The Crown A Novel

49


In a few minutes we were alone. My father requested it, and his tone was so insistent that all complied. Sister Winifred said she would take Arthur to the kitchen to see if Cook would make him something special to eat. Brother Edmund backed away, too, but not before preparing an herbal poultice for me to give my father. Geoffrey watched everything from the doorway, arms folded across his chest.

“I shall speak to you later, Master Scovill?” asked my father. Even now, severely weakened, his voice carried the authority of a Stafford.

“Of course, Sir Richard,” Geoffrey said respectfully. He nodded to me and left with Brother Edmund.

“Drink, please,” I said, handing him a steaming cup.

“In a moment, Joanna.”

“No,” I insisted. “Now.” I smiled at him. “You are going to have to get used to my giving you orders on food and drink.”

He looked at me, inquiringly.

“Dartford Priory will be suppressed in the spring,” I said. “I should like to stay here until that time. Then I will join you wherever you think we should live.”

He sipped his hot drink. The news did not give him as much happiness as I expected. Perhaps it was because he was so cold and tired.

“I must speak to you, Joanna. Please listen to everything I have to say. It will not be easy, this conversation. I think it will be the most difficult of my life.”

My heart beating faster, I took a stool and sat next to him. He hovered on the edge of the infirmary bed, just above me, his hands on his knees.

“It’s about Arthur,” he said.

I nodded. Then it came to me. “You want him to live with us? Of course, Father. I want to help raise Margaret’s son. I am only surprised her husband’s family released him to you.”

He closed his eyes. A moment passed. I heard the murmur of voices outside. One of them was Geoffrey’s. He was staying close, as my father had requested.

My father opened his eyes again.

“Joanna, he is my son.”

I was confused. “No, he is Margaret’s. You just said so.”

I could see my father’s hands shaking on his knees.

“He is my son with Margaret.”

“That’s not possible,” I said.

He closed his eyes again.

“You are not well, Father, or you would not say such a vile thing. I will call for Brother Edmund. He has remedies he can give you.”

“No!” He grabbed my wrist. “Don’t call for anyone. Hear me, daughter. You have no choice.”

I went still. I had never disobeyed him in my life, but I felt a terrible pain, deep in my body.

“In the year 1533, in the summer, I went to London to see to the family property. Do you remember?” I did not speak or nod, and he continued. “I was out on the street when I saw her. It was Margaret. She had escaped from her husband the night before and had been walking through London, not knowing where to go or what to do.”

My father paused. “I don’t know how much you know of her first husband, William Cheyne. He was a foul man, riddled with vice. Norfolk should never have arranged the marriage. Cheyne got the French pox not long after he married her; she did her best to stay clear of him. But every once in a while, Cheyne would reclaim his wife. In 1533, Anne Boleyn was pregnant with the child everyone expected would be a prince. Norfolk was attending the king, and Cheyne was with him one day and ordered Margaret to accompany him, even though she’d hated the court all her life. That’s the day the king got his first look at Margaret.”

My father’s face was full of loathing. He spoke faster than I’d ever known him to do. It was as if he felt compelled to tell me these terrible, sordid things.

“Henry had begun taking mistresses again, with the queen pregnant. Of course, when he laid eyes on Margaret, he had to have her. He told someone she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. He knew she was the daughter of Buckingham, too. That must have added to the perversity of his attraction. He told Norfolk, always eager to play procurer, to fetch her to him. Norfolk was happy because it would mean someone loyal to the Howards would entertain the king, or so he assumed. Cheyne was ordered to deliver Margaret that night to the king’s groomsman, who would take her to the king’s bed.”

I felt the sickness returning, my horror of the court.

“But she ran away,” my father said simply. “She escaped her husband. She ran out of Hampton Court, where the royal family was in residence. She had absolutely nowhere to go. Her husband would, of course, look for her at their small house in London. Her sister the duchess would not be able to hold out against this sort of pressure. She had no money of her own to get across England to Stafford Castle. When I found her, she was half-starved and exhausted. She’d hidden in a church all night, she told me. I passed her on the street that morning. I couldn’t believe it was she at first. She wept and begged me to help her.

“I brought her to my house, and I bribed the servants to help me hide her. Cheyne and Norfolk showed up later that afternoon, frantic, looking for her. I played innocent, said I had no idea she was even at court. Margaret and I thought the only way for her to be safe would be to travel far away, to the North of England, to seek refuge with her other sister, the Countess of Westmoreland. It would take an army to extract her from that castle, so close to the Scottish border and in the part of the country least friendly to the Tudors. I had a little money, and I raised more to pay for her travel.”

My father stopped talking. He seemed to need to draw strength from somewhere to go on.

“We were both so very lonely. And unhappy. What happened was a sin; I am not saying it wasn’t. It was adultery, twice over, and it was incest, too. But I won’t lie to you, Joanna, and say I regretted it. Because that would be a terrible injustice to her memory. It lasted only one week, our time together. But Margaret was the love of my life.”

He bowed his head and cried.

Something stirred in me then, besides the revulsion and the pain and the anger over the lies. I felt pity for my father and for Margaret.

“I could not escort her north; it would have raised too much suspicion with Norfolk to be gone that long. He suspected I knew something of Margaret’s whereabouts. So I hired servants to escort her, and she went north. I never saw her again, until . . . Smithfield.

“I heard that she met Bulmer at her sister’s castle shortly after she arrived, and went to live with him soon after. Then I heard she was having a child. I wondered. I became obsessed, really. I kept trying to get more information, without appearing too unseemly. When was the child expected? After he was born, the date of his birth indicated he could be mine. I couldn’t bear it any longer; I wrote to her, demanding to know. I said if it were true, I was riding north, to claim them both, no matter what the cost.

“She wrote me back. She said the child was mine, and Bulmer knew—he knew everything. He loved her and accepted the situation. He would raise the son as his own. She said he was a fine man and she would live with him for the rest of her life, give him children of his own, along with the grown sons and daughters he had already. She said she would not agree to anything that could hurt my wife . . . and you. She never wanted you to know.”

I nodded. Now I finally understood why, in her last letter, Margaret prayed daily for me to forgive her. And I also perceived the king’s vicious hatred of my poor cousin, a woman who had fled to the North rather than bed him. And why Henry the Eighth had condemned her to burn to death before a pitiless mob.

“After I was freed from the Tower, I wanted to come to you, daughter, but first I had to find out about Arthur. It was not easy to travel there in the winter.” He winced suddenly, and rubbed his arm. “I met with Bulmer’s oldest son, Sir Ralph. If he had said Arthur’s place was with the Bulmers, I would have accepted it. But he did not. He leaped at the offer for me to take Arthur.”

“Does he know you are the true father?” I was aghast.

“No!” He recoiled. “But I think he has suspected the boy is not his father’s. They asked to keep the baby daughter; his wife fancied her. Not Arthur. And the Bulmers do blame Margaret for taking an active role in the rebellion, rather than pushing her husband toward peace, as they say she should have.”

“I thought that was Norfolk’s lies.”

He sighed heavily. “Like many other people of the North, Margaret opposed the religious reforms. But in her case, she harbored a personal loathing for the king and her brother-in-law, Norfolk. When all was lost, last February, Bulmer still tried to raise troops one last time, to engage Norfolk on the field. Bulmer pleaded guilty at his trial and tried to absolve her, but too many people heard her make statements that were damning to the king—and in support of the monasteries and the old ways.”

I looked at my father, bleakly. “In support of me.”

“There’s more to it, Joanna.” He looked deeply exhausted, but I knew my father. He was a stubborn man—in this, I was his daughter—and he would tell me what he needed to.

“Arthur is not like other children,” he said miserably.

“What do you mean? He is a comely child, I saw him.”

“He is almost four years old, and he does not speak more than a few words. He is not easy to deal with. Truthfully, he is the opposite of you at that age. I think the Bulmers were half gone out of their minds trying to raise him. And I have struggled as well.”

“Father, he has been through a terrible ordeal, losing his mother and Bulmer, who surely acted as a parent to him. With love and patience, he will thrive.”

Tears of relief filled my father’s eyes. “Thank you, Joanna. Thank Christ and Saint Peter I was able to get here in time to talk to you.”

“What do you mean?”

He clasped my hand in his. “I am not well, daughter.”

“Don’t say that,” I cried. “You are not old.”

He smiled. “It is not my age. I was wounded at Smithfield, and my time at the Tower weakened me. On the ride back down to Dartford, I fell sick. When I reached the priory property, I fell off my horse.”

My father, one of the finest horsemen in all of England, had fallen off his mount? I was struck ice cold with fear.

He said, “I was unconscious and might have died in the snow had not Geoffrey Scovill come upon me. Arthur was sitting next to me, crying. He could not wake me. Master Scovill revived me, got me back up, and led me here. He knew you so well, I could not believe it. And he was at Smithfield . . . and saw us both there? Truly, it was divine providence that he should ride to Dartford today and save me.”

“Listen, Father,” I said. “Brother Edmund is a skilled healer, the best I have ever witnessed. He will help you. I will dedicate myself to your welfare, yours and Arthur’s.”

My father opened his arms. “Let me embrace you, Joanna.”

We hugged each other for a very long time. And despite everything I’d heard, all that had shocked and hurt and even repulsed me, to be embraced by my father again was the answer to every prayer I’d had.

Later, I pulled Brother Edmund into a corner. “You must heal him,” I said fiercely. “Promise me.”

“I will use every skill I know, do everything I can,” he answered. “You know that, Sister Joanna. But it would not be right to mislead you. And you are of an age and a strength to hear the truth. Your father’s heart is damaged. The journey in winter down from the North of England almost killed him.”

“Why did he do it?” I wailed. “Why did he not wait until spring?”

Brother Edmund said quietly: “He wanted to get here, to you, Sister Joanna, to speak to you before it was too late. And to bring you your cousin.”

“Cousin?”

He looked at me. “Is not Arthur Bulmer your cousin?”

“Oh, yes.” I took a deep breath. “Yes, he is.”

I had five days with my father at Dartford. He remained in the infirmary, under the care of Brother Edmund and myself. Despite everything we did, he steadily weakened. There was a time when I would have refused to see it—that my father was dying. But Brother Edmund was right. I was now of an age and a strength to deal with the truth, no matter how painful. I myself raised the possibility of bringing up Arthur, of making a home with him after the suppression of Dartford, and my father nodded in gratitude.

“With you, Arthur will be safe,” he gasped.

My father died on the evening of February 23, 1538. He had received last rites, and then drifted into sleep and did not wake.

Prioress Joan granted my request. He was buried in the Dartford graveyard on a hill halfway between the priory and the leper hospital. Many townsfolk requested burial there, longing to be near the nuns, to have prayers said for their souls wandering through purgatory as their bodies slowly turned to dust.

He was laid in the ground next to the grave of Brother Richard.

And for days in the priory church, special prayers were said for the departed soul of Sir Richard Stafford, youngest son of the second Duke of Buckingham, brother of the third Duke of Buckingham, and father of Sister Joanna, a novice in the Dominican Order.