Loving Luther

by Allison Pittman

  My fingers grew numb, whether from the cold or the strength of their grip on the windowsill, I couldn’t say. Such a feeling of unbalance, one hand nearly turned to ice, the other hot and slick with sweat. With each breath, my corset constricted, like a whalebone prison, but I took some comfort in the fact that I was breathing at all.

  See me. See me. See me.

  And he turned.

  His eyes widened in recognition, and even from this distance, I saw the infinitesimal clenching of his jaw. I gasped, aloud—the sound masked by the striking of the minstrels. A tune familiar to us, one to which we’d danced many an evening in this very room. One that allowed our hands to touch, and I wondered which I would offer—my cold one or my hot. That is, if he asked. If he threaded his way through the crowd, begging pardon of the gentlemen who stood in our path. Touching his cap to the ladies, suffering the children with a tousle of their hair.

  I brought my hands together, clasped them against my stomach, hoping to bring them to a neutral warmth, so that if I touched him—when I touched him—he would have no need to startle away. Before I could squelch the betrayal, my foot took a step in his direction, then another, my roiling body set to follow. By the third step, he was gone. No tipping of his cap, no begging of pardon. Were I to take another step, I would have to run to catch up, even to get close enough to touch his sleeve. But the music played on, and a circle of dancers formed between us, and I would not disrupt their joy to display my sorrow.

  The first measure half gone, it was too late to join the dance, and I feared my proximity to the couples made me appear desperate for a partner, so I backed up to the wall, where the open window brought me to a new realization. Of course Jerome would have no such public reunion with me. All that we ever were to each other had been based on secrecy, even when it was a secret of which everyone was well aware. He would not rush across a crowded room to take me in his arms. He would hold to his promise in our place of commitment. In the garden.

  If I took the time to go to my room and fetch my cloak, I risked the chance of being followed, questioned, delayed. Instead, I inched my way along the wall, crossed the room, and gave not another glance to the revelers around me. I inhaled sharply with my first step outside, finding the bite of the air enough to bring me to my senses. A light snow fell, and I raised my face to it, feeling the sting of each flake, promising myself there would be no tears.

  I could still hear the music and found myself humming, intending to announce my presence, lest any other guests be out here, enjoying the solitude as Jerome and I once did. The snow was powder-soft beneath my feet, and though the weight of my overdress and skirts proved enough to keep me warm, I did regret my shoes, as the silk became damp, then wet. Regardless, I charged on, taking the familiar path through the hedges, past the fountain, toward the farthermost wall where he had waited that last night. Never mind that I walked a carpet of purest white, no steps preceding mine. With each one, my promise broke. One tear, then another. Tasting salt, I swiped my sleeve across my face—quickly, lest he be watching from somewhere.

  The silence in that garden, gripped in the dead of winter, rivaled that of the deepest forest. The music and laughter seemed miles away, drowned out by my own beating heart, my own shallow breath, my own soft whisper.

  “Please. Father in heaven.”

  And then, an answer. A message, as clear to me as that spoken to the shepherds in the field. He wasn’t coming. Not tonight, not at all. Not for me. I knew as much the moment he looked at me. I knew it on the path when he thundered by. I knew it in the months without a word, on the night he left. My memories had no substance; every word he’d ever said floated as weightless as the flakes swirling around me. What a fool I’d been to believe them.

  Now I faced foolishness of a new kind, knowing I had to walk back into the party, my shoes wet, my hair nothing but a mass of dripping tendrils. At least I had the cold to blame for my red nose and blotchy face, but no way to explain why I’d taken myself away from the warmth within. A breath of fresh air, I’d say. A moment of quiet contemplation.

  The walk back to the house stretched twice as long, and the sound of voices made me drag my steps even more. Guests, it seemed, had followed my lead, gathering in pockets in the courtyard. Listening to the conversations, I heard delighted chatter about the refreshing night air, the beauty of the drifting snow, the merriment of the party. I took a final swipe at my eyes and nose, preparing to join in and say, Yes, a bracing walk is just the thing to clear one’s head. Straightening my spine, I put on my bravest face for one man in particular who had ventured out into the night.

  Luther.

  Upon seeing me, he peeled away from the small group held rapt by whatever story he told and came straight for me, creating a blessed barrier between me and the others.

  “For you.” He offered me a cup of mulled wine. I took it in both of my hands and prayed my grip was strong enough to hold it, as I had no true feeling in either. The first sip warmed me, both the temperature of the wine and the spices. I left the cup balanced on my lips and looked down into its blurry depth. Three more sips before I felt strong enough to face him.

  “Is he still here?” I had no reason to clarify.

  “No.”

  “Are his parents?”

  “Yes.”

  Another sip, this one draining the cup by half.

  “Did anyone notice? Are they talking about me?”

  He chuckled. “Don’t worry. You are not the object of everyone’s attention tonight.”

  “Not his, anyway. Did you speak to him?”

  “No. He made his greetings to Philipp and Elsa, deposited his parents, and left. It seems he has another social engagement this evening.”

  “Of course he does.” I finished the cup and was rewarded with a pleasant blurring of my thoughts. Immediately, I wished for more.

  “Now, come inside.” Luther put his arm across my shoulder, meaning to comfort or guide me. Or both. “More wine, more music. Dance with von Amsdorf. Or just stand by the fire. You’re like ice.”

  “I don’t want to go back in there.”

  “You can’t stay out here.”

  “I can do as I please.” My words came out more harshly than I’d intended, as I kept my jaw clenched to prevent my teeth from chattering.

  “You can; of course you can. But might I suggest you find a place to lie down? You’ll make a much more tragic corpse when they find you in the morning.”

  “Your wit is no longer welcome.” I pushed against his chest, but he did not move. “I’m going up to my room. To bed.”

  “Let me fetch you more wine, to warm you.”

  “I don’t want more wine.” I shouldered past him, lifting my skirts as if doing so would speed my steps. Heedless of the curious eyes that followed, I made my way around to the side of the house, where an obscure door led to a back stairway I could take directly to my room.

  “Katharina.” He followed, hard on my heels. “Kate!” This, louder, once we’d turned the corner. My feet, encased in sodden silk, felt like pointed spears of pain, and he soon had my arm, gripped at its elbow. “Wait.”

  “No! I don’t have to do what you say. I don’t have to speak to you. I don’t have to listen to you. I owe you nothing, Luther.”

  “You’re right.” He dropped my arm, and his voice took a turn to sarcasm. “I only rescued you from—”

  “You rescued me from nothing.” The anger I felt for Jerome, the humiliation I’d heaped upon myself—I fashioned it all into arrows and fired them with my words. “You aided an escape. And then you . . . you abandoned me.”

  “Abandoned you? In this fine home, with hosts who have been nothing but generous and gracious to you. Wouldn’t I love to tell my friends that you feel abandoned?”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Then use your mind to better choose your words.” He’d come to the end of his patience, armed with anger of his own.

  The side of the house was lined w
ith a privet hedge, grown up to the second-floor windows and groomed into spires. I stepped within, seeking to hide myself from whatever onlookers might follow the sound of our argument, and to my surprise, Luther followed, enclosing us with stone, and green, and snow.

  “Forgive me if I’m not perfectly articulate,” I said, clearly without repentance.

  “I’m not asking for perfection. Only perspective.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, don’t let this fool of a man destroy what we’ve accomplished.”

  “I don’t think anyone in there would say that he is the fool.”

  “Hold your head up, my girl. Come inside and lift a glass. Indulge me that much.”

  “You speak as if I owe you.”

  “You owe me nothing, Kate.”

  “Oh, but I do.” A false sense of courage infused me, a heat generated to stave off the chill that threatened to freeze me into complacent obedience. “I owe you my heart. It’s been ripped out and broken, and I owe that to you. Before you—before your rescue—I had no idea such pain existed. I had no idea I could walk and talk and die inside. So I owe you that, Luther. I owe you my pain and my humiliation. I owe you my loneliness and my despair. All of that—all of it—I lay at your feet.”

  He allowed me to speak, long after I’d given him reason to rise up and stop the ugliness I spewed. When I’d depleted myself of words, I erupted in bottomless tears and slumped against his familiar, worn black coat.

  “There, there.” He patted my back, soothing my childish rage, wisely saying nothing even in his own defense. I clutched at his sleeves, drawing him closer, hating myself more with each sob. Soon I felt his lips, a soft kiss at the top of my brow, and I burrowed deeper.

  “Look up,” he said, inching himself away. “See how clear the stars are tonight.”

  I obeyed, as we both knew I would, and marveled at the sight. It was one of those rare moments, a break in the clouds, when the snow seems to appear without a source. The stars formed a silver tapestry behind the dance of pure white.

  “Imagine the faith it took to follow a single star. To look up into that vastness of the heavens and focus on a single point of light. And then, to follow.”

  “I suppose you are my single point of light?”

  He was still holding me, but stepped away. “Christ is the Light we follow, Katie. Our own understanding will fail us. Always. Think how frightened and alone Mary must have felt on this night.”

  “But she wasn’t alone. She had a husband. And child. I have nothing. I have nobody.”

  “Mary held the Christ within her arms. You hold him within your soul. How much more is that?”

  I knew he wanted me to say that it was enough. That my faith would be enough to sustain me for the rest of my days. But I knew what it meant to love someone, and to be loved—the way God designed a man to love a woman. Even if Jerome’s love hadn’t proved to be lasting, its hold on me was strong, and an emptiness ached within me to find such love again.

  “Have you no words of wisdom for me, then? No comfort from the man who endangers his life for truth?”

  He looked away, gathering his thoughts, seeming to go far away, and then returned. “You saw our tree in the great hall?”

  Our tree. “Yes, of course. It’s beautiful.”

  “Is it more beautiful than these?” He opened his arm expansively, directing me to see the clump of firs in the side yard, and then the towers of green offering shelter.

  “It’s more festive,” I said, determined to have a say in the argument. “Unique from these.”

  “Ah, yes. But more beautiful? No. These here, in starlight, with the whiteness of snow adorning the branches—these manifest God’s creation. His perfection. And they will for years and years, long after our death, if left alone. We brought our tree into a place of celebration. But we’ve killed it. It will never be what God intended, and his plan, his design, is always best.”

  “Jerome is a good man. A godly man. Why couldn’t he have been God’s design for me?”

  Luther looked like he had an answer but discarded it with a breath of steam. “I don’t know. It is not for us to know. At least not now, but maybe someday you’ll see everything more clearly.”

  Slowly, a sense of peace settled in drifts around me. “If only I’d been able to see this clearly in June.”

  “In June there are only stars, no snow. Now is the time for grace. As the prophet Isaiah records, Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”

  “Are you saying it was a sin to love him?”

  “To love him? No.”

  Luther made it clear that there were other aspects of our love that could be interpreted as sin, and for that I bowed my head. “Are you to be my confessor?”

  “No, as I owe you no forgiveness.”

  “Then what are you to me, Luther?”

  Again he searched for an answer, scrutinizing my face as if to find it there. “Tonight, I am your friend, hoping to help you find a place to reason with the Lord.”

  “You’ve helped mightily.” Somehow, my voice was even, my breath steady, my chattering gone. And though I’d long ago come to think of Luther as a true friend, in the washing white of Christmas Eve, I first pondered if he could be anything more.

  PART VI

  Cranach Household, Wittenberg

  WINTER 1524–SPRING 1525

  CHAPTER 26

  UNTIL I CAME into the home of Lucas and Barbara Cranach, I only thought I knew how grand a house could be. Theirs dwarfed the Reichenbachs’ in every way. Two grand halls, one specifically for dancing. One dining room with a table big enough to seat fifty people, and another more intimate one for the household. There was a ladies’ parlor, a gentlemen’s library, and a room designated for sitting in the morning sun. All of this, and two floors besides, with sumptuous hallways and spacious rooms. Eighteen on the second floor, with the nursery and servants on the third.

  Accompanied by Luther, I arrived on the third of January, having celebrated Christmas and the New Year with those I had come to know as family, yet they put up no protest at my leaving. Rather, they made me a gift of a trunk, its lid covered in rich red leather, its hardware shining brass. I’d come to their home with all my belongings in a single drawstring pouch; I left the owner of three dresses, a hairbrush and mirror, a cloak and boots, two pair of shoes, and a host of undergarments besides. To my greater delight, though, I was also given the small writing desk, complete with paper and ink and quills.

  “So you can keep in touch with us, dear,” Elsa said. Never mind that the ride from her house to the Cranachs’ took less than an hour’s time.

  Still, when I stepped out of the coach in front of this home and watched as the footman retrieved my trunk, I felt nothing but a sense of belonging. I knew how to greet my hosts, how to incline my head, how to hold out my hand. Though penniless, I was not without breeding, and my time spent with a fine family reintroduced what I’d lost during my years in the convent. By now, I was no longer “one of the twelve.” My story had expanded beyond that of a former nun, now set free. I brought with me the tragic tale of a love affair, and the heartbreak that came of it. My new hosts knew me to be a teacher, a governess not out of necessity, but as a natural use for my education. I played no instrument, but had developed an appreciation for music as well as the other arts. The paintings displayed in the entry of the Cranach home were some of the finest I’d ever seen, beginning with an image of the magi visiting the Christ child, painted in a style I recognized.

  “Appropriate, isn’t it?” Cranach said, noticing my admiration. “Seeing as we will celebrate Epiphany in a few days. It was a gift from the artist.”

  “Dürer?” I said, daring to touch one finger along its edge, as it was displayed on an ornate easel, therefore at a level to do so. I’d never been in proximity to a work so rich in detail and depth. “Albrecht
Dürer?”

  “He is a rival, but also a friend.”

  “Rival?”

  Barbara Cranach took her husband’s arm. “Lucas and Albrecht are known to compete sometimes, for the commissions of the church.”

  “And royalty,” Cranach added with good nature. “Not that I’m boasting.”

  “Of course not,” Luther said. “That would be unchristian of you.”

  As they spoke, I realized I had seen this man’s work. “You did the altarpiece, then? In the little chapel on the Reichenbachs’ property?”

  He bowed in assent. “I did.”

  “Oh.” This conversation made me all the more conscious of the final belonging that sat on top of all my others in the ornate trunk. My portrait, painted by Christoph the Unknown, and an embarrassment among the fine works in the house. In that moment, I questioned whether or not to allow the piece to see the light of day.

  I had become acquainted with the family over several occasions at the Reichenbachs’, but I had not realized the depth of the friendship between Cranach and Luther. I knew him to be an artist, and the owner of a respected and lucrative pharmacy—two pursuits that seemed opposite of each other, yet served to meet the needs of both parts of the man. The first, to ensure posthumous fame; the other, contemporary wealth. Cranach himself was a large man, with a great white beard and a presence that disguised the depth of his intelligence. He seemed always to be on the verge of teaching, impatient to extract or explain a new thought. His wife, Barbara, was a gentle soul, quiet and plain in both speech and appearance. I felt an instant ease with them, not only because I’d become more accustomed to society, but because I sensed an opportunity for intellectual challenge.

  “My dear,” Barbara said, “I hope you will not be insulted that I have you in an adjoined room, but I think you will appreciate who we have staying on the other side.”

  “Who?” I looked to Luther, wondering just what he hadn’t told me.