The Secret Diaries of Juan Luis Vives

by Tim Darcy Ellis

  “I know, Papa, but they’re in Spain and you’re going to England.”

  My wife, in her emerald skirt and brown jacket, entered and looked as if she were about to say “exactly.” I shushed her with a finger to my lips.

  “Mama is going to take good care of you while I’m away.”

  Marguerite put her arms around us, and we huddled in the silence. How I wish that moment could have lasted forever. I tried to seal it into my very being, so I’d have it beside me on my difficult journey.

  “I’m going to ask the queen to bring my sisters back from Spain. But don’t worry. I’ll be back.”

  “My first papa said that.” The remark hit me like a cleaver.

  “But I am the clever fish, and I am the brave bull, El Torro Bravo.”

  And then I left them.

  30 September 1528, London

  Álvaro was dressed in black and towered over the scurrying dockers. He stood out like a shining beacon. Beside him was a mass of black fur that was Henry the hound. Could the dog recognise me after all these years? As I made my way off the boat, he stood on his hind legs, pink tongue lolling out the left side of his mouth. Álvaro let him go and he was on me, all four legs! Álvaro and I hugged like long separated brothers and walked up out of the muddy chaos of St. Katherine’s dock. Henry ran into the market stalls, barking at a woman in a great white hat, cocking his leg on a crate of country apples.

  We walked to Bishopsgate and made our way out of the city into Houndsditch, where the king’s kennels had once stood. Amid this community, foreigners were able to trade, and this is why they made their home here. Here were Lutherans, who smuggled in bible tracts; here were the Blackamoors and Portuguese merchants, who attended Mass by day, but did things I won’t mention by night. Here also were women dressed as men, and men secretly married to other men.

  We entered The Flying Horse, the stench of stale ale assailing us. A few drinkers, unaware this was a truly sacred site, sat at the worn oak bar. A couple more slumped around the blackened fireplace beside a rusty iron candelabra. One woman woke as we entered. She was unable to push Henry away. “Oh, darlin’, ’ere he is again. Ain’t he bootiful.”

  With a hint of Lisbon in his voice, thin-faced Benjamin Elisha, whom I’d met years before, greeted me with open arms and a warm hug. With greying hair hidden in a woollen cap, and the fringes of his tzitzit just visible, he had the calm magic of a great sage. He stored my kegs of Gascon wine and took ten shillings for the privilege. No wonder he was pleased to see me! But it is he who sold it, not me, the soft-fingered academic. He stored the kegs in a cellar where once I found comfort in a Kabbalistic ritual, a dark place that no knew was now the chief synagogue of England.

  Álvaro de Castro had the bronze vestiges of summer on his face. His wife, Sarah Elisha, daughter of the innkeeper, was by his side. A grin was on his face, for the years had been kind to Álvaro. Stories were exchanged like coins in the marketplace until we were breathless and dry-mouthed. The queen is under siege, the Boleyns were on the rise, and Sir Thomas was battered and worn.

  “Now is our time,” Álvaro whispered.

  “And what of Meg?” I asked.

  “Steer clear,” he replied.

  As sunset cast a ruddy light across the dung-ridden yard, we put Álvaro’s young boys, Gasper and Eduardo, to bed with a kiss and a blessing.

  May the Lord bless you and guard you.

  May the Lord shine his light upon you and be gracious to you.

  May the Lord lift up his face to you and give you peace.

  Night fell. Some entered through the inn and waited there until the last drunk was bundled out. Others entered through the back door. Some had been waiting in the cellar all along, patient as lace-workers. There were the Isaacs and Harts from Southwark, ancient English survivors, and Spanish families named the Añes and Lópezes from Creechurch Lane. There was one, a wizened scrawny thing with no name, slumped in the corner. There were the Portuguese Elishas, de Castro of Burgos and one Vives from Valencia a man whose real name was Hayim, meaning life.

  Once we had the finest synagogues in Burgos and Seville, the homes of learning. Those places, they tell me, let shafts of light through stained windows, lit up the proud faces of our fathers and mothers, free to practice their old ways. But here was a brick-lined cellar with the dank smell of kegs, barrels of ale, and spilled wine. There were once ceilings of gold leaf turning our thoughts towards the heavens, with tiles, mosaics, and the colours of the Sepharad, but now there were blackened bricks, a trickle of water, and the droppings of rats.

  The stomach churning began. Here was fear, but here also was hope. The service began with psalms, a call to prayer, and then the dialogue.

  Álvaro: Alas, our father, is this the recompense we have sought?

  Who is the father who raises children

  Just to take vengeance on them?

  To pour anger on them

  With great and fuming wrath?

  We have sat on the ground.

  We have wept.

  Benjamin: Why do you all cry out against me?

  Your murmurings have reached me.

  In my kindness, I have daily saved you from sufferings:

  You yourselves are my witnesses.

  But alas you have not kept my ways.

  Álvaro: But even if we have sinned, where are your mercies?

  If in anger you expelled us, tell us how your children can make recompense?

  Benjamin: You, my people, will be redeemed by justice,

  For you have prevailed in your suit with God.

  No more will you be ploughed like a field.

  The eyes of my congregation will see

  The moment of your salvation,

  A home, here, in its proper time.

  A collective sigh seemed to unite all, and the pale man from the corner came forward. He recited the sh’ma as if he hardly knew it, as if each word were spoken through coarse fabric in his mouth. Who was this strange and bent man? When the others had departed into the night, breezy and full of fallen leaves, I asked Álvaro.

  “Edward, Master Scales. There’s a story!”

  “And?” I asked. Nothing much had changed after all these years. I still had to push him to include me in his inner world.

  “We just got him out of the Domus.”

  “How? When?”

  “Ropes and smoke, Juanito. Coded messages and the love of God.”

  “How long had he been there? Where does he live now?”

  “Twenty-four years he was there, whisked off by the old king under the orders of Ferdinand to purge the Jews of London. That was a condition if he wanted his daughter for Prince Arthur. And he is a tenth-generation hidden one, living here in the attic, taking care of the synagogue.”

  No wonder he struggled to speak Hebrew or that his face was like that of a ghost. I sat back in awe and wonder, and then went over to Master Scales and hugged him.

  “You can share my sleeping space, sir,” he said. He pointed to a straw mattress in the corner and offered me a blanket. I almost agreed out of solidarity, but I had work to do and plans to make, for we had to get a party to Spain and get at least two out of there.

  4 October 1528

  I sent a letter to the queen, for she had to know I was back.

  No sooner was it sent than I was called upon. I boarded a skiff on the grey river downstream to Greenwich. In the cold, grey English light I pulled up the fur collar of my dark tunic. I tried with all my strength to walk tall and straight, though my spine was more bent than ever, and my shoulder wanted to hang loosely to one side and pull me with it. At the steps of the palace, a man at arms greeted me. He sounded desperate.

  “We have been waiting for you.”

  The queen sat in a sea of candlelight. This was majesty. She was dressed in blue, the faultle
ss illusion of virtue in human form.

  “At last, Señor Vives, my brother, you are here where we need you,” she said, embracing me. Her face was pale, the wrinkles around her eyes more deeply etched, the chin fallen. “And your wife, whom I begged you to bring, is outside now. Let me meet her. Bring her in.”

  She searched deep into my eyes as I lied about morning sickness and a child in her womb. Sadly, since the last miscarriage and the bleeding, there have been no more kicks and screams from the womb.

  We sat and talked, Maria de Salinas warbling beside her, high-pitched as ever, like a starling. She tried to sing a cantata.

  “Sing up! Play louder!” I told her.

  She jumped and squealed at that as if I’d slapped her on the arse, but the queen cried. As for my poor father, she said, it was a miscommunication. It was not Reginald Pole’s fault. The problem lay in Valencia, the inquisitors misreading the message. “But the royal privilege of Gascon wine, it recompenses, no?” How could a payment from wine compensate for a father burned slowly at the stake?

  “It keeps me in fur collars and leather coats, my wife in silks, Your Majesty.”

  “The king calls me sister, not wife. He is convinced of my relations with Arthur. Promise me, señor, that you have told no one of our secret on the barge those many years ago.”

  “No one,” I replied, reminding her that Anne Boleyn had been listening to every word.

  “She knows no Spanish.”

  “She arose, but was bent in the middle now, walking as if dragging a cart behind her. “Majesty, you once pleaded with the king for the lives of the apprentices who’d rioted in London.”

  Maria Salinas must have been listening despite her warbling. She switched languages, as if on cue.

  For which kind queen, with joyful heart

  She heard their mother’s thanks and praise

  And lived beloved all her days.

  “Señor, this is true, but why bring it to my attention now?” She leaned on the window frame.

  I joined her and watched the young men below riding out with leather-masked falcons. She sighed.

  “Madam, there is a sister of mine. She is in the hills above Valencia, accused of terrible things, untrue things. We need a letter and a small band of men. Then I can go to Spain and find her.”

  She turned with a sudden fire in her eye, walked to the table like a young woman, and banged her fist. “No!”

  “But Majesty, you do not understand.”

  “I need you here as my brother, as uncle and tutor to the princess. You cannot go to Spain.”

  I’d almost forgotten about her, now twelve years of age.

  “She needs you. We need you.”

  “But the cardinal has banned me from Oxford for subversive teachings.”

  “He cannot ban you from court or from my daughter. I still have the say here.”

  I needed this queen five years ago to help someone in my family, but my sisters needed her now. I was in the midst of a violent internal conflict.

  “But Your Majesty, I can be all of that for you in time, but first there is a grave matter.”

  “We do not have time, and your grief is now done, señor. We must stand firm—Pole, you, and I.”

  What irony was this? Stand with Reginald Pole? My grief was now done?

  “Very well. How does Pole fare with the princess. I hear he’s been in charge of her education?”

  “Exceedingly well, and stricter than you. Wouldn’t leave a bible translator standing, that’s for certain.”

  “Or a Jew, I dare say.”

  “Much less a Jew,” she said. Funny how the woman who calls me brother and studies the bible does not protest while my true brothers and sisters are hunted down.

  She looked tired, but I had to keep pushing. Sir Thomas, you’d think, would be her ally, but she hadn’t mentioned him. Other questions flew out of my mouth.

  “And Margaret Roper?” I asked. “She must come here often? Is she as pretty as ever? As sharp and clever? Will she be visiting soon? How often do you see her?”

  The queen sat down again. Her maids rushed over with cushions and a cold compress.

  “They’re trying to poison me,” she croaked. I could see that Meg Roper’s whereabouts and concerns were not high on her list of priorities.

  “Where is the king?”

  “Where else but Hever.”

  “Where’s that?” I asked as if I didn’t already know everything about the Boleyns of Hever.

  “Be quiet. Don’t make yourself look foolish.”

  “Sister Catherine,” I said, “I’ll stand in your corner. I’ll defend the princess with my dying breath. When she is ready, I’ll lead her into the light. But when the time comes, you must help me and my sisters. You owe me that.”

  I didn’t wait for the reply. I bade her farewell and said that I’d be in Houndsditch when she was ready.

  * * *

  Álvaro was sitting at the back door when I got home. He was throwing a soggy leather ball over and over to Henry the hound, who would retrieve it and then wrestle with him for it. Sarah was breastfeeding, and I turned away, but not before smelling the baby breath that I had once longed for myself.

  “I can’t get a band of men from her yet, but in time, I think I can.”

  “Then you can’t go.”

  Who was he to dictate? My years of cowardice were behind me. “No one will know me there now save my sisters. I know where she’ll be hiding.” I didn’t believe a word I was saying.

  “With a crooked back and soft writer’s fingers, who else could you be but Juan Luis Vives?”

  “But look what happened to my father from waiting for the right time.”

  He got up and put a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t get yourself killed. The queen may yield in time. Just be patient.”

  I trudged up to the Biett Tefilah, our secret House of Prayer within the attic of Jorge Añes in Creechurch Lane. It seemed the heart of the city, with its penny-bakers and ragmen, pipe-players and potioners, beat loudly enough for all of France to hear. My heart, as ever, beat loudly enough for the spies of Reginald Pole to hear. Once inside the dusty attic, as Álvaro, the chief rabbi of London spoke, I let go an involuntary, ancestral sigh. I was in the moment. For once, I was at peace.

  “Friends, when we gather to pray, we do not pray as one,” Álvaro said. “And when all the congregations have finished their prayers, the angel takes them all and makes them crowns to place upon the head of the Holy One.”

  Then it happened. There was the sound of footsteps on a staircase. Our moment of deep contemplation was shattered. There was a crack like a horsewhip, a rap on the attic door.

  I looked to the others for comfort but found none.

  The door swung open and a strong light shone behind a single tall figure. Was it an emissary of the king, a henchman of the pope? The tall figure was silhouetted against the attic steps and became monstrous as it made its way into the room.

  There was something familiar in his swagger.

  “Ambrosius Moyses?” Álvaro asked. There was a collective sigh.

  I realised this was the king’s musician, the Italian who played viol. What was he doing here? His eyes went slightly in opposite directions. His skin was very dark, like the darkest of Arabs. Against the lime-wash of the wall, his blue cloak was lit by the giant candle. He showed me his fist. Was he planning on punching me? Then I saw the gold ring, the kind I also own. It was the same one that the king had given me years ago, of which he told me, “There are but four in the realm.”

  I was nearly sick. Was it that I did not want to know the depth of the Jewish underworld in this land? I avoided his intent gaze, and we resumed our prayer. Afterwards, we descended to a meal of heart-warming puchero.

  “How do you survive in the king’s court?” I asked. I notic
ed that my hands were suddenly animated, like they were being moved by a celestial puppeteer.

  “By stealth,” he replied. He nodded, clasping his musician’s fingers as if in prayer.

  “And the younger Boleyn, Anne—I hear she’s around the king these days like a playful puppy.”

  “More like a mosquito,” he said. “The mosquito’s bitten him and he can’t stop scratching.”

  “Does he love her?”

  “Perhaps,” he said, placing a hand on my thigh. “She’s a cunning puss.”

  “So, she’s a puppy, a mosquito, and a puss?”

  “A bit like you, eh? Like you, she won’t give herself fully.” He threw his head back and laughed.

  “Can she help our cause? Is she well-disposed towards us?”

  In the court of the French queen, she’d sat on my knee and questioned me on the wealth of the monasteries and the abbeys. She’d talked about rich men, camels, and the eyes of needles.

  “If you offer her something, she’d be well-disposed, but what would you give her? Remember that she is the cleverest puss in the land.”

  “Cleverest puss maybe, but cleverest woman, no. That is Margaret Roper.”

  “Si, señor.” He grabbed the finger with my wedding ring and said I should be wearing the ring that he was wearing, that by doing so we’d be brothers forever. “What’d you give her then?”

  “What do you know of precious metals,” I asked him. I released my finger from his pinch.

  “Gold, señor?”

  “There is one far more precious, and not platinum.”

  “You’re talking in riddles,” he said.

  “Yes, the most prized metal of all. What is it?”

  “Power, señor, but how do you propose to get it?”

  “Try the metal known as knowledge,” I countered.

  “Won’t he grow tired of Anne, as he did with her sister?”

  “Is this knowledge?” I asked.