The Secret Diaries of Juan Luis Vives

by Tim Darcy Ellis

  Is it Inge or stocky Hildegard? Do they hide behind the heavy drapes or underneath the stairs? Are they really trained emissaries of Torquemada and the auto-da-fé?

  I dismissed class, but the dizziness and the shaking sent me to the cold, stony floor. Thankfully, this was just a petit mal and I got up, stumbling back to my room. Then it began again, the same uncontrollable shaking in my toes and twitching in my fingers. Then my forearms and knees started. My head rapidly rotated left then right, and I heard groaning, but I was not making the sounds.

  Sometime later, long enough for the fire to die, I woke in the darkness. I crawled to my bed and saw in my shiny brass mirror the bruising around my eye and the ten years on my brow that hadn’t been there that morning. I felt like a driven nail, hammered time and again into the brick wall. I denied it, but eventually gave in to the solitary pitiful thought, Why me? When will the good Lord take this away?

  An hour later, I was asleep again but was awakened by Álvaro, shaking me furiously.

  “Up, Juanito! There’s no time. You have to go. Señor Valldaura is accused and arrested and taken in chains. Quick. Gather your things.”

  There were voices outside the window, a troop of men.

  “I have to go,” Álvaro said.

  I jumped up, dazed.

  I tried to put you on the fire, cursed diary, but the cursed fire was cold. Then the banging on the door came.

  * * *

  Well, diary, if I’m still writing this, back in the cold sarcophagus of my silent room, I must have survived? Survived, perhaps, but I’m barely able to scribble. Why’s that, you ask? Because the nerves and sinews in my fingers are stretched and tremble even to hold the quill. And how about the dislocated shoulder, the same one with the broken clavicle, now strapped close to my chest that throbs like a badly infected tooth. If I move it, I experience waves of pain that have me ricocheting to the floor. Oh, and there are the blue bruises that travel all the way down to my elbow. That’s why, diary.

  Do you remember how I bound you in cloth and threw you over the bookcase and lifted the board quickly to put you there before the bashing on the door? Did you hear me get the identical diary from its hiding place? Did you hear the murmuring of de Praet, who was outside the door with his glassy eye and diamond badge? Did you hear the laughter of de Castro?

  Welcoming them with a calm smile did nothing to warm their hearts because they tied my wrists behind my back with rough ropes that bit so hard into my tender skin that the marks are still there. They marched me through the streets in front of my students and their wealthy fathers, just like the peasant rebels I’d seen a few weeks earlier. I was dragged up the steps where I’d once engaged Sir Thomas More. Where was he now? Wasn’t he supposed to come for me?

  Once inside, I was shoved down the long corridors from one chamber to another and finally cast into a large cell that smelled of dampness and decay. There was no sunlight, no window, and the only sound was the distant cries and groans of other captives.

  Gradually, in the quarter-light, one by one, their faces took on form. There were two aldermen of the city and the Count of Flanders sitting behind a table. The door opened again and in came the wasp-like Louis de Praet. One man stood behind me, like an ogre; he had a leather mask on his face. I could hear his heavy breathing, and I could smell his unwashed beard and putrid breath. With one hand, he held the ropes that bound my arms together, and with the other he held a lit torch.

  Their faces, poorly lit and gnarled, were more frightening than the faces of the gargoyles on the churches. One broke the silence. “You have betrayed us.”

  The man behind wrenched my arms higher until my shoulders cracked and jerked forwards. I yelled, “Please, sir, do not… hurt me... more. Please. I have not betrayed you.”

  De Praet sat back and laughed. My eyes were adjusted now. He was wearing a dark tunic with white-ruffed collars and sleeves and a silver chain of office. He peered with his good eye, as if scouring my soul. Then there were words, rapid like drumbeats—hard, hammering words. With Bernardo Valldaura, I had been accused of Judaising, and like Socrates before me, of corrupting the youth of the city. I took small comfort that I was in good company. I was commanded to explain my Friday night visits to Verversdijk and my recent absence from Mass. Each question was accompanied by a yank upwards of the rope and a brush of my beard with the torch flame until the air was filled with the foul stench of burned human hair. I hardly caught the words that followed. Why did I encourage free thought in my pupils? How dare I discuss the contradictions of the bible. What was the nature of my friendship with de Castro, the page of the Cardinal of Burgos? Had I been Judaising him? Why publish anti-Christian manuscripts?

  I was strangely calm in the fate that had befallen so many of the children of Abraham. I felt the soft, warm hand of my Aunt Amalia on my left shoulder, and I swear that I smelled the bergamot and rose she always wore. Next, I smelled the sweat of my cousin Jacob, with whom I would run to the end of the Calle del Barco and jump into the shining waters. As with all who had gone before, they went to their fates confessing loyalty to the king and to Jesus Christ, but it did not save them. I felt compelled in those moments to sanctify their memory and confess to everything. But another yank of the rope pulled my left shoulder clean out of the socket, and the pain ran up to my skull and down to my fingers until I was sure that I would convulse. Sadly, that release did not come. A bucket of icy water was thrown over my face as my interrogator yelled, “Talk!”

  My heart changed. I would not confess. If this was to be my end, I would not consign others to the flames. I denied what was at my core, the faith that gave me meaning and made me whole. The pain subsided into numbness. Was I suddenly accompanied by the angel of my aunt, who took away my fear? I had to safeguard the family Valldaura and Álvaro de Castro, if he was still on my side, and in this moment I thought of the Viveses of the old Juderia of Valencia, going about their daily struggles in a world more difficult than this.

  What could I do but lie? New Christians celebrate the end of the working week after evensong on a Friday. It’s what we’ve always done. Whom does it hurt? Is there a better night for a long drink than a Friday night, with the university in recess on Saturday? We sang songs in Spanish, of course, but perhaps some Hebrew crept in, for our great-grandfathers may have been Jewish long ago.

  “I am sorry for their sins,” I said, “and though I do not ask you to forgive them, I ask that you do not hold us culpable for their sins and for what they taught us. I have been visiting the Valldauras to teach them Flemish and French so that they might employ people in this struggling town. My mother was Clara’s cousin, and both women were baptised before a priest long before the edict of Ferdinand and Isabella. Call us what you like—conversos, marranos or Nuevo Cristianos—we are not Jews, but servants of Christ. What anti-Christian document have I ever produced? My latest work is a translation of St. Augustine called City of God!”

  Louis de Praet got up. “Put him in the basement cell. Take him away!”

  Were all my words meaningless? I yelled an almighty, “No!” as the pain returned, and I was dragged down stairwells into the bowels of the earth. The ropes were finally taken off, and I was thrown into a new cell where there was moss and water running down the walls, as well as the stench of corpses, of piss and vomit. There was a distant groaning, as if somewhere near someone was slowly being starved to death. A torch lit the darkness, and for a moment I could see inside—straw in one corner, a bucket in another, and a pile of bones that something was crawling on.

  The door was slammed shut and then all was darkness. I stumbled to the straw and collapsed. What had I done? With the promise of England, I had allowed an imposter to lead me. I cursed de Castro with his double-talk and Johannes Van der Poel, who trapped me with you, diary. I cursed love itself for weakening me and opening the door to my prison cell. I tried to cry, but tears would not come. I uttered
a prayer, Adon Olam, and found comfort, convinced that my soul would soon be with my mother and my cousin and my aunt.

  There was no sense of time in this living death. I was there perhaps two days. A half-loaf was thrown into my corner and water placed by the door in a rough wooden bowl. Sleep found me periodically, giving me brief solace, but then the pain from the burning chin and the dislocated shoulders woke me. At last there was the sound of boots, and I struggled to my weakened feet. The door swung open.

  “Vives, it is time.”

  They helped me up the stairs, blinded as I was by the light of the fiery torch. I was led back to the hall, where six of them sat on cushioned velvet chairs, a table full of wine and hogsheads before them. I stood there, impatient for the onslaught.

  “You give a good account of yourself, Juan Luis Vives.” Was there a hint of sympathy in de Praet’s tone? “Your intellect has a growing renown.” He looked to the others, some of whom nodded, while others shook their heads. “You’re not frightened of challenging the greatest minds of our age. We are no match for you there.” He was honest at least. “Our sons have learned much from you. Look at Van der Poel, as an example. What a clever lad. He gave you this diary, yes?” He slapped it on the table. “As if you’d go for that trick! Seems you just filled it up with the Book of Psalms and praise for St Paul.”

  I was jerked upright by the pummel of a sword. De Praet continued. “These friends of yours, it is true, bring employment to the slowing city.” His tone changed, and I braced myself. “But make no mistake, our lot is with the king of Spain. This city is not Venice, where anything goes.” De Praet buzzed around the room, flapping his arms, muttering into his thin beard. Then he returned to me, and his eyes seemed like bulbous tubers. “But no, we are not Spain. We are Flanders. They don’t own us—not fully, not yet.”

  I breathed a long sigh of relief. I remembered Mendoza of Ghent, whom they’d sent back to Spain. Would they spare me?

  “It’s confinement to your rooms for one year. You are to have no contact with these Spaniards except de Castro, the cardinal’s envoy, and Sir Thomas’s man, who must stay by you at all times.”

  Confinement? Sir Thomas’s man? Thank God for Sir Thomas.

  “You can continue to teach, but no more talk of this nonsense—what men learn from the beasts or from other faiths. No talk of your pathetic tolerance. Now go.”

  It was over. I could breathe, and as I made for the door, Louis de Praet, with something of a glint in his one good eye, called me back, whispering, “Vives, I have tried the Inquisition, but I have no stomach for it for now, so I’ll have a book for this in praise of my humanity.”

  “Of course. Your humanity, sir. Anything.”

  “You might not think I have any, and you might be right.”

  “No need to explain, Master de Praet. It’s already done.”

  And so, I find myself at my desk. The guard is outside. Hildegard the unsinkable brings me an abundance of food. She checks that no one is looking and pinches me silently on the cheek. Can I trust her? Can I forgive her? Is there anything to forgive? My right hand can barely function and my left hangs listless.

  In the cloisters below, young men play games with wooden skittles, and blackbirds sing songs of freedom. Pink pink. Pink pink pink. But my own heartbeat and my own song are now nothing but a murmur. The old questions come back. Where is the danger in us? Where is my family when I need them the most?

  I remember in the agony of self-pity that this isn’t all about me, for what of Bernardo Valldaura. Where is he? Did he survive? And where is Álvaro?

  * * *

  I was grateful that I had my wounds to nurse and my dressings to change, albeit one-handed. Hildegard dropped me a vial with oil of hypericum that she snatched from between her massive bosoms so I could clean my wounds. I burned the old linen bandages, as an old Morisco once taught me to do, and replaced them daily. Then I was lost in the silence. There was no word, no letter, from the tall house, not a glimpse of de Castro.

  At the end of the third day, he breezed in, as healthy and quick as a young buck. He kissed me on both cheeks and stood back to look at my face and shoulders. “Not as bad as I had thought,” he said.

  “What the hell are you?”

  “Quiet, Juanito.” They hadn’t suspected him of being a culprit, with his letters from the cardinal and Sir Thomas. “It was all explained by your obsession with Marguerite and the promise of what was between her legs.”

  “You take me for a fool,” I replied.

  “Such a fool to remind them of England’s response that you were to be taken to trial with a sanbenito on your head?”

  “What could England do, even when she is married to Spain?” I asked.

  “Sir Thomas might take his trade elsewhere.”

  “Tell me, what of Bernardo and the groans and cries I heard in the other cells?”

  His face became white like a sheet, and he held his head in hands. “Fat-fingered Bernardo, greeting his interrogators with silence, was stretched upon a rack until every joint in his body cracked and popped. It was the driving of a wood chip into his fingernail bed that got him to open his mouth, but in a cry only. Then he was bound in rusty wire chains, left to die in a corner of a cell.”

  “What happened next?”

  Clara Valldaura marched out of confinement, threatening her guards with a sharp knife, and drove a cart down the streets yelling to all to get out of her way. With a sack under her arm, she strode up the steps of the Princenhof and demanded to see Louis de Praet. There, she cast a sack upon the long table where I had sat with Sir Thomas not so long ago and threw him the ruby rosary she had brought all the way from Toledo.

  “Am I not a Christian woman?” she screeched.

  He appeared unmoved until she took out the silver cross with four diamonds. “For the sake of your humanity, give me what remains of my husband and my daughter’s betrothed or cut my throat with this now!” She handed him a sharp knife, like an Arabic dagger.

  She was given a twisted ball of old limbs and a body that somehow connected them. In the back of the cart she took him home, where he now lies.

  “We must visit him!” I yelled, realising that he was my gaoler. “It is a commandment.”

  What can I make of this? How much is truth; how much is a lie? I hate him for a minute and then he recites an ancient poem, a quote from one of our great Spanish rabbis, until I fall asleep at his side. “Choose your friends from the good at heart, those who grew up in waters of love and nobility, those who bring joy to friendly conversations and songs, those who are always truthful in good and evil.”

  I awoke with a start and asked out loud, “Where is she and what is she feeling now?”

  Clara called me her betrothed, no? There will be a wedding under a chuppah, the breaking of the plate, and I’ll share my bed with her when the year is finished. For now, I find peace by losing myself in the past, for the present is torture and the future unknown.

  * * *

  The University of Paris welcomed me after fleeing Valencia with my father’s endowment. Nights were red, vivid, sometimes crimson, drunk with rich burgundy wine. We sat up all night, reciting verse, challenging one another. Le Maverick, l’inconformiste they called me for challenging Aristotle, Plato, the pope. We strode through the dark overcrowded streets, sang in St. Germaine, and caroused the nuns of Notre Dame, tempting them with flesh, promising them danger.

  Her name was Adeline, the flower girl from Montmartre, rich with the scent of the land and a glint of country fields in her blue eyes. We spent the nights in a tiny, moth-eaten garret, plunging into one another’s bodies like we were diving into the ocean. There was a pregnancy, talk of a marriage, and then such bleeding that I never thought possible. Mama’s words came back to me. “Do not love them, son. Let them love you.”

  I blocked the blood and the tears, thinking it
was a weakness to suffer so. In the shame of my tears, I found the energy to become brilliant, and instead of diving into her body, I dove into my reading and spoke at the university until I got noticed, first by Erasmus and Queen Claude. She was young then, so I taught her to read bibles in French and Hebrew, and one day I introduced her to a new word: humanism.

  “There is no greater thing than the study of oneself,” I said. “There is no greater thing for man than education.”

  She still quotes me, and I wonder if the English sisters I met there, Anna and Maria, still quote me also, safe in their homeland of England. Anna, the precocious younger one, sitting on my knee, never tired of asking questions.

  “How can the pope know he’s God’s advocate on Earth? Why do people believe that? And why is no one brave enough to stand up to a king. Are they too frightened of losing their precious lives?”

  We whittled away for hours, her black eyes burning into me. They were unafraid, those eyes. It was as if they saw a very big picture indeed. She expressed an idea repeatedly. “What sense is there in being another forgotten woman in a world where so many women are forgotten? Better to risk everything than to be forgotten.”

  She ate up the Spanish I taught her, and although I lusted for her, I could see she was too young and too ambitious for me. The professorship at Louvain manifested, and I left the French queen with la petite Boleyna. In my confinement, I do not expect to see either again.

  21 April 1523

  The days of my confinement turned into weeks. We weren’t allowed to even open the windows. As the days grew longer, the stench of the room grew stronger so that even thick-skinned Hildegard pinched her nose as she entered. Álvaro, calm but distant, urging patience, accompanied me on my way to the lecture halls and gave me faint reassurances that Bernardo was recovering. Like me, Bernardo’s wounds were healing, and he was getting stronger. This was some relief, but now that Marguerite was old enough to be courted, how could I survive this incarceration?