The Tapestry

by Nancy Bilyeau

  Finishing the knot, Jacquard took the knife out of his mouth. “You see, Joanna Stafford, we learn from experience. I learned in Ghent that I have to tie you up before the fun begins. That was my mistake, one of the biggest mistakes I made in my entire career.”

  He tilted his head, regarding me.

  “You shouldn’t have taunted me in Regensburg, you realize that? That’s what made me come here, to accomplish the task once and for all.”

  There was a terrible silence for a moment, and then Jacquard leaped on me. With one hand he pressed down on my thighs so I couldn’t kick him, and with the other he pulled the rag out of my mouth.

  “I am curious about one thing, and I’m afraid that after our interlude tonight you won’t be able to answer questions. I have to know. What did you do with our man on the boat? Or should I say our woman—our wonderful blind woman.”

  I coughed for a moment and said, “When he tried to stab me on deck, I poked him in the eyes with my fingers. He threw himself overboard.”

  Jacquard laughed. He threw back his head and laughed and laughed. “I taught you too well,” he said.

  Hantaras appeared in the doorway, furious. “What are you doing with her on the ambassador’s bed?”

  “I’m not going to kill her on the bed,” Jacquard said curtly, annoyed at being questioned. “Now get out, unless you want to watch. Which I never object to.”

  “I should not have permitted this—you have lost control of yourself, Jacquard. This was all a mistake,” Hantaras said, glaring at Jacquard with even more hatred than he’d shown toward me.

  Jacquard slammed the door and then returned to me. He sat next to me on the bed and patted my cheek, as solicitous as an adoring father. I shrank from his touch. I couldn’t hold back my disgust.

  “It is harder to do than I thought,” he mused. “I’ve hated you for so long and dreamed of how I’d kill you. The thought of my vengeance has kept me warm at night for months—I have barely needed a woman. But at the same time, you are my masterpiece. The way you’ve stayed alive is remarkable—and choosing to go for the window, not the door? Magnifique.”

  He ran his hand down my entire body, feeling every inch, until he reached my ankle. With his other hand, he took rope out of his pocket, and began to tie my left foot to the bedpost.

  The end of my life was near, I knew it, and I fought through my revulsion to pray to God for deliverance to His kingdom.

  “Forgive me, Father, and take me to Your mercy,” I said. “And forgive this man for what he is about to do.”

  “Don’t pray for me,” he ordered. “I heard enough of that from you to last a hundred lifetimes.”

  “You cannot stop me,” I said. “You can bind my mouth, you can violate me in the foulest manner, you can cut my throat. But the last thought I have will be of your salvation, Jacquard.”

  Jacquard wasn’t smiling or laughing any longer. To rob him of his sadistic pleasure was the only defiance left to me. He took a step toward me, fingering his knife. I had less than a moment now.

  We both heard raised voices downstairs. I recognized Ambassador Chapuys.

  Jacquard sprang toward the head of the bed, groping for the rag, but before he could stuff it into my mouth I screamed so loudly my ears rang.

  I heard the stamping of feet, and in less than a moment, in the doorway, stood Ambassador Chapuys. “Mother of God, what are you doing here, and what have you done to Joanna?” he roared.

  “She defied us—she betrayed us, and for that she has to die,” Jacquard said haughtily. “I shall take the responsibility with the emperor.”

  “You’ve gone mad,” said Chapuys. “I always feared you had that potential.”

  “And you are a coward,” said Jacquard. “You should have ordered her death last year. You wanted to do it, admit it.”

  “She isn’t going to die.”

  Jacquard laughed. “She most certainly is! After what she knows now? You can’t take the chance she won’t tell all, and what are the implications for the emperor?”

  The ambassador looked at me, shaking his head in horror and dismay, but it was over what Jacquard was just about to do to me. He didn’t share Jacquard’s loathing. “She hasn’t said a word thus far,” he said. “Or I would know.”

  “I will not be prevented!” screamed Jacquard. He was losing control, and that was the moment it happened. Señor Hantaras burst in from a door to the side of the room. He must have been ordered to go around and wait his chance. He tackled Jacquard and threw him to the ground.

  Hantaras punched him in the face, again and again, until the premier spy of the emperor was broken and senseless. I found I could not watch the final savage blow that knocked him unconscious.

  Ambassador Chapuys freed me and helped me down the stairs. After Señor Hantaras had used that same rope to tie up Jacquard Rolin, he joined us as we worked together to revive the Earl of Surrey.

  He vomited twice and looked wretched indeed, but the earl was not seriously damaged.

  “Sorry, Joanna,” he muttered. “I can’t believe that a small amount of wine could do that to me.”

  Ambassador Chapuys insisted that the wine had gone bad and he promised to make amends. “May I know why you honored me with your presence today?” he asked, genuinely puzzled.

  “We came here to see your library,” groaned Surrey.

  “My library?”

  I turned to the ambassador. “I understand you were once friends with the man Cornelius Agrippa. Is it possible you have any of his books?”

  To my astonishment, Ambassador Chapuys smiled. “Of course,” he said, and sent the young servant who’d reappeared to fetch the book. Surrey and I exchanged glances. We would finally have it, the means to save Culpepper’s soul.

  A moment later, the servant handed Chapuys a book with these words on the cover: Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex.

  Surrey said, “But is that all? Agrippa wrote other books, books of magic.”

  “Ah, yes, there were the three books he wrote,” said Chapuys. “Interesting texts, though controversial. There aren’t many copies that exist. Perhaps some other publisher will attempt it.”

  Surrey, unable to control himself, said, “And there was a fourth! A grimoire of hexes, chants, and conjurations.”

  The ambassador waved his hand at us dismissively. “Agrippa had nothing to do with that, I tell you. Nothing. Some charlatans assembled a book of nonsense and put his name to it. I can tell you this, for I knew him better than any other man, there is no fourth book written by Agrippa. I would swear my life on it.”

  39

  After a distraught Surrey stormed off to find his servant waiting on the street, Chapuys took me aside and said, “You need never fear Jacquard Rolin again. He will be dealt with and the justice will be severe. Hantaras will pay as well. He redeemed himself to a certain degree by subduing Jacquard at my command, but I cannot trust a man who would work in secret on such a terrible cause.”

  He winced in pain, for the ambassador’s gout was most severe. After gathering himself, Chapuys said, “Joanna, I must ask you, as difficult as it may be, to try to forgive me. Not just for what happened tonight but for entangling you in the conspiracy from the beginning. I was convinced that it was justified in the service of God and emperor, but now I know that what we did, what I did . . . I was wrong.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “If there is any other service I can render you, you need only ask,” he said.

  Soon enough, there was.

  Just a week later, the king’s men arrested Culpepper on suspicion of improper relations with the queen. He had not confessed—nor had Catherine—but those who served the queen told the king’s investigators of notes passed and secret meetings. The attendants were anxious to save themselves and did not hesitate to betray Catherine an
d Culpepper and could even have embellished their stories. Lady Rochford was the guiltiest of arranging the queen’s supposed assignations—and the most anxious to betray her. But to curry favor, she told so many stories in which she played a principal part that she implicated herself in treason, too. She then denied some of it, but too late to extricate herself. Lady Rochford was arrested.

  It was Thomas Culpepper whom I vowed to see. Chapuys was able to arrange it through a series of enormous bribes. I had no book of magic to aid me, just prayer. And friendship. Those were the only things I brought with me to the Tower of London.

  “You should not be alone in the same cell as this prisoner,” said Sir John Gage, who had replaced the failing Sir William Kingston as constable of the Tower. “He is a despicable man.”

  “That is the arrangement,” I said. “No matter what occurs, I give you my word that you will not be blamed.”

  At last the door swung open and I was admitted to the dark, foul cell of my friend Thomas Culpepper.

  “I don’t want you here,” said a hoarse voice from the corner.

  I picked up the sole lit candle from a table in the corner and made my way to him. Culpepper was sitting in straw, slumped over, in the opposite corner. By the candlelight, I could see his face was bruised and swollen, his eyes mere slits. His wrists were swollen as well, and stained with dried blood. This was what had become of handsome Thomas Culpepper.

  “You have been tortured,” I said, struggling to keep my voice steady.

  “Of course.”

  I knelt on the floor, I opened my book of Scripture.

  “Joanna, don’t do this to me,” he said.

  I began to pray:

  “Hide not thy face from me; put not thy servant away in anger.

  Thou has been my help; leave me not, neither forsake me,

  God of my salvation.

  When my father and my mother forsake me,

  then the Lord will take me up.

  Teach me, my Lord, and lead me in a plain path,

  because of mine enemies.

  I must believe to see the Lord in the land of goodness.

  Wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart.

  Wait, I say, on the Lord.”

  I kept praying aloud and sharing psalms and words of courage. It took a long time for Culpepper to break his silence. An hour. Perhaps two. But when I paused between prayers, I heard a strange guttural moaning from the straw. He covered his face with his hands while he sobbed for a long time.

  I knelt by his side. “I know about the covenant,” I said. “I know everything.”

  “Surrey told you?”

  “Some of it, he did,” I said. “Some of it I pieced together myself.”

  Culpepper laughed, but it sounded more like choking. “Always so clever, that’s my Joanna Stafford.” He turned quiet. “I had thought that if anyone would visit me, it would be the Earl of Surrey.”

  “He has gone back to East Anglia with his father,” I said heavily. “He did not wish to go—he fought against the duke harder than I’ve ever seen him do. But in the end, he always sides with his father, and his father has abandoned Catherine and anyone associated with her. He is trying to ride this out in his Norfolk stronghold.”

  Culpepper was silent.

  “Tell me what happened to you,” I said. “Please, I want to help you in any way I can.”

  Culpepper swallowed, and then told his story.

  “After Hungerford was arrested, I was undone,” he said. “I thought that any moment, while I was attending the king, I’d be taken. Arrested, tortured, and killed. It does things to a man, suffering that for weeks. I started to drink wine, more and more, and to spend my time with those of poor conduct who’ve sought me out every day since I was appointed to the king’s chamber—my brother chief among them. I lost myself to their company. When Hungerford was beheaded with Cromwell, I thought I was safe. I told myself, ‘That is the sacrifice he made, what we all made, to kill Cromwell.’ But then—the king did not change! He was no more merciful after Cromwell was removed. He killed more people than ever, from Protestant preachers to old Catholics and a seventy-year-old woman who’d committed no crime at all. I began to see that it had all been for nothing. And I hated him. While I was dressing him, and gambling with him, and running his errands and laughing at his jokes, I hated him. I thought I would go mad from it.”

  Culpepper looked down at the straw-covered floor of his cell, unwilling to meet my gaze. “One day, I had to take a message to the queen and I could see that she still loved me. I decided this was how I would take my revenge on him for turning my life into hell.”

  “Do you think it was the covenant that changed you?” I asked.

  Culpepper was silent for a while. “I don’t know what happened that night—I can’t be sure of anything. Did Orobas’s spells and magic turn the king away from Cromwell? Or was it just in his nature to kill those he tires of, and I was too blind to see it?”

  It was hard to do, but I told Culpepper what I’d learned, that Agrippa most likely did not write the fourth book. The grimoire was filled with meaningless gibberish; its blasphemous incantations did not come from the magus.

  Culpepper began to weep again. “Fools, all of us. Surrey and Hungerford, they recruited me to their covenant, but I was eager to do it, to commit any sin for what I thought was glory. Even if we did not use the black arts that night, did not summon the powers of the devil, I am damned. There are so many things, but among the worst is what I did to Catherine. She would never have betrayed the king with anyone else but me.”

  “Did you love her?” I asked.

  “I have never loved anyone,” he said simply. “I do not believe it is in my nature. I think the kind of man drawn to the court of Henry the Eighth is at heart a weak man, and I am the weakest of all.”

  “I don’t believe that,” I said. “You helped me when there was nothing to be gained by it. There is goodness in you. You are not beyond God’s love, of that I am certain.”

  He took a deep breath and said, “Nonetheless, I deserve death. But Catherine doesn’t. Is there anything you can do—any way you can help her? The last thing I heard was that the king might send her to a nunnery.”

  There are no more nunneries in England. But this gave me another thought, and then a plan.

  I said, “I promise you I will try to help her.”

  And with a final prayer and a good-bye, I left.

  On December 10, Thomas Culpepper was executed at Tyburn. The king had condemned him to the full penalty of being hanged, drawn, and quartered. At the last moment, it was commuted to a swift beheading.

  I did not bear witness.

  There was only one hope now for Catherine Howard, and it would put me in more danger than I’d ever faced before in the court of Henry VIII.

  40

  Although Catherine had never been a woman of much religious conviction, truth be told, and her crimes were of a moral nature, her husband the king commanded, after he was certain of her guilt of adultery, that she be taken to Syon Abbey, once a prestigious nunnery, rather than to the Tower of London. No one was sure what would happen to her next, although most assumed she would follow the example of her cousin Anne Boleyn and be sent to the block. Still, Queen Anne was dispatched swiftly, with just seventeen days between her arrest and her decapitation. It was not the same with Queen Catherine. Some said the king was indecisive with grief, others that he had sworn to torture Catherine personally. Still others said he mulled over who should be his sixth wife.

  King Henry returned to Hampton Court after his wife had been removed to Syon. I sent two letters to Sir Thomas Heanage, chief gentleman of the privy chamber and groom of the stool, asking to see the king. I had no clear idea who was in power now. Norfolk had fled and his ally Bishop Gardiner was weakened. Some said th
e Seymour brothers were in ascendance. Others were betting on Wriothesley. No matter who fought their deadly game for a seat at the council table, I suspected that Heanage still held sway with the king. Just a few days after Culpepper’s execution, a message came back granting my request. That month at Whitehall had taught me enough.

  The first snowfall of the season was settling on the grand red-brick walls and towers of Hampton Court when I was ushered inside. A smooth-faced page escorted me to the presence chamber, as graceful as Thomas Culpepper must have been when he eagerly began serving the king of England.

  Along the way, tapestries shivered and dazzled along the walls—different ones, ones I had not studied and catalogued in Whitehall. As Heanage moved inside the innermost chamber to announce me, I was struck by the one hanging on the opposite landing, the Hercules tapestry I’d seen and approved purchase of in Brussels. Here was the half man half god committing his acts of strength, conquest, and lechery.

  Henry VIII sat under his cloth of state, his leg propped up, completely alone except for Heanage. I had not seen the king for eighteen months. He looked to have aged by at least a decade. The ruddiness was gone from his skin. Although he wore a purple robe lined with fur and his fingers were laden with diamonds, the overwhelming color was gray: wrinkled pasty gray skin and hair now more gray than red.

  As I sank into a curtsy, I felt an emotion I never expected and did not welcome: pity.

  “I thank Your Majesty for granting this audience when I know that I have offended you,” I said. “I did not carry out my duties as tapestry mistress to your satisfaction.”

  “You did prove a disappointment,” he said indifferently.

  “I propose to remedy that with offering myself in a new position of service,” I said.

  He said nothing and did nothing but raise an eyebrow.

  I took a deep breath and said, “I have experience in a nunnery. Install Queen Catherine in a nunnery of your creation and I will run it for you and see that all is done the way you would wish. You can be merciful, knowing that I, your kinswoman, will ensure she is kept away from the world.”