The Crown

by Nancy Bilyeau

  “Are you yourself now, Tom?” she demanded. “You’ll not be a beast to me, or I won’t come out.”

  “Where’s Susanna?” His voice was harder than before.

  “I was all affright and needed to come to chapel, but she ran straight for her bed in maids’ quarters. You know she isn’t one for praying.”

  “Is that so?”

  My fingers shook around the key ring. He didn’t believe Bess. In a minute it would all be over.

  A second man’s voice rang out, deeper in the Tower. “Who’s there? Declare yourself.”

  “It’s Tom Sharard here, Sir. Escorting out Bess from night duty.”

  I heard Bess’s quick steps as she hurried out of the chapel; then two sets of footsteps headed away. There were male voices, then Bess’s, though I couldn’t make out what they were saying. They didn’t sound agitated or angry; somehow Bess was managing it. The trio of voices grew dimmer, and I realized they were walking away. After a few more minutes, I heard nothing at all.

  When I tried to rise up, my knees buckled, and I sprawled onto the pew, terrified. How could I manage this secret journey back to Beauchamp if I couldn’t even stand up in the chapel? I thought about remaining in the White Tower all night and taking my chances at dawn. But my Beauchamp Tower cell was always checked just after sunrise on rounds. I couldn’t possibly get there in time, past all of the warders, in daylight, still posing as Susanna.

  I had to leave now—tonight. And I had to do it alone.

  I retraced my steps through the vaulted rooms. One led into another in a straight line—that was not hard for me. I found my way back to the great hall and hurried across it. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness; I could make out the stone walls and battlements. And it was surprisingly easy to locate the wooden door to the underground tunnel. Ten keys hung on Bess’s ring; the second one I tried opened the door.

  That same foul tunnel smell oozed over me. It was completely black down the steps, and I had no candle.

  Trembling, I went forward, closed the door behind me, and edged down the steps, feeling the brick wall as I went. My foot touched the bottom, but it was too dreadful. I scrambled back up. I couldn’t bear to leave the steps. As I hovered there, I heard the scratching of the rats. So many of them. I could almost feel their whiskered breath on my legs.

  “Mary, mother of God, protect me,” I said aloud. But my voice broke. I was a small and puny woman, standing on the threshold of evil.

  I took a deep breath. Nonsense. These were mere animals and must be told their place.

  I cried, “You will not interfere with me. I am Joanna Stafford, and I will not be stopped!”

  I leaped onto the tunnel floor with both feet and willed myself forward, into the blackness, running one hand along the damp, crumbling stone wall, the other stretching forward.

  Over and over I said it: “I am Joanna Stafford, and I will not be stopped.” I’d sickened of the running and hiding and cowering. A new recklessness coursed through my veins.

  Three times, running down the black tunnel, my foot touched something alive, a quivering warm body. In each case, I kicked it aside and kept going.

  I stumbled onto a step. I didn’t even mind the sharp pain in my shin from the fall. It meant I’d reached the end.

  I found the correct key and eased the door open a crack. It had to be midnight at least, but warders made rounds all night long. Bess had told me that.

  I saw a light shining in the Beauchamp passageway. I pushed open the door a little more. A different man sat in the exact same spot as one had hours earlier—about twenty feet away—with his legs stretched out before him. Between the yeoman warder and me was the stone stairway leading up to my cell. I didn’t see how I could make it to those stairs unseen.

  I waited, thinking, my fingers pressed to the door, when a sputtering sound made me jump. The door bounced open with a loud creak. I yanked it back and waited, shivering.

  But the warder didn’t react. I realized why: he was snoring.

  I licked my lips and then eased all the way out into the passageway, walking as quietly as I could. One step, then another. He snored again, a deep, wet sound. The man must be ill, snoring like that. His feet shook from the sheer force of it.

  I made it to the stairs. My ordeal was almost over.

  The winding steps were worn smooth, as I remembered when I was first brought to Beauchamp Tower. And that was the problem. I’d walked the stairs only once since that May afternoon, and it was trudging behind Bess, not paying close attention to our route. I was concentrating on holding up the bedsheets, trying to pass as Susanna, not on needing to retrace my steps.

  Now I didn’t know where to go.

  Remember, I ordered myself. Remember how many flights you took, where to turn. I shut my eyes tight, then opened them and peered at the circular staircase, going up three levels. My cell was on the second floor, but going in which direction? Each floor had two archways.

  I selected the archway on the left of the second-floor landing. Based on everything I could recall, this seemed right.

  But it wasn’t.

  It took me a while to realize, walking down the length of one dimly lit passageway, and then another, that this was wrong. At first I tried to convince myself that I was going the correct way. But a newly painted huge rectangular arch forced me to admit it—I had never seen it before. I doubled back, looking for the circular stairway to begin again. Yet even that was impossible to locate.

  I leaned against a wall and pressed my forehead to the stone. My body ached with fatigue; I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had something to eat or drink.

  But I didn’t dare rest for long. A snatch of prayer, and I pushed off from the wall, determined to search again. I walked down a few more dark and silent passageways, fighting down my frustration. I could translate tomes of Latin, speak Spanish and French, do flawless needlework, play music, ride the fields, manage sums, but I’d never possessed a sense of direction. I hadn’t had one when I became lost in my uncle’s maze long ago, and it was missing now.

  I found myself at the end of a long passageway and yanked open the wide door.

  The night swooped down to cradle me in its hand.

  12

  I had stepped outside, onto the castle wall allure that I’d walked every week with the lieutenant.

  A thousand stars throbbed in the clear October sky, performing their somber little dances across the heavens, dances whose design only God could fathom. I took a few steps farther out, turned this way and that, shivering in the cool night breeze. It had been a long time since I saw stars. I took a deep breath—in rushed the damp marshy smell of the Thames, and something acrid, too. What was it? Not a nice smell but familiar, having to do with the river. Finally, I had it: burning eel. Someone had caught eel in nets and cooked them on the riverbank. An enormous fire, too, for the odor to hang in the air this late at night. I never thought I’d savor such a smell; I’d always disliked eel. My throat ached as I realized that this could be my last night sky. More and more, my freedom seemed unlikely.

  I found the will to walk back to the door. With a start, I realized it had eased shut behind me without my noticing. And was now locked. I pulled at it, hard. Nothing.

  Fighting for calm, I tried the keys one by one. None worked. I ran to the other end, only to find it, too, was locked. Bess had not given me the keys to the allure; no doubt she’d assumed we would never need them.

  I was trapped outside on this narrow walkway, hundreds of feet above the ground.

  I felt such rage with myself, with my stupidity. I collapsed onto the brick floor of the allure and wrapped my arms around my knees, rocking back and forth, sobbing.

  For the first time ever, I flirted with the thought of taking my own life. Of course I recoiled from the greatest mortal sin, as would any Christian. Unforgivable. A purgatory without end. And a disgrace no family could recover from. But my mind kept returning to the possibility. The pain would be brief. I�
�d finally be free of terror and persecution. Bess would be safe.

  In just a few hours, men were coming to break me. And here I was, already broken in spirit. I might as well spare the Duke of Norfolk and his unknown companion the trouble of breaking me in body. I cowered down on the floor for hours, not daring to get back to my feet, for fear I’d hurl myself over the side.

  Of course I prayed. But they were feeble pleas. And as with every other desperate prayer I’d murmured since Smithfield, they were met with silence. After the long bout of sobbing finally ended, I slipped into a dull haze. It was too cold and hard there for sleep, although every bone in my body ached with exhaustion.

  Out of my haze I heard a volley of soft, sweet cries. It was the river birds greeting one another. I pulled myself up and looked to the east. Yes, the sky was graying toward dawn. More birds called out; they flew overhead. Their wings beat with a rapid thud, thud, thud. It touched something in me, these happy creatures, coasting over a prison wall.

  I wasn’t ready to give up.

  My only hope, and it a slim one, was in hiding behind the door. I remembered now that when the lieutenant walked me back and forth, the doors were often propped open on the outside. If that happened today, I could wait until an opportunity presented to slip around and dart to my cell.

  I took my position next to the door, on the side I knew it would swing open to. The gray sky turned a sickly orange. The boiling sun was hovering on the edge of the eastern horizon. Already, I felt the chill lessen.

  I heard voices, two men coming from the other side of the passageway. I flattened myself. The voices grew louder; keys rattled; the door flew open.

  “My wife whelped in three hours,” a man said. “It may happen before dinner.”

  The door slammed into my belly; I covered my mouth to stifle the cry.

  A foot kicked something into the bottom of the door. It didn’t close.

  “Aye, but it doesn’t always go so quick,” said another man, just inches away. “We could be in for a long wait.”

  They kept walking. I heard the other door open and shut. And then silence. This was my only chance.

  I edged around the door: no one in sight. I ran down the passageway. I could hear the prisoners stirring in their cells. I stalked by a sleepy-eyed servant carrying a basket down one passageway. He didn’t say anything to me as I hurried past, looking at the floor.

  In a matter of minutes, I’d reached my cell. My hands shook as I searched for the right key. Bess must have supplied this one. At last I found it. I locked the door behind me, and then staggered to my bed. The room spun as I tore off the hood and shoved it under the pallet, next to the keys.

  I plunged into nothingness—no dreams, no fear—until I was wakened by a voice. And a pair of hands, shaking me hard.

  I opened my eyes to the face of Lady Kingston, in a panic.

  “What’s wrong, Mistress Stafford?” she pleaded. “Are you ill?”

  I shook my head; it was too hard to speak.

  “You’re so cold, and I swear your dress is damp—how is this possible? Jesu, help us.” The pale blue gown she wore did not flatter; it made her look years older than when I’d last seen her.

  She whirled around. “Bess, get the food and wine in her quick.” My own Bess came forward, her eyes shining with relief.

  Bess silently pressed food on me while Lady Kingston cleaned my face with a warm cloth and then hurried me into a fresh kirtle and brushed my hair. “Why must it be today that they come here, when Queen Jane is brought to bed?” she muttered.

  “Oh, it’s the queen who is having her child?” I blurted.

  “Who else?” Lady Kingston snapped. “Her pains began early yesterday. They say her suffering is profound.”

  I heard a burst of voices outside. Men approached, a group of them. Strangely, I felt little apprehension. My being able to hurtle from the castle allure to my room this morning without discovery: it was a sign of something. The horse master at Stafford Castle was a gambling man—famous for it. Any sort of card game. “My luck is set to turn,” he’d always tell me with a broad wink. Could it be my luck was turning?

  The door to my cell swung open, and Sir William Kingston stepped inside. He and his wife caught each other’s gaze, and some sort of grimly intricate message hovered between them. She nodded and hurried to his side.

  Next to enter the small room was the Duke of Norfolk, dressed not in riding gear this time but in furs, his fingers sparkling with jeweled rings. He barely glanced in my direction; his face was drawn, tense.

  My pulse quickened as the third man strode into my cell. He was perhaps forty years old. He wore long, spotless white robes and a black cap on his dark hair, neatly trimmed and tinged with gray. His light-hazel eyes gleamed under dark brows; his nose was long, and his lips were full. A man neither tall nor short, not handsome nor ugly.

  The man looked at me as if there was no one else in the room. Something quivered under his placid features; if I had to define it, I would say excitement.

  The Duke of Norfolk cleared his throat.

  “Mistress Stafford, this is the Bishop of Winchester,” he said. “He has questions to put before you.”

  I dropped a grave curtsy.

  The bishop turned to Norfolk and, to my amazement, patted him on the arm. “No need to stay, Thomas,” he said in a low, pleasant voice. “I know you have urgent business to attend to.” Norfolk nodded and left. The bishop gestured—a touch imperiously, I thought—toward the Kingstons, and Bess in the corner. “All of you may go. I will proceed alone. It will be more efficient.”

  One by one, they shuffled out.

  He turned and smiled at me—a quick, cool smile. “My given name is Stephen Gardiner, Sister Joanna,” he said. “I attended court for years, but I do not believe we have ever met.”

  I shook my head. It was such a relief to hear my priory name once more. Perhaps because I was only a novice, no one had used it in the Tower.

  Bishop Gardiner took a step closer, examining me. “You do appear quite weary, Sister. You’re not ill, I hope? There is sweating sickness in the city. If you’ve been exposed to any sort of contagion, after all of my instructions, there will be consequences.”

  He hadn’t raised his voice. Yet that very reasonableness—the calm, measured way he spoke—gave me pause.

  “I am well enough,” I said.

  “I realize this has not been easy for you in the Tower.” He sighed. “There wasn’t any way around it. I could not get to London before now. Only the birth of the king’s heir was an important enough reason for me to beg leave from my duties in France.”

  “So I have been kept here, all these months, without anyone else questioning me, because we must wait for you to return to England?” I asked, confused.

  He didn’t answer.

  “Were you the one who paid for my food all these months?”

  The Bishop of Winchester closed his eyes and nodded, very slightly. Just once.

  I felt my knees buckle, and I knelt before him, my hands clasped. “Bishop Gardiner, please believe me. I am not guilty of any crime against the king. I loved my cousin, Margaret Bulmer, and only sought to honor our bond of family by attending her execution. I have never plotted against His Highness. I took the Oath of Supremacy. I am a true, loyal subject.”

  The bishop leaned down, and I felt his hands, cool and smooth, rest on my shoulders. “I know that,” he said.

  His hands moved to my hair; he stroked my black tresses, fastened at the nape of my neck. Though there was no lechery to it, I felt my skin crawl. He touched me like a sportsman petting his prized greyhound.

  “I wonder,” he mused, “will you be the snare that pulls me down?”

  13

  I sat on the chair of my cell, where I had been told to sit. Bishop Gardiner stood over me, his hands cupped. I couldn’t help but stare—I’d never seen such long fingers on a man. He began to tap his two forefingers against each other. He didn’t say anything. Sim
ply kept tapping.

  “Bishop Gardiner?” I ventured.

  “You’d like to see your father, Sir Richard Stafford.”

  It was as if he’d plucked the thought from my head.

  “Oh, yes, yes, I would, I—very much,” I stammered. “Would it be possible, Bishop?”

  “When you see him and in what manner, that depends on you, Sister Joanna,” he said. “It all depends on you.” Again, I noticed beneath his placid demeanor an excitement, tightly harnessed.

  He tapped his fingers three more times. “Tell me everything that you know about myself.”

  That was unexpected . . . and difficult. If only I’d listened to more of the gossip at Stafford Castle about the men of the king’s council. They all blurred for me, whether they be men of the cloth or noblemen, soldiers or secretaries. I knew that Gardiner was ordained when the true faith was unpolluted in England; he was not a heretical bishop. But still, he was the king’s trusted adviser and an ally of the Duke of Norfolk. There was every reason for caution.

  “You were Cardinal Wolsey’s man in the beginning. You served under him, and after the cardinal was . . .” I struggled to remember the sequence of events.

  “Banished by the king, stripped of power, and arrested for treason?” offered Bishop Gardiner, his voice cool.

  “Yes, yes, after the cardinal was . . . gone, then you became important to the king.” I felt my face redden; I couldn’t recall the details, and I hated sounding so ignorant. “The king made you Bishop of Winchester and a member of his council. And now you are his principal ambassador in France.”

  The bishop flashed a tight smile. “That is all you know of me? I confess to being somewhat surprised.”

  “I’m not a political person,” I muttered.

  “But I am, Sister Joanna. I was at Cambridge, you see. I’d been there for seven years when I left to become Wolsey’s new secretary. I still remember the night before he arrived, to interview the men who qualified for the position. I wanted to be selected so badly. I did not sleep for even an hour. And then . . . it came about. Cardinal Wolsey saw at once the promise in me. He knew I could go far.”