The Tapestry: A Novel

by Nancy Bilyeau

  Cromwell hesitated. No one will ever know how long he would have needed to gather his clever lawyer thoughts and deliver his reasons for my presence, because the next voice heard was mine.

  “Your Majesty, I am Joanna Stafford and I am at fault.” I curtsied before him, better this time, my spine straight. After coming back up, my eyes fixed on the stone floor, I continued: “I received a summons to court and I came today, but did not know where to go to find the wardrobe master. Lord Privy Seal Cromwell came upon me, lost, and kindly brought me to these good lords of your kingdom, that they might join together to form a plan.”

  A thick silence filled the hall for what seemed like hours, but might have been five seconds.

  The king said, his voice lilting, “Ah, Cromwell, we always knew you capable of sympathy for a lady’s plight, though others have deemed you indifferent to the fair sex. Would you have thought this possible, Norfolk?”

  The duke called out, “Not until today, Your Grace.”

  Laughter filled Westminster Hall, so loud it echoed against the stone walls and pillars. I finally looked up. The reaction to what Norfolk said exceeded the joke. Norfolk himself laughed the hardest. It was ghastly, the way his lips curled to expose long yellow teeth. Only three men did not shout with laughter: Cromwell and Gardiner, who arranged their faces into benevolence but were still seized by their hatred of each other, and Culpepper, who could not take his eyes off my face.

  “We shall attend to the business of the day,” said King Henry. “But first, we must address our kinswoman.”

  Kinswoman? It was true, of course, my grandmother and the king’s grandmother were sisters, but the Tudors never bore any affection for the Staffords. As the king stepped toward me, he smiled, most benevolent, and a pungent odor encircled me, of musk and lavender and rose water and something else, too, something less appealing.

  “We are most pleased that Mistress Stafford shows her loyalty and willingness to serve the Crown by making her way here, in humble haste,” the king declared. “We shall grant her a personal audience on her commission.”

  And then, half limping, the king of England made his way the length of Westminster Hall, walking alongside Thomas Cromwell, the chief minister he would now make Earl of Essex.

  7

  I’ve never seen a woman accomplish anything like that in my life,” said Master Thomas Culpepper. “And, now that I think on it, I’ve never seen a man accomplish such a feat either.”

  I had not remained in Westminster to witness the elevation of Cromwell. After the king spoke favorably to me, it was Culpepper who surged forward to escort “Mistress Stafford, the king’s kin” to Whitehall, keeping up the pretense I had begun that we did not know each other.

  “We need not dwell on what happened in there,” I said.

  “You don’t think the entire court will dwell on it soon enough?” Culpepper asked. After thanking me for the story I concocted for coming to Westminster, a story that had removed him completely, he could not stop rejoicing in my “cleverness.”

  I rubbed my forehead as I returned to Whitehall with Thomas Culpepper. Two men cut their way in front of us, leading a string of white greyhounds, their pink noses sniffing with derision. The dogs were headed for the open park, away from the palace. How I longed to join them.

  Just a few hours ago, I had been part of the throng of the obscure, milling in front of the Whitehall gatehouse. Now the most powerful men of the land were more aware of my existence than ever before. And, according to Culpepper, my words to the king, born of desperation, would award me fame throughout the court. Fame was the last thing I sought for a myriad reasons, among them that now I would be an easier target for an assailant to find.

  As if he’d read my thoughts, Culpepper’s smile faded. “I shall make all my inquiries with discretion,” he promised me. “This business shall be dealt with straight away. There is a lord who serves the chamberlain, the master of pages, I shall begin by inquiring of him which of His Majesty’s pages fit the description of the man who attacked you.”

  “I beg of you, exercise every caution,” I said. “He is a most dangerous man.”

  “Mistress, I can manage an errant page, I assure you.”

  I did not tell him of the suspicion that formed within me while I was in that small room of Westminster: that the page waited for me to arrive, in order to lure me to a carefully selected room, where he would attack, perhaps even kill me. But now, as I walked on this path with Culpepper, the late-afternoon sun slanting on the radiant stone walls of the palace, such a conspiracy began to seem too fantastical. How could a royal page be recruited to harm me? Someone must have said my name aloud at the gatehouse without my hearing; was not the area noisy and chaotic? The attack was one of depravity, nothing more.

  Nor did I tell Culpepper the whole truth about Thomas Cromwell. The only person who knew that he’d withdrawn into that room to give way to his own fear and distress was me. My instinct was to keep it that way.

  With the assurance of a man who knows his master well, Culpepper told me that Henry VIII desired a court built on chivalry. “You’ve done Cromwell a great service today, to prompt the king to think that he wanted only to be of service to a lost lady,” he said.

  I must pin my hope on Cromwell’s wanting to retain that gracious image of himself. Perhaps then he would not move against me after all.

  “My problem is what to do with you for the next hour,” continued Culpepper as we stood at the entranceway to the palace. “The king says he shall have an audience with you, and he may wish it before nightfall—or it could be tomorrow. When I attend on him later, I will find out. But in the interim, you cannot be left among the men. A lady belongs with other ladies, but there is only one place at Whitehall where they can be found. I don’t suppose you are acquainted with the Queen of England? Nothing about you would surprise me, Mistress Stafford.”

  Don’t be so sure of that, I thought.

  Aloud, I said, “I am friends with one of the queen’s maids of honor, and if she is not too occupied serving Her Majesty, I think she would be willing to take me in for a short time.”

  “Excellent,” cried Thomas Culpepper. “I should be able to come up with some plausible reason for prying her loose to keep you company. Which maid is it?”

  “Mistress Catherine Howard.”

  I had seen Culpepper exhibit many moods—amused and angry, sincere and skeptical—but I had never yet witnessed the dismay that was his reaction to hearing the name of my young friend.

  “What is the matter?” I asked.

  Instead of answering my question, he had one of his own: “When did you last see Mistress Howard?” he asked.

  “At the end of December, but very briefly,” I said, taken aback. “We were together at Howard House for a number of months earlier, in 1538. But why do you ask?” A frightening thought occurred. “Is Catherine not well?”

  “She is well.”

  Culpepper had definitely turned melancholic. He turned from me, as if he needed to wrestle with a great dilemma unobserved. Two young men brushed by, greeting Culpepper, but he waved them off. I simply could not imagine what caused him such consternation.

  “I shall take you to Mistress Catherine Howard,” he said finally. “Perhaps it will do some good.”

  What good? I asked Culpepper not once but twice as we hurried through the palace. He refused to explain. Instead he peppered me with questions about the page. How tall? What color hair and eyes? What shape of beard? What manner of speech?

  I answered his inquiries as best I could, forcing myself to remember every physical detail. The trouble was, the page wasn’t distinctive-looking. He would blend into any crowd.

  Culpepper led me to a quiet corridor situated on the main floor, facing the Thames. It didn’t seem likely, but Queen Anne’s rooms must be nearby. I remembered the design of Queen Catherine of A
ragon’s rooms at Greenwich: a large receiving chamber led to a smaller, more private room, and then, even more inaccessible, was the bedchamber. Did Henry VIII’s fourth queen keep a household humbler than his first?

  I bumped into Thomas Culpepper, for he had come to a halt outside a wooden door. A lanky young man of about sixteen sat on a stool next to the door, his ankles crossed. He looked up at us quizzically.

  “These are the queen’s apartments?” I wondered.

  “No,” said Culpepper. “This is Catherine Howard’s chamber.”

  “But why is she not lodged with the other maids and ladies of the queen?”

  Thomas Culpepper pointed at the young man, who was listening to us closely. I realized he wore a doublet with Howard insignia. “His name is Richard. He will announce you. I cannot stay.”

  Before I could respond, Culpepper had hurried back the way we’d come.

  Richard rose to his feet, asked my name, and then rapped on the door. It opened a crack, a young face of a girl peeped out—not Catherine—and I was announced.

  “Joanna!”

  The door flew all the way open and there she was. Catherine Howard embraced me, all perfumed hair and fine white teeth and velvet-clad arms as she cried my name over and over with delight.

  “You look wonderful, Catherine,” I said. “More lovely than ever.”

  And she did. Catherine had grown plumper since I last saw her, but it suited her. The girl’s pink-and-white skin glowed. Her green-flecked eyes were set off by her plush green gown. Our embrace had been so close, it knocked off her French hood, and her auburn curls spilled down her shoulders, which sloped like a child’s, even though she was near eighteen years old.

  She held me at arm’s length and said, “I’ve missed you, but oh, Joanna, your kirtle. So filthy. What a fright. Will you never learn to care about your clothes?”

  “You always cared enough for the both of us,” I retorted, but not angry in the slightest. It was impossible to be angry with Catherine.

  These rooms, Catherine’s rooms, were well appointed. There was even a small tapestry on the wall opposite the window. I thought the dozen or so maids of honor crammed together, in quarters adjoining the queen’s. But it had been thirteen years since I served Queen Catherine of Aragon at the palace of Greenwich.

  The younger girl in the room said, “Mistress Howard, I must attend to your hood.” She moved forward with pins in her hands.

  Now, this was odd. Catherine had her own maid? But she was supposed to be the maid. I didn’t want to ask intimate questions of her in front of the other girl, though, who was busy tidying Catherine’s hair.

  I told her why I’d come to Whitehall, a simpler and more benign version of the day’s harrowing events. She reacted with equanimity, as was her nature, and proceeded to share tidbits of family news. My cousin Elizabeth, the Duchess of Norfolk, was once again completely estranged from her husband and quarreling with all of her children as well. The young wife of the Earl of Surrey had given birth to a second child. And, Catherine said, her own father, Edmund Howard, the duke’s younger brother, had died not long ago.

  “I’m so very sorry,” I said. “I shall pray for his soul.”

  “Thank you, Joanna,” she said calmly, tilting her head so that her maid could finish the work on her hair. I couldn’t blame her for exhibiting little grief. Everyone at Howard House knew that her father was a debtor and a wastrel, and that after her mother died he did nothing to raise his many children, but foisted them on his relations. Such a man could suffer a long passage through Purgatory. Prayers were urgently needed, and not just mine. The Feast of the Ascension was less than a month away; I would try to persuade Father William Mote to say a mass of requiem for the deceased Edmund Howard on that day.

  Catherine, her hair finally finished, said, “The Duke of Norfolk says I am to think of him as not an uncle but a father. That is why he had me moved to these apartments—I know you must be wondering why I don’t lodge with the other maids of honor. He arranged it all and secured me a maid and a manservant. He wants the best for me.”

  I had had a great many shocks at Whitehall that day, and now this incredible statement took pride of place among them. The Duke of Norfolk had never shown much interest in Catherine and certainly nothing approaching paternal affection. She was the only Howard niece of the right age and appearance for royal service, and so he’d petitioned the king to place Catherine with his new queen. But Norfolk had often called her “fool” and “simpleton.” And now he considered her a daughter, had even moved her to private quarters at Whitehall? The Duke of Norfolk I’d seen in Westminster was as harsh a man as ever; I couldn’t believe she was talking about the same person.

  “Sarah, will you fetch some wine and cakes for me and my friend?” Catherine said, smiling, to her little maid.

  The minute the girl had left, I said, “Tell me, Catherine, about the queen.”

  “The queen?” My friend looked puzzled.

  “Is she kind to you?”

  Catherine shrugged. “I suppose. I can’t understand much of what she says, she still uses an interpreter when speaking to anyone besides her German attendants. They surround her.”

  “But do you enjoy serving Queen Anne?” I persisted. “I have been told she and the king see little of each other. How does she spend her days?”

  My friend grabbed me by both arms and said, “Let’s speak no more of the queen. I must know what happened with Edmund.”

  I never spoke of Edmund Sommerville. My friends in Dartford knew of my wish and rarely brought up his name. Perhaps that is why Catherine’s bluntness left me stunned.

  “It didn’t happen,” I stammered. “The wedding never took place—because of the Act of Six Articles, and our vows of chastity. Surrey rode down from London, he came to the church just when we were . . . ” I couldn’t finish the sentence.

  Once again, Catherine embraced me. “Surrey finally told me what happened. I’m so sorry, Joanna. But now what will you do? Couldn’t you find Edmund?”

  I stiffened. “Why would I want to find him?”

  “To marry him. The two of you are meant to be married.”

  “But I just told you, it would be illegal for us to marry. And I don’t know where he is, no one does. Not even his sister has had a letter for months. He left England, Catherine. He left his family, his friends, everyone. He left me.”

  My throat closed. Tears filled my eyes. I couldn’t believe it—I’d fought off an attack, bluffed my way through Westminster Hall, lied to the king of England, and stood my ground against Thomas Cromwell. Yet this exchange with Catherine Howard reduced me to weeping?

  “Joanna, please listen,” she said, her lips quivering. “I was there when Edmund came to Howard House. I saw the way he looked at you. He loves you. And you could be married in Europe. Or even here. It would be of no difficulty for you, Joanna, I asked a priest. Only the vows of a full-fledged nun would forbid it, and you were only a novice.”

  I flinched. Catherine could not know how much it hurt, every day, that Dartford Priory was suppressed before I could commit myself to God. I was never able to shear my hair, put on a ring, assume a new name. I never took the veil. Afterward, when I finally accepted that I could not pursue my vocation in England and resolved to marry, that ended in failure as well.

  Catherine continued, “It would be more of a matter of dispute for Edmund, but exceptions are made. You must try. I know you—the proudest woman on God’s earth. I fear that you are so wounded, you won’t—”

  “Stop,” I cried. “Catherine, you don’t understand.”

  A sharp rapping ended this painful conversation. I wiped the tears from my cheeks while Catherine saw to the door.

  Culpepper had returned—no surprise to that. But he wasn’t alone. A stout woman stood behind him, her arms heaped with dresses.

  “Mistress Joa
nna Stafford, I come from the king,” he said, with all formality. “He has ordered that these garments be made ready for you. Tomorrow, he shall dine with Queen Anne, and it is the king’s pleasure that you join them.”

  8

  Catherine Howard always slept with a window open. We were so different in temperament, in interests, but that was a preference we had shared at Howard House, even in the icy cold.

  This was a cloudless night, and so the moon’s bath of light swam through the bedchamber. I was too troubled by the day’s events—and too apprehensive about what lay ahead—to find rest. But she slept soundly, one of her arms thrown over her head. She was a different person when she slept. Some cynical, calculating adults look like innocent children when their eyes are closed, but Catherine was more childlike when awake. Now that pleasing vitality she had, which sparkled her eyes and dimpled her cheeks, was absent. In the moonlight, in profile, she was older, serious, even a touch sad. And, most of all, with her long straight nose, she was a Howard.

  Our friendship was formed almost two years ago, when we were thrown together in the Howards’ establishment. I was kept in Howard House in Southwark, against my will, by the Duke of Norfolk, who had decided that since his wife was a Stafford, he could decide my life and put an end to my independence. Catherine was sent to Southwark from her stepgrandmother’s house in Horsham to learn how to serve a queen. Two penniless daughters of unimportant younger sons of large families. A silent sympathy quivered between us. Who else could better understand what it was like to be viewed with barely concealed irritation by the heads of our respective families? The sighs of impatience when we outgrew our clothes, required an apothecary, held an empty plate at a banquet.