The Secret Diaries of Juan Luis Vives

by Tim Darcy Ellis

  Then it all came out: my foolish pleading with the queen, my plan to manipulate her position with the king, and the terrible day that the letter from Lady Willoughby arrived. I put my other hand on top of hers and said, “I’ve tried so hard for so long to be—”

  Before I could utter the word “strong,” a storm of tears and shaking came, a quivering from head to foot. But this was not an apoplexy. They let me have my moment, for this was love, this was family, this was home. With the sweet sound of the blackbirds outside, Marguerite opened the window to the daylight and drew the curtains.

  “Look,” she said. “The same family of blackbirds bringing food to the nest. There in the eaves. Look!” What business did I have with joy? Álvaro took me to the windowsill, for we were safe with de Praet en route to England. And before he left, he’d granted this family its full liberty, for he had what he wanted: a ruby rosary from Toledo, a dedication in my book, and the ultimate prize, his new role as Ambassador of Charles V to England.

  I leaned my head out the window and took a breath of freedom. In that glorious moment I was wholly in the now, and in that now, I was free at last from the horrors of the past, from the fears of the morrow.

  27 July 1524

  I’ve reunited these ripped-out pages with their leather-bound jacket… the other half of the diary. But even these pages are coming to an end, and I must put them away or burn them, perhaps? But there are a few lines left, so let’s fill them first.

  With the promise of summer and the site of shirtless tanned men bringing fruit into the marketplace, Álvaro and I began to laugh again, for like Father said, “What you can laugh at, you can rise above.” We laughed for Henry the hound, and we laughed as we sang songs for the Jews of the Domus and for the secret Jews of Houndsditch.

  Letters arrived from the queen. There was an apology. The messages had been confused. Reginald Pole had issued the right instruction, but it got to the wrong person. It wasn’t her fault or Pole’s. It was all a dreadful mistake. Had I heard yet from my sisters?

  I had not yet heard from them. Thomas Linacre had finally gone celestial, and Corpus Christi wanted me back. Both she and the princess were expecting me. But I could not go, for the warmth of the home and the bonds of family were too strong. And there, in that home, love happened. You couldn’t see it with the eye or touch it with a finger, but it was real, nonetheless.

  “Juanito,” Marguerite said as we walked into the backyard two days after my arrival. “You seem warmer now, more real.”

  I put a finger to her lips, which felt cool and yet warm, more precious than gold.

  “Why is it so hard for you?” she asked.

  “My mother said to never love a woman too well in case you lose her and see her suffer. But I can’t help this love. I can’t.”

  “So, the sonnet—it was easier to write as you left than to say when you were here?”

  “I didn’t get the chance to say it.”

  “You did write it then?” she said.

  “Of course, my sweet.”

  “Not Álvaro?” I denied it, but she had a window into my innermost thoughts.

  “Álvaro wrote it, but I told him what to write.”

  She laughed and kissed me gently on the lips.

  * * *

  Then, the great thing happened, or should I say the great things. For the first celebration, some came from Paris. Others, like Erasmus, came from Louvain. There was an unknown man from London making copious notes, an emissary of the pope, ensuring that all was done properly. That was in the church of St. Donation, strewn with summer flowers and with a choir of young boys. Zeek, in a black jacket with a white ruff-collar, was our page. The dancing and the singing and the drinking went on for two days.

  Then there was the silent wedding beneath the canopy in the dead of the night with sand strewn on the floor. There was hushed singing in Hebrew-Spanish and visitors from Antwerp whose names I will never mention. It was over quickly and quietly, as was our wish. Our rampant passion did not begin until then, but since it began, it hasn’t stopped.

  No more nights in the lonely, terrible torment of the soul. Instead, I wake to the warmth of Marguerite, the love of all the loves. She lies next to me, breasts rising and falling. In her breath I feel her soul. I am not alone now, for love has met with love and found peace and, dare I say it, found an expression of God. This is why I cannot go back to the queen and the princess.

  After we made love, by night—I am sorry, diary. What did you say? Why did you laugh? You expect me to talk of that? The skin, soft as butter, the hair under my hands, and the joy—no, I can’t. Well, perhaps. Writhing and listening to the sounds she makes, with my tongue deep in her mouth, and my... After I pretend to fall asleep, I know she lies there, next to me, watching. Then we laugh, pull the sheets up, and start all over again.

  When I can’t sleep, I climb into the attic for silent meditation. Mama and Papa come back to me. They tell me not to live in guilt. But what of Beatriz, Eva, and Leonora? Where are they? And how do I get to them when my meddling only leads to suffering? That is for another day. But you, diary, you have to go once and for all because I’ve got a family to protect, people who need me. Down you go, beneath the walls, beneath the floor. Adios!

  Part Three

  For Henry the King or for Catherine the Queen?

  “It is not your duty to complete the work, neither are you free to desist from it.”

  Mishnah Avot 2:16, The Talmud

  24 September 1528, Bruges

  It was a time of healing, of putting broken bits together, of floating and of being rather than of doing. Five years passed. Our little boy is ten, and our family of three lives here in peace.

  She could sense a change as the spring turned into summer and the swallows left their nests.

  “Don’t go cold on me, Juanito,” my wife begged. “As you get stronger, stay close.”

  I did stay close. I let it go, at least for a while. Although we were not blessed with a child of our own—not through any lack of passion, you understand—our home was blessed with love. The little boy who we’d adopted, though he had his own name and head full of blond hair, was our boy in every other way.

  It was the words from Valencia that disrupted that peace. I couldn’t ignore them. Even though she insisted I burn them, for they are of my own flesh and blood, how can I possibly do so? The letter was sealed with blood-red wax in the shape of a diamond. My heart sank. What new hell was this? What bad news?

  It commended me for my daily observance of Mass. Clearly, the far-seeing eyes and ever-open ears of the Spanish king were still working in this town. The letter said I must help find my youngest sister, Beatriz, “still abroad in the land of Judah.” Eva was safe in the arms of the convent of Carmen, and though she wouldn’t say a word to anyone, she had turned to Christ. Her husband’s wailing could be heard from the vents of a prison cell, but Eva was safe. She had turned her back on him. Leonora married into one of the very best Valencian families, one with many names and several titles. tried to lull her with the promises of salvation, a large home, an amnesty. At the meeting place, though, on the first night of Passover, one of Beatriz’s warriors put a knife to her throat and threatened to use it if she didn’t keep her mouth shut.

  What did they want of me? It’s true Beatriz was devoted to studying Father’s Talmud in secret, that her eyes squinted by the age of fourteen. It’s true that her own betrothed—well, no one can write of the medical dissection of a living man. But would she have threatened her own sister under any circumstances? And would she galvanise a band of warriors hell-bent on revenge? I don’t wish to know the answer to that because the answer is yes.

  I turned the page of the letter.

  Señor Vives, the warrior Jewess known as Beatriz Vives rallies Nuevos, burns houses, plunders churches and is the enemy of us all. We must save her soul. Any knowledge
you have, you must at once report it, for if she would kill her own sister as the Jews killed their own brother, Jesus Christ, where will she stop?”

  Although I had not written a diary for five years, something about that letter compelled me. It fired my will, not just to save Eva and Beatriz, but to right the wrong done to my people, for this is not how we act. This is not how we have ever acted in the Sepharad. I have to re-enter the fight to rescue my people from the abyss. Was that their secret aim, though? To flush me and the others out?

  I sit here in the attic, night after night, writing by the light of a single flame. How do I tell Marguerite of my decision? Shall I chase her around the four-poster bed before tying her down until she finally submits and then tell her? Or shall I just leave like a coward?

  Earlier tonight, sleep, that transitory guest, left me in the early hours. I crawled out of the bed and watched her. She seemed encased in the scent of the lavender pomanders that she has placed all around the room to help me sleep. The peonies by her bedside seemed to be watching her. In the end, I didn’t have to worry. The words took care of themselves.

  As I crawled back into bed after watching her, we were both awakened by a shout. Neither one of us could catch its words. All was dark and cold, though my body was bathed in a wine-scented sweat. She kissed me on the forehead and patted my soaking head while uttering the words, “Puh, puh, puh.”

  They did not calm me. Last night, when sleep welcomed me once again, it happened. There was a kick of the left leg. I sat bolt upright.

  “What am I? Who am I?”

  I was on my feet, banging my body around the room, rubbing my eyes, wiping away the cold sweat.

  “What’s happening to me?” I shouted.

  “Sweetness,” Marguerite cried.

  “If I am only for myself, then what am I?”

  “Come back to bed, darling. This is too much. Everything is going to be all right.”

  But I could not stop it. Words were coming out of my mouth from the great rabbis.

  “If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if not now, then when?”

  “No, Juanito. Please.” She grabbed the sheets around her in the cold night as I left the bedroom and chased me down the creaking stairs. Dawn had just begun to slither through the heavy green drapes, and I arrived exhausted at my kitchen table, sweeping away crumbs with the back of my hand. She was behind me. It was as if she knew what was at stake. She came up behind me as I slumped there, my head in my hands like a hideous gargoyle. I realised in that moment that I had no choice. Zeek, from the top of the stairs, cried “Papa,” and Marguerite groaned, “Hijo, back to bed.”

  With a throbbing head, like a man inside was randomly wielding the sharp end of a pick, I remembered what I had tried to forget. The gypsy’s words at Bartholomew Fair had come true again: “Your dead mother will be killed.” Yes, my dead mother was killed. The letter before this one told me all about it. A trial was held for a dead woman. Her crime was to give to the poor on Purim and to light the candles on Sabbath as the first three stars appeared in the night sky. And though she had met a hard hard-enough rest, coughing blood and covered in pustules, this was nothing compared to the second death. They exhumed her peaceful corpse and piled her bones and rotting flesh against a stake. They burned her remains not just once, but three times and ploughed the ash into the soil.

  I was in madness then. “As a girl, she used to sweep the bimah of the old synagogue. She always said the mourner’s Kaddish for her father.”

  “Juanito, there’s nothing we can do. Don’t upset the little man. Come back to bed.”

  I heard him slam his bedroom door shut and felt certain that I could hear the sound of crying. It was terrible, but I could not stop.

  “She liked a drink and had a temper that rendered me weak to women, so surely she deserved it.”

  Marguerite slapped me, I stopped for a minute and said. “Well, let’s say a prayer now, for the men who dug her up. Those poor men developed the buboes that my mother died from, and they died an agonising death.”

  Marguerite was past the tipping point now. She retreated, dragging the sheet behind her back up the stairs, looking to me like a sorceress. As she left, I sat at the kitchen table and drifted off once again. The dream came back. We were walking along the Calle del Barco, Father and me. There were no words, just the warmth of the Spanish sun and the gulls arguing over scraps. We turned into the Paseo Caro and went along the quay. When we could walk no further, he turned to me and said, “Son, you are ready now.”

  “Father, my wife, my little boy… the peace I have known here…”

  He looked at me and said, “You’re no longer free to desist. Now go!”

  * * *

  Later that day, I walked on Groenestreet. Who should I find there but Johannes Van der Poel, Although he had lost some of the pudginess of youth, he was a fine, strong man, with flowing blond locks.

  “Brother,” he called with the confidence of a young bull. “Your latest work, On Assistance to the Poor, is it not the most revolutionary book ever written?”

  “No, the Hebrew bible was, my friend.”

  “How so, señor?” he asked.

  I still feared his loose tongue, for he nearly got me to unmask myself with that diary. He was a clever lad—there was no doubt of that. I put my arm around his shoulder.

  “Because men wrestle with God and challenge kings. God himself challenges kings.”

  “Señor, what’s the message?” he asked as I moved away, for I had to get back home to tell Marguerite my plan.

  “Tikkun olam, Johannes—a most Hebrew message. Repair of the world, if it risks death and danger. That’s the message!”

  I ran even though the joints on my swaying back creaked like the rusty hinges of an old gatepost.

  Marguerite was inconsolable. Crash went the oak door, kick went the washroom bucket, bang went the window shutters. Her mother and the little man hid.

  “Traitor! Coward!” She stormed through the house, her long green dress rustling down the hallway, hair flowing back like the hair of Lilith. She picked up a manuscript and threw it into the fire. I stood there, stunned, in the acrid smell of vellum and ink. She lunged at me with her fists and turned to leave but couldn’t. “Use the queen’s influence to defend Beatriz, who already has a price on her head? Have you forgotten what happened last time with your meddling?” She threw a plate at my head. It smashed against the wall, scattering into a thousand pieces. I tried to pick them up but sliced my thumb. “Leave it!” she said.

  “I have to persuade her, my love, to give us an armed guard. With me and Álvaro, I can do it.” She looked at me with desperation, for here was someone who had lost so much and about to lose something more.

  “Cardinal Wolsey hates you. He’s banned you. It’s impossible.”

  “He banned me from Oxford for preaching dissent. He can’t ban me from the queen. If the queen can’t help our cause, then perhaps the Boleyns can.” I dodged a fine Venetian wine glass. “With this change, there is a chance, not just for us, but for our whole people.”

  “You’re mad to believe you can do that,” she screamed. Her jaw was rigid, and she struggled to get the words out. “It will be the end of you to try, the end of us, and this boy we’ve been entrusted to bring up. Don’t be so selfish. Think of the little boy.”

  “My fair one, I have to try.” I had to quiet her, for Louis de Praet had fallen out of favour with the cardinal, too. “I also have the royal privilege to consider, the fruits of which keep us in this beautiful home.” It was queen’s guilt that paid for the plates and the glasses that Marguerite was liberally tossing around the house.

  “It is my father’s legacy and my brother’s hard work that keeps us in this house,” she said. “In fact, some say that’s the reason you married me.”

  I tried to placate her all the way to
the bedroom.

  “That’s not true. You know it.”

  “Why not wait for Margaret Roper’s bedroom?” she said with pain in her Sephardic eyes.

  “Never,” I replied. “Without the Mores and Ropers, I’d be peddling old rags and pieces of cloth in the backstreets.”

  “Were you peddling before you knew her?” Then she smiled, something I was not expecting. “I shall come with you.”

  I shook my head furiously.

  “It’s not safe. The king can turn against his friends in the blink of an eye and will use their families as blackmail. Never.”

  “You write about the equality of the woman, that she is the equal of her husband.” She sighed and looked at the broken glass and ceramics and finally at me, knowing she had lost. “You write that she should always stand by her husband, yet you prevent me from doing so.”

  I grabbed her, whisked her to the bedroom, and made love to her madly until the day was gone and she slept, believing she had changed my mind. But as she slept, clarity came upon me. Long ago I committed to making England a safe homeland for the Jews so that my people might follow in the footsteps of the explorer, Sebastian Cabot, and settle peacefully in the so-called New World.

  After the commotion of the previous night, I didn’t have to tell Zeek much the next morning, for he’d heard everything.

  “Papa, I don’t understand. Don’t you love Mama anymore?” He sat on my knee as I wiped his tears away and stroked his fine hair with my fingers. I hummed to him, holding him close, for who knew if this would be the last time?

  “Zeek, my special boy, it’s hard, but no, I haven’t stopped loving Mama or you. Nothing would make me stop loving you.”

  “Then why?” he asked again.

  I could hear Marguerite outside the door. Her heavy breathing gave her away. I almost changed my mind there and then, but as I opened my mouth, someone else’s words came out.

  “Son, when I was a little boy, I was lucky. I had three sisters, just like the first three stars that appear in the night sky. They were pretty and dazzling.”