The Crown A Novel

5


Stafford Castle, April 1527

I don’t want to be married.”

Margaret was seventeen, and I was sixteen. It was late at night, in my bedchamber. We were lying next to each other in bed, in our nightclothes, huddled together for warmth. It was spring, but my room was cold. It was forbidden to light a fire at night after Easter, one of the many economies we practiced at Stafford Castle.

I pulled a blanket higher, up to our chins, as I searched for the right thing to say. I’d been pained to hear of Margaret’s marriage plans earlier that day, because it meant I would see even less of her, but it was selfish to say as much. Now that she’d confessed she didn’t even want to be a wife, I was at a loss.

Something came to me.

“I don’t want to be maid of honor to the queen,” I said.

Margaret shook her head. “I can’t blame you for that.”

Our respective fates had been discussed at dinner that day, in the great hall. It was a room rarely used for meals anymore, but an effort was made because of the occasion. My cousin Elizabeth, the Duchess of Norfolk, had come to visit for a fortnight, without her husband, of course. She’d brought not only her favorite companion, Margaret, but her eight-year-old daughter, Mary, and, oddly, her brother-in-law, Charles Howard. I had never much liked Elizabeth, who was older than me and quite haughty, and I had no use for any Howard, but this visit was most welcome for bringing Margaret back to me.

The Staffords and the Howards had once been the two greatest ducal families in England. The marriage of Thomas Howard, heir to the dukedom of Norfolk, to Elizabeth, the daughter of the Duke of Buckingham, was a glorious match. Her fiancé was much older, and a widower, but he was a rising man of the court, a commander on the battlefields of France, Scotland, and Ireland. She took his hand and promised God to honor and obey him.

What a blessing she could not see into her future, see the execution of her father, the ruin of the Stafford family, and the wretchedness of her marriage.

After the Duke of Buckingham was put to death in 1521, his estates, all of his castles and lands and income, were seized by the king, with one exception: Stafford Castle, the family seat, built on a hill in the reign of William the Conqueror. I had lived there most of my life. The duke’s oldest son, my cousin Henry, was permitted to hold it and draw income from the land surrounding. He settled in the crumbling castle with his family, joined by my father, mother, and myself. The rest of the Stafford clan, the cousins and aunts and uncles, dispersed, including Margaret. Elizabeth insisted that Margaret come live with her, to keep her company. And so she did. Our many letters went back and forth, but I saw Margaret only when they came back to Stafford Castle for visits. My father traveled to London once a year, to maintain the small house he’d been able to hold on to, but my mother and I always stayed behind. We no longer had money for traveling.

I didn’t understand Margaret’s marriage. Not only did she seem glum at the prospect, but at dinner Elizabeth was actually distraught about it.

“He’s one of my husband’s retainers, this William Cheyne,” said Elizabeth, angry patches of red flaring in her hollow white cheeks. “He’s asked for Margaret, and the duke agreed, without consulting me. He’s quite happy that Cheyne will take her without dowry.”

“Then it’s a love match?” asked Ursula Pole Stafford, my cousin Henry’s wife. She was heavy with child, her third pregnancy in five years.

“Margaret hasn’t spoken more than a few words to him!” Elizabeth cried. “Oh, I can’t bear the thought of losing her to a rough young husband. How could I sleep at night, knowing what crimes he might be committing against an innocent girl?”

Margaret got up and stroked Elizabeth’s shoulder. “Hush, do not be troubled,” she said. As always, Margaret worried more about her fragile older half sister than herself.

All might have been well if it weren’t for the seventeen-year-old sitting on Elizabeth’s other side, Charles Howard. “Come now, Duchess,” he drawled, “don’t some ladies relish crimes in the night?”

Elizabeth drew back from him, her lower lip trembling. Then, to everyone’s surprise, she jumped to her feet and began pulling on her long sleeves.

“Do you see this?” she cried. And after a moment, as she pulled the sleeve higher, we did see it, a long, faint, yellowish-purple bruise mottling her thin right arm. “I saw my husband, and the duke told me to cease my oppositions, that I must live with him and sleep beside him again. I asked him where would he put his whore, and he did this to me.”

We sat there, aghast, as the duchess turned to the right and to the left, holding up her arm to us with some sort of strange, terrible pride I couldn’t understand. Of course, if her father the Duke of Buckingham were alive, Norfolk wouldn’t dare beat and humiliate his wife so. We all knew that.

Little Mary Howard looked down at her plate, and I wondered what she thought of her father.

“Sister, calm yourself,” pleaded my cousin Henry. The most important thing to Henry and Ursula was to keep the family safe, to avoid all controversy and criticism, so that there would never again be grounds for suspicion.

Now, for the first time, my mother spoke, in her heavily accented English. “Duchess, we are grateful for your help in gaining a position for Joanna with the queen.”

All eyes turned on me, as I shifted, uncomfortable, in my seat.

Elizabeth nodded. “Despite everything, the queen is still devoted to you,” she said to my mother, who smiled triumphantly.

When my mother was younger than I, only fourteen, she had left her country as a maid of honor to Princess Katherine of Spain, who was bound to marry Prince Arthur of England and be queen of his island kingdom. Katherine wed Arthur, who died young, and then his brother, Henry, and finally became queen. My mother Isabella served her devotedly through it all, and six months after Katherine was crowned, she married the king’s handsome cousin, my father, Sir Richard Stafford, one of the finest athletes in the land. Another marriage that began with the highest of hopes.

I was born less than two years later, and shipped to Stafford Castle, to be cared for by governesses and tutors and maids. My mother’s place was with the queen, and I saw her only a few times a year. It was not an unusual arrangement.

The Duke of Buckingham was arrested, tried, and beheaded when I was ten years old, and everything changed. All Staffords were unwelcome at court; one of my older uncles was imprisoned along with Buckingham but later released. My parents were never charged with any crime, but they were banished. My mother was forced into the country, away from the queen, who meant everything to her. The size of the staff at Stafford Castle was severely reduced, and so she took me in hand herself. My faraway, glamorous mother was now close at hand, unhappy—and paying close attention to me.

Elizabeth wrinkled her nose at her plate. “This venison is fine enough, but aren’t we to have a fish course?” she complained.

We who lived in Stafford Castle winced. My father had spent two days hunting from dawn to dusk to ensure fresh game for our company. He was not as unhappy as my mother with a life in the country; he took a vigorous interest in managing the properties and farms and animals. The more time he was out of doors, the less he saw of my mother, who found endless fault with him. Her litany of complaints filled both my father and me with misery.

“This isn’t Arundel Castle, Sister,” Cousin Henry said morosely.

Elizabeth sighed and turned back to my mother: “I hope you’ve instructed Joanna well. The court is more permissive than when you were there. Not the household of the queen herself, she is a saint, but—”

My father, sitting next to me, threw his arm around my shoulders and squeezed. “Joanna is the best girl in the whole world,” he said firmly. “No one need ever fear for her virtue.”

My cheeks reddened. This was the most embarrassing dinner conversation imaginable. Across the table, Margaret smiled with sympathy.

Charles Howard snickered. “It’s not the ladies of easy virtue the queen needs to fear, we know that.”

Elizabeth shot him a look of warning, and her brother-in-law shut up. His words made absolutely no sense to me.

I couldn’t wait to commiserate later with Margaret, in my room, and to ask her questions about her fiancé. Once we were alone, I asked her if it was true she barely knew the man she was meant to marry.

“I’ve only spoken to him once,” she said. “But he looks at me all the time. It makes me feel strange.” A faint line creased between her eyes. “Tell me about entering service for the queen,” she said, anxious to change the topic.

“That’s all my mother’s talked about for years. Training me, drilling me. Embroidery, dancing, music, wardrobe, deportment, four languages. I have to be absolutely perfect—everything depends on it.” My stomach churned.

Margaret threw back the blanket.

“I don’t care about the rules, I’m lighting a fire,” she announced. “And then we’ll brush each other’s hair.”

She used a candle to light the old kindling in the fireplace, and ten minutes later, Margaret was sitting in front of it, as I ran a brush through the thick reddish-gold hair that hung to her waist. I knew it was a treat for her to be waited on, since day and night it was her task to wait on Elizabeth.

“Your father is so very kind to you,” she said softly.

“Yes,” I agreed.

“I miss mine very much,” said Margaret.

I thought frantically of something that would give her comfort, but nothing came to me. Margaret’s mother, a servant at another of the duke’s castles, had died long ago.

She said quietly: “If my father were here, I think I would be allowed to take vows.”

“Is that what you want?” I’d never thought of taking vows. Margaret and I were both pious; it was one of the things that separated us from the other cousins. Still, to me, nuns were mysterious, sad creatures, tinged with scandal. Years ago, one of our aunts had been dragged to a nunnery by her husband—with the Duke of Buckingham’s approval—because she had behaved scandalously at court. There were even rumors she’d dallied with the king. She’d returned to her husband after a short time.

Margaret took my hands in hers, excited. “Last spring, I traveled to Durham with my sister, to make a pilgrimage.” I remembered this trip, my mother had said the duke beat his wife very badly at their London house, and she had run away to the shrine of Saint Cuthbert, to seek relief and succor from her miseries. “It was such a glorious shrine; you would have been as impressed as I was, Joanna. But even though Elizabeth is one of the highest women in the land, we could not approach the shrine too closely, being female. It troubled my sister. So the next week, the duchess received permission for us to visit a small convent nearby, to meet the prioress. We were with them on Good Friday, Joanna. We crept to the cross with the nuns, on our bare knees, and it was so . . . beautiful. So inspiring. To be among women who were devout and kind to one another. Oh, they had joy on their faces, they looked peaceful fulfilling God’s mission. And Joanna, some sisters are very learned. They love to read as you do—they study Latin and holy manuscripts. To be one of them, to be saved from all temptation—”

“Temptation?” I asked wonderingly. “What tempts you?”

She looked at me for a moment. “Do you want to be married, Joanna?”

“No,” I answered, surprised at my own vehemence. “I have met no man who I would wish to marry. Every man I see is so lacking in quality, so far away from . . . from . . .”

Smiling, Margaret picked up Le Morte d’Arthur, lying on a stool by the fire. “From Sir Galahad and the knights?”

“Is it wrong to hope for a man who is courageous and virtuous?” I asked.

My bedchamber door burst open, and Charles Howard leaped in the room. With a wooden sword in his hand—doubtless taken from one of my young cousins—he parlayed as he made his way toward us. “Not at all!”

I jumped back into the bed and scrambled under a blanket.

“Listening at the door again, Charles?” Margaret sighed. “Have you nothing more worthwhile to do?”

“In truth, I don’t. This is a very dull house.” Charles bowed low, and when he came back up, he had a glint in his eyes. “You are in need of my company.”

I expected him to turn his attention to Margaret. She was so ravishing; men ogled her wherever she went. But instead he veered toward my bed, running his hand up the bedpost.

“I could help prepare you for the men of the court,” he offered. “You’ll need to learn a few tricks to make the important marriage your mother is counting on.”

“Leave now!” I shrieked, burying myself deeper under blankets. “Or I will call for my father.”

Charles laughed, bowed again, and backed away toward the corridor. “You’ve missed your best chance,” he said, with a final flourish. “Good night.”

After the door closed behind him, I emerged from the blankets. “He is loathsome,” I said.

“Oh, he is not as bad as that.” Margaret shrugged. “Charles is the youngest son in a very large family. It’s not an easy position.”

“How can you say that? He is vile.”

Margaret was quiet for a long moment. She nibbled her lower lip—I knew what that meant. She’d devised a plan. And once my cousin had an idea in her head, it was very difficult to dissuade her.

“Joanna, I want to give you something.” She lifted from her throat a delicate necklace strung to a medal. “You know this?”

“Of course. Your father gave it to you. It’s from the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket.”

“Let’s look at it by the fire,” she said.

Calmer now, I followed her. “I always think of the story of his death,” she said, holding the medal up to the fire so we could see it better. Four men wearing knights’ armor stood under a flowing tree. “Archbishop Becket was hated by King Henry the Second. He cried out, ‘Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?’ These four men answered his call.” I knew the story; every child in England was taught it, but as I listened to Margaret tell it once more, it appeared to have special meaning for her. “The men went to Canterbury and hid their swords under a sycamore tree outside the church. They went inside and told Saint Thomas to come out with them, but he refused. So they went out and retrieved their swords and reentered the church and hacked him to bits. They martyred him and violated a sacred space.”

I shivered, even though the crackling fire was hot on my skin.

She pressed the medal into my palm. “I want you to have this.”

“Margaret, I can’t take your medal, it’s too dear to you.”

My cousin hesitated, as if she were afraid to put something into words. “I want you to be protected at court,” she said.

I knew how much Margaret loathed the king who had destroyed her father. She never accompanied her sister to court.

“I will be with Queen Katherine at all times,” I reminded her. “My mother trusts the queen completely. Absolutely nothing can hurt me while I am in her service.”

“Yes, Joanna, the queen is a pure and noble woman. But will you take this medal?”

The way the dying flames reflected in her large eyes made me nervous.

I pulled the delicate necklace with its Saint Thomas medal over my head. “I will wear it, cousin. And now, will you stop worrying about me?”

Margaret threw her arms around me. “Thank you,” she whispered, and to my shock, I could feel her cool tears on my cheek.