The Heretic’s Wife (65 page)

John felt his eyes start to water. Here was such charity. Such generosity. Their actions were not without risk. “What will the ecclesiastical court say when you come up empty-handed?”

“The archbishop will cover for us. We volunteered for this duty.” The porter opened the pack where he’d carried the bread and cheese and produced a small Tyndale New Testament. “Give our thanks to your friend if you make it.”

John looked down at the pocket-sized book. A feeling of immense gratification came over him. “I thank you, good sirs,” he said. “God knows, I thank you, and may God bless you for your courage and steadfastness.” He paused and breathed deeply of the air, reveling in the mossy earthen smell of it after the dank smells of the Tower. “But I’m not going.”

“What do you mean, you’re not going! Are you crazy?”

“I am an honest man. Why should I not stand and defend that which I believe, that which I have written? If there be justice—”

“Justice! There is no justice to be had in the court you’ll be facing.” The porter’s frustration made his voice rise. “You’ll not have the chance of a snowball in hell.”

A scuffling on the ground drew John’s attention. Both men grasped the hilts of their swords. A disturbed squirrel bolted up the tree.

“You’ve been gone a while, and maybe you don’t know what’s been going on here,” the gentleman said, his voice quiet, the voice of reason. “Here in England they tie you to a post and set fire to you for saying the things you say.”

“I’m prepared for that. I will put myself in God’s hands.” It occurred to John then that maybe these were the hands that God was using. That maybe these two men had been sent for just such a purpose. But if he let himself believe that, how could he ever know for sure that it was not devil’s temptation?

The porter sat down hard on a nearby stump, still shaking his head in disbelief. “Let’s sit here a minute, and you think about it.”

“I’ve thought of nothing else for the last week. Believe me. I want nothing so much as to live. I have a wife . . .” No. He could not think about Kate or his courage would melt away.

His guards made no move to resume the journey.

“If you do not wish to accompany me, good sirs, I shall find my own way to Croydon Palace where I will surrender myself to the archbishop.”

Only then did the porter get up and stride away. For the last leg of their journey they walked in single file, with John bringing up the rear a few paces behind.

Kate spent her first night back in London in her little bed above the print shop.
I have completed a circle,
she thought, thinking how the past five years had changed her life and yet how really nothing had changed. She lay awake
as before, tossing and turning, filled with fear and dread for a man named John.

The captain had gone in through the same boarded-up window John had pried open and unlatched the door for her. She walked into the little bookshop on Paternoster Row and it was as if she had never left, except for a thick coat of dust that covered everything. A familiar weight of dread and loneliness descended on her as though it had hovered there all along, just waiting for her return. She had picked up her broom and started to sweep the cobwebs from the corner, noticing the spotty footprints in the dust below the window where the captain’s larger footprints had blurred John’s.

“Please, let me”—and the captain reached for the broom—“You just sit. I’ll do it,” he said.

“When can I see him?” she asked.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll take you to see him tomorrow. It is too late tonight. The deputy constable will be on duty. I’ve learned that Constable Kingston is the one who is reasonable. Especially if one shows him a gold crown in consideration of his reasonableness.”

“I cannot ever repay you . . . for any of it. You have been very kind to us.”

“I’ll think of a way,” he said. But the grin that he forced was a poor imitation of that mocking smile he usually offered.

After the cobwebs were cleared, he left to go get food. Kate unpacked her small trunk and hung her clothes in the cupboard. When he returned with Endor carrying offerings from her little bake oven, she tried to eat to please him—it seemed important to him and that was the least she could do—but the food had no taste, and it was hard to swallow for the fear lodging in her throat. She was so tired. The smallest movement was an effort. She had not slept at all, since she’d learned of John’s impending trial.

Five years. And here she was again alone in her narrow bed above the stairs. She closed her eyes and lay awake listening to the night sounds through her open attic window.
He is so close,
she thought.
Why can I not feel his presence?
And she wondered if he lay awake thinking of her. But still she did not cry. Neither did she sleep.

As Tom Lasser knocked on the door to the bookshop the next morning, some part of him wished he’d never met Kate Frith, wished he could just get on his boat and sail away. And maybe he could one day soon. Put all this behind him. But not today.

Endor opened the door for him. Kate looked up at him with pleading in her eyes, pleading for some kind of good news when he had none to give.

“You can’t see him today,” he said.

She stood by the window, her body straight and rigid. Her hair was disheveled, a tangled mass hanging down her back and falling in her face; dark circles shadowed her eyes. “Why not?”

How long had she stood watch at that window, waiting for him?

“Because they have moved him. I think we are going to have to get another plan.”

“Where has he gone? Are they taking him to trial?”

The breathlessness in her voice made him want to run. There was no point to prolonging the agony. He just needed to tell her.

“Please—”

“They’ve already tried him, Kate. He . . . he signed a confession of his beliefs.”

“No . . . please, God . . . How do you know?”

“I went to the Tower, and they told me he’d been taken to Croydon Palace, so I went there immediately. The trial was over. They’d already moved him.”

She leaned against him then to keep from falling. He put his arm around her, feeling her shoulders tremble, and guided her onto the wooden settle under the shop window. The trembling stopped and a fierce rigidity took its place.

“I thought there was a plan for his escape?” Her voice was scarcely above a whisper. “You said—”

“He refused, Kate.” He could not look at her. “John has decided to take the martyr’s route after all, poor fool. You can’t help a man who won’t be helped.”

Bishop Gardiner had said Archbishop Cranmer had no choice after Frith’s statement but to release the prisoner to his ordinary, and since he was arrested at Southend just out of London, Bishop Stokesley was his ordinary. But Tom had to give her some reassurance. Some small hope to hang on to though there was little to none.

“All is not yet lost. He’s still alive. I’ll find out where they’ve taken him. They’ll give him a couple of weeks. They would rather have his signature on a statement of repentance.” Though he doubted that was true. These men were obsessed with burning. “Will you be all right here?”

She nodded mutely. Ever since they’d left Antwerp, she’d had that unnatural,
deadly calm that was somehow worse than tears. It was as though her will were a dam behind which the pressure was building. What damage was being done behind that wall he could only guess. He’d seen people driven to madness with less cause. But he did not know how to help her except to return her husband to her.

“It may take me a day or two. Endor’s going to stay with you. She’ll get you what you need. But stay here, Kate.”

When she did not respond, he repeated, “Stay here. It’s important. You don’t need to fall in the hands of John’s enemies. That would not help either of you. Did you hear me?”

She answered dully, “I heard.”

She had not promised, but he could hardly lock her up. She would probably be safe enough. After all, More and Stokesley had what they wanted.

When John woke he thought at first he was back in the fish cellar. But Newgate Prison was worse than the fish cellar. In the fish cellar he’d had companionship and freedom of movement and hope. Here he was alone and shackled by his neck to the wall. And he had no hope. How did a man live without hope?
Your hope is in Jesus Christ. Pray to your Father in that name and he will ease your pain or shorten it.
That’s what Tyndale had said in his last letter. And that’s what John tried to do, though he could not kneel or even bow his head from his fixed position on the wall. Could God hear one man’s prayer from this hellish place that birthed so many prayers, so many souls, all crying out to God? Their unspoken prayers, a cacophony of despair, mixed with his pain and swirled inside his head.

They had brought him here after his trial. Stokesley had mocked him for his heresy, dangling rescue before him if he would recant. Thomas More had been there too, laughing, delighting in his resistance. “I understand you’ve taken a wife, Master Frith, like all the heretics who have deserted the Church. Is she beautiful? Will she be at Smithfield to watch you burn for heresy, or did you leave her behind in Antwerp? Or maybe Holland? Is she with Tyndale, perhaps? Tell us where the heretic Tyndale is, and you can return to her.”

But with all their mocking they had only hardened his resolve. And the odd thing was that they took a perverse pleasure in it, as though they really didn’t want him to recant. He could see the excitement in their faces, and he almost pitied them their devilish obsession. Their souls were in more peril
than his. His body might burn, but their souls were being consumed by the fires of their hatred.

The mind games with which he had freed his spirit from the fish cellar and the Tower no longer worked. He could not recite his Greek poetry; pain had won the battle for his mind, but he prayed for strength and for the wife he was leaving behind. He prayed, too, for some sign that God was pleased with his decision.

But no voice spoke from heaven. The doors of Newgate Prison did not fly open.

After a while he fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. He took that as a sign, for when he woke his mind was more at peace. Kate and Tyndale and even his books seemed far away, almost as though they were part of some other man’s life. John Frith no longer had a wife. Or friends. Or a future. He was resigned and his soul was prepared for death. There was only the wrenching, ripping, painful tearing from this world to get through. He prayed it would be over soon.