The details of Geoffrey’s imagined scenario repelled me. “Stop it,” I said through gritted teeth. “It’s too much to bear, too frightening.”
“Good,” Geoffrey said. “I want you to be frightened—it will drive this Germany business out of your head.” He started to the door. “Now, if you will excuse me?”
“No,” I said. “I will not.”
“You will not excuse me?” he asked, with a smile breaking out.
“No.” It took an effort to stamp out my smile that was curving in response. I needed to be serious. “Geoffrey, I’d like you to listen to a proposal. What if you could travel to Germany and not have to worry about my safety because I’d be out of reach of danger? Would you consider taking Master Cheke’s commission?”
“I might,” he said after a moment. “How could that be guaranteed?”
“The king has already said that I should go to Brussels to make inquiries about a tapestry series he is interested in acquiring. I will take up the royal commission. You and I would travel there together to Brussels, and I’d stay in Brussels while you made your way to see this Paracelsus. Flanders borders on Germany; it’s not all that far. These enemies of mine, you can’t believe they would book passage to Flanders to eliminate me.”
Geoffrey stood stock-still, his head tilted, a seriousness darkening his eyes.
After a moment, he said, “I must know what John Cheke said to you.”
“He said that now that Bishop Gardiner has granted him the position at Cambridge, he has the money to finance your trip and he wants very much for you to go.”
“Nothing else?”
“Just that he thinks you are best qualified to succeed. Those are the only things he said to me.” Which was true, although I felt a pang over the duplicity.
He shook his head. “I could be gone for a long time, Joanna. Paracelsus is in Salzburg, which is not near Brussels. Depending on what I learn, I might search for months for Edmund. Six, perhaps. You can’t remain in Brussels six months. Won’t the king wish you back far sooner?”
“Brussels is the center of tapestry production in all of Christendom. If I am to serve the king effectively, I must immerse myself. A long stay would be expected.”
“Would it? Well, you have certainly concocted quite an interesting plan, Joanna. But I should like to know—why is it so important to you that I locate Edmund? At Winchester House, when you first learned of it, you acted just the opposite of how you seem now.”
I’d feared he would detect my change in course. “I’ve always wanted Edmund to be safe,” I said. “No matter what passed between us.”
Geoffrey walked to the window. Peering outside, clenching his hands behind his back, he said, “I wish to know, Joanna, if I am able to find Edmund and persuade him to return, what would be your intent? Parliament forbids marriages between those who’d taken monastic vows of chastity, but exceptions have been made, too, as with Agatha and Oliver Gwinn.”
This was not what I had anticipated.
“Oh, Geoffrey,” I whispered.
“You mistake me, Joanna,” he said, still not looking at me. “I am not putting myself forward as your husband. I’ve had a wife—a devoted and loving wife—and shall never have another. I’ll die a widower. If it would please you to reconcile with Edmund Sommerville, that would help me.”
“Help you? Why?”
“That’s my business,” Geoffrey said. He cleared his throat, and turned around, his face perfectly calm and composed. “Very well, Joanna, I shall take up the assignment to travel to Germany, and with you along for part of the journey. Perhaps, in the end, we will both find what we seek.”
27
Less than two years ago I stood on Tower Hill, my heart breaking, as first Edward Courtenay and then Baron Montagu knelt before the executioner. That cold, rain-soaked day was the first time I laid eyes on Thomas Cromwell, whom men praised from all sides as the all-powerful Lord Privy Seal who had freed the kingdom of traitors. Today, in the baking sun, it was Cromwell’s turn to die.
I had not intended to witness this. In fact, Geoffrey and I agreed that I would stay away from London, using my health as excuse, until the time came to board our ship.
I resolved to use the time to weave The Sorrow of Niobe. I asked the sisters of Dartford to sit at the loom with me, one or two at a time, and begin the weave. I was examining the work performed so far when my cousin Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, materialized on my doorstep, talking about the details of Cromwell’s execution, set for the end of July.
“I don’t know why you’re telling me this—you can’t possibly expect me to attend,” I said.
“Cromwell does not die alone,” Surrey said.
It took only a few seconds for me to know who it must be.
“Sir Walter,” I said, and shivered.
“I managed to obtain permission to visit him in his Tower cell, and he didn’t make a great deal of sense, but he was clear on one request—Sir Walter wants you to pray for him at the moment of his death, as you did for Lord Montagu.”
“Oh, Cousin, that is too much to ask,” I protested.
“You’ve seen such sights before,” Surrey pointed out. “We stood side by side for Courtenay and Montagu.”
“That was different! Henry Courtenay was my cousin, Montagu my friend. I would pray for them as I would for any other of God’s creatures, but I harbor no friendship for Thomas Cromwell or Sir Walter Hungerford. And you know that. So why have you come?”
Surrey said, “It may calm Hungerford if you are there to, as he put it, help him to the other side. And it may quiet him. I am afraid of what he may say on the scaffold.”
Now I understood.
I asked, “And what is it that Sir Walter Hungerford could say that causes you fear—and that sends you all the way to Dartford to badger me?”
“Nothing—nothing,” the Earl of Surrey insisted. “I do not want the man to shame his good name. He comes from an old and honorable family. I didn’t think I was badgering you to convey a condemned man’s request. Sir Walter asked for you in the name of Saint Dominic.”
I took a deep, shaky breath. Leave it to Hungerford to find the one means of persuasion I could not refuse.
“Very well, I shall attend. But you must tell no one I will be there—I must have your promise.” I asked Surrey to put both my name and Geoffrey’s on the list of those with permission to witness the executions.
Geoffrey opposed this, of course, but once he realized I’d simply go by myself if need be, he agreed to come. However, this time he extracted from me a promise that I would not go to London or Westminster again before we left for Antwerp.
After giving it some thought, Geoffrey decided that instead of horse, wagon, or litter, we’d hire a small boat from Dartford, timing our journey to suit the tides. It wouldn’t be possible for anyone to follow us without being detected.
We left before dawn and disembarked a distance from London Bridge. We hurried on foot the rest of the way, moving so fast that a stitch stabbed my left side and sweat trickled down my back. We didn’t know what time the executions were set for and there was a chance we’d come too late.
We found our way to Tower Street, quiet and orderly. In moments, we’d reach the appointed place for execution of those of noble blood. Not that Cromwell possessed a drop. His earldom, conferred less than three months ago, granted him the privilege of a death at the Tower, rather than the squalid fields of Tyburn.
As we walked along it, Tower Street began to unnerve me because of its very normality. Such a short distance from the site of deep suffering, of torture and death, and yet these shopkeepers smiled from their windows. We passed a fine church, its tiny green bordered by white and pink flowers. At one cross street we halted, along with the others, as a string of wagons filled with merchants’ fragrant goods rumbled up from the wharf. Men’s obli
vious laughter crashed out of the window of a freshly painted building bearing the sign Rose Tavern. Just two doors down from the tavern stood All Hallows Barking Church, where the executioner’s victims were carted for burial. Sometimes the families later quietly arrived to claim their loved ones’ bodies for more honorable burial. And sometimes they didn’t.
My heartbeat quickened as we walked past All Hallows, for now our destination came into clear view. Tower Street was the only permitted entrance to the spectacle of death. A brown, grassless hill rose between the eastern outskirt of the city of London and the dominion of the Tower of London. On the center of that hill stood a permanent wooden scaffold. With a rush of nausea, I wondered if Baron Montagu’s and Courtenay’s blood still stained the platform boards. I forced myself to look away from the pitiless structure.
Between where we paused and the scaffold stood row after row of stone-faced men. Tower Hill swarmed with sheriffs and constables and soldiers. There were more men of the law present than the last time I was here—did they fear an attempt to rescue Cromwell? Peering past them, I spotted perhaps fifty spectators, clustered in silent groups.
Something brushed against my arm, something as light as the wing of a butterfly but with the glancing warmth of a human touch.
I whirled to see. Odd. There were about a dozen people behind us on the street, but no one stood near enough to have made contact.
“What is it?” asked Geoffrey.
“I thought someone touched me,” I said. “But it was my imagining.”
“Dismiss nothing, Joanna.”
“But there was no one there,” I said. “It could only have been a . . .”
The words faltered in my throat, for a new sensation came over me. “Geoffrey,” I whispered. “Someone—someone is watching me. I feel it. Someone behind us.”
“Don’t turn around,” he ordered.
Geoffrey Scovill slung his long, muscular arm across my shoulders, in protection. He peered behind, looking this way and that. “The trouble is, everyone is looking this way, for it’s the only way to Tower Hill. No one seems out of sort.” He tightened his grip on me, so much that my shoulders ached. “Surrey must have told others you would be here. This is a serious mistake, Joanna. We will double back, go into the church for a time, and then—”
“What is your business here?” demanded a soldier, armed with a picket. For a few seconds I thought he questioned someone else, but then realized he edged toward us. Turning back from Tower Hill would be dangerous now.
Geoffrey said to me, shortly, “Show him the paper.”
I thrust forward my authorization, conveyed by the Earl of Surrey. The soldier nodded when he read the signature at bottom.
“Send these two through,” he bellowed.
His arm still around me, Geoffrey led me past the row of soldiers, all of them scrutinizing us as if we’d committed the crime. Once we were out of earshot, I said, “In this place, nothing can hurt me, Geoffrey, surely.”
“No, but we will be here for a time, clearly visible, and must afterward file out with all the others the same way we approached, down Tower Street, as visible as knights in a damn tournament,” he said. “That will give them time to plan.”
Them.
Although it was unbearably hot on the treeless Tower Hill, I began to shake as violently as if freezing with cold. This was the last place someone should give in to weakness, and I said a silent, vehement prayer to Saint Dominic. I was here in his name—the founder of my order would protect me. Determined to see it through, I tried to take in who was around us.
At first I recognized no one. I’d thought to see Bishop Gardiner and the Duke of Norfolk, or perhaps the king’s friend the Duke of Suffolk. They were now the highest-ranking men of the land, expected to attend an important occasion such as this. But there was no sign of them. Finally I recognized the courtiers Thomas Wriothesley, avid with curiosity, and John Dudley, circumspect as always. But no one higher. And certainly no other women.
“Mistress Joanna?”
By his accent, I knew him before I turned around to face him: Master Hans Holbein. Any happiness I felt over seeing my friend was extinguished by the misery carved in his countenance: bloodshot eyes, haggard features.
“This killing ground is no place for her,” the artist said to Geoffrey, in reproach. “Why did you bring Joanna?”
Geoffrey shook his head, exasperated. “She brought me, Master Holbein.”
I said, “Do not concern yourself, for I’ve been to Tower Hill before—and Smithfield, too. I am more worried for you. Are you ailing, Master Holbein?”
“Not in body, no, but in spirit, perhaps,” he answered quietly. “I have not slept more than an hour in three days. Thomas Cromwell was my patron, as was Queen Anne Boleyn before him, and Sir Thomas More before her. I pay my respects to them—no matter the cost.”
“I understand,” I said. And I did.
Holbein stared away from Tower Hill, toward the barren fields stretching north, dotted with forlorn buildings. “It has not rained in the month of July, not a single drop,” he said. “It must mean something, it must . . .”
There was a stirring along the top of the ancient wall, the same I remembered from before. The officials of the Tower of London brought the prisoners down, to be handed over to the men of the City of London, who ruled this sorry piece of land. First came Sir William Kingston, greatly aged, his hair snow-white and his gait so stiff he moved like a wooden puppet.
Geoffrey’s hand closed around my arm, not a firm, guiding grip but a spasmodic tightening of fingers. Looking up at him sideways, I realized that Geoffrey feared what was to come. More than that, he stared at the walls of the Tower with something approaching horror. Of course—the king’s men arrested him along with me at Smithfield and he spent two days inside those walls, being interrogated, before Norfolk deemed him harmless and ordered Kingston to release him. Whether it was two days or two months, no one fully recovered from imprisonment in the Tower. I hadn’t given a thought to Geoffrey’s pain over what he’d gone through. Guilt over dragging him back here enveloped me like a suffocating blanket.
All the mutters and whispers on the hill died away as the prisoners emerged along the walkway to Tower Hill.
First appeared Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex and Lord Privy Seal and chief minister to the king of England for more than ten years. Like any other condemned man, he wore a shabby white chemise and plain dark hose—stripped of the chains, the brocades and leather, the fineries of high office. Without the dignity of his doublet, his loose belly swung beneath the torn chemise, yet he did not seem the slightest humiliated. He approached with a strong step, his head high. As much as I hated him, I had to concede Cromwell’s courage. The anguish I’d witnessed in that room in Westminster Hall was gone. Somehow he had found a measure of peace.
An odd keening sound ripped across Tower Hill.
“No, it cannot be—it cannot be!” And then the sound again, a high-pitched laugh turning to scream.
Sir Walter Hungerford stumbled into view. While Cromwell walked, proud and untouched, between the rows of guards, Hungerford was being dragged to his death. He twisted this way and that, the whites of his eyes rolling like a panicked animal’s.
“Christ, have mercy,” I breathed, as Hans Holbein muttered something in German. On the other side of me, Geoffrey’s grip on my arm tightened even more.
Hungerford was a pitiable sight but a grotesque one, too. I’d heard more details of his crimes. Geoffrey had learned that Sir Walter was formally charged with “unnatural vice”—acts committed with certain men of his household. And there was more. His wife broke free after Hungerford’s arrest with a harrowing tale. She claimed her husband beat her, imprisoned her in Farleigh Castle for three years, and tried to poison her.
“Hello, Cousin Joanna,” said another voice. At last the Earl of Surrey materia
lized beside me. “It’s fitting we should be here together—again,” he said, with a fierce nod toward Cromwell. Dark violet shadows pouched young Henry Howard’s glassy eyes. Although Cromwell was his hated enemy, he’d not slept any more than Holbein had in the last few days.
“Where is your father—and the bishop?” I asked.
“At the wedding,” he answered.
I stared at him, blank.
With a bitter smile, he said, “The king marries Catherine today.”
I simply couldn’t believe it.
“To be joined before God—the same day as an execution? How can a marriage prosper, to begin in such a fashion?”
Before Surrey could answer, Sir Walter Hungerford screamed some senseless babble, and a soldier’s arm rose, as if to strike him. Another blocked him. They both turned toward Sir William Kingston, who said and did nothing. No one knew how to control Hungerford. My prayers to convey him to God were the last thing he could be thinking of now.
“God’s blood,” said Surrey, anguished, beside me. I could not begin to imagine what this was like, to see his partner in conspiracy executed while he went free. Hungerford must never have told his interrogators about the covenant, or else Surrey—and Thomas Culpepper, too—would now be in line for the ax, too. I wondered where Culpepper was. If Surrey could bear this horror, he should be able to as well. But then, with a twist, I realized that a gentleman of the privy chamber might be required to attend the king on his wedding day.
“Wait,” called out Thomas Cromwell. Even now, condemned, he gave commands. Incredibly, they were obeyed. The soldier moved back, and Hungerford sagged to the ground, sobbing.
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