The Crown A Novel

28


I was the only novice in the tapestry room the following afternoon. I sat in front of the loom and wove in the white and light blue threads. Sister Helen and I worked in silence, just the two of us. Sister Christina was comforting her devastated mother in the locutorium, and Sister Winifred was still in the infirmary. I had no idea of Sister Agatha’s whereabouts.

I had to carry on with my duties today, until the arrival of the men.

During those first few minutes, after the discovery of the body, there was a great deal of crying and shouting. Prioress Joan and Brother Richard had dashed in after me and then retreated, aghast. The prioress had ordered the room sealed and guarded.

“There is a murderer loose in the priory!” Sister Agatha screeched in the passageway, hysterical. “The servants must search the priory. The man could still be anywhere.”

Brother Richard said, “You fool, he was killed hours ago. Do you think a murderer would strike and then linger here? He’s long gone.”

He whirled to confront Gregory.

“Did you lock all the doors last night?” he asked.

“Of course I did,” said Gregory, insulted. “That is my chief duty, to ensure that the priory is enclosed. No one could get into these guest rooms from outside of the priory—or from the cloister area, either. That door was locked, both sides, right after we carried Lord Chester to his bed, just as the prioress ordered. No one could get in, and no one could get out. I would swear to it before the king himself.”

“The windows?” asked Sister Eleanor.

Gregory shook his head. “I’ve checked them all. They are closed and secured.”

Sister Agatha whispered, “You’re not suggesting Lady Chester . . . ?”

“Do you believe she begged us to let him sleep here so she could murder him?” Brother Richard demanded.

“Silence yourselves!” shouted the prioress. “There will be no more speculation, or gossip, in this priory. We will alert the Bishop of Rochester immediately; this is a matter for the church courts.”

“The church courts?” repeated Brother Richard, incredulous. “This is a murder of a peer of the realm! And we may face the Star Chamber for it, if not the Tower.”

I couldn’t help but flinch.

“You’re wrong, Brother Richard,” said the prioress. “This crime was committed on church property. It is not a matter for the king’s court.”

Brother Richard shook his fists in a rage of frustration. “Listen to me, you must, for once, listen to the president and steward of your priory. I pleaded with you not to invite Lord Chester to Dartford, and you disregarded me. Last night I asked you to have him removed from our grounds, and again you showed disdain for my advice. But now, Prioress, it is more than just your pride at stake. It is the future of the priory, our very lives. Will you hear me out?”

Her lips trembled with emotion. And then, the prioress nodded.

Brother Richard took a breath. “If we attempt to make this a church investigation, and repel all outsiders, we will be destroyed. This crime will give our enemies an excuse to say monasteries are riddled with vice and crime and lies. That we operate in secret. But neither should we make ourselves vulnerable to the Star Chamber. Heretics eager for our dissolution rule there. No, we must open the priory to the men who investigate such crimes as their living. We must raise a hue and cry for the coroner and abide by his judgment in how to investigate and proceed.”

“The coroner?” Prioress Joan was uncertain. “Where is such a person found? I don’t want to send to London. This can’t become a London matter.”

“You said that Dartford is under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rochester. That city is not a far distance, within a day’s ride, and quite large enough that it would have a coroner. Those are the men with experience in murder, in holding an inquiry, in examining a corpse. If we send out the hue and cry now, he should be here tomorrow.”

Prioress Joan looked back at the bedchamber, apprehensive, as if expecting that Lord Chester, with his crushed head, would lurch out of the room.

“Then let it be done,” she said dully. “Gregory, send a trustworthy man to Rochester with a message by fastest horse. Have the men search every inch of the grounds, to seek evidence of an intruder.”

She turned to face us, in a frightened cluster. “Until the inquiry begins, I want all of you to carry on with your usual work. Just be sure that no one is alone anywhere in the priory. We must stay in groups, or at least in pairs.”

We dispersed. After I’d helped to clean the refectory, I made my way to the infirmary, to check on the condition of Sister Winifred. She was in a sorry state: curled up on a pallet, lying on her side, her knees pulled up. It was the position of someone in a deep sleep, but when I drew close, I could see her eyes were open. “Sister Winifred,” I said. “Are you all right?” She shuddered and did not answer me.

I turned to Brother Edmund, alarmed. “Can you help her?”

“Time and prayer will help her,” he answered, his back to me. The friar was at his distilling apparatus, feeding a handful of herbs into the mouth of the mechanism, placed on a long table.

“Then is there anything I can do—right now? Fetch some food? Anything?”

He shook his head. I came around the table and got my first look at Brother Edmund’s face. New lines of exhaustion creased around his eyes and the corners of his mouth. I doubted he’d slept a minute.

I lowered my voice to a faint whisper: “Does she know of Lord Chester’s murder?”

“No, I don’t want to tell her yet.” He grimaced. “Oh, this is a terrible, terrible tragedy.”

“You grieve for Lord Chester?” I wondered.

Brother Edmund nodded. “He was a brutal man, dissolute and cruel, but he was one of God’s creatures. And now I have to live with my sin without his forgiveness.”

“Sin?”

“Anger,” he said bleakly. “It has haunted me since I was a boy. I have prayed, I have struggled . . . His voice trailed away. “I should have found a peaceable remedy last night. I’ll always regret this lapse.”

“Brother Edmund, you must not berate yourself, please,” I said.

The lines softened around his eyes. “You are very kind, Sister Joanna.”

“Kind?” I was taken aback. “No one ascribes that quality to me.”

“Then no one has been paying much attention,” he said.

His distilling apparatus hissed and spat. Brother Edmund turned to cope with the problem, and I slipped out of the infirmary. I was unused to compliments. My mother’s way was to correct, not to praise. The only two people to proclaim virtues in me were Prioress Elizabeth and, many years before, my cousin Margaret. Both of them were dead and buried.

The next day, there was a flurry of activity in the late morning. The coroner had arrived already, I heard. In the midafternoon, in obedience to my order, I went to the tapestry room. I sat at the loom and did my work. It was so quiet there, just Sister Helen and me, weaving and tapping the pedals. There was much ugliness and violence in the world, and now it had crawled into our priory. We must do what we could to create beauty.

But the peaceful silence also allowed me to reflect on what had happened. Before long I was filled with uneasiness. The crown, assuredly dangerous, was hidden here at the priory. Lord Chester had bragged that he knew our secrets: “No one knows better than me the secrets of Dartford Priory.” Hours later he was murdered with vicious strength. For the first time I wondered if Lord Chester had been killed to protect the crown. But who here besides myself knew of its existence and its powers—and would take such swift action if the crown were threatened?

“Sis—Sis—Sis—”

The low, raspy stutter was a shock. I looked at Sister Helen. It was hard to believe, but the nun who had said nothing since her brother was hanged in chains at Tyburn now tried to speak to me. She seemed desperate to speak to me. Though it was a cool day, her face gleamed with perspiration.

“Sister . . . Joanna?” she managed to get out.

“What is it?”

“Must t-t-t-tell you.”

The door opened, and Sister Agatha bustled in. She beckoned for me, her face pink with excited nerves.

“You’re needed now,” she said.

“Where?” I asked.

“In the prioress’s chamber,” she said. “The men arrived from Rochester two hours ago, and they want to question you.”

A cold wave of fear rippled through me.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because you are one of the few who saw Lord Chester dead.”

I turned to look at Sister Helen, but her mouth was closed tight. She shook her head, very slightly, and she rubbed her arm, as if it hurt her.

I followed my novice mistress out of the cloister area and back to the front of the priory.

“Why did you say ‘men,’ not ‘man’?” I asked.

“The coroner has brought two others with him, because of the seriousness of the crime. An old man and a young one.”

To be interrogated by men reminded me of the Tower. I bitterly hated the prospect. It was important that they not learn of my months of imprisonment in the Tower; I prayed that the prioress had not told them. It would shed doubt on my character and lead to questions about why I had been allowed to come back. The last thing Bishop Gardiner would want would be for me to be drawn into a murder investigation.

Sister Agatha ushered me inside but then did not stay. She took a place on the bench, next to a grim Sister Eleanor and an even grimmer Brother Richard. The door shut between us.

Prioress Joan sat tall at her table, and three men clustered by the window. The one who stood out most immediately was a tall, stooped man wearing long, full black robes, not unlike a physician’s. There was a string around his neck, attached to a mask that hung just beneath his chin. I guessed him the coroner. A second man spoke to him in a low voice; he was gray-haired and heavyset. The third man looked out the window, his hands clasped behind his back.

Prioress Joan pointed at the chair across from her, and I sat down, consumed with dread.

The gray-haired man looked me over. He had an open, kind face, like a grandfather. “This is the novice, Joanna Stafford?”

“Sister Joanna,” corrected the prioress.

The man at the window turned around. He was in his twenties, with light-brown hair. The afternoon sun was bright in his face; it revealed a faint red mark on his forehead, a months’ old wound that was hardening to scar.

It was Geoffrey Scovill.