The Crown A Novel

12


I had stepped outside, onto the castle wall allure that I’d walked every week with the lieutenant.

A thousand stars throbbed in the clear October sky, performing their somber little dances across the heavens, dances whose design only God could fathom. I took a few steps farther out, turned this way and that, shivering in the cool night breeze. It had been a long time since I saw stars. I took a deep breath—in rushed the damp marshy smell of the Thames, and something acrid, too. What was it? Not a nice smell but familiar, having to do with the river. Finally, I had it: burning eel. Someone had caught eel in nets and cooked them on the riverbank. An enormous fire, too, for the odor to hang in the air this late at night. I never thought I’d savor such a smell; I’d always disliked eel. My throat ached as I realized that this could be my last night sky. More and more, my freedom seemed unlikely.

I found the will to walk back to the door. With a start, I realized it had eased shut behind me without my noticing. And was now locked. I pulled at it, hard. Nothing.

Fighting for calm, I tried the keys one by one. None worked. I ran to the other end, only to find it, too, was locked. Bess had not given me the keys to the allure; no doubt she’d assumed we would never need them.

I was trapped outside on this narrow walkway, hundreds of feet above the ground.

I felt such rage with myself, with my stupidity. I collapsed onto the brick floor of the allure and wrapped my arms around my knees, rocking back and forth, sobbing.

For the first time ever, I flirted with the thought of taking my own life. Of course I recoiled from the greatest mortal sin, as would any Christian. Unforgivable. A purgatory without end. And a disgrace no family could recover from. But my mind kept returning to the possibility. The pain would be brief. I’d finally be free of terror and persecution. Bess would be safe.

In just a few hours, men were coming to break me. And here I was, already broken in spirit. I might as well spare the Duke of Norfolk and his unknown companion the trouble of breaking me in body. I cowered down on the floor for hours, not daring to get back to my feet, for fear I’d hurl myself over the side.

Of course I prayed. But they were feeble pleas. And as with every other desperate prayer I’d murmured since Smithfield, they were met with silence. After the long bout of sobbing finally ended, I slipped into a dull haze. It was too cold and hard there for sleep, although every bone in my body ached with exhaustion.

Out of my haze I heard a volley of soft, sweet cries. It was the river birds greeting one another. I pulled myself up and looked to the east. Yes, the sky was graying toward dawn. More birds called out; they flew overhead. Their wings beat with a rapid thud, thud, thud. It touched something in me, these happy creatures, coasting over a prison wall.

I wasn’t ready to give up.

My only hope, and it a slim one, was in hiding behind the door. I remembered now that when the lieutenant walked me back and forth, the doors were often propped open on the outside. If that happened today, I could wait until an opportunity presented to slip around and dart to my cell.

I took my position next to the door, on the side I knew it would swing open to. The gray sky turned a sickly orange. The boiling sun was hovering on the edge of the eastern horizon. Already, I felt the chill lessen.

I heard voices, two men coming from the other side of the passageway. I flattened myself. The voices grew louder; keys rattled; the door flew open.

“My wife whelped in three hours,” a man said. “It may happen before dinner.”

The door slammed into my belly; I covered my mouth to stifle the cry.

A foot kicked something into the bottom of the door. It didn’t close.

“Aye, but it doesn’t always go so quick,” said another man, just inches away. “We could be in for a long wait.”

They kept walking. I heard the other door open and shut. And then silence. This was my only chance.

I edged around the door: no one in sight. I ran down the passageway. I could hear the prisoners stirring in their cells. I stalked by a sleepy-eyed servant carrying a basket down one passageway. He didn’t say anything to me as I hurried past, looking at the floor.

In a matter of minutes, I’d reached my cell. My hands shook as I searched for the right key. Bess must have supplied this one. At last I found it. I locked the door behind me, and then staggered to my bed. The room spun as I tore off the hood and shoved it under the pallet, next to the keys.

I plunged into nothingness—no dreams, no fear—until I was wakened by a voice. And a pair of hands, shaking me hard.

I opened my eyes to the face of Lady Kingston, in a panic.

“What’s wrong, Mistress Stafford?” she pleaded. “Are you ill?”

I shook my head; it was too hard to speak.

“You’re so cold, and I swear your dress is damp—how is this possible? Jesu, help us.” The pale blue gown she wore did not flatter; it made her look years older than when I’d last seen her.

She whirled around. “Bess, get the food and wine in her quick.” My own Bess came forward, her eyes shining with relief.

Bess silently pressed food on me while Lady Kingston cleaned my face with a warm cloth and then hurried me into a fresh kirtle and brushed my hair. “Why must it be today that they come here, when Queen Jane is brought to bed?” she muttered.

“Oh, it’s the queen who is having her child?” I blurted.

“Who else?” Lady Kingston snapped. “Her pains began early yesterday. They say her suffering is profound.”

I heard a burst of voices outside. Men approached, a group of them. Strangely, I felt little apprehension. My being able to hurtle from the castle allure to my room this morning without discovery: it was a sign of something. The horse master at Stafford Castle was a gambling man—famous for it. Any sort of card game. “My luck is set to turn,” he’d always tell me with a broad wink. Could it be my luck was turning?

The door to my cell swung open, and Sir William Kingston stepped inside. He and his wife caught each other’s gaze, and some sort of grimly intricate message hovered between them. She nodded and hurried to his side.

Next to enter the small room was the Duke of Norfolk, dressed not in riding gear this time but in furs, his fingers sparkling with jeweled rings. He barely glanced in my direction; his face was drawn, tense.

My pulse quickened as the third man strode into my cell. He was perhaps forty years old. He wore long, spotless white robes and a black cap on his dark hair, neatly trimmed and tinged with gray. His light-hazel eyes gleamed under dark brows; his nose was long, and his lips were full. A man neither tall nor short, not handsome nor ugly.

The man looked at me as if there was no one else in the room. Something quivered under his placid features; if I had to define it, I would say excitement.

The Duke of Norfolk cleared his throat.

“Mistress Stafford, this is the Bishop of Winchester,” he said. “He has questions to put before you.”

I dropped a grave curtsy.

The bishop turned to Norfolk and, to my amazement, patted him on the arm. “No need to stay, Thomas,” he said in a low, pleasant voice. “I know you have urgent business to attend to.” Norfolk nodded and left. The bishop gestured—a touch imperiously, I thought—toward the Kingstons, and Bess in the corner. “All of you may go. I will proceed alone. It will be more efficient.”

One by one, they shuffled out.

He turned and smiled at me—a quick, cool smile. “My given name is Stephen Gardiner, Sister Joanna,” he said. “I attended court for years, but I do not believe we have ever met.”

I shook my head. It was such a relief to hear my priory name once more. Perhaps because I was only a novice, no one had used it in the Tower.

Bishop Gardiner took a step closer, examining me. “You do appear quite weary, Sister. You’re not ill, I hope? There is sweating sickness in the city. If you’ve been exposed to any sort of contagion, after all of my instructions, there will be consequences.”

He hadn’t raised his voice. Yet that very reasonableness—the calm, measured way he spoke—gave me pause.

“I am well enough,” I said.

“I realize this has not been easy for you in the Tower.” He sighed. “There wasn’t any way around it. I could not get to London before now. Only the birth of the king’s heir was an important enough reason for me to beg leave from my duties in France.”

“So I have been kept here, all these months, without anyone else questioning me, because we must wait for you to return to England?” I asked, confused.

He didn’t answer.

“Were you the one who paid for my food all these months?”

The Bishop of Winchester closed his eyes and nodded, very slightly. Just once.

I felt my knees buckle, and I knelt before him, my hands clasped. “Bishop Gardiner, please believe me. I am not guilty of any crime against the king. I loved my cousin, Margaret Bulmer, and only sought to honor our bond of family by attending her execution. I have never plotted against His Highness. I took the Oath of Supremacy. I am a true, loyal subject.”

The bishop leaned down, and I felt his hands, cool and smooth, rest on my shoulders. “I know that,” he said.

His hands moved to my hair; he stroked my black tresses, fastened at the nape of my neck. Though there was no lechery to it, I felt my skin crawl. He touched me like a sportsman petting his prized greyhound.

“I wonder,” he mused, “will you be the snare that pulls me down?”