Katharina Luther

by Anne Boileau

  “But Frau Reichenbach, we have no money, how can we pay the dressmaker?”

  “Don’t worry about that now. We can sort out bills later. But my dear children, you can help yourselves by simply changing the way you behave. Let’s start with deportment. You move like nuns, I’ve seen you, creeping along the street, eyes on the ground, hands clasped, staying close to the walls, as if someone was going to eat you. Get rid of the frightened rabbit in you! I tell you, if you think someone is about to eat you, they probably will. It’s quite understandable to feel afraid, but you must never show it. Walk straight and tall. Hold your head up boldly. Look straight ahead. Don’t catch men’s eyes, but don’t studiously avoid them either. Let’s think about your gait. Have you noticed how the women in the town move? I don’t mean women of the night, just normal lay women? They move their hips, their limbs are loose and so are their arms. Look, I’ll show you.”

  She got up from her chair and demonstrated what I thought was rather a louche way of walking, but of course she was exaggerating. She stuck her feet out sideways and swung her hips as she walked, her arms loose, her head held high.

  “I don’t really walk like this, I am a respectable matron, but young women nowadays tend to move in a bolder way than when I was your age. Women with babies on their backs move with a swing too. Look about you; imitate other women. Laugh, relax. And as soon as your hair has grown long enough, roll it up on your head and discard your headdresses, we want to show that you’re unmarried. You mustn’t hide your light under a bushel.”

  “I can’t imagine anyone would ever want to marry me,” said Veronika, who is a mousy little thing with freckles, but everyone loves her.

  “Why ever not, what nonsense! Once Herr Löffler has fitted you out and we’ve sorted out your hair you’ll look like a princess, you’ll be quite irresistible!”

  We all laughed at the idea of Veronika, or any of us for that matter, looking irresistible. We talked more generally then, and were able to ask her where to get things inexpensively, when the post left for the north or the south, the name of various people who might help us, such as the apothecary and his wife, and where the dressmaker had his shop. She gave us confidence, and chased away some of our misgivings and regrets at escaping from the convent.

  She stood up to leave. “You’re fine young women, I’m sure a lot of families will be falling over each other to take you in as house daughters. I might even take one of you myself!” she laughed.

  After showing her out the five of us strolled into the vegetable garden and sat down on the grass under the apple trees; they were just coming into blossom, fragrant in the April sunshine.

  How we talked! For years we had communicated with sign language, only having an hour each day for real speech. And yet we knew one another like sisters, as indeed we were, in a sense, with all the tensions and irritations and love that relationship brings. But as we sat beneath that tree with the blossom petals falling down like confetti, I let their talk wash over me, and retreated into my own thoughts. I thought about the word freedom, tested the sound of it in Latin and German and French. I thought about my pet owl. How, when he was fully grown I let him fly free. He flew away into the night, into the dark forests; he must have learnt to hunt and look after himself. But even in his freedom he chose to come back, almost every evening, to see me. He adapted, so why couldn’t we?

  The weeks went by and we learnt to adapt. We heard from some of the other nuns, the ones who had gone back home. Magdalena wrote to say that already a young man was paying her court. The others were safely settled back in their homes, either with their parents or their brothers’ families.

  Elisabeth took up a place at the new girls’ school, teaching Latin and the catechism and reading and writing. Brigitte was paid court by an older man, an ex-monk who was appointed as pastor in a nearby village, so she left. Then Veronika was offered a place with a family, tutoring their children. Which left just Ave and me at the Cloister, still looking for a position.

  Our high birth was against us. If we had not come from patrician backgrounds, if we had learnt a trade from our parents such as saddlery or shoemaking or dressmaking, we could have found work easily enough; times were difficult, but work was available for those with skills and many people had money to pay for such services. But these were the occupations of the artisan class, not open to young gentlewomen. What did the future hold for us?

  We acquired new dresses and learnt how to move and behave in a more appropriate manner. Frau Reichenbach continued to give us advice and encouragement. She invited me to stay with her but I couldn’t have left Ave alone at the Cloister and she could not take us both.

  Men looked at us both as we walked around the town and as our confidence grew, so did our power to attract them. Men displayed, unwittingly, a vulnerable hunger, a longing. What a discovery! We women have power over men, because they desire us! When I was alone in the parlour I gazed at my face in the mirror, turning this way and that, getting used to my looks in secular clothes. I longed for my cropped hair to grow so that I could leave my head uncovered, as befits unmarried women.

  It was May when at last someone came to our rescue. One morning Philip Melanchthon came round to the Cloister. He teaches Theology and Greek at the University and is a great scholar. He’s not much older than us, but works all the time with Dr Luther, writing about Theology, translating the Scriptures. He has red hair and a funny face. I like him; a pity he’s already married! He and Catherine live next door to the Cloister, so he drops in quite a lot.

  This morning he greeted me and Ave after prayers and said:

  “Fräulein Katharina and Fräulein Ave, Herr Cranach and his wife told me yesterday they would like to meet you. Shall I take you round to their house now, and introduce you?” We already knew about Herr Cranach: he is a painter, one of the most prosperous men in the town. He has an apothecary’s shop and a printworks. He publishes books. He and his wife Barbara live in a fine house only five minutes down the street from the Black Cloister. They have three children.

  We said yes please. The three of us walked down Castle Street. I already knew the Apothecary’s shop but had not ventured into the other premises. We went through the archway into a cobbled yard behind the shop. A large linden tree stands in the middle, its green leaves still tender. On the right, looking west, there is a wooden barn and stables, then across the south side a brick building with a pan tiled roof and dormer windows. Herr Cranach has his studio here, on the first floor; the ground floor provides accommodation for the apprentices. On the left is the print workshop; this was where Philip led us; he knocked on the door and we walked in.

  The atmosphere of industry was palpable; the long low room smelt of ink and paper and machine oil from the presses; and the sour odour of young men in leather. A blond youth was occupied in measuring and cutting paper, another was sitting on a high stool at a desk wearing an eye glass and selecting metal letters with a pair of tweezers, slotting them into frames; two others were bent over panels of wood, chipping and incising them with sharp tools. At the far end of the room, an older man (I later learnt his name was Melchior Lotther) was operating a printing press.

  Philip had gone in search of Herr Cranach, so Ave and I waited by the door of the workshop, uncertain what to do next. Two of the apprentices looked up and we lowered our eyes; then a hush fell as the men paused in their work to stare at us. We turned our backs on them and stared out of the window in embarrassment, feeling the heat of their gaze. Gradually the sound of their work resumed.

  To our relief Philip soon reappeared.

  “Herr Cranach is busy with a sitter, but Frau Cranach is in the dairy, and would be glad to meet you.”

  We followed him through the door at the bottom of the courtyard into a small farmyard. The Cranachs keep two cows and Barbara was in the dairy churning butter. I saw a tall, slim woman with brown hair under a linen snood, dressed in a simple grey dress. When she saw us she came out of the dairy, stooping under the
low beam, and approached us, drying her hands on her apron.

  “You must be Ave and Katharina. How good to meet you both. Are you settled in at the Black Cloister? Is it dreadfully uncomfortable? Are you getting enough to eat?” She laughed as we shook hands, and we assured her that we were perfectly comfortable.

  “Shall I show you round? I expect you’ve seen the workshop already. We’d better not go into the studio now, but I can show you the livestock and garden. These are our two cows. This one is fifteen, my mother gave her to us as a wedding present, a wonderful cow, she’s never missed a year. The brindle is her daughter and she had her first calf just last week, a bull unfortunately. I expect you both milk?”

  “Oh yes, we both took turns in the dairy at the convent,” said Ave. “I enjoy milking”.

  “So do I,” said Barbara and laughed. “Milking soothes away your worries. Of course I’m lucky, I don’t have to do it every day. But I try to do the milking at least once a week to keep in touch with our cows.”

  Barbara showed us two sows lying on clean straw in adjacent sties. One of them was suckling eight new mottled piglets. Next to the sties was the goat stall, with two kids; the nannies spend the day outside the city walls with the town goatherd. A number of hens were scratching around in the yard, one of them with a family of chicks. Barbara led us through a doorway into a walled vegetable plot, recently tilled, with rows of seedlings, a pile of beanstalks lying at the edge waiting to be put in. The soil was black and fertile, full of promise with the growing season just beginning.

  “You really have a lot to do here,” I said.

  “Yes we have. My husband takes on too much, he thinks he can do everything. We have the chemist’s shop to manage and medicine receipts to make up. The publishing business needs supervising, though Melchior does much of that. Then of course Lucas has his painting studio, with three apprentices learning the trade and our two sons. Hans shows great promise, and I think little Lucas does too. But of course when important people call, they don’t want to be painted by understudies, so my husband has to do most of it. Then all the workers expect a hearty midday meal and what appetites young men have! I’m lucky, though, I have Elsa to help with the children and the dairy, and Cook manages the kitchen.

  “And the garden, who helps you with that?”

  She laughed. “Anyone I can find! I requisition the printing lads when I can. Then there’s Elsa, and the boys; you, if you like.”

  “I would love to help you,” I said and Ave offered her help too. “We both did gardening in the convent, didn’t we?”

  “What other experience have you got? What do you know about herbs and medicines?”

  “I worked with Sister Magdalena in the dispensary in the convent. I know a certain amount about prescriptions, and how to make them up,” said Ave.

  “That’s good. Then would you consider helping the Apothecary?”

  Ave nodded vigorously.

  “And you Katharina, would you give me a hand in the house, and with the boys’ education?”

  Yes, yes and yes.

  “In that case my husband and I are prepared to offer you both a room and work in the Cranach House. We can’t pay you much, but you can live with us as house daughters, and join in with everything. How does that seem to you?”

  We were almost speechless with pleasure and relief, and simply nodded our assent.

  So that was how my friend Ave and I came to live in the Cranach household. They gave us a room each and we lived and worked as part of their family.

  Chapter 9

  Ave in Love

  Der Mann soll so mit der Frau leben, dass sie ihn nicht gern wegziehen sieht und fröhlich wird, wenn er heimkommt.

  The husband should live with his wife in such a way that she is sad to see him leave and happy when he comes back home.

  My hair grew, and my confidence grew with it. The children liked me. Herr Cranach became less forbidding and treated me like a daughter, teasing me, making fun of me in a harmless way at meal times. Barbara noticed what I did well and what I was not so good at, and made appropriate use of my skills. I helped her in the dairy, in the vegetable garden, and in the busy summer months we four women, Cook, Elsa, Barbara and I, worked together, picking, shelling, drying, pickling, preserving fruit and putting by.

  Barbara Cranach, of all the people who have helped and encouraged me over the last two years, is the person I love and respect most. She is fifteen years older than me, and I have learnt a great deal from her. I don’t mean just the practical matters of running a large household: how to keep order among the servants, how to get the best out of all the workers, from the apothecary or engraver to the lowliest swineherd. I have also learnt from her the virtues of calmness in the face of any crisis, major of minor. Of warmth, gentleness, the art of listening; the importance of firmness combined with affection when dealing with children or subordinates. I observed, in the course of our daily life together, her wisdom, fairness and humour. And yet she never dispenses advice without being asked for it, and when you do need it she always qualifies what she says with something like: “That’s what I feel, but you might not agree.”

  Barbara is respectful to her husband and defers to his authority while never actually being subservient. As a house daughter with the Cranachs I grew by simply being with the whole family, observing how they led their lives. I had not lived in a family since I had left my own home when I was eight. I told myself, ‘If ever I should marry and have a household of my own, I want to preside over it with the same strength and consequence; I want to command respect from those working for me, and love from my husband, and recognition from his colleagues and friends, as Barbara does.’

  I look back now on those eighteen months with the Cranachs as a kind of apprenticeship. My skills at planning and running the provender in a large household, of bookkeeping, of managing domestic staff, of dealing with children and their ever changing demands, were developed there, not only by working for Barbara and Lucas, but by observing how they worked and lived together. Ave says the same thing, though she had less to do with Barbara than I did. Our skills for the secular world were honed at No. 1 Castle Street, and I am eternally grateful to the Cranachs for that.

  Ave and I soon fell into the routine of the house, slipping into our role of ‘house daughter’. They made us welcome and appreciated us for who we were, and seemed to feel no prejudice at our status as fugitive nuns.

  Meal times were noisy and cheerful. The main meal at midday was a gathering of all the hands, from the printworks and the studio and the pharmacy. Cook would make a large cauldron of stew, or dumplings with milk soup, or sausage and sauerkraut, or Kassler Ripperl with beans, depending on what was available. Herr Cranach said Grace and then we all sat down together in the long dining hall next to the kitchen. The room rang with the clattering of pewter mugs, knives and forks on plates, talk and laughter. I enjoy the company of women, but I do think that the presence of men lightens the mood; more laughter and jollity comes into play when both sexes are present.

  It was a strange sensation, eating with such a cheerful lack of restraint: joking, laughing, telling stories, when from the age of thirteen we had been required to eat in silence. What I noticed, as I looked around the table, was how much people use their hands while talking. As much communication goes on with the hands as with the face and voice. Even when people are allowed to speak, they still use their hands and faces to augment what they are saying. We had communicated in very much the same way at the convent, but without speech, and still managed to say a great deal.

  After the midday meal came the Midday Rest. Everyone retired to their own rooms or the workshops for one hour of quiet. Even the animals observed this ritual, the lame crane, the hens, the cows and pigs, the kid goats and the pair of storks on the roof; everyone would gratefully shut their eyes and snooze.

  More industry followed in the afternoon, then by five o’clock all the workers went home and a sense of peace descended as the fami
ly and household servants reclaimed the house for ourselves.

  The best conversations took place at supper. The staff ate in the kitchen and the family, including Ave and me, sat in the more intimate Stube with its tile oven, eating a light evening meal. House guests would normally eat with us in there, while their servants ate in the kitchen. How everyone talked! Ave and I listened and learnt. After the dishes were cleared away we would sometimes make music and sing.

  The summer rolled on. Ave worked in the pharmacy and before long I noticed a change in her. She began to glow. It was a Sunday in August and we were getting ready for church. I had put on my best dress, the one made for me by Frau Reichenbach’s tailor – fine green woollen cloth from England, with black satin trim and a black bodice. I knocked on Ave’s door, her room was in the front of the house overlooking the market square.

  “It’s me.”

  “Come in.”

  Ave was pinning up her hair, now just long enough to tie in a knot. She looked wonderful in her dress, which was like mine only grey with bright blue trim.

  “Ave, you look lovely. What’s happened?”

  “Oh Kathe, I think I’m in love.”

  “Am I allowed to guess who?”

  “Go on, then, guess.”

  “Is it Herr Axt?”

  “Right first time! Look what he gave me.”

  She pointed at a vase of flowers on her bedside table. They were delicate and fragrant.

  Basilius Axt was the son of Dr Axt, the Chief Apothecary. He was in his fourth year of apprenticeship to his father. Ave helped him in the shop; Basilius would look up remedies in a the newly published Apothecaries’ Guide; sometimes he would consult his father; then he copied down the ingredients and the proportions, and he and Ave worked together, making up medicines, ointments, unguents, potions and pills. The two of them pounded, ground to fine dust, pressed into pill makers; they shredded herbs and boiled and distilled and strained and poured infusions into bottles; they melted fats and herbs in pans to make unguents; they counted out tiny white pills and put them into little waxed paper boxes and labelled them with long names. Unguents and ointments were packed up too in waxed paper cartons; they wrote and stuck on labels. Two apprentices worked in the shop with them; whenever I went in there they would be busy with their hands, reading, filling up phials, assembling boxes, writing labels; their work was never done. The pharmacy was a pleasant place to work, with its wide north-facing window, its broad wooden work tops, the drawers and shelves, bottles and phials and burners and pans. And it smelt lovely too, depending of course on what herbs or remedies they were working with on that day.