The Heretic’s Wife (9 page)

“Charity is a necessary thing in a great man. Sir Thomas is a man of public virtue.”

She could tell by the flash of irritation on Mistress Roper’s face that she caught the implication of those words, but she recovered quickly.

“I was returning from a
private
errand to this almshouse, when I decided to stop in Paternoster Row. I am a great lover of books. My father sees that all his daughters receive a classical education, even his wards. As a bookseller, surely you appreciate the value of that.” She paused to see if this had any softening effect. Kate remained silent. “I saw your printer’s sign, and as I am in need of a printer’s services, I thought I should stop in.”

A likely story, Kate thought. She knew Sir Thomas’s works were printed by his brother-in-law Rastell. The woman was probably spying for her father.

When she said nothing Margaret Roper continued. “You may be wondering why I did not go to our usual printer. But this is mine own translation, and I wanted to surprise my father with it. Your shop would have been very convenient, since I pass so close by . . . twice weekly.”

Her voice rose slightly on the
twice weekly
. As if to remind again of Sir Thomas’s charity.

“I’m sorry we cannot claim the custom of so noble a house, Lady Margaret, but as you see we are practically out of business.” She made a sweeping gesture with her hands to indicate the empty shelves. “There is a printer on the other side of St. Paul’s. He can probably help you.”

“I’m sorry too,” Mistress Roper said, moving to the door. “But perhaps I can help you in another way.”

Why would you want to help us?
Kate wondered.
What are we to you?
But she had the good sense to stay silent. She thought she knew why. Kate had challenged the perception of her father’s greatness. Mistress William Roper
née
More could not let that go unanswered—both for love and argument’s sake.

She was standing at the door, her back to Kate, fingering the door latch. “What are the charges against your brother?” She turned around to face Kate.

“There are no charges. He was arrested under suspicion of disseminating Lutheran materials.”

“Does he disseminate Lutheran materials?”

“They found no evidence either on his person or in this shop to support such a charge. None gave witness against him. He made no confession even under torture. He is being held without due process in the Liberty of the Fleet where his wife and I battle poverty to ensure he has a minimum of creature comforts.”

“Does he have Lutheran sympathies?”

Mistress Roper was not a lawyer’s daughter for naught. Kate paused, weighing her answers carefully.

“My lady, no person can know another’s heart. His testimony is a matter of public record.”

“I see. And what of you? Do you have Lutheran sympathies?”

Kate hesitated and looked her interrogator directly in the eyes, so there could be no mistaking her answer. “I have promised my brother we will never sell Lutheran materials in this shop. Whatever my opinions are regarding reform or any other matter are mine alone, and I choose to keep them to myself.”

Lady Margaret smiled faintly. “A politic answer and one my own father would admire. I do understand the lure of such sentiments. They have infected our own household. My own dear husband has been seduced by the Lutheran zeal for reform.”

“And yet he remains a free man.”

Lady Margaret nodded as if to say, I take your point. “I will speak to my father and see what benefit to you and your brother may be gleaned. What is your brother’s name again?”

“Gough. John.”

“And your name?”

Kate hesitated just a fraction of a second, a hesitation that she was sure did not go unmarked by Lady Margaret. But what choice did she have? And there was compassion in the woman’s demeanor. She could hardly be faulted for loving her father. Perhaps she could use her influence to make her point whilst at the same time doing “a good work.”

“Kate Gough,” she said, curtsying lightly. “My lady, we will be forever grateful for your kindness.”

“I will do that which I can do, Kate Gough,” she said, “and I shall pray that both you and your brother find your way back to the bosom of the one, true Church.”

The next day Kate returned from visiting her brother to find the latch bent, the front door to the bookshop open, and the printing press smashed.

Three days later John came home.

Kate was disappointed when John did not come back to the shop immediately but stayed at home with his wife and child. He just needs a few days to rest, she told herself. But when she told him about the destruction of the press, his reaction was not what she’d expected. He’d seemed numb to any emotion, even anger.

“It is a warning,” he said. “We shall heed it.”

“But how shall we print without a press? And since you burned all our inventory, what shall we sell?”

“Nothing for a while, I think. It is not a good time to be a printer in England. We can print nothing that is not licensed by the king, and he will never grant a license to the kind of books that have been our stock-in-trade.”

They were sitting in John and Mary’s daub-and-wattle cottage, sparsely furnished now, with little more than a bed and a table. They had sold the cupboard and most of the plate, even sold the wall hanging that had been a wedding gift from Mary’s parents—sold it all to keep John in the Liberty. The rent on the roof over their heads was due and they could not pay.

“How shall we live, John, without the press? Shall we sell Pipkin’s cradle next? Are the four of us to live crammed into my tiny room above the shop? Of course, without a press, I suppose we could set up a bed in the print shop,” she said wryly. “But we still have to buy food.”

She regretted almost instantly the remark about the cradle, but at least it brought some fleeting expression to his face. Pain was after all better than feeling nothing, wasn’t it?

He did not look at his wife or at her when he answered, just stared at the floor in that habit he’d acquired in prison. “Mary’s father has offered to let us come and live with them in Gloucestershire.”

He did not even say
until the trouble passes,
or
for the time being
. His voice was weighed down with resignation. Kate felt a sudden surge of fear, as though she were watching some fast-flowing stream carry him away from her, and he wasn’t even struggling. “You mean close our father’s shop?” she whispered in disbelief. “Permanently? Move to Gloucestershire and . . . do what?”

Mary, who had been bouncing her restless son on her knees, set him on the floor and put her arm across her husband’s shoulders in a protective fashion.
“It will only be for a little while, Kate. Gloucestershire is really pretty country. And there’s not all the fighting over religion there. Not a bishop within a hundred miles. It smells better than London too. Lots of fresh air for Pipkin. You are to come with us. My parents have plenty of room. They bade me tell you to come. John is going to help my father. His back’s been poorly.”

Before Kate could stop herself, she blurted out, “John? Herding sheep!” The look of pleading in Mary’s face made her instantly regret the words. “I suppose the fresh air will be good for him,” she added lamely.

“Good. It’s settled then.” Mary gave them her bravest smile. “You’re coming with us?”

Kate shook her head, unable to quite believe what she’d just heard. “That is very dear of your parents, Mary. But I think I’ll stay right here for a while and watch the shop. I have a bit of money still and one or two things left I can sell. I can at least make it through the summer. Who knows what may happen by then?”

“But you will come for a visit? Tell her she must come for a visit, John.”

John raised his head and looked at her. The deadness in his eyes frightened her. “You must come for a visit,” he said.

It turned out that the only thing Kate had left to sell was the Wycliffe Bible that had been passed down to her from her great-grandmother Rebecca. She had never known her grandmother Becky, but even as a child she’d loved the big Bible, loved the way the words with their funny spellings crawled across the crowded pages, loved the little pictures in the margins. It was not like the books the printing presses turned out. This one was all written out by hand, supposedly by some long-ago relative, an illuminator who lived in Bohemia over a hundred years ago.

On the July morning that John and Mary and little Pipkin, who held on to her and could only be pried away with the promise of a lamb, departed, Kate took the Bible out from its special hiding place beneath a loose stone in the hearth. Who would buy such a thing? she thought as she removed the linen wrappings and rubbed her hand over its tooled leather binding. Few could afford it. Who would dare take the risk of owning it in such perilous times?

She opened it carefully, remembering how her father used to show it to her with such pride before he was arrested, how her mother could no longer
bear to see it after he died. It opened to a brightly illustrated picture of the baby Moses floating down a blue Nile River in his little basket. Everything was in miniature—his perfect baby’s face, each rib of the basket so perfectly executed she could almost feel the texture of the reed—and all within the intricate capital that swirled and swooped in brilliant reds and blues and a tracing of gold down the margin of the page. The face of Miriam, his sister, peered into the basket at the child. That long-ago artist had captured in her expression the love she must have felt for her baby brother. It was a beautiful face. Kate wondered about the model. She looked so different from the women Kate knew—exotic somehow, with a fall of dark hair and almond-shaped eyes and tawny skin that glowed.

How could she could bring herself to sell such a book?

She sat for a long time on the cool stones of the hearth, tears pooling in the wells of her eyes. She thought of Pipkin and his little lamb and how she should have gone with them but knowing that she could not for she would surely wither like a flower in winter without her books or literate companions, with only Pipkin and his little lamb for company—and the worst part: she would be existing on the charity of others. She was turning the pages absently, no longer absorbed in the parade of colors but mired in her own gray loneliness, when she came to a folded piece of parchment interleaved and stuck so tightly that she thought at first it might have been bound with the text. She tugged gently and it came away.

She wiped her eyes, her little wallow in the slough of self-pity momentarily banished by her curiosity. She unfolded the yellowed parchment and squinted to make out the faded ink. No brilliant pigments here but just a few words written in the familiar hand of the rest of the Bible and centered like a poem in the middle of the page.

My dearest Anna, please hold these words in your heart until you believe them: “All shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well. For this is the great deed that our Lord shall do, in which He shall save His Word in all things—He shall make well all that is not well.” These are the words of a holy woman I once knew. Now that I am an old man I understand them better—though not completely. I spent so many years grieving that I sometimes overlooked the treasure that I had been given in you. I hope one day you will understand these words too. I hope you know that I have always loved you. You were the fulfillment of this promise in my life.—Your loving grandfather, Finn.

Anna squinted at the date:
14 June 1412
—over one hundred years ago. She had a sudden curiosity about this Anna. Had she found all things well? Had she even found the note? They had certainly never found it in all the years they’d had the Bible. Had it lain, hidden for over a century, perhaps a message to her and not to the Anna for whom it was intended?

In which He shall save His Word in all things,
the note had said. What would John make of it? Would he see the reference to the “Word” as affirmation, or would he read it as condemnation? He had certainly been carrying out the family tradition of helping save the Word—at least until recently. Or did the “Word” refer to some promise that had more to do with the hope that was carried in the Word than the actual preserving of the Scriptures? It was a cryptic message—hard to decipher without knowing the writer and his Anna, this ancestor who might have been bone of her bone, flesh of her flesh.