The Heretic’s Wife (8 page)

John slowly gained his strength back but not his old spirit. Though he had always been a quiet sort, introspective and thoughtful, there was about him now a pensive melancholy. Oddly, she noticed it most in the presence of his wife and child. Like now. Mary, as she always did when she visited John, babbled on about nothing, as if her cheerfulness could somehow bring her husband back. John just sat beside her on the cot and stared out the door, which was open to the spring sunshine. The little boy sat on a blanket that Mary spread on the floor and played with the woodcut blocks that Kate had brought, thinking to spur her brother’s interest. If she could spark him back to life, they might set up a makeshift press in one corner of the room—at least print some broadsheets they could sell.

John sat idly watching—without seeing—as the little boy banged the print blocks together like cymbals, squealing with delight at the dull thudding noise they made. Kate thought to take them away from him, lest such
constant banging chip the woodcut. Such blocks, especially the finely detailed ones—and these two were finely detailed enough to pique any printer’s interest—were expensive and these were the last ones John had ordered. He’d never even had a chance to use them. Kate stuck out her hand to take them away from the child and then withdrew it.

What did it matter? John had just stared listlessly when she showed them to him.

“See, John,” she had said, “look at this one. It’s an excellent piece of workmanship. You can see the wheat grains in the sheaf. And this one—each rosemary sprig. See—this one would make a fine frontispiece for an almanac and this one could illustrate a garden calendar. We could set up a simple press, and if you could print up a few broadsheets we could bind them and sell them in the shop. Or perhaps even sell them in the market, singly. A farthing for a sheet.”

John had run his thumb along the finely carved wheat sheaf, then pushed them aside.

“There’s not enough room here for a press,” he said.

Kate bit back her observation that they’d better find room if he was going to continue to enjoy his quarters in the Liberty. Mary was pleading with her with eyes that seemed to say
Give him time, Kate. Don’t bedevil him about this.

But Kate didn’t know how much time they had. They’d nothing left to sell except the presses and punches. Then without the tools of the trade how would he ever make a living for his family?

By the time summer came, Kate was desperate. They’d sold all their remaining stock, and there were no funds to buy more. John continued to languish in the Liberty and had fallen into such a depression that he no longer even seemed aware of their struggle to keep him there. It was still early in the day, plenty of light streaming through the windows, when she decided to set up the press herself in the back of the print shop. How hard could it be? She’d watched John do it often enough, even helped him set the forms once or twice when the work was backed up.

The trick was to start with something simple. She cast around for something short and chose one page from a book of poetry, one of the three or four volumes of inventory they had left. She picked out four lines of a love poem to a woman named Margaret by John Skelton—four short lines. Margaret was a common enough name, and surely any love-smitten swain with
a yen for a woman named Margaret could vouchsafe a farthing for a pretty page to impress his love.

Then she sat down at the type case and went to work, picking out the letters, arranging lines of text on a handheld composing stick, and wedging the composed text into a metal frame along with a random border of twining ivy. She stood back and admired her finished work, a perfect mirror image of the pretty little poem. That wasn’t so hard.

The next part would be trickier, but she remembered John instructing her journeyman suitor, and if that lazy, fickle, no-account ne’er-do-well could do it, surely she could. It might take a couple of practice runs, and it looked to be a messy job that she did not relish. John never splattered a drop, but maybe she should put on the printer’s apron.

She picked up the composed form and carried it over to the hulking wooden press in the corner. “Here, feed on this dainty little morsel, you big, wooden monster,” she said, as with some difficulty and much heavy breathing she wedged the form onto the press bed. The next step she knew was to ink it with the big leather-padded daubs from a large jar of ink sitting at the base of the press. But how much ink? She stirred the ink, which had glopped during John’s absence. How much turpentine to add? She poured in a bit, stirred, poured a bit more, then began to mop the leather pad. A few drops splashed, then a few more, then a glob. She should have folded the paper over the form before she’d started with the ink—next time she would know—she thought as she wiped her forehead with the crook of one arm and struggled to clamp the sheet of damp paper into the holder; it always looked so easy when John did it. She slid the entire apparatus under the plate—the “platen” John called it—and shutting her eyes lowered the plate to press it against the inked form.

The result was a blotched and smeared waste of paper.

She crumpled it in a ball with a hearty “Damnation!” and began the whole process again. A couple of hours later, and after a few attempts, one thing was becoming clear: she was not nor would ever be a printer. There was only one thing left to do. She had to somehow secure his release if they were going to hold on to the shop.

She was still fighting back tears, still cleaning up ink splatters, when the bell tinkled in the bookshop. It should have been a welcome sound, but who needed custom without inventory? She sighed heavily and, wiping the sweat from her forehead, went to answer the bell.

I have borne a long time with thy husband . . . and given to him my poor fatherly counsel, but I perceive none of all this able to call him home; and therefore, Meggie, I will no longer argue nor dispute with him.

—S
IR
T
HOMAS
M
ORE TO
HIS DAUGHTER
M
ARGARET CONCERNING
W
ILLIAM
R
OPER’S
H
ERESY

B
y the time Kate entered the bookshop in the front room, the bell jingled for the second time. She drew her stained apron over her head, flung it toward the peg by the door, and lifted the latch just enough to peek at the woman standing there. She was a young woman of about Kate’s own age. Clearly nobility from the looks of her—richly dressed, her face framed by a heart-shaped cap edged with seed pearls—but not a beautiful woman, not even a very pretty one. Her nose was too big and her brows a trifle ragged, and her eyes were too wide set in her face for perfect symmetry. But those wide-set eyes carried an intelligent gleam, and she bore herself with the grace and self-confidence that only a plain woman of the upper class could master. She was perfectly groomed. Kate’s hand went self-consciously to pat at her own disheveled mop.

“I’m sorry, my lady, the bookshop is temporarily closed for restocking. Our inventory is pitifully low,” Kate said as she made to shut the door in her customer’s face.

The woman put a gloved hand on the door and shoved gently. “Then I’ve come at an opportune time,” she said. “For it is not the bookseller I seek, but the printer.”

“As I told you, we are closed. My brother is the printer. And he’s not here.”

“Oh, I thought—” She glanced meaningfully at Kate’s ink-stained clothing.

“I was just cleaning up the press.”

“Well, when will your brother return?”

“I can’t say.”

“Then I think I shall wait for him a while,” the woman said, maintaining her regal position. She crossed the room and settled herself onto the lone chair. “Don’t let me keep you from your work,” she said and gave an imperious wave of her hand.

It was accompanied by a smile and an “if it suits,” but the gesture irritated Kate. How could she say,
No, it does not suit,
without being unforgivably churlish to her betters? So what she said was, “Then it may be a long wait, my lady. The printer is in gaol.”

A look of shock at such a blunt declaration was quickly replaced by genuine distress. “Oh my dear. I am verily sorry.” The honest sympathy in this strange woman’s face, together with Kate’s disastrous afternoon’s adventure with the printing press, undid her, and before she knew it, tears were spilling down her cheeks and ill-considered words out of her mouth.

“It’s not right,” she declared, swiping at a tear. “The legal system is a travesty—Wolsey, More, the whole lot of them, the Church and the king’s lawyers all acting as though they are the law of England. They talk of righteousness and virtue while they destroy the lives of those with whom they disagree.”

She would have been wise to notice the hardening aspect of her would-be customer’s face, but she was too upset.

“And the king’s chief councillor, Sir Thomas More—I have but to mention the man’s name in my brother’s presence, and he starts to tremble. He’s the worst of the lot. A pious hypocrite, who delights in the pain of others.”

Kate was surprised at the vehemence of her diatribe. Her brother had never mentioned Sir Thomas by name—or any of his interrogators. But once, when she’d suggested that they try to appeal to the powerful Thomas More for intervention, John had grown pale and agitated and would not settle down until he’d extracted a promise from her that she would not seek him out.

“I understand your distress,” the woman said with somewhat less sympathy in her voice, “but you are wrong. If your brother is truly innocent he will be released. It is only a matter of time. Once they hear—”

“Time, you say. We have no time! And how can they hear, if they won’t listen! I’ve been to them all—turned away too many times to count by the bishop and the lord mayor. I’d even approach Sir Thomas More myself if I could afford the bribe. You don’t understand, Lady—”

“Margaret.” Her visitor’s voice had chilled, her earlier compassion frozen. “Margaret Roper. Mistress William Roper—daughter of Sir Thomas More.”

Kate wanted the floor to open up and swallow her. Now she’d done it. Gone and made everything worse. John would never get out of prison. That remark about the bribe. Dear God, if she could only call it back.

“I’m sorry, my lady. I should not have spoken so bluntly,” Kate stammered. “I did not mean to offer insult. I should have kept my opinions to myself.”

“So then you are merely sorry for the words and not the sentiment.”

“I would be less than honest to proclaim other than what my heart and reason teach. That would be equally an insult to my lady.”

Mistress Roper’s mouth twitched at the corner, an almost smile. “Well said. I admire honesty. And I shall repay the compliment by being likewise honest with you. You know that it is a sin to repeat idle gossip offered up by those jealous of another’s good fortune. All of England knows of my father’s greatness.”

“I do not deny he is a ‘great’ man, if greatness is defined by power. He hath the king’s and the cardinal’s private ear. But if as our Lord teaches, true greatness is to be found in compassion, then his reputation suffers in some quarters.”

Mistress Roper got up from her chair and moved with a swish of her finely woven skirts to the window. Kate’s gaze followed hers out to the street to where a liveried servant waited, holding a gray palfrey by the reins. Kate felt relief that the woman was leaving, but then she turned back toward Kate, apparently unwilling to let it lie.

“It might inform your opinion to know of the many good works for which my father is known. I have just now come from the poorhouse Sir Thomas keeps. Twice weekly, I make the trip down the Thames from Chelsea in a boat laden with food and healthful potions for the inhabitants there. Foodstuffs from my father’s own storehouse. Physics from his own apothecary.”

It occurred to Kate that Thomas More must be a man of some vestige of goodness, to inspire such love in his daughter that she was bent on securing the good opinion of one who mattered so little. Kate was about to apologize for speaking so bluntly when her memory conjured John’s hollow face and haunted look, and she could not stop her tongue.