The Tapestry: A Novel

by Nancy Bilyeau

  With an oath, he waved off a gray-haired clerk, jabbering his pleas for entry. When the clerk edged toward the side of the archway, as if to scramble into Whitehall uninvited, a soldier surged forward, waving his picket. The clerk shrank back into the crowd.

  “In the name of the king, state your business here, sirrah,” called out the tall man. It took me a few seconds to realize that he addressed Master Gwinn, who in answer turned toward me.

  I took a deep breath and stepped forward, declaring, “I am summoned to appear before the master of the king’s wardrobe.”

  “The master of the king’s wardrobe—you?” he said scornfully, his eyes scanning my shabby garments.

  Without another word, I handed him my summons. His eyebrows knotted in skepticism until his gaze reached the bottom. “Signed by Cromwell,” he said.

  “Correct,” I said crisply.

  “But even so, I must send word to—“

  “I shall be honored to escort the lady,” said another voice.

  A smiling young man with a neatly trimmed brown beard emerged from the doorway of a turret tower opposite the entrance. He wore the uniform of a royal page: a red doublet with a large Tudor red-and-white rose on the left side.

  The page bowed to me with courtesy that seemed extravagant, considering my uncertain status. The man in charge of entry to the palace shrugged. Evidently all that needed to be done was produce a paper bearing the name Cromwell for doors to be flung open. It all felt a little strange, but what did I know of palace procedures?

  I turned to say good-bye to the Gwinns. We had worked it out that one servant would wait a short distance up the King Street with two horses, and when my business was finished, I would find my way back to him. He’d take me to Southwark and my waiting friends.

  A hand grabbed my arm, so tightly I gasped. Agatha dragged me away from earshot of the men, of husband, gatehouse official and royal page, giving me a shake, just as she used to when she was novice mistress and I needed correction.

  “You don’t have to do this,” she said. “All the things you’ve always said about London, about this”—she pointed at the palace with her wobbly chin—“I see now you were right. We’ve come to an evil place.”

  Agatha had been so quiet as we waited for entry, I thought her awed by Whitehall. Now I saw that it disturbed her. It was gratifying that now, finally, she saw the court through jaundiced eyes. But there was no turning back.

  I hugged her, whispering, “All will be well.”

  “How can it be? How can good flourish here?”

  “Did not Thomas Aquinas say, ‘Good can exist without evil, whereas evil cannot exist without good’?” I said.

  Agatha shook her head. “You are clever, Joanna, and you are learned, but I do not think that will be enough to keep you safe inside these walls.”

  With a final squeeze of her shoulder, I turned to follow the page into the gaping door of the gatehouse.

  “God be with you and protect you,” Agatha called after me, her voice shrill.

  As much as I wanted to, I did not turn around.

  4

  With a graceful beckon, the page led me past a long, wooden gallery overlooking a garden and orchard. We took a walkway direct to the tallest of the white stone buildings. He walked quickly; I had to scramble to keep up. There was no question of walking side by side. I would trail him all the way to the keeper of the wardrobe.

  When I stepped over the threshold, it was the first time I’d entered a royal home since the terrible day in 1527 when I arrived to carry out my duties to Henry VIII’s first queen, Catherine of Aragon. Whitehall was grander than my memory of Greenwich. The page led me to a hall that seemed to stretch forever.

  The hall, like the courtyard, was filled with men, though these were calm. High above their heads stretched a ceiling possessing as much meticulous grandeur as the gatehouse. The same black-and-white checks, the judicious sprinkling of fleurs-de-lis. Mullioned windows were set high in the walls. It struck me that this was a very modern palace. I strained to remember what I knew of Whitehall—it was the London home of the archbishops of York until Henry VIII’s first minister, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, took ownership and spent a fortune expanding it. After the king turned against Wolsey, he took Whitehall. Just as, years earlier, he had my uncle the Duke of Buckingham executed on trumped-up charges of treason and then took all his properties. That was what Henry VIII did—he took.

  It seemed that my destination was not within this hall but beyond it. As I hurried after the page, I passed groups of men talking in low murmurs. Everyone seemed well acquainted. My whole life I’d felt an outsider, but here the feeling was most pronounced.

  My fervent hope was that I not encounter the Duke of Norfolk, Bishop Stephen Gardiner, or any of the other men whom I had antagonized in the last three years. So far there seemed little chance of that. The men of the king’s court I passed all looked very prosperous and respectable, but they were not attired in the sables, silks, and furs, the robes and chains of office that denoted the highest ranks.

  It would have been a source of great pleasure to see the Lady Mary, the king’s eldest daughter. We became friends two years ago when she learned I was among those who’d nursed her beloved mother, Queen Catherine, during the last weeks of her life. But I knew from the Lady Mary’s last letter that the advent of spring had sent her from court lodgings to Hunsdon House, her favorite establishment in the country.

  There was only one other person whom I would have liked to see—my young friend Catherine Howard, one of the queen’s maids of honor. But that could require seeing the queen herself, Anne of Cleves, and I did not want to do that. The prophecy called for the murder of King Henry before he could father a second son by the German princess, for that son would have set the world on fire. In place of killing Henry VIII, I gave him just enough of the drink from the chalice to sicken him and render him unable to be a husband to his bride. I did what I had to do, but Anne of Cleves did not deserve it. When I met her on the ship from Calais, she was kind and dignified—and generous. She paid a great deal for The Rise of the Phoenix, and this added to my guilt and confusion.

  All emotions receded as I caught sight of the king’s own tapestries. Behind the clusters of men, they covered the walls, one after another: arresting, glittering tapestries. I had never seen any this huge. They looked to be twenty feet wide. At Dartford Priory, we created far smaller ones. These must have been made in Brussels, the center of all tapestry production in Europe, making use of long looms and many workers. To create a story from a biblical source or mythology or history—a war, a tournament, a wedding—showing this many human figures, ten and more, would demand a team of eight weavers working at least a year. And the faces of the figures shown in the tapestries—they were so symmetrical. What control to create visages so lovely. There was more, too. I was accustomed to tapestries fastened to the wall; after all, their more practical aspect was to warm houses during the cold months. But these tapestries hung a few inches away from the wall, hanging from narrow poles. They moved ever so slightly, becoming live, colorful sagas rather than flat woven pictures.

  Even with all the troubles of the day—and the looming troubles of what was to come—I could not restrain myself from making my way to the wall to get a closer look. I wanted to figure out the story being told and assess its craftsmanship. Now that I was inches away, I could appreciate the meticulous line of the weave. I grasped the edge and, to my surprise, a whiff of grease and smoke puffed into my nose. I also spotted some dulling of the colors here and there. The tapestry was dirty.

  “This way, mistress—this way,” said the page, who had circled back to find me.

  “Forgive me, but I weave tapestries, that is why I am summoned today,” I said, reluctantly moving away from the wall.

  “This way,” the page repeated yet again with the same vacuous smile pasted on his fa
ce. I supposed that he took no interest in the people he escorted around the palaces. Something about him seemed odd. I found I did not want to follow him. Yet I suppressed my first twinge of suspicion. After all, I had little knowledge of the ways of royal pages.

  A shallow set of stairs led to a landing crowded with servants carrying crates. While we waited to get around them, I peered out the window. It was dizzying how close I stood to the Thames; its waters seemed to lap the palace wall.

  Minutes later, I found myself walking down another long gallery. Tapestries covered these walls, too. I wondered how many the king possessed and whether they traveled with him from palace to palace or if some were permanently affixed. With such a vast and magnificent collection, why would he commission anything from my humble home loom?

  And then I was outside, blinking in the sun. The page had led me out a door that opened the way to a larger nascent garden and empty sporting yards: tennis, which King Henry helped popularize; bowling; cockfighting.

  “Where is the keeper of the wardrobe?” I called out to the red jacket bobbing a short distance in front.

  Without answering, he pointed at a building only one story tall, on the other side of the bowling yard. I hurried to catch up to him, which was not easy.

  “Are you sure you know the way?” I asked. “This doesn’t seem right.”

  “You’ve been to Whitehall before?” he asked, very polite.

  “No.”

  The page’s smile deepened. In the sun I could see he was not as young as I’d first thought. There were tiny crinkles around his brown eyes. Beneath his beard, I detected a weak chin.

  “I know the palace and all its buildings very well, I assure you,” he said, with another of his bows.

  We resumed our walk, past a neat orchard, but it still didn’t feel right.

  “Trust your instincts always”— that is what Jacquard Rolin said. He had been a liar and schemer and murderer. A breaker of all holy commandments. But he was clever, too, fiendishly so . . . “Very well, Jacquard, what would you do?” I muttered to myself, exasperated.

  Be ready, Joanna Stafford. I could hear his Low Countries accent in the master spy’s hiss. A chill shivered up my arms in the sunny courtyard of the king.

  We finally reached the far building. It had fewer people in it, just three men near the entrance, talking together as they shared a look at a ledger. A maidservant scrubbing in the corner. Passageways stretched in two directions from the front.

  “Come, mistress, it’s this way,” said the page, moving toward the one on the left.

  At the end of the passageway was a door. The page walked to it, then turned to beckon to me again. I took two steps and stopped.

  “Mistress Joanna Stafford?” he called out. “This is where you will meet the wardrobe master.”

  “In this small room, so far from the king?” I asked. We were alone in the passageway.

  The page’s smile widened into a laugh, as if I’d said something amusing. “That is his preference, yes.”

  I walked to the door, all the time wishing I could think of an excuse to turn around and get away from him, fast. In the end, my sense of impropriety silenced the warning bells that exploded in my head. The page opened the door and I moved around him to enter. I took a deep breath, preparing my greeting.

  Suddenly I was sailing through the air, propelled by a powerful shove. The room was dark and cluttered. No one awaited me or anyone else here. I slammed into a rough table with my hip and cried out in pain.

  The door shut behind us.

  “What are you—” Before I could finish the sentence, a hand clamped over my mouth. With the other hand, the page grabbed my right arm and twisted it so sharply that my stomach turned over from the pain. He was a head taller than me, and quite strong. He started to drag me to the far corner of the room. I knew with utter certainty that I did not want go there.

  I bit his hand. It was not the slobbering of a desperate victim. No, I tore at this man’s hand with savagery; I wanted to reach bone. Now it was his turn to cry out, a squealing grunt. His grip on both my mouth and my arm loosened.

  I sprang toward the door, shouting, “Help—help!” I had reached it, my fingers on the doorknob, when the page grabbed me by the shoulder and spun me around.

  I had seconds to survive. With the side of my right hand, I chopped through the bottom of his beard to land a sharp blow to his windpipe, a move Jacquard had taught me.

  His eyes popping in shock, he staggered away, choking.

  I yanked open the door. There was no one on the passageway. He could still emerge and drag me back in. I started to run, but the pain in my hip was such that I half limped. “Help!” I cried again.

  “What has happened?” said a young man’s voice from the direction of the door. “What’s wrong, mistress?”

  Tears of relief filled my eyes as my savior approached. He was tall and dark-haired and, in my semidelirious state, seemed possessed of a singularly beautiful face, like an angel sent by Christ to deliver me.

  “A page attacked me,” I said, turning to point. “Down there.”

  The young man bounded past me, toward the door.

  “Don’t,” I cried. “You must get help first. He’s very strong.”

  Ignoring my warning, he hurtled into the room. Seconds later, I heard the words: “There’s no one here.”

  I couldn’t believe it. But as soon as I joined him, I could see for myself that the page was gone. There was a far door on the other side of the room. The page must have decided to flee rather than chase me down.

  “Are those drops of blood on the floor?” exclaimed the young man. “Are you wounded?”

  “No, it’s his blood,” I said. “I bit his hand. Quite hard.”

  The young man looked at me, his lip curling with distaste as I tucked the loosened strands of black hair back into my hood. “What were you doing with one of His Majesty’s pages?” he said. “Was this some kind of assignation?”

  “It was not. He said he was leading me to the master of the king’s wardrobe. I have a summons. I am expected this week.”

  He snorted. “The wardrobe master in this part of the palace? This is for equipment. I was seeing to the work on a new jousting lance when I heard you. Very well, what was his name?”

  “He never said.”

  The young man sighed. “You’re telling me that a royal page led a woman he didn’t know to a room in Whitehall for a bit of frolic? Do you know how carefully trained these pages are? I should know, for I served as a page in His Majesty’s service myself.”

  “He didn’t want a frolic,” I said. “He wanted to hurt me.” My voice caught. “I think he wanted to kill me.”

  “Kill a woman he didn’t even know?” His voice again rose in disbelief.

  “He knew who I was,” I said. “He used my name in this hallway, moments ago.”

  Something gnawed at me, some source of confusion, but before I could sort it out, the young man found my summons, on the floor of the room where I was attacked, and read it. “This summons is signed by Cromwell,” he said, turning somber. “You are Joanna Stafford, the daughter of Sir Richard Stafford—you are related to the third Duke of Buckingham?”

  “My uncle.”

  “Ah, so the Earl of Surrey is your cousin,” he exclaimed.

  “Correct,” I said, rather surprised my family connections were this widely known. My cousin, Elizabeth Stafford, married the Duke of Norfolk, and their eldest son was indeed the Earl of Surrey, a poet and soldier and someone who had acted as a friend to me.

  “I apologize for disbelieving anything you said,” he said. His eyes traveled up and down my clothing. “In my defense, you’re hardly dressed for court.”

  I sighed. “I am aware of that.”

  “I don’t have much time—I must make my way to Westminster Hall—bu
t I will take you to the sergeant-in-arms to make report. He will launch a thorough inquiry, believe me. The palace will be turned upside-down. He will find this criminal. And the matter will be addressed by the lord steward, perhaps even the chamberlain himself. The king will be made aware. This is one of his most particular rules, that there be no violence within the boundaries of the court.”

  “No, I don’t want that,” I said. “I don’t want that sort of attention.” I had no idea where such an inquiry would lead, and I kept too many dangerous secrets to risk it.

  The young man said, “You can’t just proceed to the keeper of the wardrobe now, after this. The page—he could be searching for you. That would be the first place he’d look. Or do you think he was too deranged by violence to seek you out?”

  I said slowly, “His actions were deranged, but in words he did not seem so. No, he seemed very . . . calm.”

  “All the worse, if he is able to conceal his vile nature behind a gentle manner,” he declared. “We must find this page, and be sure he is punished.”

  I rubbed my temples, trying to think.

  “Do you just want to go home?” he asked, gently.

  My attacker knew who I was, so he could easily find me in Dartford, where I lived, defenseless. How could I press suit to my cousin, Lord Henry Stafford, for the return of Arthur, when violence hovered?

  “I want to find out who this page is,” I said, “but not through an official inquiry. “ My head cleared. “You know the court well. I know it not at all. Will you help me learn this man’s identity?”

  “Mistress Stafford, you are a cousin to the Earl of Surrey, a man I’m proud to call a friend, and so of course I will help you in any way I can,” he said, straightening. “My name is Thomas Culpepper.”

  “I thank you, Master Culpepper,” I said. “What course of action should we pursue to learn this page’s name?”

  He caught my eye, held it, and then laughed. “I don’t know yet,” he said with disarming honesty. Just as under close scrutiny I’d realized the page was older than I first thought, Thomas Culpepper was younger. I would have put his age at about twenty-five. Even when laughing, his face was eerily perfect. With such symmetry of features, he resembled one of the king’s tapestry figures more than an earthly man.