The Chalice

by Nancy Bilyeau

  The king held the chalice in his hand as he stared at me.

  I could hear the courtiers’ shocked whispers. To throw myself in the king’s path, to try to take wine from him, was unprecedented.

  The seconds crawled by as the king continued to examine me with those narrow, cold blue eyes, sunk deep in his fleshy face.

  The king held out the chalice and I seized it with my right hand. As my fingers curled around its smooth rim, a roaring filled my head. It was as if a wind rose, but it was inside only me, and it carried a cacophony of sounds: Sister Elizabeth Barton’s cries of pain, the conjuring chant of Orobas, and the wailing words of Nostredame.

  My hand trembled, and the chalice began to slip. I seized the other side of the rim with my left hand. I rooted my feet in the floor so I would not collapse. The unearthly sounds slowly faded.

  The king noticed nothing, for he had turned away, lumbering toward the door at the far end of the gallery, which led to the apartment containing Anne of Cleves.

  A man posted at the door bowed. Just as he reached the doorway, the king faltered. He reached out to touch the side of the door.

  Holding the chalice, I began to tremble.

  But then the door was opened and he strode through it, followed by five of his attending gentlemen. The door shut behind them. No one in this room could hear what happened.

  “Joanna, what are you doing here?” asked Catherine Howard. “I’m happy to see you, of course, but you’re not on the list of ladies of the queen. I am—I’m a maid of honor. I officially began serving her in Canterbury.”

  “I’m happy for you, Catherine,” I said. “May I ask, where did you get this chalice?” I held it up to her—it was most certainly fit for royalty to drink from. Our Lord Jesus Christ drank from a vessel made of silver at the Last Supper—the Council of Ten’s choice to fashion this instrument of death in the same precious metal was blasphemous indeed.

  Catherine beamed with pleasure. “It was a gift from Queen Mary of Hungary to the Howard family, Joanna. A very nice Spanish gentleman gave it to my uncle the duke, but said that the queen regent specifically requested that it be used to serve the king of England wine before he marries. They said it is a wedding custom of the Low Countries. The Spanish gentleman asked me to be the one to give the king wine! What an honor. Just now, he told me that the king was coming to see my mistress the queen incognito and this was a perfect opportunity, because he’d be thirsty from the ride.” Catherine looked up and down the gallery. “I don’t see him anymore. He was here before. Well, it’s very exciting—only you kept him from drinking most of it. Look.” She pointed at the red liquid swirling in the chalice I still gripped so tightly.

  “Let me take it to be cleaned,” I said. “I will get it back to you afterward.”

  “But, Joanna,” she said stubbornly, “why wouldn’t you let the king drink his wine?”

  “Let me tell you something, Mistress Catherine Howard, and I won’t want you to forget it,” I said. “You can’t trust the Spanish.”

  With that, I turned and made my way out of the gallery. Still holding the chalice, I found a place near a window on the second floor, and waited. Nearly twenty minutes later, the king came storming down the stairs. The whole palace was in an uproar.

  “He doesn’t like her,” I heard over and over again. “He doesn’t like her.”

  I was again with Catherine Brandon when her husband rushed to her side. “I’ve never seen him take such a dislike to a woman—and she’s to be his wife,” he murmured. “It’s as if he’s sickened by her. His mood is most foul. This is a disaster.”

  The king then summoned Brandon, the Seymours, the Earl of Southampton, and several other nobles and gentlemen to a room on the first floor of the Bishop’s Palace. There was some sort of furious meeting within, and then the king burst out of the room, red-faced, and limped to his horse.

  I watched him ride away—angry and full of wretched humors, but alive.

  I returned Catherine Brandon’s cloak to her, and bade farewell to Catherine Howard. She was so agog over the disaster of the king and queen’s first meeting that she’d forgotten my strangeness over the chalice.

  But one person hadn’t forgotten. And after the havoc died down, I sought out Señor Hantaras, who stood outside the Bishop’s Palace, in the shadow of the bear-baiting pit.

  His eyes burned as I walked to him, the chalice extended. Just before I reached him, I finally poured the poisoned wine into the ground. The bear howled on the other side of the fence as I did so.

  “Unless you want members of the Howard household to drop into their graves, I suggest you take this,” I said. “Do you have another one, to substitute and return to the Howards?”

  “Of course I do,” he said.

  “Is your mistress dead?” I asked.

  “The wound was not that deep,” he said, not sounding overly concerned about the injury. “She will recover.”

  I said, “This was my destiny and I fulfilled it. Michel de Nostredame confirmed it. The king was not to be killed. This poison concocted by the Council of Ten is the sort that, in a small dose, turns a man impotent and full of mad humors. That is what the king consumed. There will be no second son. And someday, when the king is dead and Prince Edward is dead, the Lady Mary will be queen and the true faith will be restored. That is what we all desired, correct? That is what I was recruited and trained to bring about?”

  He said nothing.

  “So tell Ambassador Chapuys . . . it’s over,” I said, and I turned away.

  I left the bear pit and the Bishop’s Palace, to find Watling Street, the one, I knew, that would finally take me home.

  52

  Early on, one of the tasks accomplished by the builders of the king’s new manor house of Dartford was the moving of graves. It was a delicate matter. Prioresses, nuns, and friars were commonly buried where they lived. But it would not do to demolish a building and raise a new one on top of the coffins of the faithful. It could bring bad luck to the king.

  The new cemetery for the religious was on the far side of the road from the priory. So the dead looked upon the long stone wall, and the grove of trees, but were not forced to know of the grand new building. This was where Prioress Elizabeth Croessner, who welcomed me to Dartford, rested, and tapestry mistress Sister Helen and the brilliant Brother Richard, and dozens of others. My father, Sir Richard Stafford, lay there; he had died at the priory, reaching Dartford in his last weeks. I’d wanted my father near me forever.

  This cemetery was also where Geoffrey Scovill chose to bury his wife and daughter.

  I went there the first day I returned to town. My house was strangely unchanged. I’d thought in Gravesend that I would never be the same person after what awaited me on the island I loved. But I found my surroundings neither comforting nor alien when I came back to the house on the High Street. It had been paid for the entire time I was away. Jacquard Rolin insisted we pay the house’s rent six months ahead before we left; he used to say we must have several paths open to us always.

  Should I send for Arthur, persuade my cousin Henry to allow me to raise him as I’d promised my father? I wasn’t sure that I was a fit person to care for a child any longer. I had persevered in Rochester, I found strength to carry out the deed I was convinced was right and just. But all my terrible mistakes along the way, the lives ruined and lost, made me go cold with shame.

  What was to be my future? I took a seat at my loom and stared at the finished tapestry. A powerful green-and-violet bird rose from the brilliant flames of its nest, on the verge of rebirth.

  A knock at the door sounded. I almost didn’t answer it. I did not feel ready to speak to anyone.

  It was Agatha Gwinn, my onetime novice mistress. She’d heard at Holy Trinity Church that someone saw me step inside my house.

  “Wherever have you been?” she exclaimed.

  “Traveling,” I said.

  “Oh, is it to do with Edmund—is he coming home?” she asked
. “We miss him greatly in Dartford.”

  “I don’t know where he is,” I said, bowing my head.

  Agatha told me that Oliver Gwinn, with the aid of Master Hancock, had petitioned and finally received permission to remain married to her, even though she had once been a nun.

  “I’m happy for you,” I said.

  There was another knock at the door. I was to have no peace.

  But this time it was a royal page. He said, “Her Majesty Queen Anne sends me from London to acquire the tapestry of Mistress Joanna Stafford.”

  “She wants my tapestry?” I asked, stunned.

  The page nodded. “She intends to give it as a wedding present to the king. She instructed me through the interpreters to tell you that you can name your price—within reason.”

  “What a great honor,” Agatha cried. “For your very first tapestry to go to the king himself? You will have a sea of commissions after this.”

  “Yes,” I said, and dipped my head lower to hide the tears shivering in my eyes. I saw again the sweet, trusting face of Anne of Cleves, on the ship from Calais. So determined to be a good wife and queen. I had destroyed any chance of a happy marriage for her.

  “It needs finishing,” I said finally. “Not all the details of the phoenix are what they should be.”

  After I’d made arrangements to send the finished tapestry, I said good-bye to Agatha and walked up the High Street to the main road. It didn’t take all that long to reach the cemetery.

  The markers for Beatrice Scovill and her child were on the far side, next to an oak tree. Although the ground was hard and icy, I knelt to say my prayers.

  A man’s voice said, “I didn’t know you’d returned.”

  I looked up at Geoffrey Scovill. His blue eyes were dull and shadowed. A few white hairs sprouted among the brown, and he was just thirty years old this year.

  “I am sorry, I can’t even find the words for how sorry I am,” I said.

  “I’m lost, Joanna,” he said. “I’m so lost.”

  I caught my breath. “I know what it’s like to be lost,” I said.

  “I don’t know how to live with it—the regret,” he said thickly. “I never gave her the love that she had a right to.”

  “You were a good husband, I know that,” I said quickly.

  He shuddered. “No,” he said. “I was forever thinking of you. No one can understand. It was like a fever, these last two years of my life. I tried, but I could never get free of you until now, Joanna. I couldn’t see what God gave me, a beautiful and giving woman who cared for me more than any other person ever has, or ever will.”

  I wept to hear this.

  “I’ve suffered, too, Geoffrey,” I said, choking.

  “I know that.”

  Geoffrey had a book in his hand. He nodded, seeing that I noticed.

  “It’s the Bible of William Tyndale,” he said. “You won’t understand, Joanna, how could you? But it is the only thing that gives me a moment of solace.”

  I took a deep breath. “If it helps you, then I am glad of it.”

  I clutched my hands and resumed my prayers. After a moment or so, there was a soft thud. I looked down. Geoffrey had tossed the small bag on the ground next to me, the one that contained the opal he said was called Black Fire.

  “God’s truth is, I would give anything in the world if I could have Beatrice back for just a few moments.” His voice broke. “I want to tell her how sorry I am.”

  I shut my eyes. I prayed, over and over, for peace for Beatrice, for some measure of serenity for Geoffrey. He didn’t say anything more. I heard the sound of his shoes crunching on the ground as he moved around the tombstones, and then all that was left was the wind again, in the trees.

  Something stirred on my head and both my arms. My eyes flew open. Snow had begun to fall. My knees and fingers ached from the cold. I struggled to my feet.

  I looked over at the spot on the ground where he’d tossed the bag. It was not there. I searched for a few minutes. Geoffrey must have taken it away with him.

  There was no other person here. The shadows of the desiccated trees stretched toward me. All else that remained were the souls of those who had gently passed through Purgatory and now resided with Christ and the Virgin in the Kingdom of Heaven.

  The snow had stopped falling when I completed my prayers. It was still and dim in the graveyard, with twilight approaching. I forced myself to walk quickly back to town, so that movement would send warmth back into my flesh.

  Night came by the time I reached the High Street. There were only a few people left out. As I approached my house, I could see a man standing in front of it, holding a large bundle. He stood very still, as if waiting for me. Was he sent by Señor Hantaras? It was so foolish to think I would be safe from those who wished the king dead, whose plot I had subverted.

  I was completely alone in the town now, no friend on the High Street to turn to. Geoffrey Scovill, even if I wished to seek him out, lived far from the center of Dartford.

  “Sister Joanna?” came a man’s voice. “Have you returned?”

  “Yes?” I took a steadying breath. “Can I be of service, sir?”

  The man took a step toward me, and in the moonlight I could see his features. He was familiar to me—and yet not so.

  “I am John,” he said softly.

  Without the beard, I had not known him until that moment. And he wore clean clothes. Moreover, he had never addressed me in such a fashion, as if he were any other townsman.

  “Are you well, John?” I asked cautiously.

  He nodded. “I am, Sister. Since just after Christmas, I’ve not heard the voices. I live with my cousin now.” He tightened his grip on his bundle. “I help gather firewood, and I go to Mass every day.”

  “John, you are cured?” I asked, awed. “Truly?”

  “Yes, Sister. They say it is a miracle.” But his voice sounded subdued—sad. He shifted his bundle in his arms and then said, “Brother Edmund, shall he come back, too?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know.”

  “He was my friend,” John said.

  “Yes,” I said, trembling. “Thomas Aquinas once wrote, ‘There is nothing on this earth to be prized more than true friendship.’ ”

  He bowed his head. “Thank you, Sister. I pray I shall see Brother Edmund again.” He stepped back, and then turned to go. But before he did, he said one thing more: “There is much to be forgiven.”

  The night was savagely cold but I stood before my house and watched John lope away, carrying his firewood, until he’d melted into the dark stillness of the High Street.

  53

  LONDON

  MARCH 13, 1540

  Bishop Stephen Gardiner led me over the walkway stretching across the moat of the Tower of London. The senior yeomen warder signaled to him as we approached Byward Tower.

  “Bishop Gardiner, Sir William Kingston apologizes that he cannot greet you, but he’s questioning a prisoner at present,” said the man.

  “I understand,” said the bishop with a pleasant nod.

  All of the guards bowed low to him. Gardiner was more valued than ever. The king had insisted that the Bishop of Winchester preach before him every Friday during Lent, I had heard. When not preaching, Gardiner was busy persecuting those Lutheran followers who crossed the ever-murky boundary between obedience and heresy. Who knew how long the pendulum would swing in his favor? During that time, he’d take full advantage of his ascendance.

  Beauchamp was a short distance. I knew the walls of that three-story-high tower so well, for it was a place that lived in my dreams, nearly three years after my imprisonment.

  Finally the bishop broke the silence.

  “There is news from Ghent,” said Bishop Gardiner.

  Keeping my voice calm, I said, “Yes, Bishop?”

  “The Emperor Charles entered the city on the fourteenth of February with his army. The leaders of the revolt have been arrested—yet I’m told the emperor will be merciful. Less
than thirty will be executed.”

  I thought of the citizens who screamed for blood in the square of Ghent. Violence begets violence—and more violence.

  “This infamous rebellion had to be quashed utterly,” the bishop said, his voice edged with anger. “If a kingdom’s people throw off their monarchy and believe they can govern themselves—this bizarre idea cannot be tolerated. The fine its citizens must pay will cripple the city for generations to come.”

  He paused, as if waiting for me to speak.

  “That is most interesting,” I said.

  “Yes,” the bishop said. “But then a great many interesting things occur in the Low Countries. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  I’d often wondered if Gardiner suspected why the spies he sent after me disappeared from the earth. Was he ever able to confirm that I’d left England with Jacquard Rolin, posing as his wife? Gardiner knew the same story I had told everyone, that I traveled abroad in search of Edmund Sommerville but was unable to find him. No one had probed the details of my journey. I had not seen Señor Hantaras again. And Jacquard had not returned to England—as far as I knew.

  We reached Beauchamp. Another yeoman warder greeted the bishop and then offered to escort us.

  “There is no need, for I know the way,” said Gardiner.

  I followed the bishop up the worn stone steps of the central staircase to the second floor. I remembered how they dipped in the middle from so many years of use.

  “The king was at Winchester House again last night,” Gardiner said. “I was honored to be able to host a feast and party. I haven’t seen him so merry in months. Little Catherine Howard danced and danced.”

  I stopped short. “Catherine Howard attended your party?”

  “Yes, of course,” he said. “Ah, this is the right passage.”

  We walked to the second door from the end. A guard was waiting.

  Bishop Gardiner said, “Sister Joanna, I forgot to tell you something. The king wishes to summon you to court for an audience. He desires to commission a tapestry from you. He dislikes everything about his fourth queen, with one exception: the phoenix tapestry she has given him as a wedding present. The one that you wove.”