The Secret Diaries of Juan Luis Vives

by Tim Darcy Ellis

When I least expected, it seemed that hope became real. This is how it happened. It was a sunny day. All I wanted was to open the damned window, and then I heard shouts from the guards in the street below. I remained oblivious to it, forcing my attention into stacks of parchments and books. But there were footsteps on the stone stairs, and without warning there was a rap upon the door.

  There he was! It was the mighty man, the great fish, the Englishman, Sir Thomas More, but with a face more solemn than Yom Kippur. There was no smile, just the sense of something new, something that needed to happen fast. Álvaro woke up from his chanting, ruffled.

  “Good God! What is this? Caritas Christi. Open the fucking window.”

  “I can’t open it, sir.”

  “For the love of God.” He walked across the room and dislodged the metal bars that had been placed across the window. He opened the window and threw the bars into the street. He didn’t even look to see where the bars fell. He came back into the room, ignoring the shrieking in the street below, and said, “That’s better. How is the great scholar and his treatise for The Education of a Christian Woman?”

  “The Education of a Young Woman,” I said, correcting him.

  He raised his left eyebrow as only he or Álvaro could. “Vives, for that’s what they call you, I believe, don’t mess with my semantics when your life is dangling by a thread.” He looked at the bandages that held me together, peered at my pale face, and shook his head. He looked to Álvaro for answers. “What on God’s earth happened? Surely it’s not true that he lapsed into his old ways?”

  Álvaro looked him in the eye. “No, sir, it’s just a cursed rumour, a lie. He simply tried to court the daughter of another Nuevo. There’s nothing of the Jew left in him.”

  “So why the hell this incarceration in his own merde? That’s a punishment fit only for Martin Luther and his cronies.” He threw the back of his fist against a tapestry and stuck his head out of the window. There was a growing audience below, but all I could focus on was the spring air that smelled so sweet. I moved towards the window to join him and instinctively took a mighty breath. Sir Thomas spoke in a voice that would have bettered Zeus himself.

  “For the love of God, what has this town done to this man?” When he had an even greater audience below, he bellowed, “Hopeless fucking Flems, imprisoning this one, the only one among you with a mind for the future world.”

  “Please stop or things will get worse,” I cautioned him.

  “Don’t tell me to fucking stop when I’m here to save you.”

  I rushed through an explanation, but it was nothing he did not know already. He strutted around my room like the courtroom lawyer that he was and then returned to the open window.

  “You imprison him for visiting the house of a New Christian and for courting his daughter. What kind of a barbarous jack-in-the-arse puppet state is this?” He looked down at his audience and, gripping the sandstone window ledge, shouted, “Piss off, the lot of you!” He pulled the window down, charged around the small room, and I feared that he would swipe my mountains of papers off their shelves. Instead, he grew quiet and gentle, a bit like a father. “Let me tell you, Vives, that as a younger man, full of life, I tempered it. I spent four years at the monastery in Charterhouse. Every day was contemplation and meditation, but even there, in that most holy order, I was allowed to leave my cell. If that had not been allowed, my mind would not have grown. You must be allowed that.”

  He looked at me with those huge eyes, and I became aware of the milky complexion that could only belong to a man of the town, not of the fields. His words seemed like a kindly admonishment, for he knew all about de Praet and how he played the Spanish powerbrokers. It soon became clear that he could use English trade as a bargaining tool, for Bruges was waning with its silting river, and he could bargain with that.

  “I will be back in three weeks,” he declared. “I expect you to be ready. Cardinal Wolsey has a place for you at Corpus Christi in Oxford. I have great things in mind for you.”

  Lost in my obsession, my love for Marguerite, I had forgotten that.

  I pulled him back by his left shoulder as he charged towards the door. “Sir Thomas, I will consider this, but there are others in this town. I’ve left people behind before. I can’t leave these behind now.”

  He looked kindly at me and then transformed into a gryphon about to take flight and strike me down. “Pish and tush. Stay here with these for a living death, bring them with you and have a future life, or don’t mention them again. The choice is yours!”

  I stepped back and my eyes settled upon Álvaro, who’d sat in the corner watching everything with a sly, otherworldly grin. What part of his master plan was this?

  Sir Thomas looked deeply into my tortured eyes. “Vives, life is short and uncertain. Love comes and goes, and thousands lose their voices. Don’t allow yourself to lose yours.”

  “But who will provide for me? And where shall I live?”

  “As if I needed another excuse to ridicule you,” he said with a shrill laugh.

  I couldn’t help but smile on the inside, for here was a new day and an escape. Here was a chance to make my mark on life.

  “You’ll live with my wife and me in London as our guest, and then you will be in Oxford. You’ll be taken care of by the cardinal, for he’s richer than the king as long as you stay on his right side.”

  A cardinal richer than a king? So, this was the world I was entering. I accepted the offer. I felt the breaking of my heart to be leaving Marguerite and her family at a time when they needed me most. I sat at the desk then and wept as he slammed the door and was gone.

  I sit here with my magnifying glass, writing smaller script than ever. I left my father and my mother once, and now I am leaving those who love me and need me again. Perhaps I should go to Spain first and ask Sir Thomas for armed guards to bring my father and sisters to England. But I cannot face the fires, and so I pray. The strength does not come.

  I begged Álvaro to write a poem from me to Marguerite. Couldn’t he play a woman like a lute? “Let her know that I will be back for her, that I’ll never forget, that the pain in my heart is like a knife.”

  There was a juvenile exchange of “You do it” and “No, you do it,” but in the end he grabbed a sheet of parchment and began.

  Later, it appeared, and I called the poem “Leaving Lament.”

  My love,

  I know who I am,

  Where I am going,

  What I want for us. Have faith,

  Steal yourself

  Though I must leave.

  I am not running but fighting.

  El Toro Bravo, your faithful, your own.

  Believe.

  The day will come

  In its proper time, the b-yi’to,

  When I shall return, when we shall be one

  In a heaven on Earth

  As has been promised.

  As our forefathers once said,

  A peaceful place: “Ha’shamayim el ha’aretz.”

  And though today

  Our bones may be broken,

  The brotherhood is not crushed.

  So, I tell you this: have faith, have courage, for I love you.

  Farewell my love,

  JLV

  What would she make of it? Would she hear my heart? He captured it and understood it.

  I dedicated my City of God to the English king, but what else did I know of you, England?

  Álvaro said, “They call London the flower of cities, where the streets are paved with silver and gold.”

  “I’ve heard that one before. Come on, what’s the truth?”

  “There’s a magic there, a sense of the future, that these are the people we must nurture and cajole, however difficult and lengthy that process may be.”

  “I don’t understand.”

 
“All will be revealed, B’yi-to, in its proper time.”

  “Right, the proper time. All right, let’s talk of King Henry then.”

  “He grows tired of his Spanish queen. He blames her.”

  “For what?”

  “For not producing a son—one who lives. That he’s only got one legitimate daughter. He thinks it’s divine retribution.”

  “Funny how a daughter’s life is worth less than a son’s,” I said. “What does he propose to do about his situation?”

  “Juanito, our chance is in exploiting it, not in questioning it. We should get to know the king and the Protestants. We should try to move him in their direction.”

  I hadn’t considered this. “You mean in the direction of a break with Rome?”

  He nodded unconvincingly.

  “Álvaro, the cardinal and Sir Thomas are all for Rome. They despise the Protestant cause.”

  I clutched the desk to steady myself. In Álvaro’s plan, I was to play the clever little fish. And if my quest sounds abhorrent to you, my diary, remember that there is no greater abhorrence than the flames I saw in Valencia and the fears that haunt my people day by day.

  The king coveted the wealth of monasteries, and unlike his counterpart in Spain, he had no wealthy Jews to plunder.

  “And what of the Tablets of the Law and the folks who guard them?”

  He was quiet for a minute, deep in thought. Slowly, he opened his mouth as opening a hundred-year-old jewel box, not sure what he would find.

  “I have heard them say,” he said, scanning my face for the trust he craved, “that there are secret synagogues in the purlieus of the city. Without question, there is a domus there, a house for captured and repentant Jews.”

  Fear and thrill coursed through my veins as he referenced the word “synagogue,” a place I had longed for all my life. I, too, had heard of the Spanish and Portuguese merchants in London who lived as good Christians while adhering in their hearts to something far more ancient.

  “What else?” I asked.

  “There are English brothers and sisters who have kept faith alive some two hundred years since the English expulsion.”

  Mysterious as ever, he would not speak of their whereabouts. He merely said that England would one day have her own empire in the New World. In that empire, he told me, we could one day create a safe home.

  He put an arm around me and said, “Juanito, it is not just your work. It is not just about your family, so don’t take it all upon your frail shoulders. We are a hermandad, a brotherhood, a fellowship.”

  When the sonnet would be delivered to the door of the one I love, and when Sir Thomas returned tomorrow, I would be gone.

  Part Two

  A New World

  Bucklersbury House, Home of Sir Thomas More, London, England

  6 June 1523

  The last day in Bruges was like preparing for the final day of Earth.

  Soldiers, papers, and affidavits flew around the streets and across the courtrooms. I felt like I was watching children in the street scrambling for gold coins. The problem was that my liberty, my very soul’s breath, was the coin. The officials were in and out of my room. The troll-like man with the stinking leather mask reappeared. He stood over me as I sat writing a pleading letter to Erasmus, to the English queen, even to the pope. When the activity had stopped and the silence of the deep night became overwhelming, Louis de Praet entered. He banged his fist on my table and demanded once more an academic paper in his name and let me go.

  We had one night to organise it. Álvaro took the sonnet, and as soon as he left, I unstitched the pages from the diary and put it in my secret place. One minute, all seemed to me to be lost, yet in the next all seemed to be gained. On the one hand, I was cast into the abyss. What joy could I have away from the adopted family that I had come to love? On the other hand, there was hope that I could create a new world in a golden age.

  It seems that God has given me a moment of peace. Here I am in this sturdy home in the middle of the city. Here I can breathe again. As I gaze out the open window and look across the knot gardens, I take in the scents of English roses and honeysuckle. If only I could pluck them and send them home.

  I didn’t think I’d see such a day, though, as I set out on the boat from Ostend.

  It was the sixteenth day of May. The winds blew against the small sails and the creaking ropes. We rolled first this way and then that before a sudden gust threw us out of the harbour, like a stone from a catapult. That open ocean, though—what horror! The thunderous rising and falling of the waves crashed across the bow and spilled through the cabins. The men fought with the masts and rigging, but their shouting was muted by the storm until their work became like a telepathic movement, like the communication between a school of fish. Álvaro placed an arm around me inside the tiny sodden cabin, next to a crying woman reciting Hail Marys. Álvaro grabbed a post with his other hand, and we huddled together, humming Adon Olam: Lord Eternal.

  The sky seemed to collapse into the ocean as it rose into the sky. Rain fell like arrows. Gulls hovered over us, shrieking. A strong westerly wind caught us, and we were forced into the stony harbour of Dover, in the lee of the wall of white chalk and flint. I said a blessing to every deity I knew: Mithras, Isis, Minerva, Cybele, Julius Caesar, even Jesus Christ.

  The dizziness, the double vision, the ringing in the ears, the weak knees—these were with me a whole day later. But why were we in Dover, not London?

  Sir Thomas, with his characteristic scratching of the back replied, “I’ve business in Canterbury that I’d like to share with you.”

  We mounted the stout English horses: Canute, Ethelred, Sigdur. I held the ropes for dear life with my right hand, my left bound to my chest. Faster than seabirds, faster than windstorms, we charged along the old Roman road and entered the city, scattering dogs and children. Along the uneven and noisy cobbled lanes, we trotted, slower now, as the passages got narrower. The timber buildings jutting across the street looked like gossiping old women with pointed chins. We pulled up by the east wing of the grand cathedral, with its wave of fine stonework and wondrous glass in blue and red and gold. The kind expressions and round faces of the monks were the perfect antidote to our journey. They led us through a maze of cloisters and grassy lawns. They sang, “Moreños, dark ones, Israelites, they’re back!”

  A new smell of a different kind of bread pervaded the candlelit passageways. We were truly in the beating heart of the church in England. We were shown to our cells, for that’s what they were, with straw mattresses on the floor and a ewer of water. Here was the honorary brother of the king and the cardinal, lying in a stone coffin. But there was a peace and beneficence about him that I’d not before seen. Was this true humility? Was this peace that surrounded him the reason that he defended his church so strongly? Was this the thing he feared losing the most?

  I settled down and tried to sleep, but I still felt the swaying of the boat. For comfort, I imagined that I was cradled in the warm arms of Marguerite. As sleep welcomed me, my door swung open. It was Sir Thomas, barefoot and dressed in his cassock.

  “Come with me,” he whispered.

  We entered the main church, a vast, cavernous sea of candlelight, bunches of hops hanging by the pillars. A monk led us with a lantern up a stone staircase, and each step we took was worn in the middle with the tread of years. We were in the triforium, ringed with stone arches and gargoyles. I looked to Sir Thomas for reassurance but found none. We sat there for several hours until my buttocks were numb, listening to the chanting and then to nothing but the silence. He leaned over to me at last, touched me on the shoulder, and whispered, “Can you feel his presence? Can you see why I must keep the faith at all costs? The light of God lives here.”

  I nodded as a strange thought came, though I banished it. Should I record it here? But it won’t leave. All right, here it is. I thought ab
out abandoning everything and living like a monk, for who would challenge me or drag me from my bed at midnight to face false charges. It was only a thought, just a fleeting one, and thankfully it is gone.

  The next day, at mid-morning, we waited in line with the pilgrims. There were a hundred at the shrine of St. Thomas Becket. Some were in rags, others in silks, but the tomb seemed to be a great levelling spirit, as if all clamoured to be equal before a higher power. It almost felt like idolatry. The place was getting to me, touching me, making me question everything.

  Sir Thomas whispered, “See how even the king’s greatest friend, his most favoured subject, can fall? But if God is with me, whom should I fear?”

  I nodded and tried to reassure him with my eyes.

  He continued. “Things are changing so very fast, and perhaps my time, like his, will come, and if it does, señor, then stay with me to the end.”

  * * *

  Well, Juanito, if ever you read this in a future time, if all your hopes and schemes here have come to nothing—if you’re living safe and old with Marguerite and a houseful of grandchildren and have forgotten the spirit of these people, then come back! Travel in your mind once more along this scarred and sacred road in England! Here were pilgrims moving east and west, bending to pray and singing songs that I didn’t understand. There was a seething mass of icon-makers and penny-bakers, of shoe-girls mending the last of road-weary shoes, of wheelwrights fixing the wheels of less-than-sturdy carts. Men with long white plumes danced and jumped to the sounds of chopping sticks and a brass cymbal, all for a clipped coin or a clap and a cheer.

  The day was long and warm, and everywhere Sir Thomas was greeted like a king himself. At the end of the long day, we arrived at the manor of William Owen in the town of Chatham. He fawned over Sir Thomas and then made directly for us, speaking loudly and slowly.

  “My sweet Spanish gentlemen!” He poked me in the chest as if to see what a Spaniard felt like. “Be sure to remember us when you meet the gentle queen! Long life to you and welcome.”