The Heretic’s Wife Read Free Page B

Kate’s beeswaxed floorboards as she fumed silently about the books. She had been looking forward to the new books, and their inventory was pitifully low—mostly what he’d been able to print in the back room, and that wasn’t much since he couldn’t get a license for any of the Lutheran materials that were their stock-in-trade. The fire was blazing now, banishing the morning chill.
    “Have you seen Mary and the baby?” she asked, changing the subject in order not to ruin his homecoming with her scold’s tongue.
    “No. I came straight here,” he said. He was rummaging in the book cupboards gathering up pamphlets. She recognized the Antwerp imprint on some of them. Those would be Tyndale’s—all they had left.
    “What are you looking for? John, really, I am glad to see you but you probably should have gone home to see your wife before coming here.” Then she added under her breath, unable to resist, “Especially since you have returned empty-handed.”
    He strode across the room and examined the pamphlets before striding to the fire and feeding them, first one, then another, into the fire.
    “John! What in heaven’s name—”
    The bright flames leaped higher, devouring the paper and ink that he’d smuggled in at great risk. He was already at another bookshelf, rifling its contents, discarding some, clutching others to consign to the hungry blaze. He picked up the last two of Tyndale’s English New Testaments and leaned again toward the fire, shielding his face from the heat.
    She grabbed for them too late. “John! Have you gone mad? That’s the Holy Word you’re burning! And the last of our inventory.”
    “I have to do this, Kate. They’ve arrested Thomas Garrett,” he said.
    Her hand froze in midair. Thomas Garrett was a bookseller to Oxford scholars and one of their chief suppliers. What smuggled shipments John did not meet, he bought from Garrett. The heat from the fire was sucking the air out of the room, but she found breath enough to ask, “What will they do to him? Does Cardinal Wolsey have him? Or the king’s soldiers?”
    “Same difference. Henry VIII, Defender of the Faith,” John said with bitterness, “will do whatever the cardinal says. Fortunately, Garrett had his wits about him enough to escape. But others have been arrested. They tortured a parson from Honey Lane along with his servant.”
    He paused and looked hard at her, his gaze locking with her own; suddenly they were children again, and he, ever the cautious one, was warning her away from danger. “Kate, Garrett sent me a message. I may have been named.”
    His voice was calm, but she saw the fear in his eyes and suddenly his anxious, hurried movements made sense.
    “But even if that’s true and you have been named . . . you aren’t in any real danger, right? The Church has never gone after the booksellers in a serious way. It would interfere with commerce. Pope’s pony or not, the king would never allow it.”
    But even as she stammered out the words, she was remembering the new laws against printing unlicensed works and disseminating Lutheran materials in particular. They had considered the edicts hardly more than a conciliatory nod to the clerics since they seemed to have more to do with commerce than heresy. “Aren’t you being overly cautious? It’s not like you are a Lutheran preacher or something. Our customers come to us, asking for the books. Surely, you would get off with no more than a fine or a threat to shut down the shop. If that happens, I agree, then we burn the books.”
    “What is Thomas Garrett, Kate, but a bookseller? That’s why he was at Oxford. And he found a ready enough market. Several of the students are being interrogated,” he said, stuffing another gospel onto the fire. She stepped back, away from the searing heat.
    “That was the Gospel of Saint Luke! You printed that one yourself.” She had a sudden vision of him bent over his press, laboring secretly at night in violation of