States of Grace (Saint-Germain #18)

States of Grace (Saint-Germain #18) Page 30

Text of a letter from Erneste Amsteljaxter to Grav Saint-Germain in care of his kinsman, Franzicco Ragoczy di Santo-Germano, Campo San Luca, Venezia, written in scholars' Latin and delivered by private courier twenty-two days after it was dispatched.

To my patron, the esteemed Grav Saint-Germain, the affectionate greeting of Erneste Amsteljaxter on this, the 29thday of March, 1532.

My dear Grav, I must begin by thanking you for the kindness you have shown my brother! To sponsor a school for him to teach in in the New World, and to provide him with an annual stipend is more than he could have ever achieved on his own. Onfroi is beside himself with enthusiasm, and has pledged to dedicate himself to the people of the New World as well as to the families of the Europeans living in that remote place. From what he has said, a few ships from your own trading company make the crossing to the New World every year and have done so for more than a decade. I cannot tell you how this spares me what I feared must be a lifetime of providing for Onfroi's living. Whether or not you intended it to be so, you have helped me through your generosity to my brother.

You have also contributed to my happiness in another way: Mercutius Christermann has informed Rudolph Eschen that he would like my hand in marriage, and agreed to abide by the terms I have set upon the marriage: that I shall retain my position in regard to your house; that I shall be able to continue to offer shelter to women who are in need of it; that I shall not be stopped from preparing more books for publication-this, in fact, Christermann encourages, which is one of the reasons I am inclined to accept his offer; that I shall keep half of the money you have granted me for my expenses; that I shall have the right to provide education to any children he and I may have, be they male or female. It is to Christermann's credit that he, himself, has added a proviso: that I am to have my full share from sales of my work to do with as I please. When Eschen has made a proper contract, we will choose a time. I fear we must wed in a Catholic church or the Spanish may declare the marriage null and void, and all the provisos abolished, which neither of us want.

I was much saddened to hear of the death of the Venezian woman you were sending to me as a companion. To have the ship on which she sailed blown up when only a day out of port must be a most dreadful sorrow for you. You say the official report ruled that the Golden Sunset was fired upon by accident, and that the war-galley mistook a small merchant-ship out of Tyre on course for Venezia for a corsair, and missed the smaller craft which it was supposed was bearing down on your ship. That the firing was an error does not provide a lessening of grief, as I know from my own life.

I will remember you in my prayers every evening, and I will continue to fulfill my purpose promised to you for as long as there is breath in my body. Were it not for you, I would not have so much to be grateful for, to my own benefit and the benefit of others.

With my sympathy and my gratitude,

Your most devoted,

Erneste Amsteljaxter