The Crown A Novel

45


Something is wrong,” I said to Brother Edmund.

After more than two weeks away, I did not know what to expect at Dartford. Exhausted and stiff from the cold, we turned off the road onto the priory trail. It was past midnight; Dartford would be closed up and locked for the night.

But as we rode around the bend where the priory first comes into view, a torch flickered at the gatehouse. Beyond, the priory door hung open, even though it was a frigid night. A man stood in the doorway, holding a lantern. It was Gregory, the porter.

We jumped off our horses and ran to the arched entrance.

“Gregory, what’s happening?” I asked.

He stepped down the stairs, not in greeting but with his arms stretched out, as if to bar us.

“Stay back,” he said.

“Why?” asked Brother Edmund.

“It’s the bailiff who ordered it. He told me no one could go inside until he’s found help in London. He promised to return by midnight.”

My stomach clenched.

“Why is help needed?” I asked.

“The prioress has been missing for two days,” he said. Now that we were much closer, I could see Gregory’s eyes were hollow with exhaustion. “We have searched everywhere. She’s disappeared. Then, this afternoon, Sister Christina and Brother Richard went missing, too.” Gregory’s voice broke into hysteria. “They’re vanishing one by one. This priory is cursed. That’s what they say in town, and God’s blood, they’re right!”

Brother Edmund moved one step closer to the agitated porter. “Gregory, you must let us in. We may be able to find them.”

“No.” Gregory came down, so that he stood face-to-face with Brother Edmund. “The bailiff said no one else comes in, without his approval.”

I moved forward to try to persuade him. “We won’t go into the cloistered area. We only want to look in the front rooms. We may—”

Gregory pushed me back. “I won’t do it.”

“Don’t lay hands on her,” Brother Edmund said angrily. Our porter turned on him, and before I knew it, he’d struck Brother Edmund.

As they grappled on the steps, I darted around them and slipped inside.

“Wait for me, I beg you,” Brother Edmund called after me. “It’s too dangerous for you to go alone.”

“Stop, Sister Joanna!” bellowed Gregory.

I didn’t stop.

I ran as fast as I could, past the statue of the Virgin Mary, through the entranceway hall, and then I turned. I wouldn’t search for a door to underground rooms in the prioress’s chamber, I knew it couldn’t be there or Cromwell’s men would have found it.

I snatched a taper from the wall and ran into the guest bedchamber. I felt all the walls, every corner, jabbing at shelves and cracks the way Prior Roger had pushed on the wall in Malmesbury.

Nothing.

I was burning with frustration. It had to be here. There had to be a way down. I didn’t have time to push and pull and bang against every inch of the wall. Even if Brother Edmund were able to get the better of Gregory, the bailiff would arrive soon with his men.

I needed a sign to tell me where the door was, just as the lion and ivy carvings over the door at Norfolk House revealed it to be the one leading into the great hall.

It hit me, with such force I gave a loud cry.

Young Catherine Howard said: “Most of the time, the ivy is in front of the lion. But atop that door, the lion is in front. That’s how I remember which door to use.”

All over Dartford Priory, I’d seen the carvings of a crown and lilies. Always the crown was behind the symbol of the Dominican Order. Except for one place. The room where outsiders were allowed to sit with sisters—or with the prioress herself. In the locutorium.

I could hear men shouting outside the priory as I scrambled into the room where I’d sat with Brother Edmund and Brother Richard and been questioned by commissioners Layton and Legh.

I had only minutes before they’d find me.

I went to the half-empty bookcase directly under the carving of the crown in front of the lily. I ran my hands up the shelves. I pushed against the sides hard, searching for something that opened, something that slid.

On the top shelf, it gave way. There was a click. I pushed hard, and the bookshelf eased open several inches.

My taper held high, I stepped into the opening, and then closed the shelf behind me.

It was a narrow opening behind the shelf. No more than two feet wide. And very dirty. This was not the well-kept passageway of Malmesbury. My candle alighted on a pile of rotting crumbs. It was a yellow cake. With a start, I realized it was one of the soul cakes gathered by the Westerly children. This was how they moved around Dartford Priory so stealthily.

I came to a set of rickety stairs and descended.

At the bottom was a wider passageway, not much more than a tunnel. I followed it, scanning the walls for another sign of the crown.

I heard a woman’s voice. Someone was talking down here. Perhaps I’d find the prioress . . . and Brother Richard. Obviously, they had located this entranceway, too, but I couldn’t understand why they’d remained down here so long. Didn’t they know Gregory and the others would sound the alarm?

The dirty tunnel met with a wider passageway. Its walls were lined with bricks. The woman’s voice was a bit louder. I didn’t hear anyone else; who was she talking to? The voice died away. I kept walking.

When I rounded the end of the passageway, I saw three things in sequence.

A man in blood-soaked friar’s robes lay on the ground, very still. A woman was tied up in ropes and gagged, sitting on a short barrel against the wall. Next to her stood my fellow novice, Sister Christina. She was half-turned away from me and held a long knife in her right hand.

I stood there for a while before Sister Christina noticed me. I could not move; I could not speak. I was struck motionless, dumb, by the tableau before me.

I realized the man was Brother Richard. His eyes were open. He was most definitely dead.

Prioress Joan saw me. She shook her head, very slightly. That movement made Sister Christina turn around quickly.

“Sister Joanna,” she said in a hoarse voice. And then louder, with her usual vigor, “Sister Joanna.”

“What is happening?” I asked. “I don’t understand.”

“I had to do this,” she said, very earnest. “You must understand, I had to. The prioress found the door in the locutorium; she came down here, to the tunnels. She was looking for it, the crown. I came at her from behind with this”—she brandished her knife—“and I tied her up.”

“Is the crown here—now?” I asked, my eyes scanning the floor.

Sister Christina laughed, and the sound of it brought me into the reality of what was happening. I had been too shocked and confused until that moment. With my eyes I could see Brother Richard was dead and the prioress was in ropes and gagged—and Sister Christina was free with a knife. But I could not accept what it meant.

But the laughter, the bitter, angry laughter, made me understand, finally, that Sister Christina was a murderess. And she was, most likely, within the next few minutes, going to attempt to murder me.

“The crown! The crown! The crown!” she shouted, mockingly. “Is that all that matters to you, even now? It’s all that mattered to her”—she swung her knife at the prioress—“and to Brother Richard. He came looking for her, but he wanted to find the crown, too. Instead, he found me.”

“You imprisoned the prioress two days ago?” I asked, trying to calm her.

“Yes, and it caused me no regret to do so,” she said. “If it weren’t for her, none of it would have happened, Sister Joanna. She invited my father to the priory. She defiled our chapter house with his presence.”

“Your father?”

“I killed him,” she said defiantly. “God will not punish me for it. He was a despoiler—a demon. He was not human. Did you know that?”

I did not dare to bring up her mother. But a shiver of torment crossed Sister Christina’s face. “I didn’t kill my mother. I went to her that day, using the tunnels. I’ve known about them since the day Prioress Elizabeth died. But the Westerly children must have found out how to get to them, too, and I knew that if you found the children that day and spoke to them, all could be discovered. They’d finally know how someone would get from the cloister to the guest bedchamber, and that it was I who killed him. I had to be the one to tell my mother; I wanted to explain myself.” Sister Christina began to weep. “She went mad when I told her why I’d done it. She said that it was her fault, and that she had failed me. After I left, she wrote that letter and took her own life to remove any suspicion from me.”

Sister Christina slammed her other hand against the wall, inches from the prioress’s head. The prioress shrank back from the novice’s rage.

I tried again to calm Sister Christina. “The tunnels go far?”

“They go all the way to the barns,” she said. “There was a foolish prioress, a hundred years ago, who feared someone would try to take the crown by force. She had workmen dig another tunnel and connect it to the dark-house passageway. They added another entrance, from a hidden door in the passageway just outside the church. That way, she thought, if the priory were set upon, they could smuggle out the crown and themselves. She swore all the workmen to silence. But someone didn’t stay silent.”

There was a noise behind her, at the end of the passageway. A man’s voice said, “That was how Lord Chester found out about the tunnels.”

Sister Christina sprang away from the wall, waving her knife with a snarl.

And Geoffrey Scovill stepped around the corner.

With a quick darting of the eyes, he took in my position and the prioress’s. But mostly he stared at Sister Christina. He held a long stick at his side; I recognized it as a baton.

“Lord Chester found a way to send a message to a young novice named Sister Beatrice he’d seen at the priory. He lured her down here. He seduced an innocent girl, a lonely, confused girl.”

Sister Christina screamed, “How do you know that?”

“Because I found Sister Beatrice, and she told me how to find the entrances to the tunnels,” he said. “I finally forced the old porter, Jacob, to tell me where she was hiding.”

I started. That was why we ran across Geoffrey in town that day—he was searching for Jacob.

“When the commissioners came, Sister Beatrice said she wanted to leave. The prioress had no choice but to allow it. Jacob took her to the house of her mother. She was sick twice on the way. When he returned to the priory, he told Prioress Elizabeth about her vomiting, and she realized Sister Beatrice was with child. The prioress was horrified, and she went to the family house. The mother had already driven out her daughter, called her a whore. The prioress and Jacob found her living in the forest, half dead, and hid her in a small farm far from here. The prioress gave her an income for all her expenses. Sister Beatrice had to hide from Lord Chester, you see. If he knew of the pregnancy, he’d have taken the child. Her baby was born before its time; it never drew breath. But she still wanted to hide. She was so afraid of Lord Chester.”

Geoffrey took a step closer to Sister Christina.

“You know why she was afraid of him, don’t you? The last time she met him down here, he was drunk and told her something evil. Something about you.”

Sister Christina waved the knife at him and screamed, “Stop!”

Geoffrey edged closer.

“Your father meddled with you, didn’t he, Sister Christina?”

I winced. “No,” I groaned. But no one noticed, for Sister Christina screamed. Bent over and screamed, like a rabid beast.

Geoffrey took two steps toward her. “You found out about Sister Beatrice in the letter that Prioress Elizabeth wrote to her successor. Sister Beatrice left a few months before you came to Dartford. But you must have heard or suspected something, or you wouldn’t have stolen the letter. The prioress had banned Lord Chester from the priory and wanted to make sure the next head of the priory did the same. She wrote in the letter about the tunnels, too. That’s how you discovered them.”

Sister Christina stared at him, her chest heaving.

“What your father did to you was a crime against nature, Sister Christina. It is not to be wondered that you went mad yourself. But it is not an excuse for taking lives. You must now put down your knife and come with me.”

She straightened up, eyes blazing, and ran back to the prioress. “No,” she said with a terrible smile. “If you try to touch me, I will slit her throat.”

The prioress’s eyes bulged in terror.

I moved toward Sister Christina.

“Please,” I begged. “Please. Do as Geoffrey says.”

“Sister Joanna, do not forsake me,” she said. “You must help me escape.”

“You know I can’t do that,” I whispered.

“But you are the one who understands. The only one. I know that what happened to me, happened to you. I could tell, after all the time that we’ve been at Dartford together. Your father violated you.”

I shuddered, revolted.

“No,” I said.

“Don’t lie to me now,” she screeched.

“I am not lying. I love my father. He is a good, loving father. He would never do that to me.”

Her face contorted with that terrible rage that had killed two people. Sister Christina threw her knife down and rushed toward me, her hands out like claws.

I backed against the wall. She was on me in seconds. She grabbed my throat and banged my head against the bricks with all her strength. I felt a sharp, terrible, hot pain in the back of my head.

The passageway under Dartford Priory slid down and went black.