The Tapestry

by Nancy Bilyeau

  After a few moments, I spotted Holbein, who was searching through the crowd. It must be for me. Surging with guilt, I babbled apologies, but the painter waved them away. “I am quite relieved to find you, mistress. Your disappearance caused me some distress because of the day’s events.”

  Something about the way he said events struck a chord.

  “You refer to the tournament?” I said.

  My friend shook his head.

  “Just a short time ago, a man was arrested,” Holbein said. “It was Sir Walter Hungerford, and he did not go quietly.”

  20

  The news of the arrest of Sir Walter Hungerford pitched me into a state near panic. Had the king’s men discovered that Hungerford, Culpepper, and Surrey performed some sort of occult rite before dawn? Did they know its purpose—which I assumed was the annihilation of Cromwell? If so, trial and execution for treason were sure to follow. And those close to them could be swept up in the arrests. For the first time since learning of the conspiracy, I felt the sharp twist of fear for my own survival.

  I managed to ask Master Holbein, “What were the charges?”

  “No one knows why he was arrested, only that when soldiers took hold of Sir Walter, he tried to fight them off with a knife and screamed curses most blasphemous,” said Holbein. “It caused a great stir in the crowd.”

  I blurted, “I must leave you to change my dress, for this is not fit to wear to the open household at Durham House.”

  Puzzled, Holbein said, “You are intent on attending the banquet at Durham House?”

  “You do not think we would be welcome there?” I asked.

  Pulling on his beard, he said, “The royal painter and the cousin of the king will surely be welcome at Durham. But you abhor such gatherings.”

  I said, growing desperate, “I am famished, Master Holbein. You must be as well.”

  “I am always famished,” he acknowledged.

  Of course I did not wish to go to Durham House. But what better place than a banquet of courtiers to hear fresh gossip? I needed to discover how much the authorities knew, and if a connection had been established to my cousin the Earl of Surrey. And no matter how much I tried to convince myself otherwise, I cared deeply about what happened to Thomas Culpepper.

  Durham House lay near the boundary of the city of London. It was one of a row of grand manor houses that fronted the Thames, near enough to Whitehall Palace for their owners to attend the king. Holbein and I joined a cluster of gentlemen hiring a barge to row the short distance up the river. On the wharf and in the boat, the talk was entirely of the bravery of the day’s knights. One would have thought that a genuine battle had taken place that day.

  We joined the stream of people heading into Durham House. The great hall seethed with guests diving into their meals. The air was so warm and thick that it was like a cloud lowering over the long wooden tables—one pungent with the odor of roasted capons and venison and beef.

  The king presided on the dais, with his wife by his side this time and not Catherine Howard. Even from across the vast hall, Queen Anne’s smile sparkled. But equally striking was the grim visage of the Cleves ambassador who sat on the other side of her. Holbein clucked his tongue and said, “Doctor Harst will never get her crowned that way.”

  “Crowned?” I echoed.

  “The Cleves party grow restive that King Henry does not arrange a coronation for his wife,” he explained.

  Would Henry VIII command a crowning for Anne when the marriage was unconsummated? It seemed impossible. But I had learned that it was not widely known that the marriage had fundamentally failed. Clearly, the king did not dote on his queen as he had on his other wives, but some at court attributed the coolness to its being an arranged diplomatic match and to Henry VIII’s advancing age.

  “Master Holbein!” shouted a bearded man, beckoning. He was with a small group at a table near the window overlooking the river.

  I was introduced to three bearded men, the esteemed heads of the guild of merchant tailors. Holbein had painted the oldest of them when the artist lived in the household of Sir Thomas More years ago and was still held in the highest regard. As I picked at the capon on my plate and sipped the wine, I listened to the merchant tailors talk to Holbein. They had a different view on the court than any I’d heard before. They were most pleased to be welcomed to the joust and to the feast, yet it all seemed to amuse them, too. Said the youngest merchant tailor: “Seymour looks to be the favorite. But then, the brother of the king’s favorite queen has enough gold to buy the best armor.”

  The next turn of conversation seized my attention.

  “There is one similarity to the tournament of 1536,” said the red-bearded merchant-tailor, tearing off a chunk of manchet. “Just as on that May Day, an arrest was made.”

  “Ah, yes, Sir Walter Hungerford,” said the oldest man, the one who had beckoned to Master Holbein and myself.

  My fingers tightened on my goblet of wine.

  Master Holbein said, “Do any of you know what the man was charged with?”

  “I have heard,” said the same older man, “that the king’s men discovered Sir Walter harbored secret sympathy with the Pilgrimage of Grace.”

  It was the very last thing I expected. That popular rebellion, which raged in the North of England four years ago, opposed the king’s reforms of religion, called for protection of the monasteries, and demanded the ouster of Thomas Cromwell. The failure of the Pilgrimage of Grace not only hardened the king’s heart against the abbeys but also destroyed the lives of scores of people. My cousin Margaret Bulmer, who rose up against the king with her Northern husband, was burned at the stake at Smithfield, that day that forever changed my life.

  The red-bearded merchant-tailor said, “But Sir Walter is known for his devotion to Cromwell.”

  After draining his goblet of wine, the older man said, “The theory is that is all a pose. Sir Walter made a show of leading a company of soldiers to defend the king’s rights in the North, and in so doing arrested a man of God. But instead of turning that man over to the justices, he brought him south and secretly made him chaplain in Farleigh Hungerford Castle.”

  Master Holbein said, “This all hangs on his harboring a chaplain?”

  With the relish of a man delivering a choice tidbit of gossip, the older man said, “Oh, I’m told that there were all matter of things going on up at Farleigh Hungerford Castle. Quite shocking. The chaplain may have been part of a group that conjured magic, and one of the conjurings was to learn how long the king is expected to live. Not only that, Sir Walter even—” He broke off, with an apologetic look in my direction. “There are other crimes, not fit topic for conversation in proper company.”

  I cared nothing for tales of Sir Walter’s sordid private life. What horrified me was that it was publicly known he dabbled in magic. What a dark and pitiless world, controlled by forces far from Christ’s goodness. I vowed to turn away from all such practices for the rest of my life. Yet here, in the court of King Henry VIII, the most treacherous place in all of England, I found myself pulled in again. Without my saying a single word, Sir Walter had somehow perceived how close to the flame I once danced. In the chapel of Winchester House, he said, When I look in those black eyes, I know you are something different. You have seen things, my lady. Things I have seen, too. And will see again.

  Culpepper had told me that everyone watches everyone else, always. I looked up from my plate, heaped with untouched food, and nodded at whatever the heavyset merchant-tailor was saying. I even managed to force a smile.

  Master Holbein met my smile with one of his own but his eyes were puzzled. He was probably wondering about my true connection to the now-infamous Sir Walter Hungerford.

  I raised my goblet to Holbein in a toast to our friendship and then drank from it. The greatest gift I could bestow on the artist was to tell him absolutely noth
ing, just as with Geoffrey Scovill. Ignorance would become a shield of protection for them, stronger than any that a knight clutched on the field.

  Shortly before the king and queen took their leave of Durham Place, the Earl of Surrey and Thomas Culpepper strode down the middle of the vast hall. Surely they, too, knew what happened to Hungerford, but they showed no sign of fear. They were a popular pair. Dozens of men—and not a few women—called out greetings and they turned this way and that, full of light cordiality. They seemed content to move slowly but steadily through the maze of tables. All would see them as joking and gay.

  As they progressed to a table of courtiers near to me, one young man shouted, “Look at that bruise, Surrey. You let them get the better of you today?”

  The earl clutched his forehead in mock pain and then cried, “It won’t happen again, my lords!”

  The surrounding tables burst into laughter. Culpepper joined in, but at the same instant his roving gaze found me, among the merchant-tailors. For a few seconds we stared at each other; then he turned away, laughing harder than ever.

  Said my red-bearded neighbor, “Those two swagger as if they hadn’t a care in the world.”

  “They do indeed,” I said, in as normal a voice as I could manage. At the same time, I gripped the edge of the table to stop my hands from trembling. No blow during the tournament caused that bruise—I’d seen it on Surrey’s forehead when he rode in the procession of challengers. Which meant that something violent took place during their secret gathering.

  • • •

  Each day of the tournament passed like this: I wore a mask of good cheer and, each time I glimpsed Culpepper and Surrey, they did as well. But every single minute I felt encased in dread as thick as the armor worn on the field of the tournament.

  In seeking out a foretelling of the king’s death, Sir Walter committed high treason. King Henry had a violent fear of prophecy. He was only the second of the Tudor line and possessed as heir one three-year-old son—and two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, whom he’d deemed bastards. I’d heard whispers for years that the Tudors were not as secure on the throne as Henry VIII wished the foreign rulers to believe.

  But what if the men questioning Hungerford learned that was not all? It was one thing to summon the means to look into the future. To strike at the king’s chief minister now? I shuddered when I thought of how the king treated Henry Courtenay and Lord Montagu—both of them his close relations—when they had done nothing wrong. Look at what the covenant trio had aimed for. How swiftly the three men’s hatred of Cromwell would become a plot to take down the king himself. After all, the Earl of Surrey possessed a splash of royal blood. Their covenant would be condemned as a group of rebels intent on replacing the king.

  As I watched the armored men joust and fight in the cloudless heat, as I dined at the interminable banquets, one question pounded in my brain: What was Sir Walter Hungerford telling his inquisitors? I had been inside the room used for torture in the Tower of London, and I knew how impossible it would be to hold out forever.

  I did learn two things that brought new complexities to the matter of Sir Walter Hungerford and May Day. The first was relayed to me by Master Holbein, who shared gossip on another reason for Sir Walter’s fall.

  “The Hungerfords are rich, and the rumor is that the royal treasury is dwindling again,” the artist told me in a quiet moment. “It is unwise for a wealthy man to display anything other than abject loyalty to the king.”

  “He did not seem that wealthy,” I said, adding quickly, “not that I knew him well.”

  “The man I saw on May Day had lost control of himself, yet the family is brave and prestigious,” mused Holbein. “I have learned that a Hungerford was the first speaker of Parliament, another fought beside Henry V, yet another killed an officer of Richard III’s in hand-to-hand combat at Bosworth. The present Sir Walter has amassed one of the finest private libraries in the kingdom, up at the family seat, a truly enormous castle. There is a London property on the Strand, too.”

  After a moment of silence, pulling on his beard, Holbein said, “Perhaps there is no other explanation than that he’s gone mad.”

  Or something drove him mad.

  My instinct told me that whatever happened in the hours between midnight and dawn on the first of May was so foul and abhorrent that it had addled Hungerford’s mind, injured Surrey, and turned Culpepper cruel. I couldn’t imagine what. I’d been frightened each time I heard prophecy, but no one hurt me. Whatever dark place the covenant took them to was far different than what I had witnessed.

  The only person I could think of turning to for more knowledge of the practices of May Day was Father Francis. If he warned me, he must know something.

  After making my confession to him, I lingered in the chapel the third day of the tournament. “I thank you for telling me to be careful on May Day, Father.”

  He shook his head. “I cannot understand why good Christians tolerate pagan practices,” he whined. “The maypole is terribly indecent.”

  He feared a maypole? Sagging with disappointment, I murmured, “I understand your disapproval, Father.”

  “I am happy to hear it, Mistress Stafford. I only wish I could persuade His Majesty to cease all his acknowledgments of May Day, particularly the custom of lighting the Beltane fires.”

  “Which fires are that?”

  “In the centuries before Christ in His Mercy blessed England with wisdom, there were all manner of terrible practices committed on our island. One is lighting a bonfire the night before May first to worship the goddess of the earth and pay homage to her power—can you imagine anything more blasphemous? Yet the kings of England always light a small fire to mark this ‘holiday.’ His Majesty doesn’t seem to appreciate the real danger . . .”

  The instant he said that word, his mouth shut, the same as the first time he spoke to me of May Day. But this time I was determined to pull more knowledge from the priest.

  “Father Francis, I agree with you wholeheartedly, but if I am to help you in your mission, I must know more,” I said.

  The king’s chaplain remained silent.

  Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a lady of the court hovering, no doubt waiting to enter the confessional with Father Francis.

  “Please, Father, I am the king’s cousin once removed, as you well know—I wish to protect him from all danger,” I pleaded.

  Father Francis signaled for me to follow him to the shadow of a square pillar in the chapel.

  “It touches on an incident from my personal history, and I must have your word you will not repeat it,” he insisted.

  After I promised my silence, the priest took a deep breath and began his story: “I was a boy who loved nothing more than study, but my two brothers taunted me for it, endlessly. They forced me to go with them that night, the thirtieth of April, deep into the woods. They’d heard from people in the village—the worst sort of people—that strange fires could be seen in a certain place. We walked for hours, and it was cold. Nothing like the way it is this year. But my brothers would not let me return home.”

  Father Francis must have been forty years of age, but the mistreatment by his brothers marked him still. His eyebrows gathered; his face grew more pinched.

  “We reached the forbidden place—and there they were. Five people, two men, and three women, lighting fires, chanting, doing a dance that was . . .” He flushed scarlet red . . . “highly indecent. They threw something in the fire and made it leap high—as high as the flames of Hades, mistress. I swear it.”

  I crossed myself, quaking at his evocation of Hades. “Were you hurt?” I whispered.

  “No, no, no. I ran from that place, ran as fast as I could, away from the evil rites, from my brothers. I became lost, of course, and did not find my way out of the forest until dawn. My father beat my brothers senseless, and the two of them never forgave me.”<
br />
  Such memories brought him no pleasure, and Father Francis cleared his throat, regarding me with some measure of resentment. He then looked beyond me at the impatient lady who waited.

  I was drawing closer to something, but I still didn’t have the truth.

  “Father, the people in the forest, what were they doing?” I asked. “Were they performing a spell of some sort, a hex?”

  “Who told you that?” he demanded.

  “No one. I guessed, Father. I’d heard that in, in Germany the night is called Hexennacht.”

  He waved his hand at me. “I know nothing of what they do in Germany, but yes, it was a spell for certain. The night before May Day is, according to these disgusting beliefs, the night when a spell, be it a love charm or a hex to harm, is at its most potent during any day of the year. You and I may agree that it’s pagan nonsense, but many a young scholar fancying himself a humanist studies books and dredges up these secrets—secrets that should be left undisturbed. This study of nature is an offense to God. Now I must go, Mistress Stafford, and let us never speak of this again.”

  21

  Finally this tournament ends, and we can return to our normal lives,” announced Master Holbein as we found a place near the tiltyard. He’d told me his apprentice had returned and he was eager to take on his next portrait commission. I would present my tapestry inventory to the king tomorrow.

  But Sir Walter Hungerford’s life would not resume. He was now imprisoned in the Tower, I’d overheard. I continued to act as if none of it had anything to do with me, and so did the Earl of Surrey and Thomas Culpepper.

  The only time one of us slipped was on the tournament field, after one of the challengers, Cromwell’s nephew Gregory, bested Culpepper in a hand-to-hand staged combat. He threw Culpepper to the ground with a resounding crash. When he managed to struggle to his feet, Culpepper showed a face distorted with humiliation. He even cursed. A murmur of surprise ran through the watching crowd. It was uncharacteristic behavior for Culpepper, a favorite for his handsomeness and chivalry.