The Secret Diaries of Juan Luis Vives

by Tim Darcy Ellis

  And if ever there was a great fish, it was England’s Sir Thomas More. And when asked by Erasmus to be his eyes and ears in this ancient city, how could I refuse? It’s true he is all for Catholicism, but an enlightened Utopian Catholicism in which I hoped my people would find a place.

  On the day he arrived in Bruges, a company of Englishmen marched me quickly along the streets as if there was a pikestaff up my arse. I approached the house with the Dutch gable that was his lodging in Bruges. The door was opened, and I was thrust into the beating heart of the drawing room. But, where was he? No sooner had I arrived than we were away again. The great fish had tired of waiting for his little companion and was gone.

  This time, down the blowy cloisters we marched through the icy streets of Bruges past men with loads of winter kale and carrot until I saw his silhouette on the steps of the Duke’s palace. I prayed to God that his body accompanied it, but I would not have been at all surprised if this was a jester’s act! As we drew closer, he turned, the contours of his face highlighted by the pale sunshine. I thought that he must have been posing for a celestial artist. There was the smell of lanolin sweat and a vague scent of frankincense. Finally, I was with the great man, my big fish.

  There were never any formal greetings with Sir Thomas More. He always started with a question. I was not ready for it, and he knew it as I climbed, puffing, up the steps of the palace.

  “My man, Spaniard, I have forgot… Vives, is it?” He laughed at my red face and the breath coming out of my nostrils. “What’s your view on the education of a woman?”

  “In Spanish culture,” I said, “the education of women is very important.” I cursed myself for saying “my culture,” hoping that I hadn’t given myself away. Every inch of my crooked body was aching to engage him eye-to-eye, man-to-man, but he would have turned away.

  ‘Yes, Isabella, the deceased queen, was so enlightened,” he laughed.

  “It’s not her I’m thinking of. I would not teach a woman cruelty or greed.” My heart was still beating like an executioner’s drum.

  He touched my left forearm and whispered, “Who says they should be the equals of their husbands, fathers, or their sons?” His brows were furrowed, and the creases that marked the pouches of his face deepened. Then, in a flash, he let all expression disappear, and his face became like an even millpond. This was a grand dance, but where was it going? Three years earlier, he had written Utopia, in which men and women were equal citizens.

  ‘Come, Vives,” he said. “This way.”

  I followed the party into the palace and found the Duke of Alba, stony-faced and tottering from wine, next to the one-eyed Grand Bailiff, Louis de Praet. They were surrounded by a gaggle of awkward merchants and sat at a long table laid with a gold cloth. If they hadn’t stood up, they would have been lost behind giant jugs and pewter tankards. Although a grand chair had been prepared for Sir Thomas, he made straight for a lowly stool at the end of the table. I quickly ran to sit next to him at a right angle.

  I was with the great man, a gold chain of office draped over his crimson velvet shirt. That he didn’t remove his black woollen cap reminded me of Father at the Shabbat table. I caught another whiff of frankincense as I spoke.

  “Education is the means by which we progress as a race. With it, a woman can give birth, not just to babies, but to a unique language, a new philosophy.”

  Men fussed over him like flies around sugared fruit. I lost attention for a second as my eyes strayed to the chestnut-haired serving girl. She carried two pitchers under her arms that elevated her breasts into voluptuous pillows where my head longed to rest. I snapped back to the moment as thin-faced Louis de Praet sidled over. As ever, he wore a yellow feather on his black cap so that he looked like a wasp.

  “And Suleiman, he welcomes the bloody Christ-killers,” Sir Thomas said. “Better they go that way from Spain than to us, eh de Praet?” Sir Thomas said looking my way, for he knew me for a third generation New Christian.

  De Praet, sitting upright like a statue, his eye glazed from an attack from an owl whose chicks he’d tried to steal, nodded in excitement. As he replied, he turned his head so that he could catch me with his one good eye. “Ya! And so, I have good news. Charles V sends officers to the Netherlands to root those secret buggers out.”

  Sir Thomas answered him as de Praet stroked his red badge. “Pray, sir, ask the Spanish king to send a physician or two to England, for we have a problem with scurvy there, too. We’ll even give them their own house of conversion”—he leant towards me—“and?”

  I wanted to grab him and shake him. Scurvy? The scurvy of Judaism? In Utopia, he called for religious toleration. Perhaps with the advance of the Turks and Martin Luther, his heart was hardening? I blocked what I had just heard and returned to our previous matter. “It’s a pity that a woman can’t sit in the privy council and pacify the decisions of those who can.”

  “And?” he asked again, his face an unreadable manuscript.

  My voice became a throaty stutter. “In the fa-family, the educated woman can s-stimu-late debate among her children, and new ideas can be formed.” I paused as he raised his left eyebrow. I continued, clearly now. “I am surprised that you do not see that.”

  He opened his eyes wide, so that the white showed both above and below his iris.

  “Dear God, man,” he said, standing up to push me on the left shoulder with such vigour that I toppled in my chair. “Whatever possessed you to think that I do not see that? Are my daughters not the best-educated women in England? You should hear Meg sieve through the bollocks of the court like a mudlark on the banks of the Thames!”

  “Who is Meg?’ I asked.

  He smiled at me as if I were the court fool. “Mea culpa, Vives! You passed the test! The education of the princess is of the upmost importance. England’s future depends upon it.”

  The princess? Who else could he be talking of but Mary, the only living child of King Henry VIII and the queen, Catherine of Aragon?

  He looked up to the beamed roof as if summoning divine energy for his dream of a new Catholic-led golden age, and all listened intently: “If she is to rule the country, in peace and war, prosperity and famine, then she must understand languages, history and philosophy.” He was silent for a minute. “The king won’t get another child by the queen, and so the education of the woman is everything.” He caught my smile in an instant. “No, Vives. Don’t ask who I have in mind. I have in mind the best.”

  This was to be my catapult to greatness, the chance to realise my dream.

  Patience deserted me. I had pledged to do all I could to find a safe home for my people. Even though he called us a scurvy, perhaps England would be such a place.

  “Can I bring my father and my sisters?” I asked. “And the woman I love. Will it be soon?”

  He came towards me, a smile on his face.

  “Of course, they can come. My table is their table. If anyone knows the meaning of this next word, you and your family do, señor: B’yi-to.”

  It was the Hebrew word I recited daily in my prayers; it means, “in its proper time.” What did he suspect? I didn’t have time to ponder this, for he transformed into a debating demon, the perfect advocate for his nation’s interests. He displayed his verbal skills like a strongman throwing logs at a fair. He asked briefly about the progress of my latest work, for faith, not politics, is what was truly in his heart.

  “It’s a translation and commentary on St Augustine’s City of God.” For I’d do anything to convince the world what a good Catholic I am.”

  Before we parted, he gave me the name of an expert printer and bookbinder. He would help me with publishing it and with learning English. The printer was a fellow Spaniard, Álvaro de Castro, with whom he had worked in London.

  “Please,” he said softly, “give him employment and dedicate that book to King Harry, the great king of England.”
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  Argh! If I can play this king, then I can save my people. But first and foremost, I am El Toro Bravo. “Hasn’t Martin Luther recently defiled a king named Harry as an oaf and a pig and declared that he should be covered in his own excrement?” I laughed until all chattering in the room stopped. Sir Thomas looked serious, but I didn’t hold back. “You know that my work speaks against tyranny and torture and that the king is known for both? I have paltry funds for a clerk, however brilliant.”

  “Please, sir,” he implored me. “This king is a good king, the noblest, the kindest. And de Castro is the Cardinal of Burgos’s page, a great and clever man.”

  Everyone knew what a zealot the Cardinal was and what he gave his pages—and what he took from them. I didn’t need the old Cardinal’s boyfriend looking over my shoulder, vetting me for signs of Judaism.

  Sir Thomas fixed me with his eye, a cold, brown pebble. I knew in that moment that I’d have no choice, for I had to get to England.

  “Just do it,” he said. “It’s your road to success and greatness.” He thrust a purple velvet purse into my pocket. I opened it carefully, marvelling at the jangling mass of silver inside.

  In his scheming, brilliant mind there was a plan, and in that plan, he saw London as the power-horse of Europe, a new Rome. He saw that from there, new lands with his strong ideals would be settled. But I know from the mouth of Martin Luther and from the torches he has lit, Sir Thomas’s dream is receding, for this is a new age in which empire and religion will be tested and new voices will be heard. Only those able to exploit the new age will survive.

  As for me, diary, I am his eyes and ears in this town, but like a cunning little fish, I am not truly with my master. By evening’s light, you’ll find me in taverns and barracks, jostling with the English militias that are marshalled here for the final onslaught against the peasant’s revolt. I hear among them their new dreams, the true word of God, that all in that land is about to change. What then of my people’s place, the sons and daughters of the lost homeland, the children of Israel? And this king, I have never heard of him torching a Jew or speaking up against them, unlike Sir Thomas, unlike Luther, unlike Louis de Praet.

  I departed with three kisses on the cheeks, one for him, one for his king, and one for his Meg. As I left the great hall, I kissed my own hand three times, once for Mother, once for Father, and once for the one I love.

  I trudged home, wine-slow, through the ice and snow piled around the tying posts, disturbed for a moment by a man in rags shivering by a doorway. I tossed a coin from my new purse and gave him my grey woollen jacket. I rushed home after that, for it was freezing. All is now quiet in my wood-panelled room, which somehow feels like a glorious tomb.

  I grab an apple, too soft to the touch, the skin starting to wrinkle, and I compare it to my own skin, still tight, thank God! It reminds me that life is short and that I must act fast before I, too, am wrinkled and softened. I ruminate on every sentence, for my meeting with Sir Thomas was indeed just the last movement in a well-rehearsed gavotte. The seeds that I long ago sowed seem at last to have born fruit. He is convinced that I am the only one who can bring the princess to an enlightened version of her faith, but little does he know how enlightened my version would be. I see that if she is to be queen, then I must be the one to turn her away from the pain that her grandparents, Ferdinand and Isabella, have wrought.

  * * *

  England is a pretty name, but what do I know of it? In the court of Queen Claude in Paris, there were two English sisters, beacons of charisma. There was fine music—a flute and a harp—tapestries of crimson and golden thread, dancing, laughing, drama. The younger of the two girls sat on my knee, black hair pulled back with two shell combs as she twisted my beard. She tried to teach me the English verbs “to be,” “to do,” and “to love” and then chuckled at my Spanish accent. She spoke to me in perfect French. “Señor Vives, you are surrounding the words with wool.” She wore green, a pearl necklace, a crimson hood, and smelled of sandalwood. I was drunk on her, although hers was a beauty like no other. She brought me out of my rapture and asked me, “Is the pope truly our spiritual father?”

  Before I could answer, her sister, fairer and more buxom, took my left hand. She ran me through the long halls, past courtiers and lute players. She wanted to bring me to the queen’s attention, but her sister held her back. “What is your name, my pretty one?” I asked her.

  “It is Mary Bullen, sir.” Her older sister grabbed and shook her. “Never say that! Your name is Maria Boleyna!”

  Then, cheery Maria Boleyna approached Her Majesty and spoke to the queen in English. “Look at Señor Vives. Is he not the biggest smidgeon of Spanishness?”

  The queen nodded. “The greatest thinker, ma petite Boleyna. Think of his mind first when you describe his virtues.”

  Anne looked at her older sister. “You’re a fool, sister. You will never keep a man if you do not appeal first to his mind.”

  Maria replied, quick as lightning, “If you think you can outwit a great man, then you’ll lose everything.”

  Anna turned her nose up and laughed. “Sister, you know nothing.”

  * * *

  The wine of the dinner proved too strong. I must have drifted off, diary, with you open for anyone to see. A dream slipped by, but I managed to grab it. In it sat my father, sanguine, reposed, beside still waters, reciting in Hebrew the words of the Twenty-third Psalm.

  In the dream, I was in the jasmine blossoms, and their strong scent in late summer was replaced by the lavender that pervades the winding terraces of La Juderia. I was sleepy, but I dragged my head forward and wished in my haze that I was a merchant. I could trade the coarse words of the drunks in the street below for the gentle tinkering of the silversmith, Eduardo, working by early light in his salon behind the bedchamber I shared with Jaime, my brother. I contemplate how I would trade this rough earthenware inkpot for the brightness and beauty of what de Pinto created. There were silver monkeys and birds fashioned into inkpots, thimbles and brooches, shiny and smooth to the touch, if only I had been allowed to touch. This was a place where I practiced silence as I looked at their creations.

  Eduardo’s son Nathaniel was the leader of the gang called Los Pandallos de Pinto. He was our life’s blood, and we adored him like a false messiah, with his chin jutting like the overhanging storey of a townhouse, his hair long and tied back like a girl’s. Only fifteen, he had a beard. Nathaniel, say you are not gone, waiting in a foreign land.

  It was the month of Nissan. I woke up one day without the tinkering of brass on silver, and there were no more fine silver monkeys and ornate brooches. Father, what did you say to try that might mend my broken heart? What was that note nailed to the door with a drop of blood and a red, waxy diamond seal? You said they had sailed for Africa in the dead of night to a new shop in the city of Ceuta. What, dear father? You are sure? Why then did the women of the neighbourhood talk of shouting and screams in the middle of the night? Why did they take nothing of their silverware with them? Why, a week later, was the shop commandeered by the family Garcia, who bashed and thrashed the silver, more like loggers than craftsmen, and failed the business within a year?

  No, today is a day for the future and a day to forget the past.

  But my mind won’t stop this cursed thinking just as my blood won’t stop circulating. Please Juanito, if you are El Toro Bravo, stop this thinking.

  What is that now? Boots on the wooden boards close to my room, and a knock on my door shakes me out of Valencia. Am I discovered? Is this the officer of Charles I, the grand order of the Holy Inquisition? I am undone as I scratch the chair on the floor to rise. I will lock this diary, throw it in a pile of books. They know I am here. They know.

  But it is only letters that have arrived. The first is from Sir Thomas.

  “Great scholar, Vives. I believe that’s your name, no?”

  I sat frozen. Was he
alert to the fact that this is not my true name?

  “Tomorrow, I’ll be gone, but soon to return. Be ready. When I call for you, you will come, and you can bring your father and your sister and your love. Our home will be your home.”

  He calls the Jews scurvy but would have an infestation of them in his own home, so he can’t possibly think we’re Jews. But why send the Cardinal’s boy to spy on me?

  There was another letter, beneath his, from de Castro the scrivener at Antwerp. The lettering leapt off the page with a square-ish script, almost Hebraic.

  This is perhaps a clever trick. If they’re trying to pull the net over me, I must be ready.

  9 December 1522

  Out you come, diary. I have things to say, so listen.

  It was after the fair, with the boys’ parents among the bank-side hog roasts and red and yellow canvas tents on the iced-over river. Moving quickly, we huddled inside the tents. Inside were cards and dice and jugs of mead. We emerged to find children with wooden skates dodging us, grabbing for a purse. There was a man on stilts with a false beaked nose and a skullcap chasing the children across the ice.

  We walked past Douwe’s apothecary, which is exactly when I heard it. It was so shocking that I fell back into his arched doorway and let them walk on without me. I pushed the door that creaked like the tooth he was extracting, and instinctively I made sure he was using clean hands and silver needles, as if that would take my mind away from what I had heard in the street.

  I stumbled out once they had gone and walked home, where the fire now spits and roars, as if to tell me, “Slow down, Vives.” The flames reminded me that I must confront the reason I slipped into Douwe’s. It was Johannes Van der Poel’s father, the blundering, slurring merchant, who let it slip.

  “Who’d not be proud of one like that? Johannes is your best student, yes?”