The Crown A Novel

20


I followed Brother Edmund inside, and we both bowed to the prioress, sitting behind the large oak trestle table that dominated her chamber. I furtively glanced around the room. I had not been inside it since Prioress Elizabeth was alive. Besides the table and a few chairs, it was bare of other furniture; there were no bookshelves or chests. No place where a valuable object could be hidden away.

“The reason I have summoned both of you is to tell you we are to have guests at Dartford Priory,” said the prioress.

Brother Richard made a strange sort of noise, as if he could not bear to listen, and he walked to the window facing the sweeping lawns. The prioress’s lips tightened.

“Lord Chester, our neighbor, is coming to the priory in nine day’s time,” she said.

“Sister Christina’s father?” asked Brother Edmund.

“That is correct.” I heard a faint click, click, click from under the desk. I knew what it was. The prioress wore a delicate chain around her waist attached to a silver pomander ball. It was stuffed with sweet-smelling, exotic spices. Sister Agatha told me the spices were specially delivered from the Far East. With nervous fingers, the prioress often clicked the pomander ball against the chain.

“Lord Chester wishes to come to Dartford on All Souls’ Day,” she said. “That evening we will be holding the usual special Mass, the honoring of the departed. That is, of course, only for members of the priory. But in the afternoon, before the Mass . . . She raised her chin. “Before the Mass we will have a requiem feast, to which Lord Chester and his wife are invited.”

I could not believe I had heard her correctly. A feast . . . inside the priory?

“What sort of feast, Prioress?” I asked.

“The usual sort,” she snapped. “Food. Drink. Music.”

Brother Edmund and I were shocked into silence. The clicking of the pomander ball quickened.

After a moment, Brother Edmund said, “May I inquire as to the reason we are holding this feast?”

“Ha!” Brother Richard turned from the window. “Because Lord Chester has asked us to, that’s why. And we must curry favor with a courtier in high favor with the king.”

The prioress said, “Brother Richard, the next such criticism will lead to your transfer out of Dartford Priory forthwith. Bishop Gardiner will simply have to find another place of refuge for you.”

The prioress’s cheeks flamed scarlet as she glared at Brother Richard. He met her gaze for a full moment, and then looked down, in submission.

“Since Lord Chester is the father of our senior novice, it is only natural for him to wish to visit her,” she continued, much calmer. “I believe his choice of day has to do with his other child, his son, who died a year ago.”

I remembered that last November, Sister Christina had received special permission to leave the priory for the funeral. She had come back very pensive; it took her a few weeks to return to her usual forceful self.

“How can Sister Joanna and I be of service?” Brother Edmund asked.

The prioress answered, “For the performing of music at the requiem feast. You play the lute, I am told. Sister Joanna is quite skilled on the Spanish vihuela.”

I was stunned the prioress knew of my passion for music. I had played my vihuela only a few times at the priory. It was a prized possession; my mother had sent to Spain for the instrument when I was twelve years old and had taught me to play it herself. I brought it with me, and Prioress Elizabeth had encouraged my practicing, but I hadn’t touched it since my return. I was moved that the new prioress had taken note of my small talent.

Brother Edmund asked in the same mild voice: “Wouldn’t Lord Chester be better served by employing musicians familiar with songs of the court?”

The prioress answered irritably, “No, Brother, he would not be better served. He’s specifically requested that members of the priory play for him.”

The friars began to discuss the plan for music with the prioress, along with other details of the feast. These plans included me, yet my interest was drawn elsewhere. A large portrait hung on the back wall, behind the prioress. It had been there every time I entered this chamber. But I had never taken close note of it until today.

The wooden frame was carved in the shape of intertwined branches sprouting leaves. The frame’s brown color gleamed, as if the leaves and branches had been painted gold more than a century ago and gradually faded. But it was the man who drew me in. He was solemn, neither old nor young, with brown hair parted in the middle and hanging just past his ears. He did not resemble a saint, nor any of the great Catholic princes revered by the Dominicans. He looked more like a knight of high chivalry, perhaps one of Chaucer’s heroes. A dark patterned tunic stretched across broad shoulders; a simple medallion hung down his chest. His face was handsome, with a thin nose and high cheekbones, but there was a severity to his expression, a cold haughtiness. It went beyond the stiff sameness of men painted by artists in past centuries, before the innovations of Master Hans Holbein.

I heard myself say, “Who is the man in the portrait?”

Prioress Jane stopped in the middle of her sentence, surprised, and turned around.

“Isn’t it Edward the Third, founder of this priory?” asked Brother Richard.

The prioress shook her head. “No, it is Edward the Third’s oldest son, the Prince of Wales. King Edward commanded that this portrait be hung here.”

“Why would he have wanted a portrait of the Black Prince in this room?” asked Brother Richard.

The Black Prince. I’d heard someone speak of him recently, but not at the priory. An anxious memory gnawed at me.

The prioress opened her mouth to answer Brother Richard when a knock sounded at the door. The porter told her that a messenger had arrived from London.

“Very well, Gregory, show him in. Brother Edmund, you may as well remain, but Sister Joanna, you may go. Sext prayers will be soon.”

I bowed and hurried out. I had almost reached the church when it came to me who had spoken of the Black Prince. I heard again the voice of Bishop Gardiner in my Tower prison cell: “Do you know of Edward the Third? His son, the Black Prince? What of Richard the Lionhearted? Or our king’s dead brother, Prince Arthur?”

There was a reason Bishop Gardiner had spoken of the Black Prince; there was a reason for everything he said. I struggled to make sense of the mention of those men’s names. Edward the Third founded Dartford Priory. The Black Prince was heir to the throne but died before his father. Prince Arthur, the brother of our King Henry the Eighth, visited Dartford months before he himself died. What the significance of Richard the Lionhearted was, I couldn’t see. He lived and died centuries before Edward the Third—but centuries after King Athelstan. My head spun. What connection could there possibly be between them all?

The two dozen nuns of Dartford Priory had assembled in the chapel when I joined them, taking my place with my fellow novices.

Sister Winifred leaned over to whisper, “Thank you for helping me, Sister Joanna.” On the other side of her, Sister Christina looked my way, in a kinder fashion than any time since my return. Relief coursed through me. With time, both my friendships might flourish again.

I heard a whoosh as the prioress strode up the center aisle to the front of the church, and smelled a whiff of her pomander ball. As with Prioress Elizabeth, she did not enter the church until we were all seated and prepared. But in many other ways, she carried out her duties as spiritual leader very differently than the serene dead prioress. It was hard to accustom myself.

When she turned around to face us, I saw something had happened.

“Sisters, before we begin, I must share some grievous news with you,” she said in her clear, sure voice.

I felt my body tense.

“Our queen has died. The king’s most beloved consort, Jane, passed from a fever contracted in her childbed. We shall now sing the office of the dead. For the next month we shall hold special vigils for Her Majesty.”

I looked over at the iron grate hung with black cloth that separated the nuns from the friars in church. I couldn’t see Brother Richard or Brother Edmund, but I wondered at their response to this sorry news. They’d pinned their hopes on the woman whose body now lay cold in a royal chapel. Queen Jane was twenty-eight years old, one year older than I. She must have had the most highly trained physicians in the land when her time came. Yet she had suffered and died, in a haze of blood and fever, all the same.

I have heard that some outsiders believe we take the veil because we loathe men and fear bearing children. If only it were possible to make others understand. Becoming a nun has nothing to do with fear and hate; it is the opposite. I thought of Saint Catherine of Siena’s famous words: “Everything comes from love.” Love of God, love of one another, and devotion to those who’ve come before. When I sat in this stall, I could feel the presence of decade upon decade of eager young novices, learning prayers and songs. In merging my soul with theirs in our holy observances, I came the closest a person could to embracing eternity. Dartford was the only place I’d ever found spiritual peace or feeling of true worth. Again, I felt the claw of panic. How could God in His mercy allow this way of life to end?

Forcing down my fears, I folded my hands and prayed for the young dead queen, that the soul of Jane Seymour would move swiftly through the perils of purgatory and on to the kingdom of heaven.