The Heretic’s Wife

by Brenda Rickman Vantrease

  Tom feigned a look of surprise and pulled in the pot, shrugging. “Well, gentlemen, looks like Dame Fortune smiled on me this time.”

  Henry Phillips retrieved his cards and turned them up. Supremus: a six, seven, and ace of hearts with a point value of fifty-five.

  “Show your hand, sir, if you please,” Phillips said, his smile tight.

  “If you insist,” Tom said with a laugh. “But I don’t think you’ll like what you see.” He turned over his cards: a jack of spades and a two of spades with a worthless heart and a club. The hand was worth only twenty-two points, the lowest hand on the board.

  Phillips stood up, staggered back against his chair. It clattered to the floor. The tavernkeeper slapped a tankard of beer onto the table opposite them and shouted, “I’ll have no rowdiness.” The hazard players ceased their game and looked in their direction. Tom kept his seat, neatly counting his money into stacks.

  Phillips’s arm darted out, sweeping the cards from the table, then he pounded the table with his fist. “God’s Blood, I declare you are a lying whoreson,” he shouted.

  Tom had Phillips figured for a hothead but a cowardly one. Still, he was thinking about the dagger in his boot when the merchant stayed Phillips’s hand. “He beat you square. Let it go.”

  In the pause that followed, Tom stood up, picking up his money with deliberation, then bowed. “I thank you for the game, gentlemen, and I would stay to let you win some of your money back, which you verily would, but, alas, it seems our young friend is too choleric to continue. It’s probably prudent if we let it end here.” Then, with a mock salute to the simmering Henry Phillips, “Better luck next time, Master Phillips.”

  “There won’t be a next time, you bloody bastard.”

  As Tom hurried back to Cheapside to meet the lovely widow of Lübeck, he laughed aloud. He was almost sure the flaming arrow that burned his ship was sent from Bishop Stokesley—or from Thomas More. Now in some roundabout way the bishop’s money was making the last payment on his ship’s repairs. There was a pleasing justice in that and he wished they could know it.

  By Saint Gregory’s Day on May 9—Kate always remembered because Gough’s print shop had once printed his beautiful fourth-century poems about the Holy Trinity—the captain showed up early at Kate’s door. His ship was ready for inspection, and they should be the ones to pronounce it seaworthy. Her heart sank like a stone, but she put on a smile and bundled Madeline into her prettiest bonnet.

  The sun was at its apex and dancing on the water by the time their hired trap and horse clopped onto the cobblestone of the Woolwich wharf. The air smelled of the green spring and the sea and the almond scent from the marzipan ship Madeline clutched in her sticky fingers.

  “You spoil her,” Kate had said when he presented it to her.

  “It’s a special occasion,” he said. “The marzipan will help her remember it.”

  She had rarely seen him so excited. He can’t wait to go back to sea, she thought. He’ll not give us a second thought.

  There were several boats in the harbor, some still festooned with May Day banners and from one or two she even heard pipers playing music—only one caravel, though, of the right tonnage and with a square-rigged mainmast, but it looked different.

  “There she is,” the captain announced proudly.

  “Where?” Kate asked. “I don’t see—”

  “There.” He pointed to the caravel and laughed. “Same ship. New name.”

  Kate shielded her eyes to try to make out the fancy lettering on the side of the ship. The sun obscured it. “You loved that name. The sea was the one siren you couldn’t resist.”

  “Maybe I have found another,” he said, winking at Madeline as he helped her down from the trap, then assisting Endor and finally Kate. The touch of his hand was reassuring. She felt safe in his presence. You’re a fool, Kate. He is a dangerous man—more likely than not to end his days swinging from a gallows. Why should you feel safe with him? She removed her hand as soon as she gained her footing on the cobblestone, but a little shiver went up her spine when he placed his hand on her waist to guide her onto the gangplank. After she and Endor had walked across and stood safely on the new deck that smelled of pitch and fresh-cut lumber, he picked up the giggling Madeline and joined them.

  Glowing with pride, he showed them the refurbishments. “A bigger, safer space for Endor with a new bake oven.”

  Endor’s visage glowed. But Kate did not share her enthusiasm as it became plain that the captain planned for Endor to go with him, after all. And with such an enticement, how could she resist? Her little cabin even had its own porthole, but more important, Endor worshipped the ground beneath Tom Lasser’s boots. She would not refuse him.

  “Let me show you the new captain’s quarters.”

  Kate approached the door beneath the poop deck, noticing that this cabin, too, had been enlarged. She opened the door with a little sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, remembering John, what an intimate little nest they’d found there, how they’d slept together in the narrow bunk like two nestled spoons. It seemed like yesterday and yet so long ago it might have been a dream.

  The room was much nicer and larger: same table cluttered with charts and sexton and astrolabe, same blue map on the wall—the color of Madeline’s eyes—same keg of water mounted to the wall, everything the same but with a larger bed. The other bed that was no more than a bench was still there, and a dresser with a mirror above it had been added. A silver-backed comb and brush glimmered on a fringed shawl covering the dresser. Kate felt herself blush. Of course. The beautiful widow. Had she picked out the shawl? Did the silver-backed comb belong to her?

  From above deck came the sound of shouting voices and ropes being dragged, the creaking of wheels.

  “Endor, will you take Magpie up on deck?” He winked at Madeline. That was his pet name for her. “She might want to watch the men rig the mainmast.”

  Endor nodded and reached for Madeline’s hand, apparently oblivious to the sticky marzipan. The two went off happily together.

  The captain turned to Kate, who suddenly felt embarrassed to be alone with him in this intimate space. She moved to follow Madeline and Endor. He reached out his hand and lightly touched her arm. “Well, what do you think?”

  “I think it much improved. Certainly more spacious and quite well appointed.”

  “I’m glad you approve. Charlotte did it.”

  “I thought that might be the case,” Kate said. “Your widow has excellent taste.”

  He cocked an eyebrow and smiled that little crooked smile that she’d first seen outside the Fleet. “My widow? Well . . . yes, I suppose she does. But that’s not what makes her such an extraordinary woman.”

  Kate’s face grew hot as she mumbled, “I’m sure she’s quite extraordinary in many respects.”

  “What do you think of the new name?” he asked, suddenly serious.

  “I couldn’t really see it for the sun—”

  He pointed to a miniature plaque above the door. The Phoenix.

  “Ah,” she said. “Out of the ashes. The new from the old. John would have approved,” she said. “He never met a classical allusion he didn’t love.”

  “I was thinking of him when I named it. That’s why there are Bibles being loaded into the hold. There will always be Bibles in the hold. I am no martyr, but I can at least do that. But I was thinking of something else. I was thinking of us as well.”

  “Us?”

  “You and me and Endor and Madeline.” He paused as if waiting for her response. When she made none, he continued. “The four of us. We could be a family. Formed out of all the ashes of our burned-out lives.”

  The cocked eyebrow was gone, the smile as well. What was he talking about? Was he mocking her? But she read no mockery in his eyes. He took her hands in his and raised them to his lips, kissing first one and then the other in a gesture so gallant it stole her breath away.

  “But . . . your widow . . . from Lübeck.
I thought—”

  His lips curved into that half-smile again, which she never quite knew how to read.

  “My widow, as you so quaintly put it, lives above a little bookshop in Paternoster Row. Charlotte chose the shawl, the combs, the brushes—the polished pewter in the cupboard—for you, Kate. At my request. We are, as I told you, only old friends.”

  Kate recalled the quizzical look on the woman’s face and doubted if Charlotte would have characterized it just that way. She had the look of a woman sizing up her competition.

  “I am asking you to marry me, Kate Frith. I am asking you to go with me on some wonderful sea quest. You have the same yearning for adventure in you that I have. I know it. I think I have loved you since the first time I saw you bargaining with your pennies outside the Fleet for your brother’s life. My God, you were a sight to behold. When I rescued the two of you out of Bristol—that seems a lifetime ago—I used to watch you leaning out over the ship’s rail, like fair Helen, your face raised to the spray, your hair blowing in the wind . . . how I envied John. It was hard to hide that envy.”

  Kate sat down hard on the smaller bed, the bed on which she’d once lain with her husband while the captain stood above them on the deck. What would John think if he could hear this? He’d written from prison how Captain Lasser had befriended him. Had he guessed? Or would he feel betrayed to hear him confess it now?

  Her skin felt hot with excitement. She had to admit she’d felt some fascination, even attraction, for the handsome, reckless sea captain who mocked the world and its most venerable institutions. But she knew, underneath that sardonic shell, Tom Lasser was a good man. And even if she convinced herself that it was not a betrayal of John’s memory, she could not bear to lose another good man to the king’s justice. She did not know how to explain this to him.

  “You are foolish in your choice, Captain. I have no dowry,” she said more coldly than she meant to. “Even the roof over my head belongs to my brother.”

  If he noticed her coldness, his expression gave no hint. “All the better. We will not have to worry about selling it. Just board it up as we found it and leave it until your brother reclaims it.” He sat down beside her, still holding her hands. The lace of his cuff tickled her wrists. “The Phoenix will carry us far away, somewhere away from kings and power-hungry clerics with their fierce religiosity. Someplace men decide for themselves what they will read and write and think—even believe.”

  She gave a bitter little laugh. “The world does not have such a place,” she said, “outside of men’s dreams.”

  He shook his head, squeezing her hand more tightly. “But there could be such a place. There are lands beyond the western sea—”

  The skeptical Captain Tom Lasser, a dreamer after all. Who would have guessed it? She laughed out loud. “The western sea! I get seasick just in the Channel.”

  “All of Endor’s supplies have already been loaded. Including a goodly supply of ginger.”

  It was a fantasy to acknowledge such a possibility, a silly game, but she would play it a little longer. “There are rats in the hold.” She shuddered. “I don’t think I could abide the rats for the many weeks we would have to spend at sea.”

  “If the Magpie can be believed, Ruffles is a very good mouser.” His smile was wicked in its confidence—wicked and irresistible—his teeth white against his curving lips. What would those lips feel like against her skin?

  Suddenly it was a game no more. Time for the fantasy to end. She could not look at him but looked down at the white oak flooring rubbed hard and smooth, like her heart. He would sail on the next tide. By Michaelmas her face would fade from his memory as John’s was beginning to fade from hers.

  “I have been widowed less than a year,” she said. “I cannot dishonor the memory of my husband by taking another to my bed so soon after. It is the last thing I can do for him.”

  He put his hand on her chin and gently lifted her face. Her gaze met his and she saw no mockery, no scorn in his dark eyes. “John is gone, Kate. We are still here. We do the best we can. Today. Sacrificing your happiness or mine will not bring him back. You are like me. We are not the stuff of martyrs. We don’t die for what we believe—if we have a choice. We live out our beliefs. I am no saint like John. I am just a man. But saints don’t make good husbands.”

  “John was a wonderful husband.” She bristled.

  “And now he is gone, and you are sad. But consider, Kate, if he was truly a good husband as you say, he would want you to be happy, not to live out the rest of your life grieving for him, alone, like some nun who has shut herself up in a convent. I came to know him well. He loved life, and he loved you. But you said it. He just loved God more. If you are happy, then he has not abandoned you. His life is fulfilled and so is yours.”

  Kate suddenly saw John’s earnest face, like a gift, as she had seen it so many times, deep in concentration, bent over his books, absorbed completely and joyfully in his task, her mind conjuring his image clearly for the first time in weeks. She looked up at the man who had just proposed marriage to her, his face also earnest in a way she had rarely seen, only once really, when he was guiding his ship into safe harbor.

  Could a woman hold the memory of such a love as she’d had with John in her heart and that memory not be diminished by her love for another?

  “Quest,” she said almost in a whisper.

  “I’m sorry—”

  “You said we would go on a sea quest. What are we questing for?”

  “Why, fair winds, my pretty Kate, fair winds and wine-dark seas.”

  She recognized the reference from Homer, from the book she’d bought from the Antwerp dealer so long ago. No wonder John had got on so well with the captain. In so many ways they had been kindred spirits. “I will not play Penelope to your Ulysses,” she said. “I will never be left behind again.”

  He threw back his head and laughed. He touched her cheek. “We’ll be questing for truth, Kate, the kind John died for. And love. The kind of love that you and John had. Love is the only ship that floats in rough seas. I can’t promise you we won’t have rough seas, but I can promise you love.”

  Then, “Captain Lasser,” she heard herself say, disbelieving. “It seems you have taken away my objections, and I have no other. What do I have to lose?” she said through her tears. “Except another good man?”

  He pulled her to him and kissed her. When he released her, he held her out at arm’s length and gave her that same mocking grin she’d first seen through an iron grille in Fleet Prison. “Believe me, Kate, I will take every precaution to see that doesn’t happen. For both our sakes.”

  “When are you leaving?” she said, not yet used to the idea.

  “We, my pretty Kate, we leave tomorrow. I have a couple of Baltic runs for the Hanseatic League. I know a reformist preacher who will marry us in Lübeck.”

  “But tomorrow. So soon. There’s no time—”

  He strode to the chest and opened it. The sight took her breath away. It was filled with clothes. “Charlotte?”

  “With Endor’s help.”

  “You were pretty sure of yourself, Captain,” she said.

  “You said it yourself. What do you have to lose?” And he kissed her again.

  The next day when the tanbark sails of The Phoenix filled and she sailed out of the harbor, Kate Gough Frith, soon to be Lasser, sailed with it, accompanied by her daughter Madeline, a cat named Ruffles, her friend Endor, and an heirloom illuminated Bible. She lifted her face to the morning sun, putting her faith in God, her hope in Tom Lasser, and her trust in Endor’s ginger tea.

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  The historical record deals with John Frith less fully than with his friend William Tyndale, whose sixteenth-century translation of the Bible into the English language helped provoke the Protestant Reformation in England and later formed the foundational document for the King James Bible. History records the martyrdom of this exceptional young scholar before he reached his thirtieth birthday
and the circumstances surrounding his career and execution for heresy. The historical mention that he had a wife, about whom nothing beyond the fact of her existence is known, is the basis for the fictional character of Kate Frith. History also records that a bookseller and printer named John Gough was caught in the sweep that began the most intense persecution of Protestants in England outside the reign of Mary Tudor.

  Sir Thomas More’s role in all stages of that persecution is part of the historical record, and the story of his struggle with Henry VIII concerning the king’s marriage to Anne Boleyn and subsequent break with Rome is also well documented. On July 6, 1535, two years and two days after John Frith went to the stake, More was executed for treason. He was charged with denying the validity of the Act of Succession because it denied the authority of the pope in matters relating to religion in England. Margaret Roper is said to have bribed the constable of the Tower to remove the boiled head of her father from its exhibition pole on Tower Bridge, and to have hidden it so that his memory could not be further dishonored. More’s last days in the Tower were made more bearable with the knowledge that his nemesis William Tyndale, who had been betrayed by Henry Phillips and arrested in May of that same year, also languished in prison in a castle in Vilvoorde, eighteen miles from Antwerp. William Tyndale was executed by strangulation and burning in October 1536.

  Queen Anne Boleyn was beheaded on Tower Green, May 19, 1536, after she failed to produce a male heir. She was charged with committing incest with her brother George, adultery (treason) with a music master, and even practicing witchcraft to bewitch the king. Shortly after Anne’s execution, Jane Seymour became the third wife of Henry VIII.