The Crown

by Nancy Bilyeau

  “Who is in charge of the tapestries?” asked Geoffrey.

  We all looked at one another.

  Reluctantly, Sister Eleanor said, “Sister Helen. She plans the designs and personally weaves the faces of the figures. I will fetch her and bring her here, although she—”

  Geoffrey broke in. “No, you will take me to her now.”

  “That would not be appropriate, Master Scovill.”

  “We were told we would have all your cooperation, Sister,” he said. “I don’t want any of you to speak to her about this before I do. Where is she right now?”

  Sister Eleanor said, “The tapestry room.”

  “And is that far?”

  She shook her head.

  “Then let’s go.”

  It was past the usual hour in the tapestry room. We didn’t do our work after the natural light had gone. Loom work by candlelight ruins eyes; moreover, the light makes it impossible to consistently match colors. But the bells still hadn’t rung for prayers, most likely because these men were here, asking their questions, occupying the prioress. And so Sister Helen must have remained. This was the room, after all, that she felt safest in.

  Indeed, Sister Helen was alone, behind the loom, when we all walked in. She stood up, confused, her hands full of the exquisite silk and woolen thread bundles we sent for from Brussels.

  “Sister Helen, I have questions for you about the tapestry hung at the requiem feast,” Geoffrey said.

  She moaned—an awful, guttural noise—and backed into the corner, dropping all of her threads.

  Sister Eleanor moved in first. “Don’t be alarmed, Sister. Please. It will be fine.”

  Sister Helen bent over, clutching her chest.

  “She’s sick,” shouted Sister Agatha, as Sister Helen toppled to the floor. “Get Brother Edmund,” Sister Eleanor ordered the novice mistress.

  I knelt next to her, as Sister Helen writhed in pain. She panted, her eyes wild with fear as she looked at Sister Eleanor and me. After what seemed like an eternity but was probably just a minute, she grew quiet and her eyes slid shut. I placed her head in my lap, stroked her damp forehead. “Oh, Sister Helen,” I said, tearful. There was no response.

  Brother Edmund ran into the room. He felt her wrists and her throat, and then pulled up her eyelids. Geoffrey watched him from the doorway, wary.

  “We must take her to the infirmary,” the friar said. “She must be carried.”

  “I’ll help you,” Geoffrey announced. The two of them took their measure of each other, and Brother Edmund nodded. “Thank you, sir,” he said.

  They carried her together, each man gripping an opposite end of the long table they lifted her onto. It was a most upsetting sight, the conveying of a deathly ill Sister Helen through the passageways. The sisters cried out and crossed themselves as we passed, and many of them gathered in the infirmary, to be near her. Some of them said they’d noticed Sister Helen earlier, agitated, not herself, moving around the priory. Brother Edmund finally had to plead for quiet because their talk was too distracting. From her corner, Sister Winifred watched all, distraught.

  It was proposed that a few of us would assist in the nursing of Sister Helen and Sister Winifred through the night. My time would be two hours after midnight prayers. “The youngest are the strongest and can best endure having little sleep,” Sister Agatha decided.

  When I shuffled into the refectory for the evening meal, I was surprised to see Sister Christina at the novices’ table. “My mother has been taken home,” she explained.

  “How is she?” I asked.

  Sister Christina shook her head. “She’s lost. My father’s will has been hers for thirty years.”

  “And how are you?” I laid my hand on her shoulder. It was rigid, like a stone.

  “I turn to God for all answers,” she said fiercely. “He must guide us through.”

  At the end of the meal Sister Agatha sidled up to us. “Is it true a deputation from London came, to talk to your mother and to the justice of the peace?”

  Sister Christina nodded, reluctant. “Yes, they came from the court, from the king’s council, after getting word of my father’s death.”

  “And did they seek to take control of the investigation—is it true there is a quarrel?”

  “I did not follow it, my concern was prayer and my mother’s lamentable condition,” Sister Christina snapped, and Sister Agatha scuttled away.

  After the last prayers of the night, Sister Christina and I climbed the steps to the dormitories. I thought I’d lie down in my habit, try to rest for a short time, so I’d be of more use to Brother Edmund.

  When I stretched out, on top of my blanket, something poked my belly. I pulled down the blanket. A sheet of paper had been folded and sealed and placed there.

  I broke the seal as Sister Christina busied herself on the opposite side, preparing for sleep. There was one sentence scrawled across the top: “Seek out the Howard tapestry.” It was not signed.

  I refolded the parchment and slipped it under my pillow, my pulses racing. Should I give it to Justice Campion? At first that seemed the best plan, but then I turned against it. If the person who wrote it wanted the information to go directly to the investigators, then why give it to me? No, this was placed in my bed. There had to be a good reason.

  My instincts told me it was Sister Helen. The message was about a tapestry. She’d tried to speak to me earlier in the day, but we had been interrupted. The other sisters saw her moving around the priory, in agitation. She must have secured parchment and quill, written this message, and then placed it in my bed.

  It was not welcome. I did not like to see the name “Howard” or be told to seek out an old tapestry, presumably woven at Dartford and then sold to this family. How was such a search to be accomplished? And if found, what could it tell me?

  My mind went round and round until Sister Rachel shook my shoulder. “Wake up, it’s your turn to go to the infirmary,” she said. I didn’t tell her I hadn’t slept a minute. I followed her downstairs, clutching the paper in my sleeve.

  “This isn’t necessary,” Brother Edmund said when I arrived. “They’re both quiet, so there’s no aid needed. You should rest.”

  I insisted on staying, until at last Brother Edmund relented. My mind was so weary, I had to seek answers from the friar, who was so learned and perceptive and often understood human nature better than I.

  As soon as Sister Rachel had gone to her own bed, I produced the paper.

  “Who wrote this?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, but I think it was Sister Helen.” We both glanced at her slack face; she could tell us nothing.

  I waited for Brother Edmund to comment, to explain the message to me. His face was preternaturally still in the candlelight.

  “What do you think it means?” I finally asked.

  “I don’t know,” Brother Edmund said, “but I think it possible that Sister Helen observed a great many things here, things that other people did not realize she observed.”

  Such as the existence of a hidden crown? I thought, my throat tightening. Lord Chester bragged of knowing a secret, and he was murdered. Sister Helen also possessed some sort of knowledge of something that had happened in the priory and may have relayed it through her design of a tapestry. Something that involved a novice named Sister Beatrice and our own dead Prioress Elizabeth. But now Sister Helen lay senseless.

  I said no more to Brother Edmund. I couldn’t confide in him any further; it might have been a mistake to have said as much as I had.

  We worked in silence. The friar moved back and forth between the two women in his care, while I prepared linens and ground herbs for poultices. He sat in a chair next to Sister Winifred, his elbow propped on the bed. After a few moments his shoulders drooped. He slowly sagged onto the bed, his head resting next to her thin shoulder. He was definitely asleep.

  I lit a small candle and ran down the passageway. I must do what I could before he woke.

 
With all that was going on in the priory, I prayed that locking the library door would have been forgotten. For once, my hopes were answered. I pushed open the door and made my way straight to the section that once had contained the book that could reveal all to me.

  It was there. From Caractacus to Athelstan stood on the shelf, sticking out half an inch farther than any of its neighbors, as if it had been replaced in haste.

  I hurried to the last chapter, where I had left off two weeks before.

  Athelstan brought many other smaller kings and lords under submission to him and built a great kingdom. He established new laws in England. He honored his family, his half sisters and half brothers. His sisters were the most beautiful princesses in all of Christendom. Hugh the Great, Duke of the Franks and Count of Paris, sought the hand of Eadhild, the fairest of all of the sisters. Duke Hugh was a Capet, and his son would become the King of France and father to the race of French kings that had continued on in an unbroken line for centuries.

  To make an alliance with Athelstan and become the husband of Eadhild, Hugh Capet made over fine gifts to Athelstan. He had in his possession the relics of Charlemagne, for he was direct descended from that great Christian ruler. He awarded to Athelstan a sword and a spear and chalices and a sacred crown.

  There were those who refused to pay Athelstan tribute and bow to his fierce will. They said they would die before becoming “under-king” to England. An alliance formed of three such kings to destroy Athelstan. The Viking king Olaf Guthfrithsson, King Constantine of Scotland, and King Owain the Bold of Wales marched in 937 to meet Athelstan. The morning of the battle of Brunanburh, Athelstan put on his head the crown given to him by Hugh Capet and led his army of soldiers with their shields onto the field. Athelstan was vastly outnumbered. But he was not afraid.

  It was a battle great, lamentable and horrible. Athelstan led his men in battle as no king had ever done. He was a magnificent force, unstoppable by any opposing army or alliance or armies and showing no mercy. At the end of the battle, he emerged victorious. It is said that rivers of blood never soaked the ground as deeply as they did at Brunanburh. The corpses were so numerous that the black raven, the eagle, the hawk, and the wolf feasted for many days.

  Thus did Athelstan become the first man to rule over one kingdom of England, Wales, and Scotland. There now reigned one king.

  The crown. It had to be the same one. The crown came from France, a gift from a king who fathered a race of kings. It was worn by a young English king into a battle that should have been lost but was won. A battle that united our island as never before, because of the implacable, unstoppable Athelstan. And then, for reasons I couldn’t fathom, the king’s crown was taken to France and buried in the ground in Limoges, near the Aquitaine.

  I picked up the candle, burning low. Dawn would be coming, and I needed to be in the infirmary when the bells rang summoning us to first prayers.

  Outside, in the passageway, it was cold and very dark. Morning wasn’t as close as I had thought; it was still the thickest part of night.

  I hadn’t walked more than a few yards when the trail of a dank breeze stirred the air. I hadn’t experienced anything like it inside the priory. The cloister garden was too far away to cause this sort of wind. There were no windows on the passageway.

  I stopped and waited. The air had grown thick and still again. And yet there was something else in the passageway. I held up my candle and turned this way and that. No sign of a person—my candle would have revealed the figure of a man or woman. It was a watchfulness. All alone in the passageway of Dartford, I felt myself watched.

  Anyone who might have possessed some knowledge of the secrets of Dartford had been struck down. Minutes earlier, I’d read enough to piece together the role of King Athelstan in possessing a crown with powers. He had won a battle that all expected him to lose. Was it because he wore the crown on his head?

  I heard something. Not words, not a step on the stone floor. The sound was like breathing, but not air from a warm, mortal body. I felt myself in the presence of a stern, relentless judgment.

  The strange shifting breeze crawled through the air again. It was the priory itself. It was stirring to life all around me. The crown of Athelstan moved within the stones and mortar, rippling toward me.

  At that very instant, my candle went out, as if extinguished by a breath not my own.

  I bolted down the passageway as fast as I’d ever run in my life. I rounded the corner, my arms flailing in blind, terrible panic. I slammed hard into what felt like a person.

  I screamed, but only for a few seconds. A large, strong hand clamped tight over my mouth and silenced me.

  31

  It was only after Brother Edmund had wrapped me in blankets and given me ale to drink that I could put a sentence together.

  After he had run into me in the passageway, he’d lifted me up, kicking and weeping, and carried me to the infirmary. I’d waited there while he searched the dark passageway, armed with a long stick from the infirmary.

  “I didn’t find anyone, Sister Joanna,” he said. “Now tell me exactly what you saw.”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t see a person,” I said. “I heard what sounded like . . . breathing.”

  “Where was it coming from?”

  I couldn’t answer. Now that I was in the infirmary, looked after by Brother Edmund, I feared nothing so much as for him to think me mad.

  “Sister Joanna?”

  I couldn’t meet his gaze. “It seemed as if the walls were breathing. As if the priory were . . . alive.”

  He didn’t laugh or show alarm. “How long since you last slept?” he asked.

  “God’s servants don’t require sleep,” I murmured.

  “To best serve God, we require sleep and food and drink,” he said firmly. “I have known strong men to imagine fearful things when they are severely weakened. Now I want you to lie down on the pallet next to Sister Winifred’s.”

  “Not here,” I said, alarmed.

  “You must. I can’t enter the dormitories, so I’m unable to escort you, but I don’t want you walking around the priory alone again.” He steered me to a pallet. “You’ll get no more than an hour sleep, but you need it. I’ll wake you for Lauds.”

  Brother Edmund was right. I was exhausted. I fell asleep less than a minute after I stretched out on the pallet. The last thing in my mind was a question: Why hadn’t Brother Edmund asked me why I left the infirmary in the first place? But then sleep pulled me down, and I puzzled over it no more.

  True to his word, the friar woke me for Lauds. I hadn’t heard the bells. I went through the motions of our morning routine, heavy with tiredness and confusion. In the midmorning, I glanced outside the kitchen window and was startled to see Geoffrey Scovill walking alongside the barn, with Justice Campion stomping behind him, pointing at things with his cane.

  Sister Agatha materialized next to me. “They’ve been here for hours,” she whispered. “The coroner met with Lady Chester. He’s questioning the prioress again; then they say they will go through all of the servants and get statements.”

  As much as I hated to think any of our servants a murderer, I was relieved to see their suspicion move away from Brother Edmund or Brother Richard. By the end of the following day, they would hold their inquiry.

  “Does the girl in the tapestry really look like Sister Beatrice?” I asked.

  Sister Agatha nodded. “Oh, yes.”

  “Why did she leave the priory?”

  She looked around to make sure no one was listening, and then delivered up the history of Sister Beatrice to me. The onetime novice was the youngest child of a large family, her father a merchant. A few months after her father died, her mother had sent her to Dartford. “She never had a good word to say about her mother,” Sister Agatha whispered. “They quarreled all the time; the mother was hard-hearted, she told me. Prioress Elizabeth tried to be patient with her; she said that Sister Beatrice had spirit and that it should not be crushed
but molded. She was a beautiful girl—she loved music the most.”

  I smiled. “She sounds like someone I would have liked to know.”

  “But then when the king’s commissioners came, it was a grievous embarrassment that she stepped forward and said she wanted to leave us. We were so surprised. She hadn’t been the easiest novice, but no one expected that.”

  “And what happened? She left, just like that? What must her mother have said about it?”

  Sister Agatha thought for a moment. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “The next day she was gone. We never heard another word about her.” She craned her neck to look out the window. “Until now.”

  I finished my work in the kitchen; I sang the offices and ate dinner with the others. I attempted to carry on, with normalcy. But all day, growing inside me, was a sick dread. It grew worse when I went to the infirmary and was told Brother Edmund was in the prioress’s chamber, being questioned again. Sister Winifred was out of her bed, but wringing her hands, disconsolate.

  “Where is he?” she pleaded with Sister Rachel. “Why would he need to go to the prioress’s chamber?” Because of her fragile state, we had decided to keep Lord Chester’s murder from Sister Winifred, but it necessitated so many small falsehoods and evasions, I regretted the choice.

  I took Sister Winifred’s cold hands in mine. “It will be fine, Sister. Don’t distress yourself, please.”

  “Yes, don’t distress yourself,” said a voice behind us.

  “Oh, I’ve missed you,” Sister Winifred cried, throwing herself into Brother Edmund’s arms. He patted her back and shoulders, and then smiled at me. His large brown eyes gleamed with calm.

  Waves of relief washed through me.

  After he’d calmed Sister Winifred, he turned to me and said, “Sister Joanna, I would like to show you something.”

  I followed him to his apothecary cabinet. Brother Edmund took a handful of dark leaves from a box on the wall and sprinkled them in the bowl. He leaned over the fire and demonstrated how close the bowl needed to be to the flames.