The Tapestry: A Novel

by Nancy Bilyeau

  Yet she seemed perfectly calm and poised on the dais. Catherine held up her hands and said, “None of the men will stoop to pullin’ at weeds, so they employ such as me, with small hands that are right strong.” She was telling the king the story of the girl in the garden. For the first time, I saw the king’s suspicious features soften. He looked younger. The sight of my stout, aging sovereign finding contentment thanks to Catherine’s genuinely youthful sweetness sickened me. The horrible story flashed through my mind of the ravishing Andromeda chained to a rock, intended as a human sacrifice to a powerful and hideous creature of the sea.

  My place at the banquet was among the younger Howards, which had the great advantage of no one bothering to draw me into conversation. The plates came and went: a quartet of stag, sturgeon wrapped in parsley, roasted pigeons, jellies, cakes. Goblets brimmed with wine, voices trilled with laughter. But I did not eat, drink, or laugh. All I could do was bear reluctant witness to the king of En­gland making a prolonged spectacle of himself with Catherine. Leaning toward her, smiling, kissing her hand. Had someone discreetly placed the silk stool beneath the table so he could rest his rotting leg while he flirted? I wondered, and then shuddered at such a savagely mocking thought. You are the agent, you are the cause, said Chapuys, who had left Winchester House before the meal, claiming his gout. It might be true that I had changed the king’s court, but another truth was that in a short span of time, the king’s court was changing me. Would the transformation continue the longer I stayed at Whitehall? A year from now, I could be unrecognizable from the woman of Dartford.

  “You do not drink wine, mistress?” brayed a nasal voice. A tall, broad-shouldered young manservant holding a pitcher regarded me and my untouched goblet with a strange smile curving below his swollen nose.

  I shook my head and he lumbered along, enjoying some private joke.

  A cry went up across the banquet hall as a quartet of dark-haired men walked in, carrying musical instruments. “Excellent,” boomed the king. “Bishop, you will not regret inviting to your festivities our latest discovery, the Bassano brothers of Venice. Pay special attention to the sound of the violin. Exquisite.”

  Poor, poor Anne of Cleves.

  At the other end of the banquet hall, servants moved tables aside to make room for dancing. Guests began to mill about again, and I considered slipping away. A woman should not walk through the bishop’s garden park at night alone nor seek out her own boat across the Thames, but this banquet was unbearable. And what, after all, could be accomplished by remaining? Impossible to speak to Catherine when she was the companion of the king. Tonight, when she returned to her room in Whitehall, I would have it out with her at last.

  As I eyed the doorway, calculating the best way to leave unnoticed, I saw a man standing near it, a face so unexpected that I gave a soft cry. I shot to my feet and hurried across the length of the hall. Among all these people whom I had no wish to speak to, here was, incredibly, a friend.

  I’d spotted John Cheke, the young Cambridge scholar and friend of Edmund’s who had come to Dartford last summer to attend our wedding. He was moving toward the door to leave.

  Thomas Culpepper tugged on my sleeve as I passed. “May I partner you in a dance?”

  I glanced up at the dais. Sure enough, Catherine watched us, her perpetual smile in eclipse. “It might not be wise,” I murmured.

  Culpepper cocked his head. “Wise?” he asked.

  But I darted off without explaining—I did not want Master Cheke to slip away. I had to pick up my skirts and run those last yards, which made heads swivel. It was hardly the behavior of a gentlewoman.

  “Master Cheke, wait,” I called out, breathless, to his slender departing back.

  John Cheke turned, bowed, and said, “Mistress Joanna, it is good to see you again. Are you well?”

  I realized with a sharp pang that Cheke exhibited so little surprise, he must have already seen me at the banquet—perhaps during my conversation with Ambassador Chapuys—and hadn’t been planning on approaching me before he left.

  “I thought you at Cambridge,” I said.

  “I have not left it,” he said. “But an opportunity arose for me to be appointed to the Cambridge chair in Greek. I cannot be confirmed without the approval of Thomas Cromwell, which was given, and Bishop Gardiner, who insisted I come for a month, to be questioned at his convenience.” He frowned; I could see the resentment this summons created.

  “Where are you lodged?”

  Cheke pointed toward the ceiling of the banqueting hall.

  “Here?” I exclaimed. “With the bishop’s staff?”

  “There are scholars’ quarters upstairs. They are not uncomfortable. But I am also expected to appear at functions such as . . . this.” He gestured toward the line of dancers now leaping and twirling across the floor to the music of the Bassano brothers. Master Cheke wore a plain doublet and hose, not suitable for a royal banquet. But I sensed it was not his threadbare wardrobe that gave him misgivings.

  “The king’s presence here disturbs you?” I asked.

  “I would very much like to have a conversation with His Majesty,” said Cheke earnestly. “He supports the study of Greek and could sanction my version of how it should be taught, regardless of what Bishop Gardiner believes. But I would want such conversing to occur in the proper place, in the presence of the king and queen, not here, with . . .” His young face tightened with distaste as he gazed across the hall at the dais, where Catherine Howard threw back her head, laughing merrily.

  “I understand you,” I said. “In a way, I was compelled here, too. I found that—”

  Cheke held up his hand. “Mistress Joanna, I wish I could stay to speak to you for longer, but I cannot. I cannot. I have an appointment tonight. If you will forgive me, I will say good-bye.”

  Before I could even bid him farewell, Master John Cheke had ducked out of the room. Was it speaking to me that had filled him with such distaste? I had wanted to ask if he’d heard from Edmund, but there was no opportunity. While I didn’t understand how I’d offended him, there was no other explanation for his cold and abrupt departure.

  The Bassano brothers’ violins soared ever higher, to the delight of the dancers. Lady Rochford sashayed sideways, coming close enough for me to reach out and touch her—should I wish to do so, which I decidedly did not. It was so warm in the banquet hall that her unnaturally white face shone like wet paint, the red spots once centered on her cheekbones sliding toward her jaw.

  I glanced up at the dais. King Henry VIII gave no attention to any person in the banquet hall besides Catherine. He reached out and slowly caressed her shoulder, his fingers straying higher, to finger her white throat.

  I backed away from the sight of the king and Catherine, from Lady Rochford and the other dancers, until I touched the wall. I wanted to cover my eyes, cover my ears, seal myself off from everything in this room.

  A hand seized mine, and I instinctively pulled away. It was my cousin Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, and he would not let go. “You will now dance with me, Joanna,” he said.

  “I’ve watched you tonight and you have the face of someone listening to a dirge,” he continued as he led me to the floor. “Yet I hear you’ve been granted an official position, one that is dear to the king’s heart. Celebration would be more in order.”

  We stood opposite each other in a long line. The music exploded; the people stamped, turned, and pirouetted. I followed, using the steps of memory. My mother had drilled me in dance.

  The next time I was close enough to him to speak, I said, “I do not wish to serve at court.”

  “No? Well for someone who dislikes it, you are making a sensational impression,” he said.

  “My lord Surrey, we have a request,” the king’s voice rang out.

  My cousin bowed with a flourish.

  The king said, “A love poem—I know t
hat is within your capacity.”

  The musicians stopped playing and all dancing and talking ceased. Many people would have been overcome by such a force of attention. Not my cousin, who offered to share his translation of ­Petrarch’s “Sonetto in Vita”—from memory, of course. He stood in the middle of the dance floor and recited:

  “Love, that doth reign and live within my thought,

  And built his seat within my captive breast,

  Clad in the arms wherein with me he fought,

  Oft in my face he doth his banner rest.

  But she that taught me love and suffer pain,

  My doubtful hope and eke my hot desire

  With shamefast look to shadow and refrain,

  Her smiling grace converteth straight to ire.

  And coward Love, then to the heart apace

  Taketh his flight, where he doth lurk and plain,

  His purpose lost, and dare not show his face.

  For my lord’s guilt thus faultless bide I pain.

  Yet from my lord shall not my foot remove:

  Sweet is the death that taketh end by love.

  We were forced to part again.”

  I wondered at the earl’s recklessness—a “coward love” that “taketh his flight”? How like his grandfather he was. The Duke of Buckingham had relished every chance to subtly mock King Henry, and had paid for it with his life.

  But this same king did not seem to hear the darker part of a poem that ended with a parting. He thanked Surrey, commanded that the music resume, and took Catherine’s little hand in his, kissing it in his own display before us all of “hot desire.”

  Revolted yet trapped in this cage of a royal court, I turned in the design of the dance to extend my hand to the next gentleman, and came face-to-face once more with Sir Walter Hungerford.

  “Ah, so I see you are a favorite of Ambassador Chapuys?” he said, eyes gleaming.

  “No,” I said.

  “A pity,” said Sir Walter. “I was hoping you could obtain me an invitation to his library. For years I’ve longed to see that collection.” He laughed at his own bizarre private joke. Fortunately, the dance sent me on to another partner.

  It was not until the dance was over that I could speak again to Surrey. I was so agitated that my words emerged in a tumble: “I have remained at court not to seek favor but because of my fears for Catherine, a defenseless girl. A concern shared by no one in her own family.” Surrey winced, but I could not stop now. “Is this the only remedy for the disease of hating Cromwell, to sacrifice Catherine’s virtue? You have no more honorable way to increase your influence with the king?”

  Surrey said, “There is another way to put an end to Cromwell, though it be anything but honorable. I can say not a word to you about it. Only that, someday, when all has changed, I hope to redeem myself in your eyes, Joanna.”

  My young cousin spoke with such dignity that I felt almost ashamed. I stepped back as the music began and people chose new partners. Surrey bowed before a young lady who was thrilled to be chosen and they took their places in the next lines. I had had enough and moved away from the place of dancing.

  His words sent off a deep warning inside me. My cousin had a secret and I wondered if it would be possible to coax it from him.

  A manservant was studying me, his beefy arms wrapped around a tray. The same young man who’d smiled when I turned away wine. He still smiled. This, at least, I could do something about.

  “You have something to say to me?” I demanded.

  I’d meant to banish that hateful smirk, but instead it deepened. “Yes, mistress, I do, and something ye might find of interest,” he whined. I saw that his nose had been broken and assumed that was why he spoke this way.

  “My name is Tom,” he continued, “and if I were to tell ye that a man has been asked to watch out for ye, to inform on yer movements, would that be of interest to ye or yer kin?” he asked.

  “Who is informing on me?” I demanded.

  Tom slid toward me, lowering the tray, and picked up a plate left behind on the table shoved against the wall. Making a show of examining the plate, he said, “Do ye see yonder a tall man with a long black beard, at the dais, standing behind the bishop? Don’t be obvious in yer surveying, I beg ye. He’s a mean, base creature.”

  At the far end of the dais, towering behind the bishop, I did observe a man of that description. He stood tall, a hand on each hip, as he looked to the right and then the left, surveying the crowd. When he reached my part of the banquet hall, his gaze halted as he settled on me, and then, after a few seconds, resumed his sweep.

  I swallowed and said, “Tell me who asked that man to watch me.”

  Tom chuckled and said, “I don’t know the other man’s name but I know where to find him. He’s in Winchester House, hiding. For a price, Mistress. I will take yer kinsmen to him.”

  “Kinsmen?”

  Tom answered, his eyes glistening, “Ye be a Howard, aren’t ye? And they are a rich clan. This news be of worth to them.”

  Now I understood Tom’s motives. It was too bad for him that he dealt with a lone Stafford, not a Howard. I said, “First tell me about the man who wants me watched. Did you see him?”

  “I did.”

  “Give me his name.”

  “Oh, I do not think he gave that in my hearing.”

  My heartbeat quickening, I said, “What did he look like?”

  Tom thought for a moment and said, “He’s a tall man, could be thirty years of age, light brown hair. A beard.”

  It was he—the man who’d attacked me that first day—and he was in the same building as I.

  Pleased by my reaction, Tom said, “He pointed you out and then asked yonder foreman if he would send word when you left Winchester House. Gave him a few pence and said there would be more when word was given. I heard it all. Seems to me he wishes to follow ye, mistress. I’d hate to see a lady such as yerself come to harm this night.”

  It took me a moment to gather myself. I desperately wanted to find out who was directing the actions of the man who sought to harm me. From the first day, I had known that this was the only course that would free me from fear—discovering who and why. Then I could mount a defense.

  “Tom, have you a knife on you?” I asked.

  He proudly patted his doublet pocket. “Always, mistress. And a sharp one, too.”

  I pulled the pearl earring from my left ear. “I will give you this, Tom, if you take me to this man concealed. No Howards. No one else. Just you and me. And we go at once.”

  17

  It took both of my pearl earrings to persuade Tom to lead me to the room where my assailant hid. He was grievously disappointed that my name was not Howard. Even if I weren’t part of the sprawling clan, surely I could take this matter to one of the men in the banqueting hall for a bit of business?

  When I ruled that out because of the matter’s private nature, he leered, “Ah, mistress, he’s a man of yer past, eh?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” I said, through gritted teeth. Just as he wished I were someone different, I wished I didn’t have to join forces with such a repellent ruffian. But I must make use of either Tom or the hard-faced brute who stood behind Bishop Gardiner. They were the ones who knew where my enemy was.

  “Bear in mind that this won’t be a happy reunion upstairs,” I said. “You may need to make a show of your knife while I speak to him.”

  “You won’t want me to drag him downstairs?” Tom said.

  What a fitting end to the bishop’s banquet that would make, I thought. Particularly since the man who directed the attack could be in this very room. After tonight, I’d never again doubt that the Bishop of Winchester, the Duke of Norfolk, and the imperial ambassador all detested me enough to wish to see me harmed. Within the hour, I could discover which one.

 
“But he did look a strong fellow,” said Tom. And then: “I have a remedy for this. I shall return in a moment, mistress.”

  Tom’s “remedy” was a fellow servant named Roger, an absolutely massive man with bleary blue eyes and whiskers that shot in all directions on his shiny red chin. “Roger’ll help me, won’t ye?” said Tom, with a clap on his broad back. Roger grunted and strained to scratch the place on his back where he’d been thumped.

  Since we did not want to suggest that I was departing the banquet, I left the main hall in the opposite direction of the door leading out of Winchester House and walked instead through a large study where people not inclined to dance were lounging and drinking wine. After a few moments, Tom beckoned from the narrow door in the corner and I hurried down a long passageway snaking past the kitchens and storerooms and cold pantries. At the end was a set of worn stairs.

  While climbing the steps leading higher into Winchester House, I tried to plan what I’d say. With Tom on one side and Roger on the other, I’d demand an explanation for the attack in Whitehall and his lying in wait for me tonight. I had no illusions that it would be a simple matter to learn my enemy’s name. But at least I’d have the upper hand, and a series of options, including sending for Thomas Culpepper and turning the man over to him. I still worried that making this an official matter could lead to questions and expose my most dangerous secrets. But now that I was more intertwined with the court than ever, I couldn’t continue at Whitehall with an enemy in the shadows. It was possible that this man would escape punishment for hurting me that first day—but at least I’d deal a blow to the plotters against me.

  The size of Winchester House became even more apparent as Tom led me farther and farther in. Roger carried the candle to light the way as we moved from the servants’ stairs to the main corridor of the second story, and passed a well-appointed library, where a half dozen men—priests and scholars, I guessed—read texts by candlelight. This was the purpose of the Bishop of Winchester’s London residence, not the bacchanal downstairs.