The Chalice

by Nancy Bilyeau

  Desperate for distraction, I picked up the book I’d begun, an English translation of The Life of Edward the Confessor, by the Abbot of Rievaulx. But the struggles of the pious Saxon king failed to engage. I read a long paragraph, only to realize at the end that I hadn’t absorbed a single word. I closed the book—it possessed a red engraved cover. All of the books in my bedchamber were of the highest quality. I knew that Gertrude had in the last two years quietly purchased books from the large monasteries dissolved at the king’s command. She rescued the martyrologies and Rules of Saint Benedict and Pater Nosters from the brutish courtiers who’d taken possession of religious houses. On my first day here, she’d pressed into my hand an exquisite Mirror of the Blessed Life of Christ. And now she must see me as recalcitrant and ungrateful.

  I was seized with longing for the friends I’d left behind in Dartford. It was difficult for me to cope with the tensions of the Red Rose. Two more weeks remained of my visit, but if there were a way to leave today without giving offense, I would have done so. If only I could talk everything over with Sister Winifred—and with Brother Edmund. I’d had three letters from her and one short one from him. I ached to hear his temperate voice and look into his brown eyes, full of probity and wit.

  I sat on the edge of the bed—this plush, curtained bed that had been afforded me—and wailed like a muddled child. After a time, I felt spent and rather embarrassed. I rarely carried on like this.

  Just after dusk fell, I heard the stirring of horses. Torchlight danced outside my window, as it always did around nightfall. Henry Courtenay, Marquess of Exeter, was returning home.

  Unquestionably Henry could have occupied his own rooms at court. The king currently resided at Whitehall. But my cousin had received permission to live at home, with his wife and son. Every morning he heard Mass in the family chapel and then went directly to the river, to be rowed to the palace. As a close kinsman and noble, he must serve the king. Instead of taking our main meal at dinner, in the early afternoon, we ate lightly then and enjoyed a large supper after nightfall, with Henry at the head of the table.

  It always moved me, the excitement over Henry’s return. I had never observed such devotion to the master of a house. Doors slammed, the sound of running feet, calls flung from one floor to another. Every person, from the lowest scullery lad to the highest-ranking officer, hastened to present him or herself in the main antechamber, for evensong.

  By the time I’d reached the top of the stairs, Henry stood just inside the doorway. Fresh candles soared everywhere. His household, more than sixty people, bowed or curtsied in waves. Gertrude, who always stood on the first step, curtsied as well.

  I’ve been asked, by more than one person, what it was that made Henry Courtenay so compelling. His fate haunts the more sensitive souls.

  Part of it was looks. He and the king, both the grandsons of Edward IV, inherited the Yorkist monarch’s height, fair skin, and blue eyes. But Henry Courtenay had a simplicity to his manner, a calm and friendly directness. He never insisted on obeisance from anyone. Perhaps that was why it was given so willingly.

  Gathered with the others on the stairs, I felt a familiar hand slip into mine.

  “Joanna!” Arthur cried, with a radiant smile. “I shot arrows today.”

  How it brightened my spirits, to see Arthur so joyful. In just two weeks, his manner of speech had improved greatly. It was near miraculous.

  We sang Henry’s favorite hymn, what I’d soon learned was a household tradition.

  To thee before the close of day

  Creator of the world, we pray

  That, with thy wonted favor, thou

  Wouldst be our guard and keeper now.

  My eyes landed on the twins, Joseph and James. The one I had seen earlier in the day sang with fervor, but his brother’s lips barely moved. I had heard that an accident befell Joseph as a child, leaving him diminished. His twin protected him. Even now, he nudged him, to stimulate memory of the song.

  When we’d all finished, Henry made his way to his wife. Along the way there was a smile for this servant, a reassuring nod for another.

  “My lady,” he said, kissing Gertrude’s hand.

  “My lord,” she murmured.

  In one way, at least, Henry was not like Edward IV, the infamous adulterer. Love of Gertrude was what guided him.

  It was always a small group in the dining parlor: First the immediate family, and their relations, Arthur and myself. Constance and Charles, the respective heads of Gertrude’s and Henry’s households, dined with us, as did the family chaplain and a young tutor from Oxford University who led Edward’s lessons. I sat on the same side of the long table as Gertrude, with Constance between us, and so could not see her face.

  For the boys, archery was the focus of their days. As pheasant was served, Edward and his father talked over length of bow and accuracy of shot. Arthur listened, doing his best to follow the conversation.

  I ached for a better future for Arthur than the one that had seemed on offer in Dartford. Arthur was a Stafford. He should be trained in all the arts and sports of a nobleman. Both the Staffords and the Bulmers were houses in eclipse. Henry Courtenay was in the position—perhaps a unique one—of being both of the old nobility and in high favor with the Tudor king. No one could help Arthur more.

  “Now Edward, what of Arthur—how did his lessons go?” Gertrude said. She leaned forward in her seat and twisted toward me. Her conspiratorial way of looking at someone—as if tossing a half wink your way—never failed to charm. In her uncanny way, she’d leaped into my thoughts and knew of my hopes for Arthur.

  I smiled back at her, tentatively, and as I listened to Arthur’s excited talk of his afternoon, I was able to taste my pheasant at last. The afternoon’s episode had been put away, I hoped forever.

  The conversation moved toward families the Courtenays knew in the west. Charles relayed some news gleaned from correspondence. This one’s father had died. That one struggled with debt because of a bad grain harvest. It was very much like the conversations around the table at Stafford Castle. Detailed scrutiny of the lives of country families whom, when in our presence, no one actually cared about all that much. It infuriated my mother. She wanted to talk of the great events of the kingdom. But that was not the Stafford way. I realized that the Courtenays, too, never, ever talked of the king or his councilors or foreign affairs at table.

  “Remember, the day after tomorrow is my party,” Gertrude said. “Just a few friends. Only ladies. Cakes and sweet wines. Joanna will enjoy the company so much.”

  She said it as if I already knew about the party, but I’d heard not a word. Henry beamed as I tried to hide my surprise. Had Gertrude forgotten to mention it? But she never forgot anything. And I was not at all sure I’d enjoy it: this had been one of my conditions of the visit to London—no contact with the court or its courtiers.

  Had Gertrude waited to “invite” me until we were in Henry’s presence, so that I would be less likely to balk?

  Immediately I felt guilty for thinking this of her. Hadn’t she put our quarrel over astrology behind her—and shown every interest in Arthur? This was on top of generosity and solicitude displayed each day of my visit.

  Henry Courtenay laid down his fork and said, “I do believe this is the moment to speak of another engagement, cousin Joanna. Every year in the autumn, I make a point to dine with my closest friend, Henry Pole, Baron Montagu. It’s set for November fourth, here at the Red Rose. I very much want you to join us. You know Montagu, I believe.”

  “Yes, I’m acquainted with the Poles,” I answered. My cousin Henry Stafford was married to Ursula Pole, and her siblings made regular visits to Stafford Castle. There were three brothers: Henry, the oldest, who always seemed to me very arrogant; Reginald, the middle son, a quiet scholar; and Godfrey, the youngest, a ruffian and my least favorite. Of more concern to me than the guests expected was the date: the first week of November. Later than I would have preferred.

  “So
it is settled—you will attend the dinner,” Henry said, smiling.

  Haltingly, I said, “Yes, but the other half of my tapestry loom will be delivered that same week, and so, after the party, I shall need to return to Dartford.”

  It seemed that everyone sitting at the table had a reaction to that—and not one of them favorable. Both Arthur and Edward cried out in disappointment. Gertrude looked aghast. But it was Henry whose expression pained me the most.

  “Have you not had a happy time with us, Joanna?” he asked sadly.

  How this pained me. It was my talks with Henry Courtenay that brought me the most happiness at the Red Rose. On a handful of evenings I joined my cousin in his study. He would speak with great enthusiasm about his favorite subject—the lives of past kings of England—as he patted the two dogs that begged for his attention. It was, I admit, a scenario that I’d envisioned for myself and my father. I’d assumed I’d never have that family feeling again after he died last winter. Henry had given me back a taste of it.

  Arthur was becoming more and more upset. “No, no, I don’t want to leave!”

  “Don’t be troubled, Arthur,” I pleaded, patting his hand. “We shall see.” I shouldn’t have brought up leaving the Red Rose in front of him this way, without preparation.

  The conversation at the table returned to Gertrude’s dinner. The Duchess of Suffolk would not be able to attend. I knew the Duke of Suffolk was considered the king’s closest friend, and so her absence seemed no matter of regret to me.

  Yet Gertrude said, “The duchess wrote in her note to me that she wanted to make your acquaintance and regretted not being able do so.”

  “Why would she want to do that?” I asked, apprehensive.

  Gertrude said, “I believe it is because of her mother, Maria de Salinas.”

  My hand tightened around the knife I’d used to cut my pheasant. I was no longer present, in this comfortable dining parlor, but back in cold and shabby Kimbolton Castle, at the bedside of the dying Katherine of Aragon. I’d nursed the exiled queen alongside Maria de Salinas, the queen’s most devoted lady. She’d come from Spain as a young girl, as had my mother. And, like my mother and Gertrude’s mother, she married an English nobleman, in her case, Lord Willoughby. I remember in the moments after the queen died at dawn, how Maria and I clutched each other, in blind grief.

  “Lady Willoughby is dead,” I said softly. I knew that she followed the queen to the grave not more than a year later. “Of all the ladies you’ve mentioned, because of her mother, the duchess is someone I would wish to meet.”

  Gertrude looked at her husband as if seeking permission for something. He nodded. “Duchess Catherine is very young, not yet twenty years old. She is Suffolk’s fourth wife. But I regret to tell you she is an avid reformer in the matter of religion.”

  As everyone else finished supper, I struggled to fathom this Catherine Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk. How could she practice a faith that constituted painful heresy to the blessed queen, whom her mother revered?

  After supper, as was my custom, I went to Arthur’s room to spend more time with him. He’d recovered his high spirits from the scene at dinner this evening; I tried to play with him but was sore distracted.

  The first two weeks had gone well enough in London, but beginning in the great hall this morning, things had become strained and confusing. Henry had gone direct from the table to discuss pressing matters with Charles. Such talks went on for hours. Perhaps if I confided in Gertrude—not about my terror of prophecy but about what I heard and saw before the fireplace in her house—it would begin to restore good faith.

  After putting Arthur to bed, I made my way to Gertrude’s rooms once again.

  I could hear the sound of women’s voices in the bathing room. She was the only person I knew who’d had a room built just for bathing. Her maids cleaned her bedchamber while heating water in a huge pot hanging over the fire. I knocked on the door. Gertrude called out, “Come in!”

  The bathing room was small, dominated by a large wooden tub that, I knew, had been built to her specifications. Gertrude lay in it, her black hair piled on top of her head, the water up to her breasts. Herbs and potions swayed in the water. And peels of orange, a fruit grown in the Mediterranean. The steamy room pulsed with its sharp smell.

  She sat up in the water, startled. “I thought you were the maid, bringing water,” she said. Seeing her naked, I realized how thin she was. Gertrude’s height and carriage were set off so well in clothes. But now I glimpsed the sharp triangles of her shoulders.

  Constance sat in a chair pulled up close to the bath, a small box open in her lap, filled with bundles of letters. Gertrude held a letter in both hands. Without looking at it, she thrust it toward Constance.

  The lady-in-waiting leaned over, but the letter slipped through her fingers and fell to the floor. It drifted to my feet, propelled by the curl of a draft. I picked it up. It was not written in English but in Latin.

  “Joanna, I would of course enjoy speaking with you, but I need to finish my correspondence first,” Gertrude said. “Would that be acceptable?”

  The words were reasonable, but a brittleness underlined them. She wasn’t angry, more afflicted with nerves. Her eyes were not even on my face but fixed on the letter I’d retrieved.

  “Of course,” I said, and handed the letter to Constance, who pushed it into the box on her lap. “Tomorrow, then?”

  On the long walk to my bedchamber, the passageway lit by candles affixed to the walls, I wondered what had made Gertrude nervous in her bathing room. Could it be the letter? I’d read only one phrase: de libero arbitrio. Which, translated to English, meant “of free will.”

  Something about the phrase “of free will” tugged at me, though. I searched the many conversations I’d had today. No one had said it, nor in the previous days either.

  It wasn’t until the middle of the night, as one restless dream shifted to the next, that I remembered. I bolted up in my bed, gasping for breath.

  I’d heard those words in Saint Sepulchre ten years earlier, first from Sister Anne and then Sister Elizabeth Barton herself.

  “You must hear the prophecies of your own free will and unconstrained,” the nun had told me. “After you hear the third, nothing can stop it. Nothing.”

  10

  So, Mistress Wriothesley, how goes your husband’s quest to find the king a new wife?”

  The roomful of women who’d come to Gertrude’s party dissolved into laughter. Mistress Wriothesley herself, plain-faced and heavily pregnant, shook her head, refusing to answer.

  Cecily, the woman who posed it—younger and prettier than the wife of Master Thomas Wriothsley, king’s ambassador—sipped spice wine from her glass and pretended to be sorry. “We don’t mean to pry into the secrets of the king’s council, but really, what are we all to do?” she said. “We’ve been a year without a queen. No positions to fill, no favor to fight over. It’s intolerable. We all pray that His Grace takes a fourth wife—forthwith.” Everyone laughed again as Cecily giggled, rather helplessly, as if she had little to do with the words that came from her mouth.

  I tried to concentrate on the song being played in this, the most beautiful room in the Red Rose. With Gertrude’s exquisite taste—and Henry’s money—every inch of the house was impressive. But the music room reigned supreme, which was all the more interesting since I’d heard it was installed before the Courtenays took possession. In this high, rectangular space, a frieze ran along three of the walls. The long stretch of sculpted decoration told a story, of a band of traveling musicians who arrive in a village and raise everyone’s spirits. Whoever designed it had a feeling for the way music could transform lives. What a charming setting for the Courtenay musicians, who entertained Gertrude’s guests on the lute and harp and with lovely madrigals.

  Everything was in place for an enjoyable afternoon—but for the guests.

  I had never been a person who was at ease in a party. But Gertrude assured me that her friends
were pious and cultured and kind. “I expect you to make lifelong friends today,” she said, squeezing my arm as we walked into the music room together. I had forced a smile in return. Common sense dictated that my seeing “de libero arbitrio” in one of her letters was a coincidence, nothing more. Nonetheless, I’d still not confided in her about the visions in the great hall. For now, I would keep my own counsel on all matters that disturbed me.

  “Ladies, I present my husband’s cousin, Mistress Joanna Stafford,” announced Gertrude. Seven pairs of eyes studied me from head to toe, examining the borrowed brocades, headdress, and gems that covered my body.

  The women ranged widely in age, from Cecily with her milk-and-honey girlishness to a woman everyone called Countess Elizabeth whose forehead puckered at the temples. Cecily sat with Lady Carew—or Lady C., as she was called—who made knowing remarks about her husband, Sir Nicholas Carew, evidently a courtier in high favor with the king. As I moved from guest to guest to shake hands, I was discomfited by their smiles, gracious but as cold as a frostbitten pasture.

  Gertrude’s guests sat in pairs except for one woman who was alone, farthest from the music. She bore a fixed smile on her face that never left, even when she spoke. I guessed her to be the same age as Gertrude, who called her Lady R. with fondness. Her skin was alabaster white; gleaming, yes, but devoid of any depth or subtlety to its glow, like an egg kept overlong in a cupboard. She had gray eyes, set wide apart. In profile, she looked like any other woman. But when she faced me, with that toothy frozen smile and bulging eyes set far apart, she was something else.

  Lady R. spoke now, seemingly to ease Mistress Wriothesley’s discomfort. “It is no fault of your husband’s that negotiations proceed so slowly in Brussels for the hand of Christina of Milan,” said Lady R. “She is the niece of the Emperor Charles.”