The Chalice

by Nancy Bilyeau

  Catherine, scarlet with shame, peered over at me. Recognition flickered in her eyes—she remembered me, too.

  I moved toward the table. “You curtsy as low as possible to the knife,” I explained. “You rub the plate with some of the salt. Then, you put a tiny mound of salt on the knife.”

  “I am most grateful for your kind help,” the girl said to me, a smile restoring the prettiness I remembered. “But how do you know all of this, mistress?”

  “My mother taught me how to prepare dinner for the queen’s presence chamber,” I said.

  The duchess said approvingly, “Joanna’s mother was trained in Spain, where they have the highest standards of all for court ladies. She and I served the queen together; I waited on Katherine of Aragon for sixteen years.”

  Catherine said timidly, “Your Grace, it might help me if I understood why this is done. Why must the plates be rubbed with salt?”

  “It has to do with the threat of poison,” Elizabeth said.

  Catherine’s eyes flickered with interest. “Has anyone ever tried to poison a queen of England?”

  “Not to my knowledge,” Elizabeth admitted, “but the Borgias were not so long ago, with their poisoners.”

  “Who are the Borgias?” asked Catherine.

  Elizabeth groaned. Once again, I stepped in to explain. It was not easy. The Borgia crimes always made me uncomfortable. Some people claimed the Borgias were in some part responsible for igniting the firestorm of heresy that now threatened to engulf Christendom.

  After I’d finished, Elizabeth marched over to a stool pushed against the wall. She snatched up a piece of needlework and waved it at me. “This is all that Catherine is capable of.”

  Even from across the room, the stitches looked primitive. I snuck another glance at Catherine. She rolled her eyes at me—I was relieved to see she had spirit—and then dipped a curtsy. “I apologize for all my shortcomings, Your Grace.”

  “When is the new queen set to arrive?” I asked.

  “Oh, nothing is decided yet,” Elizabeth answered, “but the field is narrowing.

  My cousin nibbled on a fingernail and then said, “Catherine, I’ve endured enough of you. Leave me.”

  The young Howard girl scampered out of the room.

  “Will you wait on the queen?” I asked my cousin. “I’d imagine you would be the principal lady of waiting.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Then you will need all sorts of new garments to wear to court,” I said, with a single clap of my hands. I wanted it to seem as if the idea just occurred. “I want you to have that cloth of silver dress, Elizabeth. It can be easily mended. And all the rest of the fine dresses the marchioness of Exeter gave me—you should have them as well. We are of the same size.”

  My cousin’s face lit up. She tried at once to dampen it—she realized its unseemliness. She said, “If it can be managed to secure them from the Red Rose, then, yes, I could make a place for them here. Are you quite sure, Joanna?”

  “Oh, I want you to have the clothes,” I said. Which was true enough. I would never wear them again.

  Elizabeth suddenly flung herself across the room. Thin arms encircled me. “It’s kind of you, Joanna. Most kind. If there’s anything I can do—”

  I counted to five and then said, “You can speak to the duke about my returning to Dartford, not Stafford Castle.”

  She rapidly withdrew from our familial embrace. “No I couldn’t,” she said. “The duke would never, ever agree. Joanna, this is your fault. You shouldn’t have taken lodgings in Dartford with that child in the first place. It was not fitting—no one approved at the time.”

  “ ‘That child,’ as you call him, is Margaret’s own son,” I said.

  Elizabeth said, “I know—yes, of course I know of the poor boy,” she said. For the first time I glimpsed the caring heart that Margaret always insisted that Elizabeth possessed. “I’ve wanted to see Arthur for a long time—I wanted to be by Margaret’s side at the end. Impossible. I’m the highest ranking lady in the land after the king’s wives and daughters and Lady Margaret Douglas, but I have no power at all.”

  Elizabeth had always raged over our sex’s inferiority. Other women submitted to slights if not abuses every day. Not Elizabeth. That was one of the reasons she had taken the shocking step of leaving her husband. She was unwilling to submit to him after she felt wronged.

  “Why have you returned to Howard House now?” I asked.

  “I had no choice,” she said. “My husband would not give me a proper allowance after I left him. I have no money of my own. No one would visit me, not even my children. They took their father’s part. Gertrude Courtenay, your great friend, abandoned my cause like everyone else. I asked my brother Henry if I could return to Stafford Castle and live with him and his family—and do you know what he did? He wrote to my husband that he did not want me—he did not even write back to me at all. There’s too much scandal attached to my name.”

  “Perhaps cousin Henry won’t want me either,” I said hopefully.

  Elizabeth waved a hand at me. “I’m the Duchess of Norfolk, and you’re a nobody. It’s not the same.” She sighed. “It was Cromwell who brokered this reconciliation. My condition was Howard not strike me or humiliate me by keeping his whores under the same roof. In return I will take his households in hand again, though it is not easy. My husband wants to keep Christmas in grand style. Ridiculous. Everyone in the family comes and goes, the accounts are in chaos. The Howards are a bad lot. I told my father that when he forced me to wed. Father laughed at me—but I was right.”

  Looking at her mournful face, I had another idea.

  “Let me help you, cousin,” I said. “I can teach Catherine needlework and the other things she needs to know to be a proper maid of honor. I will assist with all the preparations for Christmastide.”

  Elizabeth brightened. “Would you do that for me, Joanna?”

  I felt a twist of guilt over my deceit but forced myself to say yes. Southwark was so close to Dartford, two hours by horse. If I managed to make myself indispensable here, I could yet find a way to maneuver home. If I were forced to return to Stafford Castle, it would be much, much harder.

  Elizabeth interceded with her husband, and I was permitted to remain through Christmas. But while here I’d need to adhere to certain rules, for the duke plainly did not trust me. Arthur Bulmer was never to be permitted inside the house. I must not correspond with anyone. I could not discuss the arrests of the Courtenays, Baron Montagu, or the rest inside the walls of Howard House. I was not to read any books. The last rule left me stunned. Elizabeth explained that her husband detested reading. Literature and theology and politics were all forbidden topics at Howard House.

  Everyone fearfully complied with the duke’s edicts except for one member of the Howard family—the Earl of Surrey, Norfolk’s twenty-one-year-old son and heir. Surrey broke every rule.

  On my fourth day there, he materialized at dinner with his wife, Frances. Like Catherine Howard, when prompted, he recognized me from the party last year. But he was not preoccupied by festivities now. The treacherous politics at court were his chief concern. “There’s no specific evidence of treason against Courtenay and the rest,” he declared. “They may serve long terms in the Tower, but the king won’t let Cromwell kill these good men based on no evidence at all.”

  I ached to question Surrey, to learn more about how my friends fared in the Tower. Elizabeth, knowing my mind, shook her head warningly at me.

  Surrey leaped to his feet and threw a goblet at the fireplace. It shattered. “Cromwell wants no one but low creatures like himself around the king,” he roared.

  My next encounter with Surrey was more personally troubling. I was asleep when the words of a bawdy tune exploded down the passageway outside my room.

  I opened the door a crack to discover the cause of the disturbance. Surrey clung to the wall, his mother at his side.

  “You!” he shouted. “You are the one who
hates my father.”

  He lunged into my room, pushing the door open with such force that pieces of wood split into the air. “I will speak to your cousin,” he said.

  Now that he was close, I smelled the vomit on his clothes. The earl’s face was reddened and shiny. Men drank too much wine—I knew that. But there was a horror to this level of drunkenness.

  “She’s your cousin, too,” Elizabeth pointed out, worried for me.

  “I don’t want to talk to you,” he growled. “I want to talk to Joanna Stafford.”

  “Then do so,” I said, disgusted. “Speak your peace and leave me be.”

  Surrey pushed his mother out and closed the door. “I know what people whisper behind my back. That my father was a pimp for Anne Boleyn. It’s a damn lie. The Boleyns never listened to him. They did what they wanted always. What did we get out of that marriage? Nothing. She talked to him worse than she would to a dog.”

  A memory stirred. A few days before he died, my father told me the most sordid story about Norfolk. When Queen Anne was with child, the king caught sight of my beautiful cousin Margaret and lusted for the daughter of the man he’d had killed. He wanted Margaret brought to his bed. Norfolk tried to force her to comply, thinking his sister-in-law could prove a mistress of benefit to him. When a revolted Margaret fled the court, my father hid her from Norfolk until she could go north.

  Perhaps the duke ended up loathing his niece Anne Boleyn, but I suspected that in the beginning he’d pushed for that dalliance, too. The doubt must have shown in my face. Surrey redoubled his efforts to persuade me of his father’s worth.

  “Why does it matter to you what I think?” I asked wearily.

  “I want you to know the truth—I want everyone to know the truth,” he said. His face whitened, he covered his mouth, and he stumbled out the door. I heard him coughing and spitting outside my room. Elizabeth, who had been waiting, spoke soothingly.

  “Oh, Mother,” moaned Surrey, and began weeping. Childish wails filled the passageway. They grew fainter as he retreated to his room. Unhappy Howard House fell silent once more.

  26

  I kept my promise to Elizabeth, training Catherine Howard in the skills she’d need for court. I helped with the planning of Christmastide, the ordering of meats and mince pies and sweets.

  But I longed for the company of my friends in Dartford as never before. Within these walls, there was no one remotely like selfless Brother Edmund—or his devout sister, Winifred. As for Geoffrey, thoughts of him were never far away either. In the middle of the night, tossing sleepless in my bed, I saw Geoffrey emerge from the shadows of the alcove at the top of the stairs. He’d press me into his arms so tightly, my cloth of silver burned my flesh. But, come morning, I always felt deep shame at my weakness. Geoffrey Scovill would be best off without me. I had brought him little but trouble, and if we came together in the future, it could mean his death.

  Then there was Arthur. Worry bore into me like a wasting disease. My father had entrusted him to my care—and I had failed. Who was looking after him? How was he faring? It was so cruel that Norfolk had forbidden Arthur to come to me or for me to send word to those who cared for him. It was the duke’s guilt over Margaret’s death, I suspected, that made him take such a stance. My cousin Elizabeth felt nearly as miserable about Arthur, I knew that. But there was little she could do—her own position was precarious. One night, after a quarrel with the duke, Elizabeth wept in my arms for hours.

  “What was your quarrel about?” I asked.

  “He wants to match our daughter Mary with Thomas Seymour, a lout and wastrel. But I know Mary loathes Seymour, and I tried to take her part. She has refused to marry him and stays away from London. How he cursed at me.”

  I tried to comfort my cousin, but I was terrible at such a task. Margaret would have talked with her, pressed compresses on her forehead, brushed her hair, prayed with her. I tried to do those things, but my own mood was so fraught, it was difficult to lift her spirits. In addition, she steadily refused to help me make my way home to Dartford, not Stafford Castle. “Don’t harangue me about that now!” she always implored me, rubbing her forehead.

  It was Catherine Howard who noticed my deepening sadness, much as I tried to hide it, at needlework one morning. She had shadows to her own nature, and was far from the “pretty simpleton” that Elizabeth dubbed her. Catherine rarely spoke of her past, but I learned that her childhood had been one of hardship. No grown member of the Howard family cared what happened to her until the duke thought her fit for court. Even now, her happiness was of no importance—all that mattered was the possibility she could do well enough to advance the clan. It had been made clear to her she must attract a husband with enough coins in his pocket to take her off the Howards’ hands.

  “If you are unhappy here, why don’t you return to Stafford Castle?” Catherine asked.

  “I made a life for myself in Dartford with friends and a little boy who needs me,” I said. “I mean to start a tapestry business. At this moment, my loom sits, unused, in a building office on the High Street.”

  “I can barely keep my stitches straight, and you can create whole tapestries?” she asked, awestruck.

  “Catherine, your stitching is far better than you give yourself credit for,” I said, pointing to the work in her lap. “You’ve improved, without question.”

  The smallest compliments had such an impact, for she was so starved for them. She said, “I have an excellent teacher,” a dimple appearing in her soft cheek.

  It was the end of November and quite cold when everything changed one morning. I had not broken my fast, for I was determined to go without food all day. It had been too long since I fasted.

  There was a soft tap at the open door. Catherine beckoned for me, her face flushed. “You must come with me now,” she said, and pulled me out of the room.

  “Why?” I asked as we hurtled along. But she wouldn’t answer.

  Shortly I found myself walking down the long passageway on the main floor, and I watched, surprised, as Catherine removed a key from her pocket and began fiddling with a door at the end.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Shhhhh,” Catherine said, and then burst out giggling.

  “I am glad to see you in better spirits, but I must insist you tell me what we’re about here,” I said firmly.

  Catherine whispered: “There’s a man come to see you, and I’ve hidden him in here.”

  Geoffrey. He’d been unable to bear our separation any longer. I felt a flash of joy, swiftly swallowed up by fear. How incredibly dangerous to come to the Duke of Norfolk’s own house.

  As soon as Catherine got the door open, I pushed in ahead of her. It was a dark storeroom, filled with chairs and trays.

  Brother Edmund stepped out of the corner.

  “Sister Joanna,” he said, “I’ve come to take you home.”

  27

  Brother Edmund said, “Won’t you speak to me, Sister?”

  But I couldn’t, for it was too impossible to believe that he stood before me, after all these weeks. I soaked in every detail: Brother Edmund’s ash-blond hair, grown long because he never wanted to take the time to cut it. His sensible dark brown doublet, the one I had helped him order from a tailor after we were forced to put away our white habits and black cloaks. His sturdy shoes, caked with dried mud. He must have walked the entire way from Dartford to Howard House.

  “It’s you, ah it’s you—” I choked.

  He stepped forward quickly to comfort me. It was not the same sort of embrace as Geoffrey Scovill’s. He squeezed my shoulder with one hand and gently patted my back with the other. “I am here, hush, I am here,” he said.

  “You are my friend,” I said, as if I were a small child. Brother Edmund smiled and said, “Did not your favorite Dominican, Thomas Aquinas, say, ‘There is nothing on this earth to be prized more than true friendship’?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Oh, yes.” I turned to Catherine. “Thank
you for this.”

  She explained that she saw Brother Edmund walking up the path from her window this morning. She recognized him from when we both came to Howard House last year; she was the one who greeted and conversed with us before we donned our masks. She’d rushed down to find out why he’d come. A few sentences persuaded her that Brother Edmund best be brought inside and hidden until I could be secured.

  “How is Arthur?” I asked.

  “He is well, Sister Joanna, do not be troubled. He lives with me and Sister Winifred.” Brother Edmund shared the precious details of Arthur’s arrival and subsequent activities. “Of course Arthur misses you, as have I.” He added quickly, “And Sister Winifred and Sister Beatrice and all the rest—Sisters Eleanor and Agatha and Rachel. We all miss you.”

  I asked, “How did you know I was here?”

  Brother Edmund explained that when he brought Arthur to Dartford, Geoffrey Scovill relayed the news of the Red Rose arrests. Geoffrey said that the Duke of Norfolk forced Lord Dudley to rescind my arrest and then commandeered me. “Master Scovill said that though he did not have knowledge of your whereabouts, you knew where he was and would send word when the time was right. He advised waiting.”

  So Geoffrey did not tell him of the duke’s warning to hang him if he were found with me. A significant omission.

  Catherine said, “But you didn’t wait.”

  “No,” Brother Edmund said. “I didn’t wait.” His cheeks reddened slightly. “I remembered Howard House from when we came here, Sister Joanna. It was my first destination.”

  Catherine had already told Brother Edmund about the duke’s shifting plans for me.

  “I am prepared to speak to His Grace on your behalf as soon as he returns and make a case for your coming back with me to Dartford,” Brother Edmund said.