Our leader, the poor, pious Cistercian Brother Oswald, lay still, his ivory head smashed open on the street, just below the bottom step.
Snowflakes touched down in the dark red blood curling around the stones.
A helmeted man on a huge black horse, its mouth foaming, blocked our escape. He called out orders to his men to seize us all. The orders were instantly obeyed. Rough hands grabbed my friends, pulling their arms around their backs to restrain them.
I could not take it in, could not believe this was happening. To succeed and live—that was always a possibility. To succeed and die was more likely, and I had accepted that and prepared for it. But to fail at our mission and to live? This was impossible. Dread rose in me as I realized I was once more made a prisoner.
“Get them out of sight as quickly as possible,” cried the helmeted commander on the black horse. Two burly soldiers picked up the limp body of Brother Oswald, as callously as slinging a bag of meal to market.
The man in charge removed his helmet—Lord John Dudley. Not two months earlier, I’d watched him order a far different group of people gathered for imprisonment.
One of the soldiers grabbed Brother Edmund and spun him around, tying his wrists together behind his back. He winced with pain, crouched over. His eyes searched for me and found me. The friar apothecary straightened as best he could, struggling to hide his pain.
I stepped out of the shadows of the door. I could not bear to be separated from Brother Edmund now.
Dudley nodded at the sight of me. There was absolutely no surprise. He knew I would be here.
In that moment, I understood. We were betrayed. And I knew who it was who had betrayed us.
And so our pilgrimage ended. It began in hope, faith, and courage. It concluded in death and in failure. We did not even possess the unquestioned dignity of a holy mission. Lord John Dudley tried to take that from us, too.
“Did you do this because you thought the king’s men came here to defile Becket’s bones?” Dudley demanded of me as he walked us through the dark streets, away from the cathedral. It had stopped snowing. A thin white layer clung to the street—I walked in the sharp hoofprints of Dudley’s horse.
He continued: “That is a baseless rumor, spread by Papists who would blacken the king’s good name throughout Christendom. The king stripped and closed the shrine, yes, but only to prevent superstitious practices. The bones were to be moved somewhere safe, to prevent just such criminal actions as you took tonight.”
I said nothing. It was impossible to know if any part of that were true.
But of one thing I could be sure—it was nothing but hubris to think that I could change anything in the kingdom. Christmas night in Dartford, I’d thought that perhaps this action was the one I was meant to take—I did not need to wait for instructions from a third seer. But either the prophecies were false or I had grievously misinterpreted them.
“When the raven climbs the rope, the dog must soar like the hawk . . . Look to the bear to welcome the bull.” I was further from understanding these words than ever before.
A frustration raged in me as never before. Why had I been cursed with this? It had brought me nothing but pain and confusion. If by some miracle of God’s grace I evaded trial and prison—if not execution—I wanted nothing but a quiet life filled with prayer.
I wished I could speak to Brother Edmund. We walked side by side, our wrists bound behind our backs. Dudley rode just ahead of us, half turned to taunt. A dozen soldiers separated us from the followers of Brother Oswald. All I could remember was the Cistercian’s dashed head on the steps of the cathedral, the snow touching his blood. I prayed that someone would take his poor body away, for Christian burial.
Dudley nudged his horse to the side of the road and signaled to a young soldier to receive orders. The soldier nodded, turned, and grabbed Brother Edmund and me, to push us off the road, closer to Dudley.
The others marched on, led by a boy carrying a torch, the soldiers surrounding the five followers of Brother Oswald. As they passed us, one monk called out, “God protect and keep you.”
Dudley made a hissing noise of disgust.
After they’d disappeared from view, Dudley kicked his horse to start again, but down a different street. His one soldier walked behind us, prodding Brother Edmund with his halberd periodically. We had nothing but the weak moonlight to guide us.
What did it mean, that we had separated from the others and went with only Dudley and one other man to a different destination?
We walked for at least an hour, perhaps two. All the buildings we passed were dark. The citizens of Canterbury obeyed their curfew. No one watched us go by—there would be no witnesses to our fate.
We walked through an opening in an ancient, low stone wall. I ached with weariness, with grief and dread. But my mind stirred. I was on the brink of memory.
Fewer buildings stood on the other side of the wall. There was a barren forest, the snow clinging to naked branches like bandage strips on withered limbs. My gaze shifted to the left side of the road, where a group of buildings loomed, a church spire stretching to the frozen sky.
Dudley is taking us to Saint Sepulchre.
A young bearded man ran from the gatehouse of Saint Sepulchre. It was not the porter I remembered from when I was seventeen, that was for certain. The bearded man took Dudley’s horse.
Saint Sepulchre was only half standing. The new owner of the convent, whether it be Reformer bishop or favored courtier, had ordered the beginning of the destruction. The church had been torn down as well as that first room, where I’d seen the painting of Saint Benedict. But the work had halted, no doubt because of winter’s arrival. The wing containing the prioress’s chambers and the dormitory still stood.
The bearded man who took Dudley’s horse reappeared with a lit torch. He and the soldier led us down the sole passageway; Dudley did not follow. He hadn’t seemed to grasp the significance of this place, of my having been brought here before. But if Dudley knew nothing of my history, why bring me here?
The two men stopped at the dormitory where I remembered the nuns of Saint Sepulchre slept. Keys rustled, a door opened. Brother Edmund was shoved into the room without benefit of candle.
Before I could say a word to him, the door slammed shut again.
“Over here,” grunted the bearded man, and pointed. I was to be imprisoned in the next room, the very same room where I’d received prophecy from Sister Elizabeth Barton.
I recoiled. I leaped in the other direction. “Not there!” I cried. The soldier seized me at once.
“Open it,” he commanded, his hands tightening around my wrists. I yelped in pain.
The other man opened the door. The soldier flung me in. I fell flat on my stomach, my bound hands flailing behind me. A mound of old straw broke the fall or else my face would have been bloodied.
The door slammed shut. The room was black. As I well knew, there was no window.
“Help me, Mother Mary—help me, Lord God,” I pleaded, wriggling in the straw.
But there was no help for me. I pulled my knees up to my belly and wept, like a terrified child. This was the room where I watched a young nun writhe on the floor; now I did the same. “You are the one who will come after,” she’d moaned. Was it true what Gertrude Courtenay told me—did she falsely recant in order to protect me? She must have faced torture terrible indeed to make her take that step to keep safe the secret. How would I stand up to the pain when it was my turn?
“Sister Joanna, Sister Joanna!”
Had I gone mad? Whose voice was this—Sister Barton’s perhaps. My entire body convulsed with terror. But then I realized it was a man calling out to me. Brother Edmund.
“Can you hear me?” he shouted.
“Yes!” I shouted back.
“Follow my voice—follow it,” he said. “I will keep talking until you reach the wall.”
I got to my knees and inched forward to him. I could not feel my way forward with my hands. As Brother Edmund spok
e, I made my way to him, until I hit the brick wall. The pain in my head was so sharp, I thought I would faint. I sucked in breath after breath, until the pain subdued enough for me to sit. His voice emanated from a hole in the bottom of the wall.
I thanked God and the Virgin for it. I huddled above that hole, my cheek pressed against the rough, cold brick.
“This is Saint Sepulchre, isn’t it?” he asked. Now that Brother Edmund was so close, he no longer needed to shout.
“Yes,” I said.
“Sister Joanna, listen to me,” he said, his voice urgent. “I don’t know how much time we have. You must stay calm. Tell them nothing about the prophecies. We may yet find a way to freedom. The important thing is—do not panic.”
I said, “How could we possible win our freedom now? We are going to be roughly questioned—one or both of us may be put to the pain. Or perhaps they will just kill us here in Saint Sepulchre, before sunrise.”
Brother Edmund was silent for a moment. “Yes,” he said. “It is possible we will be killed. In which case we should both pray for God’s mercy and forgiveness.”
I had thought myself fully prepared for martyrdom a few hours ago. Now, with all of my being, I did not want to die.
Brother Edmund continued, “But it is also possible that something else is about to happen. How could Dudley know of our mission? He rode all the way from London with these soldiers.”
I pressed my cheek even harder against the stone’s edge, and said, “I believe that Geoffrey Scovill told him.”
“What?” I could hear the shock in his voice.
The morning that we left Dartford for Canterbury, the morning after Christmas, as I hurriedly packed food, Geoffrey banged on the door of my house. I had made arrangements for Arthur to stay with Sister Winifred for a few days—our plan was to tell them we would join Brother Oswald for a single pilgrimage. Which had the benefit of being true.
Geoffrey pushed his way past Kitty to storm into my kitchen. He took in the slices of bread, the wrapped parcels of portable food.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I am preparing meals for some friends who came for Christmas,” I said evenly. “They are going on a journey.”
“Where?” Geoffrey demanded. His blue eyes narrowed as he studied my face.
“It is none of your concern,” I said.
“I am the constable of Dartford, and so it is my concern,” he said. “Their destination had better not be Canterbury.”
I was dismayed—how on earth could he know when we had decided less than twelve hours ago?
I said, “Why do you care where they go?”
“Because there is nothing but trouble for them in Canterbury,” he said. And then, “Is Sommerville going with them? Are you?”
“No,” I said quickly.
Geoffrey’s lips whitened. I did not want to keep hurting Geoffrey Scovill, yet I did exactly that.
“So now you lie to me, is that what we’ve come to?” he said roughly. “Joanna, you’re a fool. This is madness, and it will change nothing.”
With that, he was gone.
I told Brother Edmund everything, every word of the conversation. When I was finished, he said, “You should have informed me and the others.”
“Yes,” I said brokenly. “I have erred, so many, many times. And this error cost Brother Oswald his life, and perhaps ours, too. But we didn’t leave for another few hours, and I never saw Geoffrey again. He didn’t try to stop us. I never imagined he would go to someone like John Dudley. It is hard to believe that Geoffrey would ever do anything to harm me, no matter how angry he was. And I—I didn’t want you to know about this quarrel.”
There was silence for a time. I wondered if Brother Edmund was so appalled, he no longer wished to speak to me.
But then his voice came again, and there was no anger in it.
“Do you remember, in the cemetery, when you asked me if something was wrong?”
“Yes,” I said. “You looked so distressed.”
“While we were there, I looked over at you, hiding behind that gravestone, and I realized something, Sister Joanna,” he said and then his voice trailed away.
I waited, uncertain. When he spoke again, his voice was even softer.
“I realized that as much as I wanted to strike a blow for our faith, for our blessed Saint Thomas, I wanted something else, too. It’s what I’ve wanted for quite a long time. I have not always understood it; I’ve felt it and fought it. I always thought my destiny was as a man of God. But I now know that I want it so much that, given a choice between life and death, I believe with all of my heart, that I would choose life—even a life that is strange and difficult for me.”
I slid down along the rough wall. I couldn’t see him in the darkness, but I knew his face could not be more than three feet from mine.
“What is it that you want, Brother Edmund?” I said.
“Something is called for at this moment, something profound must be said, but all of my references are from Scripture,” he said, the shadow of a laugh in his voice. “I can only think of Catherine of Siena and what she said: ‘The human heart is always drawn by love.’ ”
He hesitated again.
“It’s you,” he said. “I am in love with you.”
Tears filled my eyes and my throat tightened. I willed myself to stop, so that I would be able to speak to him.
“If we are able to free ourselves, Sister Joanna, my only wish is to marry you,” he said. “I know absolutely nothing of being a husband, but I would give the rest of my life to you.”
“Yes,” I said, and despite everything that had happened, I smiled into the darkness. How incredible it felt, this happiness coursing through me.
But I had no time to tell him of my own feelings, for the door to my cell—to Sister Elizabeth Barton’s cell—swung open. The young bearded man, holding a torch, pulled me toward the passageway.
“Good-bye, Brother Edmund,” I called out wildly, as I was dragged out the door.
Fear rose in me, but joy burned in me, too. I was loved. I must do everything possible to survive the night.
At the end of the passageway, the man pushed me around the corner.
I collided with someone who stood there awaiting me.
It was Jacquard Rolin.
I stumbled back and tried to speak, but Jacquard whipped me around and covered my mouth with his hand. He was fast and strong—much stronger than I had ever perceived.
“I don’t believe your Brother Edmund can hear through that door, but there is a chance of it,” he whispered into my ear. “Don’t say my name if you desire that he should live.”
I nodded, frantic.
“Very good.” He withdrew his hand. I turned slowly to face him. I was unable to believe that it was truly the Low Countries Reformer who stood before me in Saint Sepulchre.
“Come, let us walk farther and then we can converse,” he said. “But first, untie her hands.”
The man immediately obeyed. Jacquard was in command of this situation.
We walked as he looked me up and down. “What a night you’ve had, Joanna Stafford,” he said, as calm and pleasant as if we had met in the middle of the High Street. “I heard you lost your courage and cried when they put you in Elizabeth Barton’s cell. That doesn’t sound like you.”
“How is this possible?” I stammered. “Are you the one who betrayed us to Dudley?”
Jacquard smiled. Those perfect teeth gleamed in the torchlight.
“Come with me,” he said.
Jacquard led me to the prioress’s chambers. He knocked once, pushed open the door, and then gestured for me to go first with a flourish of his palm.
I walked into the room, the same one I’d entered with my mother ten years ago. It was lit with many candles. The oak table was still there. A man sat on the other side of it.
It was Eustace Chapuys, ambassador of the Emperor Charles.
“Hello, Juana,” he said.
This was wrong—so wrong. For a moment I wondered if I was hallucinating. But I could feel my legs and my arms. I drew breath. This was real.
The only thing I could manage to say to him was “You do know me, then?”
Jacquard laughed behind me. Chapuys smiled, too, a wry smile as if I’d said something extremely amusing, but there was a bitter edge to it as well.
I pointed at Jacquard. “Why is he here, Ambassador? He is employed by the king, and he follows the Reform faith.”
Chapuys lifted his chin and said, “No, Juana. Jacquard Rolin is a spy in the service of the Emperor Charles.”
The candlelight tilted and ran together. I was falling and would have hit the floor, but Jacquard, again moving incredibly fast, caught me. He carried me to the empty chair opposite Chapuys.
The ambassador said: “Wine. Food. At once.”
A goblet was pressed to my lips. I drank limply. I tried to wave off the chunk of bread, but they insisted. I managed to get the bread down but it was not easy.
“Jacquard infiltrated a party of German heretics and arrived in London in May,” said Chapuys. “We had to have someone keeping you under observation in Dartford. I have English men and women in my service, but none skillful enough for the delicacy of this important task. I asked for the best—and the best is what I received.”
Jacquard bowed. “Your praise honors me.”
“Why would you need to observe me at all?” I asked.
Neither man answered.
I turned around to glare at Jacquard. “You are not a Reformer? But your beliefs—you told me of them yourself.”
Jacquard transformed himself while I watched. His eyes burning, he said, “Timothy’s views on the doctrine of free will are most inspiring.” He burst out laughing.
“Enough,” said Chapuys quietly.
“Lord John Dudley—I don’t understand how he comes into it,” I said. “He cannot possibly be in the employ of the emperor.”
“Dudley believes Jacquard to be a low-level spy for Cromwell, which he in fact is,” the ambassador explained. “Jacquard has been a valued spy for the Emperor Charles for the last eight years. With his skills, he was able to attract Cromwell’s interest just enough so that the Lord Privy Seal would recruit him but had no idea of his true allegiances. He employed Jacquard three weeks after he arrived in London.”
The Chalice Page 28