In the midst of my expression of thanks, an obstacle occurred. “Doctor Harst, the Cleves ambassador, will perhaps not be pleased with this commission or others, too, if word should spread.”
Holbein threw his head back and laughed louder than I’d heard him yet. “Word shall spread, be assured. But artists do not shun controversial subjects, Mistress Stafford. This is what we live for.”
Less than an hour later, when I told Catherine of the plan that she sit for a portrait sketch by Master Hans Holbein, she cried, “What an honor. I would never, ever have thought Holbein would be interested in me. Thank you, Joanna.”
She embraced me. I could tell that Catherine was grateful for more than the opportunity to sit for a sketch. She interpreted this as a healing of the breach between us since she’d been presented to me by King Henry. She had no idea how I planned to use it as a weapon in my private war.
“This will require every waking minute,” I told her. “You’ll have to be excused from your duties in the queen’s household.”
“Oh, that will be no difficulty,” she said. “Lady Rochford will see to it.”
I should not have been surprised that Jane Boleyn, Lady Rochford, was in control of Catherine’s comings and goings in the queen’s household. She must be in league with Norfolk. What an unsavory person she was: Lady Rochford had supplied the evidence Cromwell desperately needed to condemn not just Queen Anne Boleyn but her own husband, George Boleyn. As much as I detested Lord Rochford, it was a chilling act by a wife. And, most ominously, Jane Boleyn trafficked in the black arts. I knew it was she who told Gertrude Courtenay of the necromancer Orobas, and where he could be found.
But I was determined to not be intimidated by Lady Rochford or the Duke of Norfolk or even Bishop Gardiner. We have done all we can to make sure the king continues to detest his wife. That is what the bishop told me in the Whitehall gardens. I had no idea that a critical part of their plan was to use a seventeen-year-old girl as bait, drawing the king away from the queen and the architect of her marriage, Thomas Cromwell.
For the next three days, I effectively removed Catherine from their corrupting grasp. Once I’d delivered her to Hans Holbein in the morning, I did not leave her side until after nightfall and we went to sleep, protected by the Howards’ servant Richard. I put myself at Master Holbein’s disposal, and in so doing became more familiar with his workshop. I learned that the strong smells were either for cleaning brushes or mixing pigments or treating the paper. For Catherine’s image, he drew on a paper tinted a faint pink. His tools were a row of chalks: black, gray, red, and shades between. I sharpened them to his specification.
My other task was to keep her still. Catherine bubbled with a hundred questions, but as Holbein explained, he could not sketch her while she spoke or moved. I seized the opportunity to read aloud from a prayer book. She listened quietly, but I feared her expression was more obedient than rapt. When breaks permitted, we ate our meals in Holbein’s workshop. And then, after he lost the light from those tall windows, I accompanied Catherine to the royal chapel. Thankfully, we did not encounter the king there. I selected the prayers to be recited with great care. I didn’t dare say the word adultery to her—that would be too obvious. But I prayed with her for guidance in seeking out God’s grace and went so far as to ask the Virgin Mary to protect us from temptation to commit fleshly sins.
Through it all, I never mentioned her “friendship” with Henry VIII, and she made absolutely no reference to it. I watched her for signs of contrition in chapel. She kneeled next to me, hands clasped, earnestly praying. It almost seemed as if some other girl were in danger, not my friend. But it was Catherine Howard, and I was determined to save her. All other thoughts, from my distaste for the king’s commission to my fear of an unknown enemy in Whitehall, were thrust aside. This had become the most important objective.
I was certain that Catherine charmed Master Holbein. She made him laugh so loud that it seemed the walls shook. And he was not offended by her flurry of questions, such as when she pleaded with him for gossip about the famous personages he’d painted. She was much more interested in the stories of queens and duchesses than in those of humanist scholars such as Desiderius Erasmus, whom he’d had the honor to paint three times in Basel. Catherine even coaxed out of Holbein the details of his own background: his youth in Augsburg, a free Imperial city in Bavaria; his apprenticeship under his artist father, Hans Holbein the Elder; and his marriage to a widow named Elsbeth, who lived in a house in Basel with their four children. With a delicacy I was pleased to see, Catherine did not press him for reasons why his family never joined him in England. I suspected there was some problem, perhaps even estrangement, there.
Late in the afternoon of the third day, a messenger appeared to inform Catherine that the seamstress was in her room, prepared to do the final fitting of her dress. Apparently Bishop Gardiner’s banquet, which Catherine looked forward to much more than I did, was the sort of affair that required fine clothes and jewels.
I encouraged Catherine to go on without me; this would afford a moment for me to make sure that Holbein had formed a high opinion of her. I very much wanted him to see the best in Catherine. For a time, I helped the artist clean his workshop. I felt rather guilty that he would not be paid for his labors and kept trying to make it up to him. He commented, not for the first time, that he’d never seen a woman of gentle birth take to cleaning so well. I thanked him without revealing that as a Dominican novice, I had performed such labor every day. I did not know Master Holbein’s religious beliefs, but if he was from Germany, there was a chance he was Lutheran and would recoil from my service to God. He might even be acquainted with Martin Luther or his English follower, the Doctor Barnes whom Bishop Gardiner hated so fervently.
As I straightened his chalks, I said, “You see how kind Catherine is, how caring of other people.”
“Yes, I see that,” he said and continued to clean his hands with a strong-smelling cloth.
That was not enough for me. “Master Holbein, then, you perceive how those who say she is the sort of girl who would serve as mistress are wrong.”
He said, “Do you think that mistresses are cruel and terrible? In my experience, most of them are quite kind.”
I stood in the middle of his workshop, staring at him, speechless.
In a gentler voice, Holbein said, “Mistress Joanna, I believe that you are someone who sees the world in black and white. But I am an artist.” He held up a palette dotted with blobs of dried paint. “I see many, many colors.”
“Another way to put it is that you are a cynic.”
He sat down, heavily, by the window. Looking out, he said, “I came to England, with a letter of recommendation from the scholar Erasmus, to the house of Sir Thomas More. He was my patron and a great man. A great friend. And he was beheaded in 1535, by order of the king. It was difficult, but an artist must have a patron, so I found my way into the favor of Anne Boleyn. And I grew to like and respect her very much indeed—until she was beheaded in 1536, by order of the king. Now my chief patron, besides the king himself, is Chief Minister Thomas Cromwell. A wise and dedicated man—with a long list of enemies.”
He shook himself from his melancholia. “We shall have our cake and wine, Mistress Joanna,” he announced. Once again the intense sweetness of cake coupled with the light tartness of wine left me comforted. Holbein spoke only of benign topics. Nothing of mistresses, or dead patrons. Neither of us wanted to delve into any of that again. I understood better now his strange life, the loyalties he formed and the shifts he felt he must make.
It was twilight when I left Holbein’s workshop. The sound of the crowds outside the gatehouse had died away. All those petitioners so desperate for Cromwell’s favor must have gone home. There were few people inside the gatehouse. I passed no one in the passageway leading to the winding stairs at the end.
I realized this was the first time
I’d been alone anywhere since Culpepper delivered me to Catherine’s rooms five days ago. Promise me you’ll never be alone, Culpepper had insisted.
I was starting down the stairs, framing a silent apology to Thomas, when I heard a soft footfall on the step somewhere above.
It made me smile. What exquisite timing—I realize I should not be alone and seconds later I am pursued. Of course it wasn’t the case.
I glanced over my shoulder. If this were a typical staircase, I would be able to see someone behind. But because the stairs were winding and dimly lit—there were no fixed candles on the wall and I carried nothing myself—I saw no other person.
I continued to the second floor, determined not to give way to my nerves. I couldn’t hear anyone descending behind me, until I stopped, abruptly. There were two more soft steps above, and then that person halted, too. As if he were waiting for what I would do next.
My throat tightened; I could feel the sweat break out on my brow.
Through a slit of a window, the last fading rays of a grayish-orange dusk filled the square space. Before me stretched a long passageway empty of people. This part of the gatehouse was used during the day, but not at night. Master Holbein might be the only person left in the entire structure. If I screamed, I was sure he would hear me, but would he be able to reach me before . . . before . . . I forced such ghoulish thoughts from my head. No one was following. This was nonsense.
I leaned toward the wall and peered up, craning my head, to see, once and for all, if someone hovered above me. My eyes scanned back and forth. There was nothing.
Until a dark form detached itself from the side of the stairs and started toward me, coming fast.
I didn’t scream as I hurtled down the rest of the stairs, half running, half falling. But I’d never moved so fast in my life. Not even when I was attacked by the “page” had I felt such terror.
“God’s wounds!” cursed the hulking manservant whom I crashed into at the bottom of the stairs. I spun off of him and fell to the floor.
“Someone’s on the stairs! On the stairs!” I cried.
“What—someone after ye?” he groaned, holding his arm. Seeing how frightened I was, he said, “Show me where.”
I scrambled to my feet, looking toward the stairs. There were torches on the main floor and it was obvious no one followed me all the way down.
The manservant peered up the stairs, holding a candle as high as he could. “See for yerself, there’s not a soul here,” he announced.
I crept toward him and peered up, as far as the light would permit. He was right. Whoever had followed me, who waited just above, was gone.
15
It was the next day, the fourth day, the day that Master Holbein finished his drawing of Catherine Howard, when I asked about The Dance of Death.
I woke before dawn, exhausted from a night of half-formed creatures ravaging my dreams. I’d been shaken by what happened on the winding stairs of the Whitehall gatehouse. Yet the more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that it could not have been a second attempt at harming me. That would mean someone—whether it was the man who impersonated the page or another—followed me everywhere, just out of my sight, waiting for the moment when I’d be alone to pounce. Which was absurd. No, it must have been some shy servant, pausing on the stairs, not wishing to overtake a woman of unknown status. Nothing more. I felt ashamed that I, a daughter of the Stafford house, had given way to such panic. Living in the palace of Whitehall for a week had addled my mind.
Spring nights were usually quite cool, but it felt warm and airless in this bedchamber, even with open windows. While Catherine slept, I knelt on the floor, hands clasped, desperate to feel the grace of Christ and His mercy. Was I pursuing the right course in the way I tried to save my friend? It would be so beneficial to talk to someone about Catherine, about the king, about the man who attacked me—everything. I considered seeking out Thomas Culpepper but then decided against it. He was a good man, but I was certain he could not fully understand all of my feelings. Only with Edmund had I felt that level of understanding.
As if my spirits were not low enough, I ached for the loss of Edmund. Not the self-pitying sulk of a woman who lacked a husband, but a wish to benefit from all of his wisdom, his good qualities. He had insight into people that I sometimes lacked, and deep compassion for everyone, too. Everyone but himself.
I heard Catherine stirring in the bed. “Joanna?” she said, plaintive as a little child.
“I am praying.”
She propped herself up. “Today is the last day we shall go to Master Holbein’s workshop?” she said, her voice thick with sleep. “I am sorry for it. I’ve liked being with him—and with you, Joanna.”
“I feel the same,” I said. And then, the words burst out of me in a rush: “Why don’t you leave London with me tomorrow? I’ve room for you in Dartford, and enough money for us both to live on.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment. It was too dark for me to read the expression on Catherine’s face.
“That is good of you,” she said. “Joanna, you are the only friend I have ever had who cared for me, for myself, without expecting anything in return.”
What a sad and rather ominous thing to say.
“Then you will come?” I pressed.
“Oh, but what would I do in Dartford? Do you know how many people try their entire lives to win a position at court? This is the center of the kingdom. I can’t possibly leave.”
I feared I’d lost. How could a few days of friendly companionship and prayer, of distraction in an artist’s workshop, count against the enticing glamour of the king’s court? But I bit my lip to stop from saying anything more. This was not the right moment.
Catherine was distracted while sitting for Master Holbein that day. For one, it was warm, more like July than April. I assumed she also felt excitement over Bishop Gardiner’s banquet that evening. I regarded the banquet as I would an appointment with the barber surgeon to pull teeth. But the instant Catherine had let slip that the king would attend, I’d resolved to go.
Once this banquet was behind us, I would make the strongest case possible to deter her from sharing the king’s bed. I knew Catherine was subject to pressure, but the Duke of Norfolk couldn’t literally force her to commit this sin. My hope was that once she expressed unwillingness to King Henry, he’d move on to someone else.
And then there was the question of my own fate. I couldn’t keep living in Catherine’s rooms. I wanted to return to my home in Dartford, but that would be difficult now that I had accepted the royal commission and was expected to work in London. Because without doubt that is what I’d done by arranging for Holbein to draw Catherine. Complications loomed in all directions. I felt angry with myself—at critical junctures I’d taken all the wrong turns.
In this wretched state, I posed a question: “The painting on the wall of the Great Chamber—the skeleton reaching for the ruler—what is the meaning of it, Master Holbein?”
The artist frowned, his eyes narrowing, and at first I thought I’d offended him. But then I realized he was calculating something. “Fourteen years—or is it fifteen?” he murmured. “Such a long time ago.”
I said, “In that painting, it is as if the skeleton reaches for the man.”
“Does not death reach for us all?” Holbein mused. “I read a poem once where Death takes the shape of a companion who says to a youth, ‘Come on, good fellow, make an end / For you and I must talk.’ ”
Catherine cried, her voice shrill, “No, stop, Master Holbein please. I beseech you. It’s too frightening.” Her cheeks flushed, she ran her hands up and down her arms. “I’m cold,” she said, trying to laugh but not quite able to.
Holbein laid down his chalk at once, and fetched her sweet wine. I wrapped a shawl tight around her shoulders, although it was a warm spring day, the warmest yet.
The artist said to her, reassuringly, “It was but a book, Mistress Catherine. I designed the illustrations for it, through a series of woodcuts. The Whitehall painting that Mistress Joanna refers to, it was a commission to expand on one of the woodcuts. But the book was created long ago, when I lived in Basel. That part of the world, it was torn by great upheaval when I did the work—it was the conflicts over religion. All over now.”
I said, “Are the conflicts over? It seems to me they’ve just begun.”
Holbein shot me a look, a forbidding one. Whether it was because of Catherine’s trepidation or some other, darker reason, he would say no more.
About an hour later, the portrait sketch was declared finished. Or rather, Catherine’s part of it was finished. Master Holbein said he was not ready to unveil it, but would soon. He was surprisingly unmovable when she pleaded to see.
“An artist is vulnerable when the work is complete, and I must have a day to restore myself,” he said. “Then you will see. And I hope you will be pleased.” He turned to me. “Both of you.”
So we took our leave of Master Hans Holbein, myself with regret. It had been something of an idyll—I knew I would miss those acrid scents and sweet flavors, the pleasure of watching the great artist observe Catherine: his gaze steady, his left hand making quick, precise movements on light pink paper.
There could be no other such idylls in our future.
We changed our garments and then, when the hour was upon us, we walked, arm in arm, to the royal landing of Whitehall, where boats would convey guests across the Thames. I tried as hard as I could to conceal my dread and my dismay, for a new necklace shimmered on Catherine’s bosom. Her maid, Sarah, had presented it to her after she’d donned her deep blue bodice and skirt. The golden necklace was set with a violet gem, one I believed to be a sapphire. It was obviously a gift—either from the king or from her uncle the Duke of Norfolk to best adorn her for the king. Either option made me feel as cold as Catherine did when she heard the poem of The Dance of Death.
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