He didn’t.
Tyndale became the most hunted man in the empire, in all of Europe. If caught, his fate would be unspeakable. People speculated on what tortures would be applied, which limbs would be torn, how slowly he would die. Mia understood why Tyndale didn’t want her. He would never allow her to be in his company again, not in these burning days.
Mia determined she would keep her promise. She would wait, if not for him, then for the burning days to end. And when they ended, she would read the book that stole her father and her beloved friend away. She would enter the new world their lives had bought her passage into.
But today, sitting in this dark cell alone with Alma, Mia had found her way to freedom. The burning days would never end; she saw that now. As long as the book was read, people would die for it. She had been wrong to wait, wrong to think a safer time and place to stand for the truth would find her. Truth made the world unsafe. Truth spurred evil into action. There would be no end to evil, not in this world, not while the book was still open.
And yet Mia found this one thing more to be true: She had been wrong to be so afraid, afraid of the darkness in the world, and afraid of the truth as well. She had survived the darkness, and she had survived the truth. She had survived the worst moments when she wished to die and the worst moments when she feared Alma would die. She had survived because God was not just in the church; He was in the world and in His Word. She had lost sight of that, frightened by the way people had responded to His Word, unwilling to lose another family for its sake. But He had never punished her for her weakness. He had healed and saved at wild, unpredictable moments, but He was here, and He was at work. They were together with God, right there, Alma and Mia, and they were safe.
Mia sat upon the bench, shifting her weight to ease the pain in her bones. Alma curled up like a kitten in her lap, and Mia bent over to kiss her head. Whatever happened now, Mia knew that this unpredictable, patient God was at work. She would choose to focus on this one thought and trust Him once more.
Worn by the streets, she had met and married Bjorn not many years after that awful year her father died, grateful for a constant roof and bed. She had stumbled into this good fortune and taken up his offer of marriage without question. And when her stomach swelled and the timely pains came upon her, she knew she had done the right thing. Her father and Tyndale, they would want her life to go on. They would want her to be a good wife and have many children and someday to teach them from the Book. If Mia survived this cell, she would do that.
She remembered Alma’s birth. She remembered lying in her bed, too weak to help, too filled with joy to even speak, watching a midwife rub Alma with salt and wine. Bjorn had come home drunk, elated.
Mia reached for his hand. “You do not mind it is a girl, then?”
“What? A girl? Well, have another.” He slapped his leg. “I heard news today, Mia, great news. A man causing much trouble for sheriffs, stirring up people—he got burned in Brussels last week. That’s the end of his work.”
Prickly black stars appeared in the corners of her vision. She could not focus on his face. The room shrank. Bjorn celebrated, but not for her. Not for them.
“Forgive me, Mia. I forget you are a good wife who stays home and doesn’t go wandering about the streets picking up gossip. That’s why I wanted you, you know. I knew you would serve me well. The man’s name was Tyndale, though he had tried to escape us by changing his name, always running from one city to another. Some say he came here—can you imagine? I’d have gutted him in the street. He came here, they say, looking for someone, though he would not say who.”
Mia was devastated.
Bjorn never spoke again of Tyndale or of her days spent near death after Alma’s birth. He had turned cold and watched her indifferently, the way one watches an old cow that’s gone dry, wondering if the meat is wasted too. He would have sold her in the market if he could—she knew that much.
Mia never told him anything of her past. She kept her eyes straight ahead, focused on days to come. She would be a good wife.
That was how she would defend herself. When Bastion called her to stand before him as an accused witch, it wasn’t her past that he would be judging. No one knew of it. She would insist that he judge her based on only one piece of evidence: Had she been a good wife to Bjorn? Had she not concerned herself, day and night, with being the wife all men taught as ideal?
That was the truth, and they would all see it. If they did not, if the truth did not save her, then Bastion would.
Chapter Twenty-three