The Crown A Novel

6


The Tower of London, May 1537

I knew something was wrong, for the bed was too wide.

Every morning, just before sunrise, the subsacrist would ring the bell, and I’d sit up and cross myself, then grope for the side of my straw-stuffed pallet. It rested on the floor against the wall of the novice dormitory, next to Sister Winifred’s pallet and, on the other side, Sister Christina’s.

In our pitch-black room, we would find the habits folded and placed at the side of our pallets hours before, and dress quickly. Within minutes, a yellow light would seep under the wooden door: the approach of the lighted lantern. The twenty-four nuns of Dartford would walk past our room, two by two, on the way to Lauds. We’d wait for the last pair to pass before taking our ordained place at the end of the line and walking down the stone stairs to church.

But this morning, the bed was deep and wide as my fingers reached for the edge. And not just that. A thick, warm light weighed on my eyelids. The sun had already risen, yet that was impossible. No nun or novice of Dartford Priory ever slept through Lauds. If we were sick to our bellies, if our throats were on fire, if our loins cramped with the courses of the moon, we still walked the stone passageway to first prayers. Otherwise, we’d face the sternest of punishments at chapter.

I wanted to rise, to learn what had gone amiss, to make amends, but a strange heaviness held me. I could not open my eyes. It was as if the bed itself were pulling me in. Part of me fought it, but mostly I longed to submit to this sweet black nothingness.

After a time, the nothingness parted, and people on a dirty field, shoving and laughing and cursing, their faces red with drink, surrounded me. I was at Smithfield again. “You are dreaming,” I said out loud. “Nothing can hurt you.” And indeed, this time my feet seemed to float above the mud. I was drifting, darting. Unobserved.

Then I saw her, and it pulled me to the ground. She moved ahead, but I knew that proud walk so well, her way of pulling back and squaring her shoulders when displeased. I wanted to see her, to touch her, but I was terrified, too. I no longer felt safe in a dream. This had become real.

I called for her, but she didn’t hear.

“Mama, help me,” I screamed. “Don’t let them take me to the Tower.”

My mother turned around; her gaze settled on me. “You promised,” she said, unsmiling. “You promised her you’d never tell anyone the secret.”

I tensed. “Who do you mean?”

My mother’s black eyes flashed. “You know who, Juana. Era una promesa sagrada.”

Now I was the one to shake my head. “No, Mama, no. You couldn’t know about that. You weren’t there. You were already dead!”

It was as if by saying those words I cast a spell to send her away, for she melted into the crowd, replaced by Sir William Kingston.

“I don’t want to go back to the Tower,” I said.

“You’re not.”

More hands on me, and then I was being thrust to the top of a small hill of branches, with a stake soaring in the middle. They tied me to it, circling my waist with scratchy ropes. Soon the men were gone, and orange flames licked at the twigs below my feet. A circle of jeering people surrounded me, cheering my death as they’d cheered Margaret’s.

I pulled against the ropes, but they were too tight. The smoke rose to form a column around me. In seconds I would be in agony.

“God, please help me!” I screamed. “I beseech you—forgive me, save me.”

The smoke parted. A figure floated down: a beautiful man, wearing a breastplate of silver armor. He glided closer. He had curly blond hair and porcelain skin and blue eyes. Atop those curls was a golden crown. With a shock, I knew him. The Archangel Gabriel, God’s messenger, had come down to fetch me.

“You won’t feel any pain,” he said.

The flames crawled all over me. My arms and my legs, even my hair, were consumed, but it was nothing to me. I laughed, my relief was so great. I knew that was impertinent, to laugh in the presence of the mightiest archangel, he who laid waste to Sodom, but Gabriel laughed, too. My ropes fell off, and I floated up. We began to twirl together; we danced in the sky.

Someone else shook me. I couldn’t see the hands, but I felt them.

The luminous blue sky I twirled in began to darken, the Archangel Gabriel to tremble. “No,” I cried. But everything broke apart, like a ship dashed to pieces on the rocks. My angel left me; the last glimmer was of his golden crown.

And then I woke.

I shrank from the woman’s face but two feet from mine. She was as base and ugly as Gabriel was gossamer beauty. She glared at me with eyes set deep under thick brows, as baleful as a demon.

“Don’t hurt me.” My voice sounded so hoarse. My limbs felt weak and heavy.

“Of course I won’t hurt you,” she said. “I was simply trying to wake you. You must eat something. It’s been too long.”

Slowly, it all fell into place. I had seen Margaret burned at Smithfield; my father caused a disturbance, injured himself, and was taken away; I’d been arrested with poor Geoffrey Scovill and brought to the Tower of London. I must have slept for some time, awakened by this woman, who, I now perceived, having gained distance from my dream, was not a hideous demon but an ordinary woman in her middle years, albeit one dressed in rich brocades and an elaborate French hood.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I am Lady Kingston. And now you will eat. Bess?”

She beckoned, and a second woman, younger and heavier, carried over a wooden tray. The pungent smell of thick fish broth hit me like cannon fire; every sinew of my body craved food.

“We tried to give you something to eat yesterday,” Lady Kingston said as the serving woman named Bess set the tray on my bed and withdrew.

“Yesterday?”

“Don’t you recall it? You have slept for two nights and a day. We tried to wake you yesterday. You took some wine, and then fell back asleep. Your dress was changed, the one you had on was too dirty to rest in.” I realized I wore a long cotton shift. Lady Kingston pointed at a drab gray dress folded at the foot of the bed. “I know it is not appropriate to your station, but I am kept much occupied.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said as I drank my first spoonful. Lady Kingston pursed her lips and watched me eat. It occurred to me that a woman wearing such elaborate clothing while doing her husband’s business in a prison cell would not approve of my indifference to fashion. But I couldn’t care about that. All that mattered was the broth. Every steaming mouthful sent strength back into me.

When I’d finished the soup, I looked around the room. I was being held in an enormous space—it looked about forty feet long—with a cracked wooden floor and high stone walls. Sunlight poured in through a series of barred windows halfway up one wall. The only pieces of furniture were my bed, a small table, and Lady Kingston’s chair.

My face must have posed the question.

“We do not usually keep prisoners here,” she said, shrugging. “But there are few empty rooms, and we didn’t want to put you among all the men.”

I sat up straighter. “Is my father in the Tower?”

Lady Kingston picked up the tray and carefully placed it on the table. She gave me a steady look as she sat back down.

“You said some things before I roused you,” she said. “You called for your mother, but there were others you called for as well. I heard of an angel?”

“I was dreaming.”

“Were you?”

The serving woman, Bess, appeared at her side. “Sir William says you’re required in the Lieutenant’s Lodging, my lady,” she murmured.

“Very well.” Lady Kingston stiffly rose to her feet. “Bess, prepare her.”

As Lady Kingston swept across the long room, I bit my lip. What were they preparing me for? As the last vestiges of my strange dream faded, an icy dread took hold.

The instant the door shut behind Lady Kingston, Bess grabbed my hand. “Don’t tell her anything, I beg you.”

I studied her more closely. She looked about thirty. The deep pockmarks in her cheeks and chin meant that she’d had a strong bout of the disease and that it had nearly killed her. Yet what struck me most were her eyes. They gleamed, they shone, they even sparkled. My presence seemed to enthrall her.

“Why?” I asked, trying to pull my hand loose from her clammy grip.

“She’s a spy for him.” The words came in a feverish rush. “Lady Kingston calms the women and feeds them, and she asks questions, and they sound very innocent, but she writes it all down for her husband, everything they say, and then Sir William writes to Cromwell.”

“Is that so surprising?” I asked.

“You should have heard her with Queen Anne. She went mad here, the queen, when the king had her arrested. She screamed and cried, and she laughed. Yes, she rocked with laughter. She couldn’t stop. Lady Kingston sat with her night and day and calmed her. And she wrote down every word. I heard they used it all against her at trial.”

I swung out of bed and wrenched free of Bess. “Never speak to me of Anne Boleyn,” I said. I backed away from her and hit my head against something. It was a huge ring fastened to the wall.

“What’s that?” I rubbed my head.

Bess smiled, following me over. “It was to chain the elephant.”

“What did you say?”

“The elephant.”

I shook my head, edging away from her again. “You’re the one who’s mad.”

“No, no, no,” she said. “I’m telling you the truth. This isn’t the White Tower. You’re not being kept with the rebels from the North or any other prisoner. They didn’t know where to put you, so they had a bed brought to the West Tower. This is the menagerie.”

“What?”

“Don’t you know of the royal beasts? In this room they kept the elephant that Louis of France gave King Henry the Third. It was just the one elephant. After it died, there was never another. But he was proud of it, and he built this room for it to live in.”

It dawned on me that Bess could be speaking the truth.

“There were women kept in this room later,” she continued. “That could be why they chose it for you. When King Edward the First needed money for war, he had the women Jews brought to the Tower, and their fathers or husbands had to pay to free them. If they couldn’t bring enough money, the Jewesses were starved to death.”

“That is sinful.”

Bess looked surprised. “They weren’t Christians. And they were foreigners.”

She was the sort of Englishwoman my Spanish mother had most despised.

The sound of men shouting came through the windows. Bess glanced over and then back at me. “You must trust me, I believe in the old ways, what you believe in,” she said anxiously. “You are a servant of Christ, and I will help you as much as I am able.” She started to pull on a delicate chain around her thick neck. “I need to show you something.”

“You don’t need to show me anything.”

She pulled the chain all the way out. It was attached to a locket, and she opened it. “Look at this.” She panted with excitement.

I glimpsed a lock of dark-brown hair. “It’s hers,” she breathed. “Sister Barton’s. She was in the Tower three years ago.”

I stared at it, at the evidence of Sister Elizabeth Barton, who experienced such prophecies that the whole of Christendom marveled.

Bess asked, “Did you know her?”

“No, she was a Benedictine, I am a Dominican,” I said carefully. “She was executed before I even entered my priory.”

“I knew her. I spoke to her three times in her prison cell.” Bess glowed with pride. “She was the holiest woman in England and the bravest, don’t you think? To speak publicly against the king’s divorce?”

I bowed my head. “She paid a terrible price.”

“Yes, they hanged her. I saw.” Bess laid her hand on my shoulder. “That’s what they’re wondering about you. If you see visions about the king. If that’s why you went to Smithfield. Remember, Lady Kingston was very interested in your dream.”

I shook off her hand. “I don’t have visions, I am not used by God in that way.”

More men shouted. I hurried to the windows, but they were a foot too high for me to see from.

“Bring me the chair,” I called to Bess. “This could be my father, or Geoffrey Scovill.”

“Oh, no, you can’t look out the window dressed in a shift,” she said.

“Only my face will be visible.”

Bess looked at me, fearful, and then made her choice. She dragged the chair over to the window.

My room faced a well-kept green and a group of buildings. The largest by far was an ancient square white castle. On the green a line of six men shuffled by, their hands chained. Yeomen warders, all shouting, surrounded them.

“Some prisoners are being led away,” I said.

“Yes, more northern rebels are to be transferred to Tyburn for execution,” Bess said, standing next to me. “Do you see Sir William and Lady Kingston?”

My eyes scanned the green until I spotted the tall, officious pair. “Oh, yes.”

“He was a yeoman of the guard in his youth, did you know?” Bess said. “The king has promoted him a dozen times. He’ll do anything that is required. Sir William cried on the day they executed Sir Thomas More. He was his friend. But he led him to the ax all the same.”

My attention was on the prisoners. “Do you know these men?” I asked. “Could any of them be Sir John Bulmer?”

“I don’t know, mistress. But Sir John is a tall man with a white beard.”

I scanned the line. A man with just that description stood near the end. But I was surprised—he looked to be almost sixty years old. Twice Margaret’s age. Still, this was the husband she loved so much. Soon they would be reunited, in God’s mercy.

A horse whinnied on the other side of the Kingstons. I could see Lady Kingston curtsy. The horse trotted along the line of prisoners, and as I looked at the man riding it, a sickness rose in my belly. He was an old man, older than Sir William Kingston and Sir John Bulmer, but he rode his horse like a young buck. The yeomen warders bowed low.

Suddenly, the horseman looked over. Although he was a fair distance away, his gaze met mine, and he started with recognition. He wheeled and kicked the sides of his horse as I stumbled down from the chair.

“Who else did you see?” Bess asked.

I saw the man who had led the king’s army to defeat the rebels in the North, who was wretchedly married to my cousin Elizabeth, who was the highest-ranking peer of the kingdom.

“It is the Duke of Norfolk,” I said. “And I expect he’s coming to see me.”