“Aye, that you did—so that I often went hungry and was unable to pay for the repair of my boots. I had to sing at the doors of rich men for alms, and to run up and down the quadrangles for half an hour before bedtime, or the coldness of my body would have kept me from sleep altogether.”
“And you bear me a grudge for that, eh, my son?”
“Nay, Father. For, having no money to spend on folly, I must give all my energies to learning; and knowledge is a greater prize than meat for supper—even if it is not always of the law!”
“Thomas, I understand you not. You are a good son, and yet you are a fool. Instead of giving yourself entirely to the study of the law, what do you do? When that fellow Erasmus came to England you spent much time … discoursing, I hear, prattling the hours away, studying Greek and Latin together … when I wished you to work at the law. And now that you are accounted a worthy and utter barrister, and you are made a burgess, what do you do? You… a humble subject of the King, must arouse the King's wrath.”
“Father, one day, if I am a rich man, I will repay the hundred pounds.”
“Pah!” said John More. “If you are a rich man you will hear from the King, and I doubt you would remain a rich man long enough to pay your father that hundred pounds. For, my son… and let us speak low, for I would not have this go beyond us … the King will not forget you. You have escaped, you think. You have done your noble act and your father has paid his fine. Do not think that is an end of this matter.” He lowered his voice still more. “This King of ours is a cold-hearted man. Money is the love of his life; but one of his light o' loves is revenge. You have thwarted his love; you have wounded her deeply. You … a young man, who have, with your writings, already attracted attention to yourself so that your name is known in Europe, and when scholars visit this country you are one of those with whom they seek to converse. You have set yourself up to enlighten the people, and you have done this in Parliament. What you have said is this: ‘The King's coffers are full to bursting, good people, and you are poor. Therefore, as a burgess of your Parliament, I will work to remedy these matters.’ The King will not forget that. Depend upon it, he will seek an opportunity of letting you know that no subject of his—be he ever so learned, and whatever admiration scholars lay at his feet—shall insult the King and his beloved spouse, riches.”
“Then, Father, I am fortunate to be a poor man; and how many men can truly rejoice in their poverty?”
“You take these matters lightly, my son. But have a care. The King watches you. If you prosper he will have your treasure.”
“Then I pray, Father, that my treasures will be those which the King does not envy—my friends, my writing, my honor.”
“Tut!” said the shrewd lawyer. “This is fools' talk. Learn wisdom with your Greek and Latin. It'll stand you in better stead than either.”
Jane was frightened. That man with the cruel face hated her husband. She took her father-in-law's warning to heart if Thomas did not.
Often she dreamed of the hard-faced King, and in her dreams his great coffers burst open while Thomas took out the gold and gave it to the beggars in Candlewick Street.
She knew she had a very strange and alarming husband; and often, when she wept a little during the silence of the night, she wondered whether it would have been much worse to have remained unmarried all her life than to have become the wife of Thomas More.
HER POSITION was not relieved by the coming of the man from Rotterdam.
Jane had heard much of him; and of all the learned friends who struck terror into her heart, this man frightened her more than any.
He settled in at The Barge and changed the way of life there.
Sometimes he looked at Jane with a mildly sarcastic smile, and there would be a faint twinkle in his half-closed blue eyes as though he were wondering how such a man as his friend Thomas More could have married the insignificant little wench.
She learned a good deal about him, but the things which interested her were, Thomas said, unimportant. He was the illegitimate son of a priest, and this seemed to Jane a shameful thing; nor could she understand why he was not ashamed of it. He had become an orphan when he was very young, and when those about him had realized his unusual powers he had been sent into a convent of canons regular, but, like Thomas, he could not bring himself to take the vows. He had studied in Paris, where he had given his life to literature; and although he had suffered greatly from abject poverty and had been forced to earn his bread by becoming tutor to gentlemen, so dazzling was his scholarship that he had drawn the attention of other scholars to himself and was recognized as the greatest of them all.
Jane, in her kitchen, giving orders to her maids, could hardly believe that she had this great man in her house and that it was her husband with whom he went walking through the streets of London.
To some extent she was glad of this man's visit; it turned Thomas's attention from herself. They were translating something—to which they referred as Lucian—from Latin into Greek, she believed; they would spend hours together doing this work, disagreeing on many points. It seemed to Jane that learned conversation involved a good deal of disagreement. And so it happened that as Thomas must engage himself in continual conversation with Erasmus, with his work as a lawyer and with his attendances at the Parliament, he had less time to give to the tutoring of his wife.
But she, since the smile she was sure she had received from the Prince of Wales, began to feel that perhaps she was not so foolish as she had believed herself to be. On looking back, it seemed that that smile of the Princes had held a certain appreciation. She was not so foolish that she did not realize that the Prince would look for other qualities in a woman than did Thomas; yet the approbation of such a Prince gave her new courage and confidence in herself.
She listened more carefully to the discourses that went on about her; and when they were in English she found that they were not so dreary as she had believed they must be.
Erasmus disliked the monks; Thomas defended them.
Erasmus declared his intention of one day laying bare to the world the iniquitous happenings which occurred in some of the monasteries of Europe.
He had stories to tell of the evil practices which went on in monasteries. Listening, Jane realized that there was much sin in the world.
In some religious houses, declared Erasmus, lewdness rather than religion was the order of the day. Abortion and child murder prevailed; for how, demanded Erasmus, can these holy nuns account for the children they bring into the world? They cannot. So they strangle them as soon as they are born and bury them in the grounds of the nunneries. There are lusts of an unnatural nature between the sexes….
Here the men became aware of Jane's attention, and they lapsed into Latin.
Jane thought: The Prince thought me worth a glance. Perhaps I could learn a little Latin. Though I should never be a scholar I might learn a little, for if I can understand English, why not Latin?
Erasmus spoke in English of one monastery in which there was a statue of a boy saint, hollow and so light that it could be lifted by a child of five. Yet it was said that only those without sin could lift it. Many came to see the holy statue, and rich men found that they could only lift it when they had paid heavily for the monk's intercession with the saints on their behalf Only when they had given to the monastery as much money as they could be induced to part with were they able to lift the statue. A miracle? In a way. Worked by one of the monks who, remaining out of sight, removed at the right moment that peg which held the statue on the floor. Then there was the case of the phial of blood, reputed to be that of Christ. Only those who were holy enough could see the blood; and it was deemed a sign from Heaven that a man would only be received there if the blood appeared to him. And the blood? The blood of a duck, renewed at regular intervals. And the phial? It was opaque one side. It cost much money to have the phial turned so that the blood was visible to the devout dupe.