The Heretic’s Wife Read Online Free PDF

especially this king, at one’s peril. Thomas was fifty-one years old, and he felt every birthday in his bones. He had served Henry well, but it appeared he was not to be allowed to retire. How could he answer “nay” and not provoke his king to wrath? But how could he answer “yea” and preserve his public honor? He got up wearily and poked at the fire, gathering the coals back together. His eye fell on a small bound packet.
    Meg had mentioned another message. He recognized Cuthbert Tunstall’s familiar seal. He tore this one open with more enthusiasm. It contained a small book and a few pamphlets. Although the two colleagues often exchanged books, Thomas examined this book with curiosity and some surprise. It was Tyndale’s English New Testament! He’d heard about it, though he’d not seen one before because, like all works containing Lutheran doctrine and glosses, it was banned under the bishop’s recent monition.
    A scrap of vellum fell out and fluttered to the floor. Thomas bent to retrieve it. The letter, written in Latin, as was all correspondence among More, Bishop Tunstall, and Cardinal Wolsey, gave More specific dispensation to possess the book along with a request to help catch out the “sons of iniquity” who were spreading Luther’s poison across England. The letter further suggested that Sir Thomas could best serve this cause by writing a refutation of Tyndale for publication and distribution, and offered monetary compensation.
    Thomas opened the English New Testament with curiosity and, squinting in the candlelight, flipped through the pages. Tyndale was a capable translator and a cunning one. Each page fueled Thomas’s anger more: the base Anglo-Saxon word choices, the plainness of the verbiage, the use of the word
congregation
and not
church,
the use of
elder
in place of
priest,
deliberately stripping the Church of its claim to being Christ’s body on earth. Even the use of
repent
and not
do penance,
a blatant slap at the Church’s penitential system of indulgences. He scanned the heretical Lutheran glosses that railed against the power of the Church, feeling his temper rise.
Coenum!
Excrement! A foul heretical document!
    His fingers itched to begin.
    Thomas would not help Henry make a legal wife of his whore, but this he could do. This he would do. And for free. He slammed the little pocketsized book shut, the profane thing, cheaply bound, cheaply printed, and made to throw it in the fire. But no, not the book. The book was evidence. Itwas the book’s author who should be consigned to the flames. He and all other foul and stinking heretics like him, who would sully England with this profane offal.
    From somewhere deep in the heart of the garden, he heard an animal roar. Samson. The keeper had given the beast a brief furlough from his cage. The sap was rising in the earth, and Samson would be feeling the stirrings inside himself. He would be beating on his chest, lunging at the leash that kept him inside the walled garden, anger in his wild cry. Sir Thomas thumbed through the other heretical samples, feeling a great sympathy with Samson’s rage. But he could not beat his chest and scream into the silence of slumbering Chelsea House. Sir Thomas More was a civilized man. A great scholar. A man of classical learning. An honorable man. And a Christian.
    He slammed the New Testament down on the table and pounded it with his fist, then stood up and, gathering his ermine-fringed cloak, strode from the room. The door slammed behind him as he went in the direction of the porter’s lodge.

THREE

By burning Luther’s books you may rid your bookshelves of him but you will not rid men’s minds of him.
    —E RASMUS OF R OTTERDAM
    T he daffodils were blooming in the window box outside Gough’s Book and Print Shop, but neither their brave yellow blossoms nor the thin sunlight lifted Kate’s spirits. Not one word from John since the day two weeks ago when they had taken him away. He would have gotten a