Loving Luther

by Allison Pittman

  “Tell me, Fräulein,” Glatz said, calling my attention back to him completely, “being so established in this household must be quite a change from your life as a nun. Have you acquired a taste for such a lavish lifestyle?”

  “A taste for it?” I smiled, emphasizing the coincidental timing of the remark as I speared a chunk of baked yam and popped it into my mouth, chewing throughout the awkward silence that followed. “I wouldn’t say a taste so much as an appreciation for the prodigious amount of work that makes such a household possible.”

  “Work?”

  “With great wealth comes great responsibility.”

  He looked like he wanted to reply, but chose instead to take another slice of pork from a passing platter. An odd thing to do, as his plate sat full before him; then I noticed his new serving didn’t go onto his plate at all, but into a large, square napkin, which he folded and knotted and slipped into his coat pocket. Too late, I averted my eyes from his action.

  “Don’t bother yourself being embarrassed for me, Fräulein. I assure you I am not so much poor as practical.”

  I smiled politely, as if nary a disparaging thought had entered my mind. “When I was a little girl, I used to take biscuits from our dinner and sneak them into bed. I confessed my sin to the priest, and he chastised me, warning me that rats could come in the night to nibble it away.”

  “Perhaps I risk a greater danger of being followed home by a neighborhood dog?”

  It was the first I’d heard him attempt a joke, and I rewarded his effort with a chuckle and a promise that I, too, would be sneaking a sweet from the table to my room.

  “So, we are not so different after all, Fräulein?”

  He said it with such a sense of sweet conviction, I had not the heart to disagree.

  Shortly after Christmas, it became clear to all who knew me that Glatz had in his mind to be my suitor, and that he did so with Luther’s encouragement and insistence. Both men came to call nearly daily, and after a time, Glatz came alone, bringing with him opportunities for long, awkward stretches of silence, leaving Barbara to fill the void with neighborhood news. We graduated to taking walks together, when the temperature allowed.

  “I would like to show you my home,” he said one evening. It was the first week of March, with a distant hint of spring in the air. My mind was preoccupied with thoughts of the garden, what I might plant in the corner over which I’d been given full stewardship. Peas, perhaps. Or some other legume. The household did not observe strict meatlessness on Fridays, but I enjoyed cultivating new recipes, soups especially, with a thicker, more substantial broth—

  “Fräulein?”

  He’d been speaking, for quite some time if his frustration was any measure, and I apologized for my absence of mind. “You were saying?”

  “Only that I would like to take you to my home, to let you see where I live, even temporarily.”

  “Herr Doktor Glatz—” I feigned blushing offense—“I don’t know if that would be proper without a chaperone.”

  He laughed, a not-entirely unpleasant sound, and assured me no one would give a second thought.

  Bereft of excuses, I agreed and tucked my hands deeper in the woolen muff, though the late-afternoon sun made it almost too warm.

  “Can I ask you where you were, just those few minutes ago? What were you thinking?”

  It was the most intimate question he had asked, and I felt I owed him honesty.

  “My garden—the section I oversee at the Cranachs’. I was thinking of what I might plant.”

  He seemed satisfied and asked no more.

  We arrived at the small home, built with the sprawling university and Stadtkirche in plain view behind it. I glanced up, wondering if Luther might be inside, working on notes for an upcoming sermon, or writing some correspondence. I hesitated long enough on Glatz’s threshold to cause him again to ask for my thoughts, but this time I said nothing close to the truth, only that I wondered where I should scrape the mud from my boots.

  “No worries about that,” he said, but I made a show of wiping the soles of my boots on the stones in front of the door.

  Though the outside of the house made no secret of its humble nature, the interior was monastic in design. A small, square table, two high-backed wooden chairs. A measly pile of wood scattered in the metal box beside the cold, dark fireplace. A closed door must have led to a bedchamber, and before I could stop myself, I pictured a thin, narrow bed within.

  “Modest, I know,” Glatz said, making no move to ask me to sit on either of his two chairs. “But clean.”

  “Very much so.” I had to take his word, as there was not enough light to confirm. It was colder in this room than it was outside, the windows small and high, limiting the light. “Though it’s small enough that it wouldn’t offer much of a challenge to a charwoman.”

  He waved off my words. “The parsonage in Orlamunde came with a small staff, but not here. I do my own cleaning, actually. And have learned to make a few simple meals on my own.”

  I’d been witness to his simple meals. More than one had been pilfered and pocketed beneath my very nose.

  “But why not hire a woman?”

  “Because it would fall to me to pay her wages.”

  He spoke without discernible pride, only a blatantly stated fact that I could not help but take as a challenge.

  “Don’t you see that you are preventing some woman from earning an honest wage?”

  “Good women do not seek to earn a wage. They seek marriage.”

  I said nothing, not wanting to engage in this topic of conversation. Obviously, I was a woman with neither a wage nor a husband. Only a minute within these walls, and I knew well what Kaspar Glatz would be willing to offer.

  “Might be best,” I said, “seeing that this is a temporary home for you. How long will you be in Wittenberg?”

  He accepted my evasion with surprising grace, and I felt my first twinge of pity. “I’ve not yet decided. Rather, it hasn’t been decided for me. Where and when the Lord would have me go.”

  “Isn’t that the case for us all?”

  “I suppose it is.”

  Silence, then the scraping of a chair, and Glatz’s offer for me to sit.

  “A glass of wine?” he asked when I was comfortably at table. “It was a Christmas gift from Cranach. One of his best, I’d say.”

  “Thank you, but no.” I had no desire to have anything but a clear, sharp head. “In fact, I should get back soon. I’m expected for supper.” And I prayed he would not take such as an invitation.

  “Very well.” He returned the bottle to its cupboard, unopened. “But before you leave, I want to make one thing clear to you.”

  “You’ve nothing to make clear—”

  “This is not all I have. I have cash enough for a fine home. A farm, even, should I choose. Nothing like what you have now—”

  “Please.” I was desperate to stop him. “I have nothing of my own. Nothing other than my character and my conscience. Nothing to bring—”

  “I am not a young man, clearly. Neither are you a particularly young woman. In that, at least, we are matched.”

  “You can’t . . .” I stood and took a purposeful step toward the door. “You mustn’t—”

  “Fräulein, please.” He nearly barked the words with the type of unpleasant authority that begged both obedience and contempt. “I’ve no intentions of molesting your person.”

  “I didn’t believe you would, sir.” I would not insult him with laughter, though somewhere in my darkest recesses, amusement took hold. “I simply cannot encourage this conversation further. I must leave.”

  “My only wish,” he continued as if I hadn’t spoken a word, “is some sort of companionship. As I am getting older, and my eyes fail ever more, I find I can hardly read.”

  The little laughter that followed simply could not be helped. “Read?”

  “I’ve thought, lately, it might do to have someone who can read to me. And Martin told me what
a bright mind you have, though I’ve yet to see much of it displayed. I can trust that you are literate? Even in Latin?”

  “You cannot mean—”

  “I am sure we can find a mode of living suitable to both of our tastes. Less lavish, of course, than what you currently enjoy. But I can concede—”

  “Concede nothing.” This time it was I who gave weight to my words, and he fell silent. I steeled myself against pity, as he had the decency to look embarrassed for his display. “This is neither the time nor the place for this conversation. We’ve been acquainted a mere matter of months, and I can truthfully say that I have not spent the time since our acquaintance in contemplation of any such arrangement.”

  “But Martin assured me—”

  I made a dismissive sound. “This wouldn’t be the first time Herr Doktor Luther overstepped his bounds in an attempt to secure my future.”

  “But he said you had no prospects. No future. That yours was a desperate situation, and perhaps my opportunity to benefit from a certain kindness and—” he gulped the word—“generosity.”

  Stunned, I took in the details of the room, my eyes now adjusted to the dim light. The thin layer of grime on the table, the dirt crusted on the window. If I recalled correctly, my chair had been both imbalanced and uncomfortable, and there was only one other to be had. Unless there was a chair in the bedroom. Next to the bed.

  The last time a man proposed marriage to me, my body had burned with such passion, I would have found all other furniture superfluous to our happiness. How, then, had I become—over the course of only a year—a woman who would be considered content as nothing more than a cook and a companion to an old man? How could my passion for learning be reduced to an ability to read? Here, in the gray frigidity of this room, I could clearly recall every moment Luther made me feel like a woman afire, even as my feckless heart burned for Jerome. Going back, I suppose, to the first moment I beheld him in the street below my window at the Brummbär Inn. When he slid my ring upon my finger. When he held strands of my hair, like a man in the throes of restraint. I’d held his gaze at dinner, the candlelight no doubt enhancing my features. I knew what it was to see him talk to the bore at his left while his eyes saw nothing but me. I knew none other who could make him laugh with the abandon I cultivated. I’d never seen him in silence so profound as the times we sat together by a dying fire. Yet Luther not only disavowed the power I had over him, but implied that I would generously apply it to any man of his choosing.

  “Is that what he said?”

  Glatz had the goodness, at least, to be chagrined. “Not in so many words.”

  “But in spirit.”

  “If you recall, upon our introduction, I said he had been misleading.”

  “You did.” I gathered my skirts, preparing to leave. “So if nothing else, we should both have come to the conclusion not to believe a word that comes out of the man’s mouth.”

  He drew up. “How dare you speak of the man that way.”

  “I dare, because I know him. Better than you do, for all you might claim. Now, I’ll take my leave, and I’ll ask you not to call on me again. If you are a guest of the Cranachs, I cannot refuse your company. But our intent toward each other has been made, I believe, perfectly clear. And we have no mutual understanding.”

  Glatz paid me the highest honor by making no move to hinder my exit. He said not a word, even as I struggled with the swollen door, and I gave no glance over my shoulder to see if he stood within its frame. I would not turn around, could not turn around, because the stinging shame of my tears would have presented such a weakness of my sex as to give credence to Luther’s claim: that I was weak, desperate.

  Half his age, and he said I was not a young woman.

  Able to speak in circles around him, and he said I am not bright.

  There would be no glance at Stadtkirche as I stormed away, caring not a whit where Luther might be, or what he might be doing. The pace of my walk stirred my blood hot enough to match my anger, and I could feel my face flush, then cool as the breeze blew against my tears. I must have been a frightful sight, a fact confirmed by the curious glances of those I passed. Some, familiar, offered a cautious greeting, which I curtly returned. Others tsked and turned their heads, unsympathetic to my distress.

  I slushed through the semi-melted snow, careless of the muddy and wet consequences to my skirt. This wasn’t my best gown, by far. My oldest, actually, given as my first encounter with charity only hours after climbing down from the wagon in Torgau. My new, best red gown I kept away, pressed and ready for a visit from Luther, as he’d remarked on the color it brought to my cheeks.

  I wished—truly, for the first time since leaving Marienthrone—for the comfort of my sisters. A childish longing for Sister Odile and her generous lap, Sister Elisabeth and her purloined spice cake, Sister Gerda and her insulated wisdom—any of them would be able to tell me, without hesitation, that I had been given the mind of Christ, and that my future would not be held hostage by marriage, to any man. I did not regret my freedom, for I relished every brisk, unfettered step I took, but I had no idea I would become some sort of bartered prize in the hands of the man who orchestrated it.

  At Schoenberg Street, I came to the place where a turn to the left would bring me to the Cranachs’; to the right, Market Square, still buzzing with activity. Not ready to face Barbara and her winsome curiosity about my afternoon with Glatz, I turned to the right and felt the welcome return of composure as I wove throughout the booths and shops. My ears rang with the merchants’ calling, and I traded a few of the coins in my pocket for a book of poetry. Something frivolous, as I felt I was due, along with a small bag of sweet biscuits and a pot of jam, which I would share with the Cranachs once I’d eaten my fill.

  By then I’d taken myself far from the main street and worried I’d lost my way when I turned a corner to see Luther, not ten feet away, coming from a stationer’s with a bundle of fresh, clean paper tied with red string.

  “Katie!” he called, as if he had some right of affection or authority to summon me so in a public place.

  “Herr Doktor,” I said, once the distance had closed enough between us to allow me to greet him without raising my voice.

  He frowned. “You seem displeased for a woman walking so freely with her purchases on an afternoon in nearly spring.”

  “Well, then, I must be, as you are the expert in all avenues of my emotions.”

  “What’s this?” Then he took on a pitying look I had come to hate. “Ah, Katie. You must have heard the news.”

  From the look on his face, the news was nothing good. “What news?”

  “It’s Baumgartner.”

  “Jerome?” It was all I could do to speak his name as a certain dread closed around my throat. “Has something happened to him? Is he ill?”

  Luther’s expression grew more grave. “Worse, I’m afraid. He’s engaged.”

  He allowed the ruse to continue for a second longer before bursting into his mischievous grin as I traveled a reactionary journey from relief to irritation to something bottomless within me that defied anything I’d ever felt before.

  “That’s a terrible joke, Luther.”

  “I’m sorry. I meant only to lighten the moment.”

  That’s when I noticed he clutched my arm, as I must have appeared faint. I shook off his grip.

  “I’m a grown woman, capable of handling the truth, especially when it is a truth that doesn’t affect me in the least.”

  “Doesn’t it?”

  “No.”

  “Because your affections have been claimed by another?”

  There was no way to answer truthfully. “No, Luther. They haven’t.”

  “I see.” He rocked back on his heels and tucked his package under his arm. “And you don’t foresee any change of heart?”

  “Not mine.”

  My answer seemed to settle the discussion, even if not to his satisfaction, and I allowed him to declare the matter closed with a f
inal, decisive sound. “May I see you home?”

  Minutes before I’d been angry enough to wish never to see Luther again. But he’d been estranged, of late, and even this conversation served to cleanse my palate from the unpleasantness that defined any moment spent with Kaspar Glatz. I must have taken too long to respond because he assured me he had no intentions of keeping me from either my new book or my new pastries.

  “I shall abandon you at the door upon arrival,” he said, offering me his free arm. Rather than take it, I clutched at my bundle, my muff slid up to the elbow, and fell into an easy, familiar step beside him.

  “You told me once,” I said, “that you would not speak to me if you saw me in the market.”

  “I was speaking hypothetically, in conjecture of a world in which I did not know you.”

  I did not bring up all the other things he had said, about how he would think me to be a charming girl. Lovely in face and enticing in figure. In fact, our walk was accompanied entirely by unspoken words. He did not ask about Glatz; I did not tell him. Yet the matter was settled between us. The whole matter of Glatz had lived and died through suggestion and innuendo; why dredge up details now? I asked nothing about Jerome’s engagement, not the name or nature of his fiancée, knowing gossip would reveal all details soon enough. And I did not—would not—share my feelings for him, having had two such devastating truths revealed to me. First, that he saw me in such a despairing light. Second, that in the cold, hard light of such knowledge, I loved him still.

  CHAPTER 32

  WHEN I CAME inside after my walk home that afternoon, I forgot about my new book of poetry. Instead, I went immediately to Barbara Cranach, pulled her away from the kitchen, where she was giving the cook final instructions for supper, and insisted that she listen to the entirety of my tale. My love and loss of Jerome, my contempt for Glatz and the clumsiness of his confession, and the depths of my feelings for Luther. She listened to it all without a hint of surprise and offered no comment beyond a broad, soft bosom on which to rest my sob-wracked head.