CHAPTER 33
I CHOPPED THE spade into the earth, creating dark, orderly furrows. Barbara had tried to convince me to give this chore over to the gardener, sparing myself the labor, but as the sun beat warm on my back and the ground moved cool beneath my hands, I was glad to have taken it on for myself. Even though I might come away with blisters on my palms and an ache between my shoulders, in the moment I felt alive. Healthy and strong. Birdsong and soil filled my senses, and I hummed as I worked, a tune no one else in the household would recognize. Eventually the words joined me in my toil:
The white doves are flying,
The white foxes slipping,
Over, and under, and right through the wall.
Intermittently I hummed and I sang, trying to remember just what I thought I would find on the other side. Here, too, I lived behind a wall. My own choosing of late, as I hadn’t accepted a single social invitation since the Frühlingstanz where I’d seen Jerome. Then again, none had been extended. Still, the boundaries had fallen unto me in pleasant places, as the psalmist wrote, and if I lived my life with my comfortable room and a generous garden, it would be enough. My Savior promised me an eternal inheritance; I lived as his daughter in this world.
I began humming again, thinking of those creatures bent on escape. I was the dove, sent out first and living with the promise of God’s provision. I was the fox, wily and quick, slipping into the houses of great, important families, stealing all I needed. And the rabbit —quick to avoid the snare.
“That is an unfamiliar tune,” said a familiar voice behind me. I straightened and turned to see Luther at the garden gate. He picked up the melody where I’d left it and hummed it to perfection as he walked toward me.
“It is of my own invention,” I said, resuming my task.
“Is there a lyric? I am always searching for new hymns for the congregation.”
I smiled slyly, even though he couldn’t see my face. “I don’t think this is a song you would want your parishioners to sing.”
“Not bawdy, I hope?”
“Not at all. Merely subversive.”
I hacked at the earth, imagining each strike of the spade’s edge to be a sharp word said against him. Challenging his characterization of me as a weak, desperate woman. See? How strong I am. See? How capable. He, however, chipped into my anger with every note of my tune. He’d gone from humming it to expressing each syllable —“Da-da-da-da-di-dum” —as if he knew the words and chose not to sing them. After a time, I wished to join him, to lay down my tool and tell him the story and share with him the wonder of how such a sweet, simple image had turned into new life for so many women. Marriages, children —new families born of our doves and foxes and rabbits.
Stubbornly, though, I held my lips shut and increased my efforts, until Luther, his voice choked with frustration, said, “For the sake of sanity, Katie. Put that down and talk to me.”
I stood straight again, leaving the tool lodged in the dirt, but did not turn. “What have I to say to you?”
“Plenty, from what I’ve heard. Now, come.”
I felt his hand close around mine and tried to snatch it away. “You’ll get dirty.”
“I don’t care.”
Luther kept his grip, leading me to a long, rough-hewn bench along the garden wall. He let go as I sat down and took to pacing the length of it in front of me while I made a valiant attempt to tuck my stray hair behind the plain gray kerchief tied around my head and dust the lingering grains of soil from the apron I wore over my dress.
“Kaspar Glatz has left town,” he said, then paused for my reaction. I gave him none. “And he told me before he left that you said you would not have him for a husband.”
“I told you that day at the market that I would not have him.”
“No, you told me that you had no affection for him.”
“That is the second side to the same coin.”
“Hardly.” He stopped directly in my sight and stood, hands clasped behind his back like an expectant schoolteacher. “One need not have affection in order to embark on a marriage.”
“You are correct about that, Herr Doktor.” I dared not look up at him.
“von Amsdorf says I was a fool to even suggest such a match. His opinion of my friend is surprisingly unfavorable.”
“Which friend?” I asked. “Herr Glatz or me?”
“Ah, my girl, you know he is unreasonably fond of you. And ever since I first proposed to mediate an introduction between you and Kaspar, Nikolaus has been vocally opposed. On more than one occasion he has said that you are far too fine a woman to have such a skinflint foisted upon her.”
I cringed at the familiarity of the insult. “You must believe me when I tell you that I never used such a phrase to disparage Glatz’s person.”
“But do you now object? I see not. So it was not merely a matter of Nikolaus leaping to be your champion.”
He spoke it not as a question, so I offered no commentary. Yet the specificity of his words assured me that the two had discussed more than Glatz’s parsimony.
“What else did Herr von Amsdorf tell you?”
In response, Luther began pacing again. “Despite what he thinks —or you, or any of the hundreds of people so willing to advise me on matters that are little of their concern —I am not some great, sexless log.”
Before I could stop myself, I tasted garden dirt on my tongue as I clapped a hand over my mouth to stifle a laugh. “No one has ever said —”
“I may lack the youth of that fool Baumgartner, but I assure you, if given the opportunity, I shall show myself more than capable of marital vigor.”
Then I did laugh, right out loud and lustily, though I knew a more timid maiden would blush at the implication. Luther, I could tell, appreciated my laughter, rewarding me with an approving gaze that lapped at my indignation.
“And I,” he said, “unlike Kaspar Glatz, do not live in a state of poverty by choice. I have nothing, Katharina, to offer a woman. He has money enough to buy a home for each season, and I maintain a single room, cold in the winter and insufferable in the summer. Never mind luxury. I can scarcely offer comfort.”
“I seek none of that.” I spoke softly, not directly to him, as he had yet to offer me the little he had.
He came to sit beside me and touched his knuckle to my chin, lifting my face, forcing my gaze. “I gave my life to Jesus Christ the moment I left the priesthood.”
“As did I, even before I left —”
“But unlike you, I live in a certain danger because of my decision. My actions. Always. A price on my head, a threat on my life. Dear friends of mine have been lost to this conflict with the Church. So to say that I would offer a woman —that I would offer you —my life . . . I have not even that to give. Daily I live only by Christ’s protection and grace. How can I give what is not mine?”
“I ask you for nothing, Luther. You say you have no wealth; I ask for no wealth. You say you have no life? I ask for nothing more than . . .” I stopped and turned away, humiliated at the onset of tears and devastated at his gentleness as he untied the kerchief, setting free my hair, and handed it to me to dry them.
“Nothing more than . . .”
“Nothing more than what was promised. Freedom to pursue the life of my choosing. Not just a husband. I didn’t forsake my vows simply to gain favor in marriage. You didn’t either. But couldn’t it be that our freedom released us to find each other?”
I remained still as a rabbit in the field, waiting upon his response.
Finally, with a voice too soft to startle, he spoke. “It is my greatest joy, Kate, to find you. When we are apart, I hear your voice. It echoes without words, pleasant as the tune that beckoned me today. I long for your opinions, silly as they might be at times. I anticipate your face, and when I know I am to see you after some long absence, my steps quicken to find your company. My eyes do not rest until they fall upon your countenance. You are dearer to me than any friend.”
My heart soared as he spoke, like the dove over the wall, but faltered at his conclusion, for he unequivocally defined me as a friend, and I knew after this conversation, I would have to be so much more. Or nothing at all.
I took his hand, opened it, and laid my own within. I stared down, mesmerized by the sight of our flesh intertwined. “Do you know when I first heard your voice? Not from the confessional, and not that day in Torgau, when you asked about the women. Not the sound you make when you speak, but your voice? It was months before. Years, even, when I held a scrap of paper with your writing. ‘The Freedom of a Christian.’”
“I remember sending that to you.”
“Not to me directly, I know. But I was the first to read it, and somehow, I heard it in your voice. God whispered it to me, calling forth such a longing to understand. I wanted nothing more than to talk to you. And as I questioned, I felt you answer. Your letters, your messages, your translations spoke to me. Oh, my darling.” Slowly, I lifted my gaze to find him waiting. “From the moment I held your words, you have been my home.”
I watched, intently, looking for any change in his countenance. Relief, consternation, enlightenment —anything but this mask of control. When he spoke, I sank at the familiar refrain.
“I have no worldly goods to give you.”
“In that, we are equal.”
“And —” he held my hand tighter —“I will not mislead you in the matter of love. For I cannot say even now that I offer you the entirety of my heart.”
“I know that.” And I did. I always had.
He traced his finger along the thin gold band I wore. “I shall have to buy you a new ring one day. But until then, Fräulein von Bora, would you be content to simply take my hand?”
“In what way do you mean?” I would not suffer another bout of misunderstanding. I deserved a true proposal in the midst of such indirection. A sweet breeze came, blowing cool against my neck and lifting my hair to bring it —a mass of tangled strands —in a veil to obscure my vision. Gently, Luther —Martin —smoothed it from my face, and there I found him changed.
“As my wife, in every way that God intended.”
In response, I took his hand and laid it to my breast. “You have my heart, Martin. Fully and completely. And for now, I am content to share yours.”
He stood, drawing me to my feet, then closer still, into an embrace, and kissed me. Sweetly at first, fraught with trepidation. Finding no resistance on my part, he pulled me closer, his fingers tangled in my hair, my hands —their dirt long forgotten —touched to his cheeks. When he pulled away, I marked his transformation complete.
“You shall have everything that is mine to give, my Kate.” I could not mistake the dimension of his meaning. Our kiss had awakened something he feared had lain dormant too long. Age —his or mine —had not tempered desire. “All I shall ask you to share is my joy, and my sorrow.”
“That may be said of any marriage. I want more. I want to share in your thoughts. Your conversation.” I could see he intended to kiss me again, and I braced against him. “I want to know that my mind will hold a place in our home equal to any other part of my body.”
“I assure you, I should like nothing more than to begin and end each day hearing your voice in prayer.”
“What about those times when I am not in prayer?”
“Well, then —” he kissed my brow —“I can think of no other sound more pleasing to punctuate the hours of our solitude.”
I closed my eyes, content in his embrace. With him I could foresee no solitude at all.