The Chalice

by Nancy Bilyeau

  My stomach clenched. At last, I had heard a prophecy.

  “Those are not my words,” Sister Elizabeth continued. “They come from the lips of Mother Shipton. Do you know of her?”

  I shook my head.

  “Born in a cave in Yorkshire,” she said, her words coming fast. “A girl without a father—a bastard of the north. Hated and scorned by all. Not just for deformity of face but for the power of her words. Crone, they call her. Witch. It is so wretched to know the truth, Joanna. To see things no one else can see. To have to try to stop evil before it is too late.”

  “What sort of evil?” The instant I asked the question, I regretted it.

  Again the nun’s lower lip trembled. Her eyes gleamed with tears.

  “The Boleyns,” she said.

  I stumbled back and hit the stone wall, hard. I felt behind me for the door. I hadn’t heard the prioress lock it. I would find a way out of this room. I must.

  “Oh, you’re so frightened, forgive me,” she wailed, tears spattering her face. “I don’t want this fate for you. I know that you’ve already been touched by the evil. I will try my hardest, Joanna. I don’t want you to be the one.”

  “The one?” I repeated, still feeling for the door.

  Sister Elizabeth stretched her arms wide, her palms facing the ceiling. “You are the one who will come after,” she said.

  The gravity of her words, coupled with the way she spread her hands, chilled me to the marrow.

  Sister Elizabeth opened her mouth, as if to say something else, and then shut it. Her face turned bright red. But in a flash, the red drained away, leaving her skin ashen. I looked at the candles. How could a person change color in such a manner? But the candles burned steadily.

  “Are you unwell, Sister?” I said. “Shall I seek help?”

  She shook her head, violently, but not to say no to me. Her head, her arms, her legs—every part of her shook. Her tongue bobbed in and out of her mouth. After less than a minute of this, her knees gave way and she collapsed.

  “It hurts,” she moaned, writhing on her back. “It hurts.”

  “I will get you help,” I said.

  “No, no, no,” she said, her voice a hoarse stammer. “Joanna Stafford . . . hear me. I . . . beg . . . you.”

  Fighting down my terror, I knelt on the floor beside her. A trail of white foam eased out of her gaping mouth. She thrashed and coughed; I thought she would lose consciousness. But she didn’t.

  “I see abbeys crumbling to dust,” she said. The choking and thrashing ended. Incredibly, the voice of Sister Elizabeth Barton boomed strong and clear. “I see the blood of monks spilled across the land. Books are destroyed. Statues toppled. Relics defiled. I see the greatest men of the kingdom with heads struck off. The common folk will hang, even the children. Friars will starve. Queens will die.”

  Rocking back and forth, I moaned, “No, no, no. This can’t be.”

  “You are the one who will come after,” she said, her voice stronger still. “I am the first of three seers. If I fail, you must go before the second and then the third, to receive the full prophesy and learn what you must do. But only of your own free will. After the third has prophesied, nothing can stop it, Joanna Stafford. Nothing.”

  “But I can’t,” I cried. “I can’t do anything. I’m no one—and I’m too afraid.”

  In a voice so loud it echoed in her cell, Sister Elizabeth said, “When the raven climbs the rope, the dog must soar like the hawk. When the raven climbs the rope, the dog must soar like the hawk.”

  The door flew open. The prioress and Sister Anne hurried to the fallen nun, kneeling beside her. Sister Elizabeth Barton said just two words more, before the prioress pried open her jaw and Sister Anne pushed in a rag. She turned her head, to find me with her fierce eyes, and then she spoke.

  “The chalice . . .”

  2

  DARTFORD

  OCTOBER 2, 1538

  On a dismal Tuesday night, ten years after that visit to the seer and two months before the desperate mission to Canterbury, I lay sleepless in my bed. I mourned the past and worried for the future, but without any conception of what was to come. The events of the following day would set me once more on the path to prophecy that Sister Elizabeth Barton warned of long ago. But as I stared at the ceiling, there was only one thing predictable: the depth of the next day’s mud.

  The rain began hard on midnight, hours after I crept into bed. It was a fine bed: a mattress placed on a board, propped up on four short wooden legs. By any measure, it was more comfortable than my old bed at Dartford Priory, a straw-stuffed pallet laid on the stone floor of the novice dormitory. We slept in stretches there: After Vespers we rested for a few hours, then awoke to the bells calling us to Matins, at midnight. After that observance, we’d return to our dormitories, to sleep until the pealing of the bells announced Lauds.

  Now there was nothing to disturb me between sunset and sunrise, yet sleep eluded me as it had so many nights before. I listened to the rain and to the light snoring of Arthur, on the other side of the small room.

  “With you, Arthur will be safe,” my father said to me last winter. He’d come to plead with me to take care of Arthur, then four years old, the only son of my cousin Margaret. She was gone, and my father soon followed, his health broken by his imprisonment in the Tower and the other horrors of the past year.

  To all of England, Margaret Bulmer—the bastard daughter of my uncle the Duke of Buckingham—was an infamous traitor, burned at the stake at Smithfield for her part in the Pilgrimage of Grace. But to me she was the trusted companion of my childhood. I would never regret going to Smithfield, breaking the rule of enclosure of my Dominican Order, to stand by Margaret. Of course I would protect and care for her son. And I would never reveal to a living soul the truth of his birth—that he was not the child of Margaret’s husband.

  I’d always found it a soothing sound, the drumming of rain on windows, both at Stafford Castle and at Dartford Priory. And why not? The elements never impeded me. Before Arthur, I spent most of the hours of the day inside.

  But now I was at the mercy of the elements. Only vigorous play kept Arthur occupied: running and climbing and digging and tossing balls. As the rain grew stronger, a dread took hold of what the next day would bring. How could I cope with Arthur if a rainstorm trapped us inside? I’d need all my strength to manage him . . . yet the sleepless minutes stretched into hours. My thoughts coiled round and round in my head.

  “We must not submit to sorrow,” Brother Edmund often said. He was correct. But it wasn’t quite sorrow that plagued me. It was my inability to understand why God allowed this to happen: the dissolution of the monasteries, the end of our way of life. I had been told over and over to submit to the will of Christ Our Lord. To my shame, I found that very difficult. More than anything else, I felt lost.

  Finally, mercifully, a sodden exhaustion silenced the questions and I found sleep.

  It was Arthur’s firm shake of a shoulder that woke me, just after dawn.

  “Joanna—hungry.”

  As weary as I was, the sound of Arthur’s halting voice—he did not speak as well as most five-year-olds—and the sight of his round, handsome face heartened me. I pulled myself from bed, dressed him in his child’s gown, and led him downstairs, his warm little hand clutching mine.

  I lit a fire in our kitchen and sliced the bread. I discovered most of the cheese had gone rancid but managed to find a decent slice for Arthur. My serving girl, Kitty, often forgot to store food properly in our tiny larder. I was her first employer. She lived with her parents nearby and came in most afternoons to sweep, wash our clothes and linen, churn and cook. None of it was done well. But she was kind and needed money and I sought to help. Arthur was gobbling his second piece of bread when a knock sounded on the front door.

  “Sister Bea!” he crowed.

  Into my home slid Sister Beatrice, shaking the rain off her cloak. Droplets clung to her long blond eyelashes. She’d been a
novice before me and left the priory for more than a year, but returned as a lay sister a few months before its closing. Now, like myself, she was in limbo: a woman forced from a religious life but not of a mind and spirit to embrace the secular world.

  As Arthur reached up to hug her waist, Sister Beatrice gave her usual smile, a curve of her lip without the showing of teeth. She was a woman sparing of words. I’d not seen a blush on her white skin nor anger in those slanted green eyes.

  As I handed her a hunk of bread, she took a long look at me. I suspect my near-sleepless night had left my face a misery. But she didn’t make inquiry. Neither of us meddled in the other’s troubles or secrets.

  “I’ll be dressed in a moment,” I said, for I was still in my nightclothes.

  “After you return from Mass, shall we all go to the Building Office?” she asked. Sister Beatrice looked after Arthur while I attended Mass, for he simply could not keep silent in church.

  In an instant my torpor fell away. “Oh, yes, I’d forgotten. It’s the first Wednesday of the month. Hurrah!” I danced with Arthur through the kitchen. He laughed so hard that bits of half-chewed bread flew through the air.

  Today was the day to secure my tapestry loom.

  At the priory, we’d woven tapestries, exquisite silk ones. They were sold to hang on castle walls. Each one told a story based on ancient myths or parables in Scripture. Novices had been expected to weave for at least three hours a day, when the light was strongest. My mother personally trained me in needlework and, although tapestry work was very different—we sat at a large wooden loom, sometimes pressing foot pedals—I took to it at once.

  Four months ago, I’d had the idea to continue the tradition of Dartford tapestry-making as a private enterprise. The challenge was securing a loom, since of course the priory’s was carted away at our dissolution, as was every other object we possessed. Such looms were not even constructed in England, so I ordered one from Brussels, the center of tapestry production for all of Christendom, and arranged to have it shipped from the Low Countries to Dartford. It was no simple matter, because of all the trade difficulties, but I managed it. The first Wednesday of the month was the day when new imported goods were distributed to waiting customers, at the Building Office.

  I raced up the stairs to dress, wriggling into my kirtle and pinning up my thick black hair. I pulled my cleanest white hood over my hair.

  I kissed Arthur on his cheek and scrambled out the door, calling over my shoulder, “Be ready by the time I return. I shall bring reinforcements!”

  3

  When I stepped out the door, I plunged into the heart of town. I lived on the High Street, in one of the two-story timber-framed buildings that faced the church.

  From behind our priory walls, Dartford had seemed a good neighbor—a friendly, well-ordered place. Three hours on horseback from London, the town was known for its safe travelers’ inns, its proud shops, and, of course, its five-hundred-year-old church. There was another Dartford, though. One that was not so well ordered. The shambles was closer to the church than usually thought desirable in a town this size. The stench of it, the butchered animals and dead fish, were a constant unpleasantness. I wondered why the town fathers did not have such a malodorous site moved.

  The shambles was a reminder that beneath the pleasing surface of Dartford lurked ugliness. It was a reminder that I too often ignored.

  That very morning, heedless, I leaped across the puddles in the street to reach the pride of the town: Holy Trinity Church. Its square Norman tower, with five-foot-thick walls, could be seen for miles.

  I’d made it across the street when I heard my friends’ voices behind me.

  “Sister Joanna, a good morning to you.”

  Brother Edmund and Sister Winifred bore such a strong resemblance to each other: slender, with ash-blond hair and large brown eyes. As I waited for them to reach me in the doorway, I scrutinized Brother Edmund’s sensitive features, more out of habit than necessity. For years he had struggled with a secret dependence on a certain tincture, made from an exotic red flower of India. At the priory he’d confessed it to me and vowed never to weaken again. Ever since, I’d studied his eyes for the telltale sign of the potion: a preternatural calm. When the priory was dissolved, Brother Edmund continued his work as an apothecary and healer. The priory had had two infirmaries, one inside its walls and the other, for the benefit of the town, outside it. Brother Edmund kept the town’s open, supplying it himself, and practiced his skills on any who desired it. I worried that his proximity to the tinctures of his trade would weaken his resolve. But today, as on every day for almost a year, his eyes were clear.

  When they reached me, I realized it was Sister Winifred who deserved my concern more than her older brother. Her skin was ashen; her cheekbones stood out in her face. I knew the marshy air of Dartford wreaked havoc on her, especially after a sopping night.

  “Are you well, Sister?” I asked as the three of us entered the church.

  “Oh, yes,” she said quickly.

  Our footsteps echoed as we walked across the church, which was alive with light. Brilliant candles flickered everywhere: at the grand high altar, at the chapel of Saint Thomas Becket, and on the floor clustered around the brass memorials, honoring the dead gentry of Dartford.

  We were the only people visible on the floor of the church. Yet we were not alone. High above the vestry, through three vertical slits, a candle gleamed. And a malevolent dark form moved between those carved slits.

  Father William Mote, the vicar of Holy Trinity Church, was watching us from his private room.

  Brother Edmund glanced up; he, too, took note of the priest’s surveillance. He put his arm around Sister Winifred, patting her on the shoulder as he guided her to our destination at the southeastern corner of the church: the altar of Saint Mary the Virgin.

  I do not know exactly how it happened, that we, the refugees of Dartford Priory, were shunted off this way. No one ever said we were unwelcome at Holy Trinity. It was all done as if it was for our benefit: “Your Dominican Order reveres the Virgin—wouldn’t you be more comfortable in a chapel devoted to Her?” And we would hear Mass exclusively from doddering Father Anthony rather than Father William.

  I made a tally of all the good that our priory had done for generations—not just as landlord and employer but also as sponsor of the almshouse and the infirmary. And what of our role as teachers? The priory was the only place where girls of good local families could learn reading and writing. Nothing took its place. And yet now we were treated like inferior animals to be culled from the herd. I dipped my fingers in the stoup of holy water at the side of the chapel entrance. But before I followed Sister Winifred inside, I whirled around to glare at Father William’s high spying place. You should be ashamed, I thought.

  Brother Edmund shook his head. Just as I stood watch over him for signs of his weakness, he did his best to help me master mine—my temper.

  I took my place before the statue of the serene Virgin. It was of some comfort that we took Mass in such a chapel. A colorful wall mural of Saint George slaying the dragon dominated the room.

  There was a stirring behind me. The others were arriving, the six nuns of Dartford who still lived in community. They were the vestiges of the priory, attempting to live out the ideals of our order. When King Henry and Lord Privy Seal Thomas Cromwell dissolved the priory, most of the sisters returned to their families. Our prioress departed for the home of a brother, and none of us heard from her again. But Sister Rachel, one of the senior nuns, had years earlier been bequeathed a large house a mile from the center of town, and five others joined her there, pooling their pensions. Arthur’s rambunctiousness made my joining the sisters in their community impossible, and so I, like Brother Edmund and Sister Winifred, leased lodgings from Holy Trinity Church.

  Morning Mass was when we could all be together again. At the priory, we had chanted the Psalms at least four hours a day—the liturgy was the core of our commitment to Go
d. To be reduced to a single observance was difficult, but without daily Mass we’d be plunged into confusion.

  Sister Eleanor strode forward, water dripping from her clothes. Yes, the hem of her kirtle was drenched from the mile’s walk in the rain, but she’d never complain. She’d been appointed circatrix of Dartford by the prioress—the enforcer of rules. From what I could tell, she considered herself the leader now, though Sister Rachel—ten years older and the actual owner of the house—also had firm ideas of how they should conduct themselves.

  We all stood in the same exact place every day, re-creating the hierarchy of our lost world. Sister Winifred and I, the two ex-novices of Dartford, were in front. The tense Sister Eleanor stood behind us. Next were the two nuns who also held office while at Dartford: Sister Rachel, the reliquarian, and Sister Agatha, the novice mistress. Then came the final three. Brother Edmund stood across the aisle, alone, continuing the strict division of man and woman.

  I struggled to hide my impatience as we waited for our assigned priest. The only sounds were the sizzle of an altar candle or one of Sister Agatha’s loud sighs. I turned around; her eyes met mine with a little nod. Of all the sisters, I missed her the most, my warm-natured, gossipy novice mistress.

  Finally we heard the shuffling feet of Father Anthony.

  “Salve,” he said in his creaky voice.

  A moment after he’d begun Mass, I looked over at Brother Edmund. This was not correct. My friend, who was as proficient in Latin as I, cleared his throat.

  “Father, forgive me, but it is not the beginning of Lent.”

  The priest blinked rapidly, his mouth working. “What day is it?”

  “It is the second of October, Father.”

  “What year?”

  Brother Edmund said gently, “The Year of Our Lord 1538.”

  Father Anthony thought a moment and then launched into an appropriate Mass.

  How far we had fallen. I ached to remember: Sitting in my novice stall, singing and chanting, the lavender incense so heady it made me swoon. Or plucking cherries from a tree in our orchard. Or leafing through the precious books of the library. This morning, I could feel the same longing from the others, pulsing in the very air. Yet what was to be done? The monastic life was extinguished in England.