bread. When there was no bread they ate the rats.

  Jemmy had always looked out for her. He used to hold her hand when they were in the streets. The first thing she’d ever seen in the still water had been the portent of his death. Just a wee girl, maybe five or six summers, she had looked into a puddle after a rain and seen the hangman’s noose. One week later they had hanged Jemmy with two other cutpurses. Ella had cried for two days, and she had learned the pictures in the water never lied. Endor wondered how long it would be before the girl or the man—she could not tell which, since she had only seen the stake—would meet her trial.

  Kate wrinkled her nose as the woman opened the door to the upstairs rooms: one small sitting room, a garderobe, and a bedroom and all flooded with that wonderful watery light that hovered over the whole city. “It smells of turpentine,” she said to John. “But I guess we’ll get used to it. It’s clean and certainly has a bigger bed than we’re accustomed to.”

  “That’s the only thing that makes it undesirable.” He grinned. “I don’t like the idea of even the possibility of so much space between us.”

  “Shh,” Kate said, feeling herself blush as she looked at the austere woman who showed them the chamber.

  The woman was the sister of the man who’d owned the studio. According to Mistress Poyntz, the hostess at the house where they had gone last night, he’d died right here in this room and less than a month gone.

  “I’m not sure I’ll like living in a dead man’s studio—” Kate had started to protest when Mistress Poyntz had told them about the rooms early that morning, but Mistress Poyntz had tried to reassure her. “I’ve seen it. I’m sure you’ll be comfortable, my dear. It’s nice and spacious, good light—the brother was a very well known artist—and Catherine said she would put in a feather bed. It will just be temporary until somebody moves out of the English Merchants’ House. The English merchants never stay long. You can’t keep sleeping on pallets in the parlor as you did last night.”

  Kate looked around the pretty chamber, thinking maybe she could put the idea out of her head after all. It was a nice room, nicer than her room had been above the print shop, nicer even than her room had been during her stay at the Walshes’.

  “We’ll move the bed away from the windows over next to the easel where the sketches of that really ugly woman are displayed,” John said.

  “John! The landlady will hear you. We can’t afford to insult her,” she said softly from the corner of her mouth. “Lady Poyntz says lodgings are very expensive here and this woman is accommodating us.”

  “Don’t worry. She probably speaks only Flemish.” Then in a louder voice, looking over Kate’s shoulder, “We’ll take it,” he said in English then repeated it in her language.

  She answered something that sounded like gibberish to Kate and he fumbled in his pocket.

  “You speak Flemish, too?” Kate asked in wonderment.

  “After a fashion. It’s just Low German—not that different from Dutch.” He handed the woman one of their precious coins.

  Kate sat on the settle beneath one of the wide windows and ran her hand across its bright cushions. “We should go back to the English Merchants’ House and get our trunk, I suppose.” She noticed a paint smear on the piping around the damask edging. Noticed too that the rooms were very well appointed for an artist’s studio. He must have been successful. She supposed ugly people wanted their portraits painted too.

  Catherine, the woman who was to be their new landlady—Kate couldn’t remember her last name, started with an M, she thought—was rummaging in the cupboard. She brought out clean towels and a cake of Castilian soap, placed them on the table beside the bed.

  “We can get it later,” John said, with a familiar gleam in his eye as he sat down on the bed. He patted it with his hand. “Let’s test this new feather mattress as soon as she leaves. See if
being on dry land has a deleterious effect on our lovemaking.”

  Kate glanced at the woman, who was digging out an extra coverlet, releasing the sharp smell of herbs into the air to mix with the turpentine. She appeared oblivious.

  Kate pulled a face mimicking shock and murmured, “Why, Master Frith, for a theologian you are quite the ardent husband.”

  The woman handed them the coverlet and smiled, her eyes showing unusual merriment. “I hope you will be happy,” she said in careful but perfect English. “It is good to have joy in this room again. Quentin would have been pleased too. He did not paint ugly women only. You may see his work in the cathedral. The altarpiece is very well known. People come from miles to see it.”

  John’s face turned the color of the crimson bed hangings. “Th . . . thank you, Mistress Massys. It is very . . . Christian of you to take us in during your time of mourning. I did not realize you spoke English. And so well. We are mindful of your loss and will treat your brother’s studio with respect, I assure you.”

  Kate stifled a giggle. It was good for John to get caught out once in a while.

  Catherine Massys nodded gravely, but her eyes still sparkled. “Thank you for that assurance. I shall look forward to seeing you at the Bible study at the English House. Though not tonight, I expect.”

  As she was speaking, she moved mercifully toward the door. “If you require anything else, Merta, my maid, will deliver your breakfast each day. Just tell her. She does not speak English, but that should be no problem for you of course.”

  She closed the door as John was still sputtering an answer.

  He lay spread-eagled across the bed as Kate burst out laughing. “John, how can we ever face that woman again?”

  “Let’s not think about that now,” he said. “Let’s just be glad we’re safe and we have a roof over our heads.”

  “And not to mention this lovely bed,” she said, lying down beside him and then as quickly getting up again.

  “Now what?” he wailed as she walked across the room and turned the easel around, then began to strip down to her shift.

  “I’ll have no ugly duchess watching over us,” she said. “She might mark our unborn children.”

  NINETEEN

  . . . old crones who still wish to play the goat and display their foul and withered breasts . . . who industriously smear their faces with paint and never get away from the mirror.

  —ERASMUS OF ROTTERDAM (PROBABLY THE

  INSPIRATION FOR MASSYS’S SATIRICAL

  PORTRAIT OF A GROTESQUE OLD WOMAN)

  It was as John had promised. By Christmas Kate was beginning to feel at home in Flanders. She’d gotten used to the constant clamor of polyglot curses and riotous greetings, the sounds of rolling carts on cobblestones and the jangling of harness bells outside their little town house chamber. And they had only to latch the wide glass-paned windows and fasten the creaking wooden shutters to banish all the world.

  Each morning, after they had breakfasted on Merta’s fresh milk and buttery hot cross buns, John left to go down to the Grote Markt, where among the many guild houses he found ready employment as a translator. Leaning out the window, Kate watched him down the narrow winding street until with a sweep of his hand and a quickly blown kiss he turned the corner and passed out of sight. On dreary days she puttered around the little apartment like any common hausfrau, sweeping up crumbs, plumping the cushions, spreading the counterpane on the handsome feather bed, giving it an affectionate final flourish with a sweep of her hand—for it was indeed a very fine bed.

  On clear crisp days she ventured as far as the marketplace, her basket on her arm, walking as purposefully as the strangers she encountered until she reached the tented stalls. Then she would wander from pavilion to pavilion, indulging her senses with the exotic goods they offered: fingering a fine piece of Venetian lace, gasping at the colors of a tapestry from Bruges, inhaling the spicy smells of cinnamon and anise and dried fruits. Once she even bought a bit of bound fabric with a carefully stenciled cartoon of a fountain and unicorn and the silk threads to embroider. John deserved an accomplished wife and the tapestry would look pretty hanging above their bed. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

  She bought fresh bread and cheese and sometimes hot soup to keep warm on the little brazier Catherine Massys had sent “to break the early morning chill,” though Kate seldom felt that chill. She enjoyed lingering abed with her new husband, snuggled deep in the feather bed—until the morning sun warmed the room through the east-facing windows. But it was the market bookstalls she could not resist. Antwerp was the printing center of the world. She spent hours browsing—so many books in so many languages, and more than one of the vendors carried English books. Yesterday she had seen a book she wanted to buy, but today it was gone. She wondered if the bookseller could understand her inquiry.

  “Luther?” she asked, enunciating slowly.

  The vendor nodded, dug under the pile, and handed her a book which she could not read, but she recognized the German language.

  “English?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said clearly. “I have it in English. I have lots of English. The English merchants buy from me. I buy directly from the printers.”

  He reached into a large sack and pulled out three different works. “I have Tyndale—it says Hitchens but that’s just another name Tyndale uses—and Erasmus’s Adagia and a book of Luther’s sermons.” She reached for the book of sermons. It was the one she’d seen yesterday.

  “You do not display them? I thought I saw this one yesterday.”

  He shrugged. “Not in large numbers. This is still a Catholic town even though the city fathers usually look the other way for the sake of trade.”

  She paid for the book of sermons—a gift for John, who would enjoy comparing it to his German copy. She was learning that the translation of a language was as much art as science. “I suppose I should hide it beneath the cheese,” she said.

  “Oh, you’ll not be bothered. Foreigners are seldom harassed here.” He shrugged. “We’re all foreigners. Without our trade this city would shrivel like an old man’s—” He blushed to the top of his balding pate, blushed as only a fair-skinned man can blush. “What I mean to say is we mind our business, and they mind theirs.”

  “I’ll take this one too,” she said, picking up an English translation of Homer’s Odyssey. The sermons were for John. The Homer was for her. John quoted Ulysses so much she wanted to share the great heroic adventure, wanted to glimpse the lure of wine-dark seas.

  What a wonderful place to live, she thought, walking home. John had chosen well. Here in Antwerp they were just two more foreigners in a city of foreigners. London seemed very far away.

  Sometimes she and John walked down to the docks at sunset to watch the ships come in: Portuguese caravels, Spanish galleons, Venetian merchant ships, all carrying the colorful insignia of their nation’s origins. Whenever she spied an English ship, she strained her eyes to see if it might be the Siren’s Song. She would think briefly of Endor hunched over her little bake oven, and would become aware of the cheap tin medal nesting between her breasts, next to her skin, beneath her chemise. She thought, too, of Captain Lasser standing on the stern scanning the horizon with his hawk’s eyes.

  But tonight there would be no time for walking down by the river. Tonight they were going to the English House.

  The English House was even more welcoming than usual. A chilly drizzle had settled along the twilight streets of Antwerp and the blazing hearth promised warmth and conviviality. The hall was ablaze with candles, and ivy and holly twined the wooden rafters of the hall. As she handed her mantle to the housemaid, delicious smells drew her gaze to the linen-draped buffet.

  “If that table had voice it would surely be groaning beneath the weight of so many Christmas puddings and roast meats,” she whispered to John.

  “And we will do our part to relieve it of its burden, sweet wife.”

  The welcome sound of English voices als
o greeted their senses. Not one strange syllable among them all. English laughter is even different from other laughter, she thought, feeling a rush of gratitude for this little island of home. They were greeted as old friends, and truly by now, Kate had come to recognize some familiar faces among the eight or so merchants who gathered there on this particular night, though the clientele had a tendency to ebb and flow with their business endeavors. Of course John laughed easily with them; he worked with them every day.

  It was polite for a company of mostly men. Lord Poyntz saw to that. The ale was sufficient but not overly abundant. So Kate was content to enjoy her food in silence as she listened to the current of manly conversation rippling about her. She couldn’t help but wonder about the wives they’d left behind in England.

  As always, Mistress Poyntz seemed glad enough for feminine companionship in this company of men. After supper, while the merchants engaged in theological debate or tales of smuggling Bibles past the customs officials, or played at cards or chess, the two women sat with their embroidery. Their hostess laughed as Kate stabbed at the fabric folds that were looking more crumpled with each day.

  “You will learn it, my dear, never worry. What’s a little crimson stain here and there? A mere blossom in a millefleur field.” She lifted the fabric to her dainty mouth and bit a silken thread, then asked, “How do you find your lodgings? Are they pleasing?”

  “Quite. And our landlady is very accommodating, though we seldom see her.”

  “That could be a good thing,” Mistress Poyntz said. “Not that Catherine Massys isn’t a very nice person . . . She comes here from time to time. She is a friend of one of the merchants and quite an intelligent woman. But you are after all still newlyweds and deserving of some privacy.”

  “She speaks English surprisingly well,” Kate said, feeling herself flush at the memory. “I’m afraid John and I were a trifle . . . free in our conversation, thinking she would not understand.”