The Crown A Novel

PART


FOUR





47


Dartford Priory, January 1538

It was gray for a very long time. A soft, insulating, peaceful gray.

It was as if I were being rowed from Dartford to London on the Thames again, cocooned in morning mist. I remember when I sat in the boat and looked over the sides, into the water, I never once saw a bottom to the river. It was always an opaque liquid chalk.

I heard voices in spurts. There was my name: “Sister Joanna.” Occasionally, just “Joanna.” I didn’t want to speak. I turned from them, stubborn. I wanted only to float in the soothing gray.

But after a time, a garden emerged, a familiar one. It was Stafford Castle, the gardens, one of my favorite places. This was no nightmare; I didn’t feel the need to run or hide. No, the gardens welcomed me. I could smell the flowers and hear the birds calling and feel the insects’ teasing wings.

Someone wept, though, and it was ruining the garden. I looked around to see who it was. No one.

“Please, Sister Joanna,” a woman wept. “Please.”

There was no help for it. I’d have to leave the garden. I couldn’t let the weeping go on—that would be selfish, remiss. I tried to go in the direction of the weeping, but my legs wouldn’t move. I reached up, with all my strength. The vibrant flowers and warm sun left me; grayness returned. The crying grew louder, and I finally knew who it was: Sister Winifred.

I opened my eyes, at last. I was lying on a bed, and Sister Winifred’s blond head was next to me, pressed facedown as she wept.

I reached for her; it was much harder than I expected. My fingers moved only a few inches. But she felt the movement. Her head shot up.

“Sister Joanna!” she cried. “Oh, thank the Virgin.”

“Don’t upset yourself—it’s bad for your health.” My voice sounded terrible, like a croaking bird.

Sister Winifred laughed, joyful. “Brother Edmund, Brother Edmund,” she cried out.

And then he was there. His bony, tender hands were feeling my wrists and my throat. He lifted my eyelids and peered into my eyes. I peered back. He looked tired, but much like himself. His eyes were not the serene yet dull brown that I now knew was the product of a dangerous flower. They were full of aching concern.

“I greet you, Brother Edmund,” I said.

He smiled. “And I greet you, Sister Joanna.”

It rushed over me then, the fear and the horror in the tunnels under the priory. I shrank away and immediately felt a burning pain in the back of my head.

“No, Sister Christina, no!” I was frantic.

“It’s all right, it’s all right,” Brother Edmund said quickly. “Sister Christina is gone. She can’t hurt you. Don’t move, Sister Joanna.”

“My head,” I groaned.

“You have been dealt a serious head wound,” he said. “We had the barber here as well, and a physician came from London yesterday.”

I stared at him. “Yesterday? How . . . how long have I been asleep?”

“You have been unable to speak or move for several weeks,” he said quietly.

Sister Winifred took my hand and held it tightly. “It was thought you would die,” she said.

I looked at her, at her loving face. And then at Brother Edmund, who was checking the bandages on my head. I could hear the crackling of a high fire in the infirmary fireplace. It was full winter now.

“I won’t die?” I asked.

“You won’t,” Brother Edmund said firmly. “You will recover, though it may take some time.”

I tightened my grip on Sister Winifred’s hand. “My father,” I said.

They exchanged a quick look. Brother Edmund leaned down and said, “We have not yet found him.”

“But he was to be freed!” I cried. “Bishop Gardiner promised the princess.”

“He was freed three days after we went to Lambeth. We know it for certain. Geoffrey Scovill rode to London and confirmed it.”

I stared at him, confused. Finally, I said, “Then he must be at Stafford Castle.”

“We wrote a letter, to your cousin, Sir Henry. He replied that he’d not seen your father, nor heard word. The letter came to the priory yesterday.”

Salty tears burned in my eyes.

“Geoffrey Scovill is looking for him, Sister Joanna,” he said. “And we know that when Master Scovill sets out to find someone, he succeeds. He is quite stubborn.”

“Like me,” I said.

“Yes,” said Brother Edmund. “He is like you.” Brother Edmund ducked his head and looked away.

The bells pealed. It was time for prayers. Sister Winifred looked at us, questioningly.

“Go, please,” I said. “I want you to.”

“Tell them of Sister Joanna,” Brother Edmund said. “There can be prayers of thanks today.”

When Sister Winifred left, I asked him about the crown.

He shook his head. “It’s not to be found, either. There was a place for it, a room very much like the one at Malmesbury, but it was empty. I have searched the tunnels, every inch. Nothing.”

“Sister Christina.”

“Yes,” he said. “When the men were taking her away, one of the things she screamed is that we would never find the crown. That she had sanctified it.”

I swallowed. “Yes. Brother Edmund, her father’s evil drove her mad. Sister Helen—she must have seen things no one else had and suspected that Sister Christina had murdered Lord Chester. But the tapestries—what did they mean?”

“The sisters dance for their father, Atlas, a god whom Zeus condemned to hold up the heavens on his shoulders. They mourn for him, but in some myths they blame him, too, for not protecting them from capture. The Pleiades all gave birth to children conceived from gods or demigods, sometimes through force. There’s a version in which the sisters turn against their father. They hate him. In this tapestry, yes, their dance was angry.”

I nodded. “That is why she wanted me to see the story, even though other nuns wove it long ago.”

Now I had another frightening thought. “And what about Bishop Gardiner?”

“He returned to France after one week spent in London. He had been summoned by the king to hear in person his specifications for a new wife. Gardiner’s charge is to negotiate with King Francis for a French princess.”

“Poor princess.” I shuddered. Something shifted in Brother Edmund’s expression; I could see he had more to tell me. It would not be pleasant hearing.

“What is it, Brother?” I pressed him.

“Sister Christina has already been charged with murder and found guilty in the Courts of Assize.” He hesitated.

“Tell me,” I whispered.

“Sister Christina will be hanged,” he said.

I took it in. I said nothing for a long while. And then I managed to whisper: “She would rather be burned.”

The room was beginning to swim in front of my eyes. “Rest now,” he said soothingly. “Don’t think about Sister Christina, or the crown, or Bishop Gardiner. All will be well.”

The grayness returned.

I began to recover. It took me two days before I could sit up without fainting. And my arms and legs were so weak and uncooperative—it was extraordinarily frustrating. Brother Edmund and Sister Winifred set up a regimen for me. Each day I endeavored to do more. To sit up, to reach with one hand and then the other. Finally, I could stand, but I couldn’t walk. It was frightening how my legs collapsed under me.

I had visitors. Every time I was up to it, a different sister would come to sit with me, pray with me. Sister Agatha had to be reminded that it wasn’t fair for her to take up all the visitor time.

Prioress Joan asked to see me with only Brother Edmund present. She sat by my bed, and her face was very serious and yet without a trace of anger or distrust.

“I think that if you had not come when you did, she would have ended my life,” said the prioress. “Sister Christina meant to kill me—she told me several times she would. But it was very hard for her to kill a Prioress of Dartford. The training she received had had its effect, even on a girl who was mad. She hated me, yet she respected and feared me, too. She was praying for the strength to kill me when you appeared.”

“And Brother Richard?” I asked.

The prioress’s head sank. I could see how difficult this would be.

“Sister Christina sat next to me, with her knife pointed at my throat, while we listened to him come down the passageway. He kept calling out, ‘Prioress? Prioress?’ He sounded so worried for me. I wanted desperately to warn him. The sound of his voice, the way he called out for me, I can’t seem to put it out of my mind. Every night I hear it, and every day I . . .” Her voice trailed away. After a long moment of silence, she continued. “When he came around the corner, she sprang on him. Brother Richard died quickly.”

We all three fell silent, as we greatly mourned the loss of the brilliant Brother Richard.

She finally cleared her throat. “I wish to speak to you about the crown of Athelstan.”

I tensed. A quick glance at Brother Edmund revealed he was not nervous about the subject. Yes, of course. They had already spoken, while I was senseless.

“Commissioners Legh and Layton told me they were certain you had been handpicked by Bishop Gardiner to search the priory for a relic called the Athelstan crown. They said there were rumors for many years of its existence, and Cromwell had them inquiring at all the monasteries, in particular Malmesbury Abbey, where King Athelstan was buried, but no one had found it. Certain reports of late led them to believe it was at Dartford. I was told that if I could find it, Dartford would not be suppressed—we would continue here. But they told me I must not directly confront you three and thus stir Gardiner to direct intervention. I must search with discretion. I was assured that the king would honor the ancient crown of a king.”

I snorted in disbelief.

The prioress flushed, and then continued. “When Brother Richard said you were both recalled to London by orders of Bishop Gardiner, it sounded patently false. But I did not try to stop you, because I thought it would be easier to achieve my goal with just one agent of Gardiner in competition with me, not three. After many days of effort, and studying diagrams of other priories and monasteries, I realized there must be significance to the difference in the stone carvings over the bookcase in the locutorium, and was able to gain entry to the stairs. But I never found the correct room. Sister Christina seized me.”

“Sister Christina found the crown,” I said.

The prioress nodded. “She taunted me about it. She said she had removed it from the priory weeks earlier and sanctified it.”

Sanctified. That word again.

“But how did she do that?” I asked.

“She told me she threw it in a fire and melted it. She broke it into pieces. Then she threw the pieces in the river.”

I shuddered at the madness of Sister Christina.

“In truth, she was much more concerned with her father and his crimes against her and Sister Beatrice than with the crown. The greatest error of my life was agreeing to Lord Chester’s coming to Dartford Priory. Prioress Elizabeth had forbade him from coming to the priory, but I didn’t know why because I never read her letter. He meant to flaunt his power before his daughter, I think. What he did to her was a horrific crime against God and man.” She shook her head. “She said her father became enraged when she said she wanted to take vows here, but she managed to send a letter to her uncle the Bishop of Dover and to enlist his support. She wanted to rebuild her life here, to try to forget the past and dedicate herself to God. Perhaps if Lord Chester had not come here, to the feast, she might have succeeded. I don’t know. God is merciful. But when her father laid hands on the reliquary at our feast, something inside her snapped. There was no going back then.”

The prioress straightened in her chair. “I have to find a way to live with this mistake, which has cost all of these lives. I shall ask for forgiveness and spiritual guidance every day that is left to me on earth.”

I reached out to the prioress, I touched her hand. She looked at me, surprised—and then grateful.

“What happens to us now?” I asked.

She said simply, “Dartford Priory will be suppressed. I wrote to Cromwell and informed him of what happened, and he sent me a letter two weeks ago making it plain what must occur. I am surrendering the priory to the will of the king. There will be no persecutions or arrests. It will happen to us, the same thing that is happening to all the larger monasteries all over England. At least we will be spared another visit from Commissioners Legh and Layton. After Easter, we must all leave Dartford Priory. Pensions have been arranged.”

The prioress leaned closer to me. “For our time remaining, we will conduct ourselves with dedication to Christ and with the dignity that comes from being members of the Dominican Order. I suggest to you what I am suggesting to all of the sisters. Give careful consideration to how you wish to live after Dartford is closed to you. Sister Joanna, you have options they do not. You are half Spanish, and the Dominican Order is very strong in Spain. You could travel there. I’d help you with the arrangements. You are not without means. There is your father’s inheritance—”

I shook my head violently. “I am an Englishwoman.”

She said, very gently, “You cannot become a nun here. It’s not possible to perform the ceremony of final profession on the eve of our destruction. I sought permission, from our governing prelate, for you and Sister Winifred. I sent a letter the day after my rescue. I wanted to do that for you. Sister Joanna, you are the final novice to profess at Dartford. I wanted you to be the last nun. But it is too near the end of our days. My request was denied.”

I clutched the edge of my bed. There had been so many tragedies, so many losses, and mysteries never to be understood. But this one struck me as the cruelest of blows. Was I to live out my life in this strange limbo, not a regular woman of the world but not a full nun?

“I wish to be alone,” I said.

She nodded and quietly left, along with Brother Edmund. That night I wept without ceasing until finally I sank into a sodden, dreamless, dull sleep. It was all for nothing, the searching and the terror and the struggle. It was over.

The next week was very hard for me. I almost felt I was back in the Tower, that final period of listlessness, of hopeless stupor. To cheer me, Sister Agatha brought me a letter from the Lady Mary. The novice mistress was beside herself from excitement. I read it while she stood there, and then shared the gracious words of the king’s daughter with her. It pleased her more than me. I would always revere the Lady Mary and be grateful to her, but right now she was part of a way of life that was dying. A life of grace and sacrifice and order, giving way to ugliness and confusion. The tragedy was too enormous.

Sister Winifred did her best to cheer me. She even begged me to make a life with her after Dartford closed.

“Brother Edmund says he will try to keep the infirmary open in the village, working as an apothecary, rather than a friar,” she said. “There are those in the town who have pleaded with him to remain, to make the attempt. I will help him in the infirmary, and I will keep house for him, cook and clean. We’ll find a house in town. I have not asked him yet, but I am sure he’d welcome you.”

“No, I must be with my father,” I said. “I know I can find him. When I am strong enough, I will purchase a horse and look for him myself.”

“Yes, of course, Sister,” she murmured, trying to hide her disappointment. “I understand.”

Soon after that I learned about Sister Beatrice.

At first they hadn’t told me; for some reason, they thought I would be too unnerved. But finally, it was revealed that Sister Beatrice had in a fashion returned to Dartford. The crimes of Sister Christina had so disturbed her, she wrote a letter to the prioress asking for an audience. During a very long discussion, it was agreed that she could come back as a lay sister for as long as Dartford existed. Other priories had them—women who performed mostly manual labor, freeing up the nuns and novices for religious study. Lay sisters wore different habits and slept with the servants, but were still required to obey the laws of chastity, obedience, and humility.

Sister Agatha asked me, rather nervously, if I wanted to meet her.

I shrugged. “I don’t see why not.”

The next morning, Sister Beatrice came to the infirmary. I had not slept well, and I was dreading a long confession from a penitent fallen woman.

She was taller than I’d expected, with hazel eyes and thick blond hair pulled back tight under a cap. She slipped onto a stool and stared at me for so long I felt uncomfortable.

“So,” she said, “I have heard you actually like tapestry work.”

I laughed. “You don’t?”

“I find it so dull, and I’m terrible at it. But I was bad at everything here, except for music. At chapter, my faults were doubly long as everyone else’s. I’m sure I was the worst novice in the history of the Dominican Order.”

“Then why did you return?” I asked.

“Prioress Elizabeth and the other nuns treated me better than anyone else in my life,” she said. “Except for Geoffrey Scovill.” To my amazement, she blushed as she said his name. She looked away until the blush receded.

“Geoffrey told me all about you,” she muttered.

I should have minded this, but for some reason I didn’t.

“He said you are a remarkable person,” she continued.

“I’m not,” I said, weary.

She bit her thumbnail; I could see that all her fingernails were torn to the quick. She’d shown me something of a sullen nature, but then it shifted into sadness. “Do you blame me, Sister Joanna?” she asked. “Is everything that happened here at the priory my fault?”

“No.”

She nodded but still looked troubled.

“I think,” I said slowly, “that for the rest of the time we have here, we should not blame one another or find fault with one another. It is very precious and beautiful, the life at Dartford Priory. We should cherish it until it is impossible to do so any longer.”

She got up from her stool.

“You’re mistaken about one thing, Sister Joanna. You are remarkable.”