The Heretic’s Wife

by Brenda Rickman Vantrease

  Five years. And here she was again alone in her narrow bed above the stairs. She closed her eyes and lay awake listening to the night sounds through her open attic window. He is so close, she thought. Why can I not feel his presence? And she wondered if he lay awake thinking of her. But still she did not cry. Neither did she sleep.

  As Tom Lasser knocked on the door to the bookshop the next morning, some part of him wished he’d never met Kate Frith, wished he could just get on his boat and sail away. And maybe he could one day soon. Put all this behind him. But not today.

  Endor opened the door for him. Kate looked up at him with pleading in her eyes, pleading for some kind of good news when he had none to give.

  “You can’t see him today,” he said.

  She stood by the window, her body straight and rigid. Her hair was disheveled, a tangled mass hanging down her back and falling in her face; dark circles shadowed her eyes. “Why not?”

  How long had she stood watch at that window, waiting for him?

  “Because they have moved him. I think we are going to have to get another plan.”

  “Where has he gone? Are they taking him to trial?”

  The breathlessness in her voice made him want to run. There was no point to prolonging the agony. He just needed to tell her.

  “Please—”

  “They’ve already tried him, Kate. He . . . he signed a confession of his beliefs.”

  “No . . . please, God . . . How do you know?”

  “I went to the Tower, and they told me he’d been taken to Croydon Palace, so I went there immediately. The trial was over. They’d already moved him.”

  She leaned against him then to keep from falling. He put his arm around her, feeling her shoulders tremble, and guided her onto the wooden settle under the shop window. The trembling stopped and a fierce rigidity took its place.

  “I thought there was a plan for his escape?” Her voice was scarcely above a whisper. “You said—”

  “He refused, Kate.” He could not look at her. “John has decided to take the martyr’s route after all, poor fool. You can’t help a man who won’t be helped.”

  Bishop Gardiner had said Archbishop Cranmer had no choice after Frith’s statement but to release the prisoner to his ordinary, and since he was arrested at Southend just out of London, Bishop Stokesley was his ordinary. But Tom had to give her some reassurance. Some small hope to hang on to though there was little to none.

  “All is not yet lost. He’s still alive. I’ll find out where they’ve taken him. They’ll give him a couple of weeks. They would rather have his signature on a statement of repentance.” Though he doubted that was true. These men were obsessed with burning. “Will you be all right here?”

  She nodded mutely. Ever since they’d left Antwerp, she’d had that unnatural, deadly calm that was somehow worse than tears. It was as though her will were a dam behind which the pressure was building. What damage was being done behind that wall he could only guess. He’d seen people driven to madness with less cause. But he did not know how to help her except to return her husband to her.

  “It may take me a day or two. Endor’s going to stay with you. She’ll get you what you need. But stay here, Kate.”

  When she did not respond, he repeated, “Stay here. It’s important. You don’t need to fall in the hands of John’s enemies. That would not help either of you. Did you hear me?”

  She answered dully, “I heard.”

  She had not promised, but he could hardly lock her up. She would probably be safe enough. After all, More and Stokesley had what they wanted.

  When John woke he thought at first he was back in the fish cellar. But Newgate Prison was worse than the fish cellar. In the fish cellar he’d had companionship and freedom of movement and hope. Here he was alone and shackled by his neck to the wall. And he had no hope. How did a man live without hope? Your hope is in Jesus Christ. Pray to your Father in that name and he will ease your pain or shorten it. That’s what Tyndale had said in his last letter. And that’s what John tried to do, though he could not kneel or even bow his head from his fixed position on the wall. Could God hear one man’s prayer from this hellish place that birthed so many prayers, so many souls, all crying out to God? Their unspoken prayers, a cacophony of despair, mixed with his pain and swirled inside his head.

  They had brought him here after his trial. Stokesley had mocked him for his heresy, dangling rescue before him if he would recant. Thomas More had been there too, laughing, delighting in his resistance. “I understand you’ve taken a wife, Master Frith, like all the heretics who have deserted the Church. Is she beautiful? Will she be at Smithfield to watch you burn for heresy, or did you leave her behind in Antwerp? Or maybe Holland? Is she with Tyndale, perhaps? Tell us where the heretic Tyndale is, and you can return to her.”

  But with all their mocking they had only hardened his resolve. And the odd thing was that they took a perverse pleasure in it, as though they really didn’t want him to recant. He could see the excitement in their faces, and he almost pitied them their devilish obsession. Their souls were in more peril than his. His body might burn, but their souls were being consumed by the fires of their hatred.

  The mind games with which he had freed his spirit from the fish cellar and the Tower no longer worked. He could not recite his Greek poetry; pain had won the battle for his mind, but he prayed for strength and for the wife he was leaving behind. He prayed, too, for some sign that God was pleased with his decision.

  But no voice spoke from heaven. The doors of Newgate Prison did not fly open.

  After a while he fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. He took that as a sign, for when he woke his mind was more at peace. Kate and Tyndale and even his books seemed far away, almost as though they were part of some other man’s life. John Frith no longer had a wife. Or friends. Or a future. He was resigned and his soul was prepared for death. There was only the wrenching, ripping, painful tearing from this world to get through. He prayed it would be over soon.

  Get up, Kate. It’s up to you. You have to find him before it is too late. Kate struggled from her torpor. Get up and look for John. But she didn’t have the strength. He should be home from Frankfurt soon. He would know what to do. The shelves were almost empty. But of course, the shelves were empty. John had burned all the books. John wasn’t in Frankfurt, and she had to find him. What would she tell Mary? But Mary wasn’t here. Mary was in Gloucestershire with her parents and John. It was all so confusing and she was so tired. If only she could sleep. She would ask Mistress Poyntz for her sleeping draught. Just this once. What could it hurt? The baby was asleep beneath the stones.

  Endor put away the remains of their breakfast. Kate had no memory of having eaten, but only half of a sweet bun remained on her plate. She covered her face with her hands and tried to think. Where should she start? Her mind would not work. The Fleet. She would start with the Fleet. That’s where she’d found him last time.

  It’s not John Gough, you fool. You’re not Kate Gough. You’re Kate Frith. It’s John Frith they have taken. John Frith they’re going to torture. John Frith they’re going to kill. Your husband. The captain will find him. Sleep, Kate. The captain will find him.

  Endor placed a steaming cup in front of her. She grunted and gestured for Kate to take it. When she did not, Endor held the cup to her lips, and Kate sipped the concoction. It was oddly soothing. She sipped again. By the time the cup was emptied, so was her mind. She slumped forward onto the table and slept.

  When she woke, the sun was no longer streaming in the east-facing window. Kate got up and washed her face with cool water. She needed to think clearly now. One man in all of England had the power to save her husband and it wasn’t Captain Tom Lasser.

  “I’m going, out, Endor,” she said, scribbling a note on a piece of paper.

  Endor shook her head in distress, beseeched Kate with her eyes.

  “I have to go. If the captain comes back, give him this. It says I’ve gone to f
ind John.”

  FORTY

  . . . Christ will kindle a fire of faggots for him and make him therein sweat the blood out of his body here and straight from hense send his soul forever into the fire of hell.

  —SIR THOMAS MORE

  ON THE BURNING OF JOHN FRITH

  By the time Kate walked the two and half miles to Westminster, the ministers were already leaving Parliament House. She approached one of them as he hurried to hail one of the small water ferries that plied the Thames in late afternoon.

  “Begging your pardon, please, sir, but where might I find Sir Thomas More?”

  He laughed, and something in the tone of that laugh led Kate to believe he was not a friend of Sir Thomas’s. “Not here, that’s for sure. He will already have gone home by now. If he was ever here. He spends most of his time holed up in his study in Chelsea.”

  “Chelsea? That’s upriver, right?”

  “About three miles or so.”

  She could not walk that far before nightfall. Her disappointment must have shown in her face.

  “I’m headed toward Richmond. My waterman will let you off. Of course, you’ll have to make your own way back, and it will be dark. You might want to consider waiting until tomorrow.”

  “I have a friend in service there.” How easily the lie came. “I’ll not be returning till the morrow. I really would like to be there tonight.”

  “If you are sure . . .” And he motioned for her to follow.

  After a few cursory attempts at conversation as the waterman toiled up-river, the parliamentarian turned his attention to some papers he carried in a bag, leaving Kate to contemplate just exactly what she was going to say to Thomas More. It was going to be hard to throw herself on the mercy of a man she hated as much as she hated him, and then she realized that she didn’t even know what he looked like. How could she hate somebody she’d never seen? He was, after all, just a man. Maybe she could stir the compassion his daughter was so sure he possessed.

  By the time the boatman pulled up to the little wooden jetty, the lamps had already been lit in the large brick house at the top of a sprawling lawn.

  “Thank you, kind sir.” She put on her bravest smile.

  “Are you sure your friend will be here? A woman alone . . . we’re pretty far out.”

  “She is Sir Thomas’s housekeeper. She’s expecting me. But thank you for caring and for the boat ride.” Before he could change his mind, she stepped out of the boat, and hiking up her skirts to keep them out of the river mud, she ran up the lawn. When she was halfway up, her courage almost failed her. She could run back to the river’s edge, hail the boat—the man had seemed a good sort. He’d probably give her some kind of shelter for the night.

  Thomas More is the man that tortured your brother and destroyed your livelihood, the man who has pursued your husband like a hound from hell and shut him away to await a horrible death. He has taken all you have. What else can he do to you?

  She stepped upon the wide veranda and beat upon the door.

  Sir Thomas poured his visitor a glass of fine French wine. It was an extravagance in which he rarely indulged these days. But at last he had something to celebrate. Bishop Stokesley took the offered glass and sipped it with less appreciation than Thomas would have liked. The man was a philistine. Even Wolsey, that son of a butcher, had had an appreciation for a fine wine.

  “There has been no progress then?” Sir Thomas asked.

  “No. Bishop Gardiner visited him. In response to his old tutor’s appeal, Frith recited the Twenty-third Psalm—in Hebrew, over and over, just staring into space. His mind has slipped into madness.”

  Thomas had never mastered Hebrew. Why bother? But he harbored a grudging admiration for such an intellect. “A waste of a good mind, but he should have used that fine mind in the service of his Church. There’s no point in waiting. How can a madman repent?” He sipped his wine, savoring the taste of it. Being in the king’s good graces had carried with it many advantages—some of which he already missed. “I assume we extracted no more information on Tyndale.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Stokesley said. “Henry Phillips has found him in Antwerp as we suspected. Hiding out in the sanctuary of a Hansa house for English merchants. Phillips has been instructed to win his confidence and draw him out. He’s a scoundrel, but he could charm the devil if it would put a silver jingle in his pocket.” Stokesley closed his eyes, and his thin lips stretched in a skeletal smile. “It is only a matter of time. Patience.”

  But Thomas was running out of patience. And Phillips was not to be trusted to carry out such an important job. That had been the disadvantage of this pursuit—the low-life miscreants Thomas had to deal with. But it was hard to find a man of honor who made a good spy. Stephen Vaughan was proof of that.

  The sound of a commotion in the hall treaded on that thought. A minute later, Barnabas tapped on the study door.

  “A young woman, Sir Thomas. She is demanding to see you.”

  “Send her away. No, wait. Send her to the kitchen. Cook can give her something to eat first. Probably a beggar or some supplicant on a legal matter.” Then he turned back to Stokesley. “I have less of that now that I’m no longer a favorite at court. I do not miss it.”

  Stokesley waited until Barnabas had shut the door. “Frith’s execution is set for tomorrow. Smithfield. Will you be there?”

  “I think not. My attendance gives the matter too much weight. I suggest you not be present either. We want the people to see him as a common criminal, not some martyr. Unrest already disturbs the population. There have been fourteen suicides in London in the past fortnight and reports of other ill portents, like comets in the sky and a blue cross above the moon, that frighten the peasants.”

  Stokesley nodded his agreement. “Holt also gave evidence against an apprentice. We’ll burn them at the same time. Give the people something real to fear, like the taint of heresy and the Church’s just retribution.” He drained his glass as though it were some poor ale and rose to leave.

  Sir Thomas frowned. “You are welcome to stay the night. Alice will provide a bed for you. I am not so impoverished that I cannot extend hospitality to my bishop.”

  “It is a warm night and a full moon on the river. I’ve early business tomorrow, but I thank you. I’ll keep you advised of Phillips’s progress in regard to Tyndale. Your Church is grateful for your help.”

  “I am grateful for the opportunity to serve,” Thomas said, following his visitor to the door. “It gives me great satisfaction.”

  He went in to dine with his family for the first time in weeks in a rare spirit of celebration. They were well into the meal when the disturbance happened.

  “No. I am not leaving. I demand to see—”

  The doors to the great hall at Chelsea burst open and Margaret Roper looked up from her place at the table to see a woman, held tenuously in the clutches of Barnabas, hurtle into the room. She was struggling like some wild creature, desperate to break free.

  Dame Alice’s spoon clattered against her plate. “Holy Virgin protect us,” she shrieked. “It’s a madwoman.”

  In spite of the servant’s muscular build, he was hard-pressed to restrain the woman, and his voice was breathless with the struggle. “I’m sorry, Sir Thomas. I told her you would not see her.”

  The woman’s hair was unbound and hung down her back in a tangled riot; her skirt was mud spattered and her eyes flared wide with fear or anger. Her glance flicked around the room until her gaze fixed on Margaret’s father, who sat at the head of the table as though transfixed. His hand, frozen on the lid of the pewter salver, hovered above the roasted joint.

  “Please—Sir Thomas . . . I must speak with Sir Thomas.” And with the sound of ripping cloth as part of her sleeve tore away, she broke free and hurled herself at his feet. He drew back from the woman, still holding the pewter lid in his hand, as though it could shield him from some deadly contagion in the interloper’s touch.

  Meg’s sisters screame
d as her husband rushed to Barnabas’s assistance. There was something familiar about the woman huddled at her father’s feet, holding on to the table leg as the men tried to pull her away. She tossed her head and the hair that had obscured her face flew back.

  That white smooth skin, that high brow with the faintest blue line pulsing beneath the skin . . .

  “Wait. I know this woman,” Margaret said. “She is no madwoman. Let her speak her piece. Her name is Gough. Her brother was the printer in Paternoster Row I told you about. Remember, Father? It’s been a few years. You released him from prison. Her name is—”

  “Kate, my lord. My name is Kate . . .”

  The men loosened their hold but stood close to her. William Roper helped her to her feet. She straightened her hair and her spine as she made a visible attempt to regain composure, then gave a small dignified curtsy such as a lady of rank might make to a peer. “Mistress Roper is right, my lord. I met your daughter while my brother was in prison. But my name is not Gough. My name is Frith. Kate Frith, Mistress John Frith, and I . . . have come here to . . . to beg my lord for my husband’s life.”

  There were murmurs around the table as some recognized the name. “Isn’t he that translator that . . . he is a scholar, I think . . . in exile for heresy . . .”

  Sir Thomas put down the pewter lid and waved his family to silence. He smiled then as if he’d just stumbled upon some wonderful discovery, as if this interruption of his dinner were some kind of gift. Meg exhaled relief. Now this woman would finally see that her father was not the monster she had believed him to be when they first met.