The Secret Diaries of Juan Luis Vives

by Tim Darcy Ellis

  “I don’t think he’ll grow tired so long as she keeps this game up.”

  “She will for sure,” I said. “Think of the titles, the furs, the jewels.”

  “The only title she wants is queen,” he said. “But he may grow tired of her, so she’d better give him sons.”

  This was the grand plan. Although the queen first rebutted me, she could be blackmailed if necessary, to help my sisters. When the royal game was played more fully down the line, we could work with Anne and the reformers to give us a safe homeland. Was I mad to think it could work? I could then bring Marguerite and Zeek to London. We could build our synagogue on the edge of the city. By stealth and with God’s love, we could make it happen. England could take the refugees and become a greater nation for it. It could export them across the world. It could be done.

  “And the king acknowledges you?”

  He laughed, turned, showing his proud jaw and strong nose. “Ha ha, my friend. It is not really the king who is the problem. Have you ever heard of him torching a Jew, or even criticising a Jew? No, it’s Reginald Pole who’s the problem. It is he who fuels the flames of the pope.”

  “Enough, my friend. Who are the owners of the other two rings?”

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  “Good night, my friend,” I said.

  He closed his eyes, feigning sadness. Surely this was a game he had played a hundred times over, one that would one day get him in trouble.

  10 October 1528

  There was a plan, and I had to petition the queen like the mothers of the London apprentices once petitioned her. She saved their sons, and she could save the lives of my sisters. And she owed me a life. But my arrival in London had not gone unnoticed, and as the autumn rains pelted like arrows and we put sandbags at the front door, a boy thrust a letter into my hand. It came from Chelsea. And who, in my absence, had moved to Chelsea but Sir Thomas More and his daughters. Assuming it was from Meg, I opened it with the energy of a starving man who’d been taken to a banquet.

  I scanned the page rather than read it. And yes, there was an invitation to Chelsea. I wiped my brow with the handkerchief given to me by my wife. To Chelsea, then, although Álvaro counselled against it.

  “But I owe this family something,” I said.

  “You’re your own person, Juanito. You don’t have to justify yourself.”

  I left the ale-stained inn two days later, and the sunshine broke through as if the divine presence was shining to guide me on my journey. I left the city at Ludgate, with its familiar London scenes that I found so endearing. There was a street brawl, a mangy cat being chased by five hungry street hounds, and a toothless whore lifting up her dirty skirt. I made for Kings Road and arrived in Chelsea in the early afternoon. There could be only one house new enough and grand enough to belong to the Mores, so it wasn’t hard to find it.

  I gazed from the gate and was struck by the weak scent of late roses and freshly turned soil. The formal gardens were laid out with ponds and fountains. Each one of its five wings pointed like a long finger to the sacred river. There was the barking of dogs, the chattering of young women, and what sounded like an angel singing, “Love me brought.”

  The doors swung open and all was golden, with the shafts of light on the wood panels and polished floors. Cicely was the first to embrace me, now fully grown with a massive bosom and rosy cheeks. There was young Elizabeth, slim and elegant, dressed in white. “Do you remember me, sir?” she said, giggling with the preciousness of the youngest child of the household.

  “How could I not?”

  Alice More looked more stooped and aged but greeted me with a friendly “Welcome home, son.” Then in strode Marguerita Charism, Meg Roper. Had she dressed for me with a Spanish hood and an autumn-coloured gown? The younger girls were silent.

  “Mistress Roper, the season becomes you,” I said.

  She blushed. “Señor Vives, did you not notice that the autumn sun shone today for the first time?” She paused. “Because you’re here, where you should be!” My heart leapt; my cheeks flushed. Elizabeth giggled. I wanted, in that moment, to be with her forever. Then she turned sideways, and I could see a bump in her stomach.

  “Master Roper, he is well?” I asked with the sincerity of a gutter whore.

  “Yes, but away at court on business of state.”

  I sighed with relief. “And your father—when do I see the great statesman?” I asked, hoping that he, too, hadn’t been called away on matters of state.

  “Soon,” she said and took me by the arm to the drawing room.

  I could smell something on her. Was it rose, geranium, bergamot? Perhaps it was the scent of all three, but it took me back, to a summer’s night, lying on cushions in Bucklersbury, when I nearly gave up everything for her. As we entered the room, with its diamond stucco ceiling, the autumn sunshine poured in.

  “It’s been too many years,” she said, and brushed away a tear. She then said, “Señor, forgive me please.”

  “Forgive you for what, Meg?” I asked.

  “For my whispers.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Whispers to Reginald Pole of a found text that I didn’t understand, that I had no right to find, whispers that grew a life of their own.”

  The diary. She had discussed it and understood bits of it.

  “You understand where those whispers went then?” I said. How was it that I could forgive her? What did that say about my weakness?

  Sir Thomas’s man, a short, stocky fellow known as Will, barged in.

  “He’s ready for you, Señor Hayim.”

  “Don’t call him that, Will,” Meg said. “His name is Señor Vives, or Master Lewis. Anything but Hayim.”

  I was led up a great oak staircase and taken to his private room, where Will told me, “Go on, knock.” I placed an ear to the door that still smelled of the workroom of a carpenter. There was nothing but silence from within. Still nervous around him after all these years, I knocked anxiously.

  “Enter.” And so, I did.

  His back was turned to me. He was gazing out of the lead-panelled window towards the river. “I must get rid of these clothes.”

  “Sir Thomas, do I not get an embrace after all this time?”

  He looked up. “I will expose you for the secret Lutheran you really are, pretending to be a Catholic. Come on down to the cells.”

  “But, but Your Majesty, I am not. Haven’t you read what I’ve written about them? Is that not proof enough?”

  “The net’s closed in. A washerwoman testified against you. That’s good enough for us.”

  I was struck by the creases of his eyes, which seemed much deeper. His mouth was sunken at the edges. He grabbed me by both shoulders and drew me towards him before throwing me off like a ball in a game.

  “Don’t make jokes about it, Vives.”

  “What we can laugh at we can rise above,” I replied.

  “I’ll remember that when they take me up the scaffold!” He walked back towards the window and then started. “It wasn’t Pole’s fault—or Meg’s or the queen’s. It was a miscommunication.”

  “It can be made right. I’ve sisters there still. I need you to intercede, to talk with the queen, to get an army of—”

  “Enough! I will do what I can. You have my word.”

  He removed his chain, his jacket, and his shirt. I tried to avoid my glance. As he stripped away these layers, there was a coat of grey, matted sheep’s hair between his white shirt and the skin. It was his penitential hair shirt.

  “Why on earth do you wear that?”

  “To remind me of my sinful mind and that my pain is nothing to his.”

  I could not hold back. “So, Jesus wishes you to wear that?”

  “I can’t say yes to that, but I wish to wear it to bring me closer to him.”

&nb
sp; I thanked the heavens that I was born a Jew.

  After dressing, he took me downstairs and through the gardens and wrought-iron gates to the riverbank. Many of the leaves had fallen, and we kicked them away, the smell of the English autumn enveloping us. I noticed that the golden beeches were still clinging to their oval russet leaves. The wind swished through them, and I tried to catch its words. Was it telling me to take strength and to be like these clever beeches, to hold on to the very end? We sat down on a fallen tree trunk.

  He spoke to me softly, like a brother. There were rumours of a schism with Rome and Spain. There were rumours of an invasion that may follow, a second War of the Roses. “I will not forsake the queen,” he said.

  “Won’t you bend just a little? You wrote it in Utopia that toleration is the very thing we should strive for. Can’t we find a place amid the changes that no man can stop?” But he did not respond to that.

  “Just be a brother to her and forget your unrealistic dreams,” he said.

  I contemplated a future with the queen as her honorary brother. Then I remembered what her family had done to mine. I remembered what I had always stood for: justice, concord, and toleration. No, I wouldn’t sell my ideals for the privileges that being her brother would bring. But I wouldn’t tell him that.

  “Of course, Sir Thomas.”

  At supper, above a small mountain of quail, I glanced towards the woman who, like a magnet, had drawn me there. She was still magnificent. She looked elevated, buoyed by the love that motherhood had given her. I sighed, like the slow drawing out of the tide on a sandy beach. I felt both entranced and wounded by her, for she had what I craved: parents, brothers, sisters, and a daughter of her very own. Could she feel that?

  When our plates were cleared, she looked across the table and spoke. “I had a letter from your wife.”

  “Why did she write to you?” I stammered. The old paralysis hit my lips. What new torture was this?

  “She tells me many things, señor. She tells me to feed you and keep you warm in Chelsea, away from grimy Houndsditch and away from meddling in the court.”

  I sat frozen. My wife would rather I was with another woman than with the queen or my secret community. That was sacrifice, was love. I couldn’t hide the tears in my eyes.

  “Am I deserving of such a love?”

  Meg looked at me. “I don’t know, señor.”

  Elizabeth changed the tone, suddenly imploring her father. “Daddy, this is just like the old days, before you got so serious. Can you recite us some poetry or some Greek?”

  Sir Thomas, sparking at the thought of performing, replied, “Plato it is. The Spaniard will like that! This one makes me think of our queen.”

  For Hekabe and the women of Troy

  Tears were fated from the day of their birth

  “Stop, husband!” Lady Alice interrupted him. “It’s too sad. We want joy in this house again.”

  He thought for a moment. “All right. Jolly Plato it is.”

  My star, stargazing? If only I could be

  The sky, with all those eyes to stare at thee!

  Meg looked at me from the other side of the table, still piled high with bones and plates. “And from you, señor—you must have something Greek that you can share.”

  I acquiesced:

  Asclepius cured the body: to make men whole

  But Apollo sent Plato, healer of the soul.

  “And Mistress Roper, I know you, too, study the Greek poets,” I said. “Do you have anything for us?”

  “Yes, I do. Have you heard of Kleoboulos?”

  I am the maiden in bronze set over the tomb of Midas

  As long as water runs from wellsprings, and tall trees burgeon,

  And the sun goes up the sky to shine, and the moon is brilliant,

  As long as rivers shall flow and the wash of sea’s breakers,

  So long remaining in my place on this tomb where the tears fall

  I shall tell those who pass that Midas lies here buried.

  “That’s beautiful, Meg,” I said, and then cursed myself for letting the name out. “Is it a metaphor for someone or something?”

  “I wronged someone a while ago by invading his private space, and something terrible came of it. Was it my fault? I don’t know, but I’ll be forever trying to make amends for my part in it.”

  I could see why Álvaro had counselled me against coming here. Heavy and slow with red wine, we sauntered to the drawing room. I hoped to catch her again, but as I walked with Sir Thomas and looked over my shoulder, she was gone.

  After Madeira wine and heavy port, I sat in my room, the light autumn fire dying a slow death. I did not stir it. I sat with my scraps of paper and thoughts of this imperfect world. Is repair really possible, tikkun olam? And what if I love two women. What does that make me? But I must not commit adultery.

  We congregated at breakfast the next morning with fresh eggs and kippers. William Roper, who had taken a barge from Hampton Court, greeted me with all the enthusiasm with which one greets a plague victim.

  “And what has the great scholar been working on this last year?”

  “I published De Subventione Pauperum,” I replied.

  “What did he say?” he asked his wife.

  “Señor has published a treatise concerning the relief of the poor,” she replied.

  He smiled. “Another indecipherable work in Latin, no doubt. My father-in-law now writes in English. Is English not good enough for you, señor?”

  Sir Thomas looked embarrassed.

  “It seems it’s not good enough for the bible,” I said, looking at everyone at the table except for him. “Strange, isn’t it, that the Greeks, the Germans, and even the French have bibles in their own tongues, but not the English.”

  I realised I was walking a dangerous path here. I asked Sir Thomas what this new work consisted of.

  “It is a dialogue concerning heresies and heretics and what we do with them.”

  That old feeling returned. The ceiling lowering and the walls closed in. I began to speak in short, stuttered sentences. “Master… Roper… feel free… to translate my book… if you can… if the subject moves you. I’m all for English translations, you see. But for now, at least, Latin is the universal tongue, eh, Sir Tom? And I need German counts and French kings, Holy Roman emperors, and even Sultans to read it.”

  William Roper threw me a cold dark stare. I was glad I was not alone with him on a hunting trip, deep in the forest. “And for the secret rabbis of London and Bruges, perhaps?” he said.

  “I know of no rabbis in this land, sir, but toleration, in my view, is necessary for any civilised society and nation.”

  Sir Thomas interceded. “After all I’ve done for you, you’d rather ally with the reformers who have bewitched the king?”

  “I am your friend until the last moment,” I said. “But I’m for a world where no one has to live in fear of being wrenched from their bed in the middle of the night just for the way they celebrate God.”

  “Piss and shit on you,” he said. “The punishment for a Lutheran is to give him a faggot and march him around Smithfield for an hour.”

  “Would you rather put faggots underneath them, as in Spain?” I asked.

  “My sweet brother,” he laughed. “You have taken the bait once again. I will stay fixed to the one true order of the Catholic Church, whatever it takes.”

  I rose from the table. “Even if that means an Inquisition in this land and the burning of heretics and friends?”

  “Whatever it takes,” he repeated. Sir Thomas got up and walked towards me.

  Meg broke the silence. “Father, please listen to him. Save yourself if no one else. The world is changing.”

  Her husband raised his scratchy voice. “Don’t you dare speak to your father like that in this house. And you, Vives, h
ad better watch your back in your smoky purlieu in Houndsditch.”

  Sir Thomas walked over to me, linked his arm into mine, and led me into the library.

  There were no words that I could find. It was clear our paths were going in different directions. I couldn’t stay in this house, whatever my wife or I wanted. I requested one thing: a memento. He went upstairs and returned with a sketch in chalk and ink by the artist Holbein. He was sitting in an ermine collar with his great chain of office around the neck. The sketch was full of holes. The artist had blown charcoal through them to outline his painting. I rolled it up and placed it in my case.

  I kept my goodbyes quiet. As I mounted the horse, I glanced over my left shoulder and saw Meg looking out an upstairs window, taking her hood off, throwing it on the floor. I saw her husband go towards her as he raised his left arm. I couldn’t bear to see what was about to happen.

  I arrived at The Flying Horse by late afternoon, fighting my way through barrow boys, ragmen, and carts stuck in ruts.

  “Are they with us?” Álvaro asked as I dismounted.

  “No. I should have stayed away.”

  “And, how is she?” he asked.

  “She cares for me, but that husband—what a brute!”

  “He’s obsessed with us and puts his men in the street to watch. Luckily, no one takes any notice of him. Look, Juanito, you love her. It’s not your fault. And her father is a great man. He saved us once, but times change.”

  “This country is divided.”

  “Yes, and we must be on the winning side.”

  How could I walk away from them and leave Meg to deal with that horrible man?

  Álvaro put his arm around my shoulder and spoke quietly. “He’s living in fear. He’s lashing out and we can’t be in his way. There’s too much at stake.”

  What could I do but agree with him?

  12 November 1528

  I almost went back to Bruges, for the pain of separation from Marguerite and Zeek was sharp. The finality of my final separation from Meg made the pain even greater. And though the queen called me, I stalled.