CHAPTER 20
IN AN UNLIKELY turn of events, I found myself playing the part of the muse to Christoph’s continued efforts to perfect his skill. After completing my initial portrait, he declared a desire to paint a series of the wives of the patriarchs. For his first endeavor, I was to be Rebekah, and the fountain in the center of the garden would play the role of the well where she was discovered to be Isaac’s bride. Wrapped in yards of a fine, gauzy cloth and given a vase to hold upon my shoulder, I spent untold hours staring into the face of the horse groomer chosen to play the part of the servant who held out a handful of jewels. From the story, I knew the prizes to be a bracelet and a gold ring for the young woman’s nose.
Christoph instructed me to look the groomer straight in the eye, intended to demonstrate an acknowledgment and acceptance of my fate. I complied, imagining him to be Luther, fulfilling such a divine errand in introducing me to Jerome. He had claimed me just as if he’d put a ring through my nose, leaving me no choice but to see God’s purpose. Posing for Christoph afforded me hours of contemplation. When my eyes lost their focus and my shoulder ached under its burden, my mind set loose, composing endless conversations I would never have.
I imagined seeing my father, telling him, with appropriate humility, that I was living just as he always said our family deserved. My temporary home, my peers, my daily life —all of it fitting our family’s station. A life I might have enjoyed had I been born two generations earlier. I like to imagine he’d be pleased, selflessly thankful for God’s provision for his daughter. And yet, my clearest memory of my father remained his pale, puffy face at the convent gate. And nothing but silence since. When I searched the darker recesses of my heart, I knew my true motivation was to gloat to my stepmother, to let her see how far I’d risen above her expectation and desire. When I caught myself in those thoughts, I closed my eyes for as long as Christoph would allow, praying for God to forgive my pride.
But then, even in the midst of repentance, I’d wonder —was it pride? Was it truly a sin to be happy, and grateful for that happiness? And yet, how could I ever reach back to people I’d left behind and share with them my happiness, when they had done everything in their power to deny me? When I gave my prayers of thanks, as I did to God every morning and every night on bended knees beside my bed, I thanked him for his provision. For this comfortable home, no matter how temporary, and the graciousness of my hosts, no matter how coerced, and all the small comforts I never imagined during my sparse existence at Marienthrone. I thanked him for granting me understanding of the gospel, and for Luther’s work in securing that for all. Those and more, my pious thoughts in prayer.
Always, though, while draped in silks, playing the silent role of a woman on the brink of marriage, my mind wandered to Jerome. Not until I met him did I fully understand why the Church kept its consecrated brides of Christ locked behind convent walls. If one as homely as I could be brought to the precipice of sin, what chance would a beauty like Therese have of standing unscathed? Having just a taste of what it meant to be a woman in a man’s embrace, to experience the nascent longing that leads to a fulfillment of purpose, I found myself restless and unsatisfied during any moment spent away from Jerome Baumgartner.
The joyous counter to that dilemma was the fact that I had very few moments spent away from him. He joined us nearly every evening for supper, along with a myriad of neighbors. On evenings when musicians entertained us in exchange for a meal, Jerome and I danced until we were breathless. Nights when we had no music, we walked the extent of the gardens in the moonlight. In either case, our bodies moved together in perfect concert. To be polite, of course, I danced with other guests, as did he, but our eyes found each other’s between every turn, and when the music was lively enough for a volta, I declined any other partner. Jerome would grasp my waist, lift me up, spin me nearly all around, and those tiny wisps of time passed like moments of pure flight. Sometimes when we walked in the garden, he would hum a tune and do the same, only holding me aloft longer than any proper choreography would allow. From her place in the shadows, Marina would offer sweet applause, and we would separate and bow. In Marina’s presence, he would kiss my hand. When I dismissed her to prepare our room, Jerome would pull me to the shadows, take me in his arms, and kiss me until my whole being felt like it was trapped in a volta spin.
Rather than live as the perpetual houseguest on the charity of the Reichenbachs, I was eventually installed as something of a tutor, giving daily instruction in Latin to the children for two hours each afternoon. This was yet another aspect of my life to be arranged by Luther, proposed to the delight of the parents and despair of the children. However, I proved myself a competent teacher and felt I more than earned my keep.
“Do you think the children would object if I were to sit in on their lessons?” Jerome asked one evening. It was the tail end of June, warm and near dark. Inside, a houseful of guests drank and danced, reveling in the summer solstice, mindless of the pagan roots of the celebration. The festivities allowed us to slip away unnoticed, and we’d walked clear to the back wall of the garden. “My Latin is deplorable. Always has been. Since I was a child.”
“So long ago as that?”
“Then again, I don’t think I would learn anything from you, either. I would be far too distracted.”
I stood still, waiting for his kiss. He’d done so often enough in the weeks since the first that I anticipated the act. I marked the change in his voice, the trailing of the final syllable. There’d be a glint in his eye, an angling of his face. And always, a preceding touch. The tips of his fingers to my jaw, guiding my lips to his, as if they couldn’t make their way if left to their own devices.
And yet, despite the routine, this kiss —like the first, like every one since —turned me into something like a molten taper, great globs of my resolve dripping away with each bit of his insistence. I sensed a wick, running down the length of me, fashioned from vows and prayer. It diminished with every minute spent in his embrace and now burned double-bright, threatening to drag me into darkness.
“Wait.” I took a moment to catch my breath.
His face hovered inches above mine, far enough that I could see its handsome planes, chiseled sharper in the moonlight. Somewhere behind me, a torch glowed, the orange light dancing in his eyes. Every warning I’d ever heard about the evil of men’s intent might have proved him to be the devil himself, if he hadn’t smiled and doused the flame.
“There’s no one here.” He gathered me closer, as if those words and that gesture would serve to quell my fear.
I pressed my hands against his doublet and held him off. “No, Jerome.”
Looking chagrined, he backed away. “Forgive me, Katharina. For my forward behavior. I didn’t realize —”
“Don’t apologize.” I kept my hand pressed against his coat, aware of the pulse at my wrist, how it beat against his heart. “You’ve done nothing I haven’t . . . permitted.”
Relief washed across his face, and I saw for the first time what he might have looked like as a boy, newly released from guilt. I longed to comb the fallen black curls from his brow, but dared not bring any part of my flesh into contact with his, no matter how innocent the touch. I stepped away, allowing the darkness to cool my cheeks. Strains of music and revelry made their way even to this great distance. I forced my breath to match the rhythm and turned toward the laughter, wishing for a moment of lightness to descend between us.
“Shall I walk you back?” When I declined, he led me to sit on the stone bench with only a pinch to my sleeve. He sat at a distance so respectable, the holy book from which the priest read at mass would fit between us.
“Don’t be angry with me, Katharina. I couldn’t bear it.”
“How could I be? Without turning against myself?” The need to soothe him took me by surprise, and I was glad of the expanse of stone, or I might have taken his petulant head to my lap. “It’s only . . . I don’t think this is what Luther intended when he arranged for us to meet.”
“Really?” Jerome wagged his brows mischievously, becoming more and more of a boy. “Then you don’t know him as well as I do. He’s hardly the saint his followers would have you believe, and well aware of the workings —”
“Stop!” It was the second time this evening —the second time since our acquaintance —that I put my hand up against him, but this time it was a playful slap in attempt to stop his words, and my breath was short from laughter. “You really are such a child.”
“Am I?” He grinned, but made it clear he expected an answer.
I sobered. Of course he was a man, every bit and breath of him. But I couldn’t say as much out loud. In that moment, the very word —man —carried a weight of sinful thought. I fought for clarity and composure.
“The Apostle Paul,” I said, then repeated the name as Jerome appeared to protest, “says that there comes a time when we must put away childish things. And I fear that, these evenings, my actions with you . . . I have been childish.”
“No.” He leaned forward, but kept himself behind our agreed invisible barrier. “You are a woman.”
“Acting like —”
He was close again, filling all the space between us, filling all my senses, and the only defense I had was my voice.
“I haven’t been giving thought to the consequences of my actions. What you must think of me. What . . . my sisters. We risked everything, and here I fritter with this dalliance.”
“Is that all I am to you, Katharina?”
I’d hurt him, or was close to it. His eyes never left mine, and his lips remained parted after saying my name.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what you are because I don’t know . . . anything. I’ve never been a young girl, not in the way young girls are out in the world. I’ve never been silly.”
“Do you feel you’re being silly now?”
And there he voiced my greatest fear.
“I feel an obligation to Luther.”
He broke our gaze, briefly. “As do I.”
The summer night took on a chill, not from the perfumed air of the garden, but from my own lungs, filling with winter, forming a fragile, tight frost. “Is that, then, why you’ve been so liberal with your attentions?”
He laughed, and I felt a tiny crack of warmth. “If anything, it is my fear of him that has kept my attentions at bay. He told me he was bringing a young woman here. Someone close to my age, bright. And that he thought we might get on well enough with each other. And I thought it would be enjoyable to have someone new to talk to. To dance with. But then . . .”
Somehow, my hand was in his again, palm up, his thumb against my wrist. His lips against my pulse, and my heart a wild tumult within. The next I knew, he was on his knees, gazing up, and speaking.
“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
He bowed, touched his head to my knee, and when he looked up —this was new. This man, this touch, this look that turned his eyes to embers.
“Allow me, then, to put away my childish behavior and present myself to you as a man. A worthy man of God, who offers you his hand in marriage.”
A new burst of music came from the house, reminding me that I should be feeling joy, yet I wished with all my heart we’d stayed for the dancing.
“You can’t mean that, Jerome.”
He looked shocked. Ready to protest. “It’s what —”
“Luther wants?”
I’d touched a bit of truth, because he sank back, but then resurged. “It’s what I want.”
“Why?”
Back in the house, I knew couples were reeling, and I counted the measures waiting for his answer, wondering which he would choose. He wanted to marry me to be a part of Luther’s grand liberation. He wanted to establish himself as a man, independent of his family. We’d been too familiar with each other, and I’d ignited some level of lust that begged for marriage to legitimize it.
“You’re trembling, my darling. Why are you so afraid? I thought —I’d hoped —you’d be happy.”
“You mean you’ve thought about it before this minute?”
“Truthfully? No. But now I can see nothing else.”
I was melting again. Not with the flame of passion from moments before, but a gentle, loose puddling. What must it be like to come to such rash decisions? All my life, I’d lived without my own will, and the two commitments I’d made —to take the veil, and to leave it —came after months of agonizing thought. Here he could decide on a spur to propose marriage? As if I could respond in like time? My foot tapped to the music. Faster, even.
“Your parents would never approve.”
“My parents have no say in whom I love.”
Then the music stopped, and I feared his last words would be swept away with the final notes.
“Do you, Jerome?” Before meeting him, I’d never longed for a man to love me. So many mountains loomed ahead, an entire life for which I’d been ill prepared. How could I survive without such a promise?
He answered as I knew he would —as I hoped he would —with a kiss. One that brought him up from his knees to sit beside me, then brought me to my feet, full against him. He trailed the words down the heat of my throat, until no other possible truth remained.
“I love you, Katharina von Bora. I love you.”
I said nothing because I could offer nothing but tears and disbelief until finally he pulled away, gripping my arms, holding me in a still, silent dance, and I confessed my own.