The Crown A Novel

41


One of the women in the crowd nudged me. “But the abbey has not been destroyed, mistress,” she said.

Brother Edmund heard her. “What do you mean? Isn’t this the work of the king’s commissioners?”

“No, sir,” she said. “The commissioners have come to make a report, but they’ve not yet dissolved our abbey. The spire collapsed in a terrible storm many years ago, before I was born. They are finally taking down all the damaged parts; they don’t have the money to make repairs. But in the back section, the abbey is intact. There’s a prior, and monks, and all of our memorials.” She paused. “Can’t you hear the singing?”

“I don’t hear anything,” Brother Edmund said, despondent.

The woman pleaded with everyone to be quiet. That’s when we heard, from behind the wall, a beautiful sound. The lilting harmony of many voices, proudly singing the offices of Vespers.

The woman turned to Brother Edmund. “Be of good cheer, sir,” she said. The others also moved forward to comfort him. “We still have our fine monks here,” said the old man. “You will not be disappointed with Malmesbury Abbey.” I had not seen such compassion from strangers for a long time. Nor had Brother Edmund; he was greatly touched.

“Oh, thank you, good Christian people, thank you,” said Brother Edmund, and made the sign of the cross. He walked through the archway and onto the abbey green.

I hurriedly gave John and Luke some coins and told them to find supper and to provision the horses. “See if there is an inn here, in town, and return in three hours,” I said.

“But it will be night by then,” said John. “What will we do if there isn’t an inn?”

I didn’t answer. I turned to follow Brother Edmund, striding across the green. The fallen bricks were hard to see in the dwindling light. I fell over one and hurt my right knee. I could feel the spreading warmth of blood but ignored the pain.

“Wait for me, Brother!” I said.

He’d made it to the open doorway, on the side of the abbey, and hesitated. The second I reached him, he quietly removed his hat, revealing his tonsure. “I won’t play a false part here, before God,” he said.

“We don’t know this prior, if we can trust him,” I warned.

Brother Edmund closed his eyes and listened to the song, as it echoed from deep within the abbey. “Isn’t it beautiful, Sister Joanna?” he said. “Don’t you feel as if we’re coming home?”

“It is good to hear the offices again,” I said carefully. There was something about this elegant, half-ravaged abbey that disturbed me.

“I wish I could make confession while I am here,” he said, peering inside. “It has been too long, and my sins are great.”

“Surely not, Brother Edmund.”

He reached out to grip the abbey wall, as if he needed it to strengthen him. “I have something to say to you, Sister Joanna.”

“Yes?”

Looking away, at the side of the door, he said, “I wanted to lie with you last night. I have never been with a woman in my entire life, but in that room I felt great temptation. I have to say this before we go inside the abbey.”

I looked at the side of his thin, sensitive face.

“That is why I left the room and why I treated you so coldly this morning,” he continued, haltingly. “Which was unfair. You did nothing wrong. I am a very weak man—you and I both know this. Yet it is your faith and your belief in me that have sustained me these many weeks. I pledge to you, with my life, that I will never violate your trust.”

Words swelled in my throat. He seemed to be waiting for me to say something. But I couldn’t speak.

The song of the Vespers reached a crescendo inside: “Come, let us sing to the Lord, our God . . .”

Brother Edmund turned to look at me, his eyes both proud and sad. “Shall we go in now, Sister?” he asked.

“Yes, Brother.”

The singing led us to the Benedictine monks of Malmesbury. We passed through the wrecked portions of the abbey to the back section, which was intact. Their church was large and old. The columns, the pews, resembled those of other places of worship. The apse rose in a pointed arch, filled with stained glass of exquisite beauty. The flickering of the candles danced off the many faces in the glass.

Brother Edmund and I waited, respectfully, at the back of the church, for Vespers to be finished.

The prior spotted us. He stepped down from the apse and walked down the nave to meet us.

Brother Edmund did not move. He did not shrink away. But I was afraid. What would the prior make of a man with a tonsured head who did not wear a monk’s or friar’s habit, and was accompanied by a woman?

The prior, a tall man with striking green eyes and high cheekbones, about forty years of age, stopped a few feet from us. He raised his hands to heaven in exultation.

“You have come!” he cried. “God be praised, you have come.”

Brother Edmund started, confused. “Do you know us?” he asked the prior.

“We all of us know you; we see you every day,” answered the prior.

I edged closer to Brother Edmund. This was all wrong.

“Prior, we have never been to this abbey in our lives,” said Brother Edmund gravely.

He smiled. “I am Prior Roger Frampton, and I welcome you to the place where you’ve been expected, and on this very night.”

The prior turned and beckoned, to lead us up the aisle, to the apse of the church. There were about twenty monks seated in their boxes. They broke into joyful smiles as we passed, as if we were prodigal children returned. It frightened me even more; I stayed close to Brother Edmund. As we passed the first box, I saw a single monk, a thin, graying man, who did not smile but glared at us with fear and distrust.

Prior Roger beckoned to a panel of stained glass, to the far left. It was centuries old. There were two stark figures side by side: a man and a woman. The man was blond, his hair cut in an unmistakable tonsure; the woman, shorter, had long dark hair. At both of their feet glittered a golden crown.

Brother Edmund and I looked at each other, dumbfounded. Our coming to Malmesbury had been foretold, and immortalized in blessed glass.

“Then you know why we are here?” I managed to ask.

The prior nodded. “You are here to serve him.” He lifted up both hands, to honor the largest figure, in the central panel of glass. The man wore golden armor, a red cape hanging off his broad shoulders, and wielded a shield and a sword. Long flaxen hair hung to his shoulders. His face was young and strikingly handsome, but unsmiling. He had one foot raised, as if were about to step out of the glass window and stride into the church.

“King Athelstan,” I breathed.

“Athelstan the Glorious, the first king of all England and our abbey’s benefactor.” The prior’s voice rang out across the church; a wave of fervent murmurs answered him. “Strong and fearless, yet wise and fair in all his actions. A man of the greatest purity.”

“His tomb is here, in the abbey?” asked Brother Edmund.

The prior nodded. “I will take you to him.”

He lit a candle himself and led us down a winding stone staircase off the side of the church. It opened to a hall and we moved toward a heavy rounded archway. I wondered if we were below the altar of the church.

The prior lit candles as we walked into the plain stone room. He ushered us to stand before the massive carved figure of Athelstan. It was a majestic memorial, yet stark, unadorned. The king was stretched out on a rectangular block, facing upward, wearing long robes and a simple crown. I felt as if I were plunged into the soul of a lost Saxon kingdom.

Prior Roger knelt before the tomb, and we took places on either side of him. The floor was worn, from the humble knees of so many other people prostrating themselves. At the corner of the monument was carved ATHELSTAN, 895 TO 939, ANNO DOMINI.

He recited: “Holy King Athelstan, renowned through the whole world, whose esteem flourishes and whose honor endures everywhere, whom God set as king over the English, sustained by the foundation of the throne, and as leader of earthly forces.”

Something stirred in the air. I glanced over my shoulder. I had the impression of a man entering the room. But I saw no one. My right knee throbbed from my fall on the green; I prayed I would not bleed on the floor.

I turned back to the marble figure of the king and tried to find my prayer, but I was distracted by an oppressive sense of being watched, and not with kindness but with judgment. I remembered being in the passageway off the cloister of Dartford and running in terror from this same feeling. I peered up at the carved face of Athelstan, his face sterner than in the stained glass. This was a king who, when still very young, forced his own brother into a boat with no sail, no food or water, and cast him out into the sea.

The prior crossed himself and rose to his feet. We did likewise.

I ached to escape from this room, but Brother Edmund did not appear disturbed by any presence. He scanned the tomb with great interest. “I have studied history my whole life, but I know little of this king. I have no explanation for why I am so unfamiliar with his reign. Did he have a queen, a family?”

“Oh, no,” said the prior with a shudder, as if such an idea were distasteful. “Athelstan never knew the touch of woman. He dedicated himself to God.”

“Did he take vows?” asked Brother Edmund. “Was the king a monk?”

“No, he was something else. Something not seen before his ascension or since his death. A king of utter purity.” The prior smiled. “We have many documents honoring him in our library, which is undamaged. The writings of William of Malmesbury, our esteemed historian, are collected there.” He ran his hand along the corner of the monument. “I fear though that in our country, history is written by the conquerors. Few come to visit the library anymore. Since the family of Alfred, Edward, and Athelstan died out, no truly English king has held the throne. They have all carried the blood of the foreign conquerors, the Normans and the Plantagenets.” He paused again. “Sometimes I think a mist was sent out by Athelstan to obscure his memory, to help protect his sacred relics from the touch of those who have proven unworthy, who would misuse them.”

Brother Edmund and I both tensed.

“Do you speak of his crown?” I asked.

The prior’s green eyes glittered in the candlelight. “Yes.”

I looked over at Brother Edmund, questioningly. He nodded.

I took a step toward the prior. “My name is Sister Joanna Stafford; I am a novice at the Dominican Order in Dartford Priory. This is Brother Edmund Sommerville, a friar at Dartford. We believe King Athelstan’s crown to be hidden at our priory, since the time of its foundation. We’ve traveled here to learn more about the king and his crown, to better understand its powers.”

Prior Roger nodded, as if this were exactly what he expected to hear. “Come with me.”

Brother Edmund touched my elbow, gently, and I followed him and the prior back up the stairs. We walked down a long passageway to the prior’s own chamber.

I expected him to offer us chairs. But instead he went to a bookshelf in the corner and reached up, to a place in the upper right-hand corner. He pushed, hard. There was a sliding noise. The bookshelf eased back to reveal a narrow, secret place.

I covered my mouth with my hands. This was precisely the sort of thing I had been hunting for at Dartford, without luck, for weeks. At first my pulse raced, exultant. When I returned to my own priory, I would search the walls in the prioress’s chamber for a similar point of entry. But then I remembered how Cromwell’s men had pounded on all of the walls in that room, torn up the floor. They’d suspected an entranceway was there, yet found nothing.

The prior beckoned for us to follow. “Bring the candle,” he said.

We slid inside the space, Brother Edmund carrying the source of light. Almost immediately it led down a steep set of stairs.

“Was this place created to hide the relics of Athelstan?” Brother Edmund asked as we descended.

“No,” said the prior. “It leads to our dark house. We moved the relics into it later.”

“What is a ‘dark house’?” I asked.

“A place of punishment for those who have sinned against the order so greatly they must be set apart for a period of time,” the prior said.

“A prison cell?” asked Brother Edmund, shocked.

We’d reached the bottom of the steps.

“Of a sort. There were monks who, judged guilty by their priors, spent years down here, in chains.” The prior turned back to us, reassuringly. “We do not use it this way, and haven’t for many, many years, even before the Holy Father send out an edict discouraging their usage in 1420. But many of the monasteries and abbeys of England were built with them, rooms or whole chambers underground. After the edict, most filled in their rooms. We, of course, told the commissioners who came two years ago that we had had ours filled in. We showed him the original entrance, from another part of the abbey. The door opened to nothing but a wall of dirt. This entrance, from the prior’s chamber, was constructed in secret.”

The prior began to lead us down a narrow passageway. The floor was dirt.

Brother Edmund asked, “Did the king’s commissioners specifically seek the relics of Athelstan? Did they ask about the crown?”

“Oh, yes. We were pressed to tell them, several times. They have somehow discovered that the crown exists and suspect it has great powers, but they don’t know where it is hidden. The king’s commissioners, Layton and Legh, made visitations, and their men searched every inch of the abbey. And Bishop Gardiner himself has made inquiry.”

“Gardiner was here?” My voice rose in alarm.

A monk stepped in front of us; he had been listening in the darkness. He was the gray, nervous one from the front of the church.

“Why do you ask?” he demanded, pointing straight at me. “What do you know of our sworn enemy, Stephen Gardiner?”