CHAPTER 32

WHEN I CAME inside after my walk home that afternoon, I forgot about my new book of poetry. Instead, I went immediately to Barbara Cranach, pulled her away from the kitchen, where she was giving the cook final instructions for supper, and insisted that she listen to the entirety of my tale. My love and loss of Jerome, my contempt for Glatz and the clumsiness of his confession, and the depths of my feelings for Luther. She listened to it all without a hint of surprise and offered no comment beyond a broad, soft bosom on which to rest my sob-wracked head.

“And so,” I said when the power of speech returned, “I cannot see him again.”

“But that hardly seems best. Let me talk —”

“No. I don’t want to add embellishment to that image he already has. That I need someone to be cajoled into having me. The last squab on the platter, growing colder and less appetizing with each passing moment.”

She chuckled. “You’re hardly a squab.”

“You’re right. I don’t know that I merit even that distinction.”

“You will see him again, in the same capacity in which you always have. He is a friend of our family, a welcome guest in our home, a member of our community, and the leader of our church. What? Did you think you would simply lock yourself away in your room every time he comes to dinner?”

“No.” I swallowed, bracing myself to voice my actual thought. “I thought it might be time that I leave this place.”

“Leave? Our home? Your home? Where would you go?”

“I’m a qualified governess. Or teacher —maybe even at the girls’ school here. I could find a room —”

“You have a room. Here.”

“But surely when I arrived here, you had not thought for me to stay forever.”

“Truthfully? No. I hoped not, because I knew Luther wanted to find a husband for you. He still wants that, I’m sure.”

I tried to smile. “So did I, until today. But I want to love the man I marry, and I want to marry the man I love.”

“As you should. In the meantime, you’ll stay on here, just as you have been, without argument, and without sulking. There’s no shame in caring for a man, and I won’t have you hiding away as if there were.”

And so, I did not. Her words prompted a new surge of strength. I allowed my prayers to take on a new confidence, praying not for Luther’s love, but for his safety, and the continued efforts to bring people into the same freedom I now knew. I worshiped under his leadership, singing hymns penned by his hand. I sat under his instruction on those Sundays he taught from behind the pulpit. Each time my heart wandered into longing, I took it captive and turned to Scripture to find a more fitting object of desire. To learn, to read, to study in a manner befitting the risk I took with my very life.

Still, though, in all of this, I allowed myself to embrace what it meant to be a woman of my age and standing. With my second year of freedom coming to a close, I embarked on a quest to embrace all forms of vanity so long denied during my years beneath the veil. I could not turn back the years, could not wake up in the morning as a dewy-faced girl of nineteen, but neither did I need to comport myself as a fitting mate for a nearsighted man in need of a reading companion.

With Barbara’s help, I adopted a new hairstyle, winding my braids in a crown at the back of my head, with the front left in long, loose curls that fell to my shoulders. My ears were pierced, and I took to wearing a pair of earrings given to Cranach as payment for a portrait.

“But on condition,” he said, “that you sit for me for your own portrait.”

“Do you think I am ready?” It was one of those rare evenings when only the three of us supped in the family dining room.

He considered me for a time. “Not yet.”

In a sense, I did hide from Luther in that I was always before him, but always out of reach. Any evening he came to the Cranach home for supper, I sat myself beside him but spoke only as much as good manners required. If I found myself in another’s home, at another table, I maneuvered to sit as far away as possible and made great sport of catching his eye. I wore my red dress with more than fashionable frequency and sought two more gowns in equally flattering colors, collecting them from Barbara Cranach’s generous friends, then altering them with my own brocade and stitchery to make them unrecognizable from their original style.

The previous spring, I’d been too preoccupied with Ave and the preparations for her wedding to take full advantage of all the social opportunities in the small town of Wittenberg, but this year I would not make the same mistake. Once released from the somber observance of Lent, the town embarked on a season of celebrations. Grand houses, like the Cranachs’, hosted banquets and balls, with music and dancing that lasted well into the morning. When there was no home to host, the community hall opened wide its doors to men and women of all society faced off in long lines of dancing. Here I was held aloft in the strong arms of a blacksmith, touched hands to the butcher, and locked elbows with the man who had sold me my favorite book of poems.

Luther was here, too, as was Glatz, marking his final evening before returning to Orlamunde. I danced with neither. Not with Glatz, of course, because he never indulged, and not with Luther because we had a long-held understanding that we did not dance with each other. On any other occasion, however, he would be at my elbow, in my ear, commenting on the couples, pointing out the next best prospect for a turn. On this night, I kept myself on the other side of the room, knowing with the musicians’ every flourish, my face flushed a little more, my breath came with an attractive heaving, and my eyes shone bright enough to catch his. I offered no smile, no wave, not so much as an acknowledging crook of my finger. But his eyes, I knew, never left me. In fact, I felt every eye on me, knowing I was the whisper of the town —the former nun, the last to be unmarried, shamelessly on display.

While I may have exaggerated my status in the eyes of Wittenberg, I did not imagine one particular set trained upon me as I drained my cup of the delicious, fruity concoction dipped from the large bowl at the back table. They were as distinct as the evening I first saw them, just as bulbous and unforgiving. Frau Baumgartner, her face both round and pinched, coming to a point with her ever-disapprovingly pursed lips.

Startled, I turned my back to Jerome’s mother to hide the straightening of my dress, the patting of the sweat from my brow, and the deep, bracing breath I would need to face her.

“Fräulein von Bora?” Her voice dripped with empty friendship. “It is still Fräulein, is it not?”

I ran my hands the length of my bodice and offered an equally forced smile. “Frau Baumgartner. What a surprise to see you here.”

“I would have hardly known it was you. You’ve —” she made an obvious search for the word —“changed.”

I dipped my cup again, my eyes scanning the crowd over the brim, thinking there must be someone who could rescue me, when I saw Nikolaus von Amsdorf making his way toward me.

Escape.

“If you’ll —”

“Surprisingly enough,” she continued, “we do have some family in this city, so we’ve come to introduce Jerome’s fiancée. Have you had an opportunity to meet her yet?”

“I have not. Ah, Herr von Amsdorf.” I could hardly stand up under the relief. “I believe you had the next dance, did you not?”

“I did.” He offered his arm, nodded to Frau Baumgartner, and took the cup from my hand, setting it on the table. He led me away, steadying me as I stumbled against his step.

The musicians were mid-tune in a complicated dance of intertwining couples, nothing we could immediately join, making me doubly grateful for his participation in our ruse.

“Where are you taking me?” I asked, as we were clearly not joining the dance.

“Outside,” he answered genially. “You need some air.”

I tugged myself back. “I don’t have to leave. I belong here as much as anyone.” My belligerence surprised me, as did the very sound of my words, thick within my mouth, and rounder than they should be.

“You’re a little beschwipst.”

“Drunk? I haven’t touched the wine.”

“The punch, Fräulein. Just as dangerous.”

“Oh.” I glanced over my shoulder to see if Luther was watching, wondering what he might think of such a display; instead, I saw a face equally familiar.

Though it had been months, I reacted to the sight of Jerome Baumgartner as if I’d seen him just yesterday. The same thick, dark hair, the same shadow of a beard on his face, the same dark lashes that would fan across the top of his cheeks when he closed his eyes. His eyes were not closed, however. They caught mine and held in a steady gaze, causing me to grip von Amsdorf’s arm all the harder.

I tucked my face into the crook of von Amsdorf’s neck and whispered loud enough to be heard above the music. “Is that his fiancée?”

“It is. Fräulein Geldsack,” von Amsdorf said wryly.

The young lady in question may have been blessed with wealth, as von Amsdorf’s unflattering nickname alleged, but she was a homely girl, with sallow cheeks and a dreary expression. She clutched Jerome’s arm like a farmer’s wife with a wayward goat. Though her dress was the height of fashion and made from material finer than I’d ever know, she seemed little more than a form within its frame. It seemed to touch no part of her body, unlike the lank hair that escaped from her cap and lay in spears against her neck.

“Sweet Saint Paul, von Amsdorf. How rich is she?” My own question brought me to a fit of laughter, undaunted by the cupping of my hand against my mouth, and he speeded our progress through the crowd and out into the courtyard, where a ring of torches gave light and warmth against the chilly spring night.

Once we were safely outside, von Amsdorf informed me that she was from a very important family.

“Ah, yes.” I stood on my own. “Well I know the importance of a good family to the Baumgartners. But I repeat: how rich is she?”

He smiled, creating handsome planes in the torchlight. “Very.”

“And how young?” He looked uncomfortable, and I continued. “It’s a fair question. The girl still has pimples on her face.”

“Fourteen,” he said, and I made him repeat it.

“So.” The ground was spinning again, and I backed into a stone bench and sat down. “I’ve been thrown over for an ugly child?”

“We’ve always said Baumgartner was a fool.” He sat next to me. “Unworthy of you.”

“We?”

“Luther. Me. Anyone who knows the tale.”

“Except Frau Baumgartner.”

“Yes, except her. Luther isn’t happy with the match at all.”

“I don’t give a fig what Luther is and isn’t happy about.” Again my words surprised me, but I knew they rang true —not a product of too much punch. “I believe he has grown too fond of his own opinion.”

“You know he holds you in high regard.”

“So high that he would foist me onto a man like Kaspar Glatz?”

Von Amsdorf said nothing, but his silence conceded my point.

“Am I so undesirable?”

“You know better than that, Fräulein. If anything Martin would be hard-pressed to find anybody he deemed good enough for you.”

“Then why not him? Or you?” I laughed, a sound far too bitter, considering the lingering sweetness in my mouth. “I declare in this moment I will consider only two men worthy of me. You, because you are handsome, and a fine dancer, and have the physique and —I assume —the vigor of a man half your age.”

He laughed but did not disagree.

“Or Luther. Because I love him.”

There was enough of a reaction on his part to assure me of the sharpness of my senses and the fact that I had confirmed a suspicion he’d long held.

“Have you told him this?”

“Not in so many words, no. And I’m asking you, as a friend, not to tell him either. I don’t know why I said anything —and no, it is not because I am, as you say, beschwipst. It is a truth I have carried longer than I can say.”

“You have my word,” he said, and I utterly trusted him.

Inside, the crowd applauded the end of the song, and von Amsdorf held out his hand. “Shall we?”

I shook my head. “I can’t go back in there. I can’t face him.”

Had von Amsdorf asked me if, by him, I meant Jerome, Luther, or even Glatz, I would not have been able to say. Thankfully, he did not ask. He simply took my hand and brought it to his lips, placing a lingering kiss that made me wish I could open my heart to him.

“Do you want to know why I think Luther never considered a marriage between you and me?” he asked, looking up over the back of my own hand.

“Yes.”

“Because I am one of his closest friends. We will always be in each other’s lives. And I don’t think he could bear it.”

Whether or not they were true, von Amsdorf’s words healed me in a way no priestly absolution ever had, and I brought his hand to my lips to kiss. “Will you go inside and find the Cranachs? Tell them I’ve gone home?”

“Of course. Wait here, and I’ll escort you.”

“No, please. I don’t want to infringe on your evening. They’ve a coach here, and a driver.”

“A coach? On such a fine night, for such a short walk?” He inhaled, expanding his strong, broad shoulders. “Nonsense. I’ll send word in to Lucas, and then I’m walking you home, so you can tell me every word you said to that skinflint Glatz.”