The Crown

by Nancy Bilyeau

  This was going too far.

  “I don’t know why I am here, but I insist on going back,” I fumed. “I have been appointed to serve the queen.”

  They laughed again at their private joke.

  “I don’t think she understands a thing,” George Boleyn said. “The Staffords have botched it. Of course, they live so far from court and are in complete disgrace. They don’t know anything.”

  “Do not insult my family, sir,” I said. “We are one of the oldest in the land. Before today I had never heard the name ‘Boleyn.’ ”

  I did not know it, but I had thrown down a gauntlet before dangerous people. I meant that I had not been informed who the Boleyns were, but they took it as an insult against the prestige of their name. The mood in the room shifted from mockery to something more malignant. I started toward the door, to get away from them, when a page hurried in. I almost collided with him.

  “The king,” he said, breathless.

  George Boleyn took me by the arm—I thought to lead me out of the room, out of the way of the king, who for some reason was stopping here. But in the next moment I was in a tiny alcove off to the side of the room, separated by a heavy curtain.

  A hand clamped over my mouth. “Don’t say a word,” George Boleyn breathed into my ear.

  I tried to pull away, but he wrapped his other arm around me and pressed me close to him. He was strong.

  The voices in the other room made me stop struggling. One of them was the king’s.

  “Confession,” he groaned, as if in agony. “I was ready—I was completely and utterly ready, Nan. But she’s making confession.”

  “That won’t last long,” said Anne Boleyn, soothingly.

  “I’m not sure that it should be done today.”

  “You promised,” she said, much more sharply. “And it’s dangerous to keep delaying. There are so many rumors; you’ve said the worst thing that could happen was if she sent a message to her nephew, the emperor. You have to tell her, and you have to get her to agree. No messages.”

  I could not believe this young woman spoke to the King of England in this way.

  “Eighteen years of marriage—it’s not a simple matter,” he groaned. “I was ready when I went in before, but now . . .”

  “By nightfall it will be done and behind you, think of that.”

  There were a few seconds of silence, and then in a voice full of pleading, he said, “Would you let me—?”

  “No, no, no,” she laughed.

  “Please, Nan. Please.”

  There was silence, and then the softest moan.

  At the sound of that moan, George Boleyn stirred. His left hand remained rigidly clamped over my mouth; the other began to move over me. His hand cupped my breast. I pulled away, horrified. Again he whispered, faint but with a new, terrifying roughness, “If you make a sound, it will be the end of you.”

  And then he put his hand down my dress.

  How many minutes passed? I don’t know. It could have been five. Or fifteen. Or much longer. But George Boleyn stopped the instant that the king and his sister stopped. The king said something, she answered, then there was moving around, and someone else came into the room. In another minute it was completely silent. Everyone left.

  George Boleyn gathered together his hose, which had become loosened from his doublet, and rearranged his codpiece.

  “And now, Mistress Stafford,” he said with a laugh, “I will take you back to the queen’s apartments.”

  When he’d dragged me into the room his sister and the king had just left, he said, “You will tell no one what just occurred. If you do, I will deny it. I am the favorite of the king; he will believe me. Or he will fear that his conversation with my sister will be made public. That could never be allowed. Your parents will be punished; you and your family will be shunned forever. You’ll never, ever get anyone to marry you.” He pressed his lips to my ear. “This will just be our secret. And who knows? You may come to like me. After today, I think I should be the one to take your maidenhead. Don’t you agree?”

  The gallery was a blur on the way back. I had a hard time walking; George Boleyn had to hold me up a few times, to keep me from falling. I don’t know if anyone noticed my state. If they did, they didn’t inquire.

  When we were outside the queen’s apartments, my mother appeared. “Where did you go? Did you have the queen’s or Lady Parr’s permission?” She looked at me more closely. “What’s wrong, Joanna?”

  I shook my head, numbly. I turned around. George Boleyn had gone. I am not sure she ever noticed him.

  “The king is speaking with the queen privately,” she said. She spoke about the friends she had seen, but she was agitated. She would look at me, worried, then peer inside the queen’s chamber, worried for some other reason.

  The king appeared, suddenly, and his waiting courtiers and pages reassembled around him, like barnacles to a ship.

  His face was red and furious. For such a tall, powerful man to look like that, so enraged, it was terrifying. My mother actually flattened herself against the wall as he strode past.

  We heard the queen then. A wounded sob.

  My mother ran inside the rooms right after Lady Parr and the other senior ladies; I should have gone with her. I was a servant to the queen, after all. But I didn’t move.

  She reappeared in a few minutes, her face drained of color. “It’s unbelievable,” she said. “Unbelievable. He told the queen he wants an annulment, that they have never been truly married. Madre de Dios.”

  The queen was still sobbing. But she was soon to be drowned out. There was a louder noise, a hysterical scream.

  It was mine. And it lasted as long as it took my mother to hurry me out of the royal palace of Henry the Eighth.

  PART

  FOUR

  47

  Dartford Priory, January 1538

  It was gray for a very long time. A soft, insulating, peaceful gray.

  It was as if I were being rowed from Dartford to London on the Thames again, cocooned in morning mist. I remember when I sat in the boat and looked over the sides, into the water, I never once saw a bottom to the river. It was always an opaque liquid chalk.

  I heard voices in spurts. There was my name: “Sister Joanna.” Occasionally, just “Joanna.” I didn’t want to speak. I turned from them, stubborn. I wanted only to float in the soothing gray.

  But after a time, a garden emerged, a familiar one. It was Stafford Castle, the gardens, one of my favorite places. This was no nightmare; I didn’t feel the need to run or hide. No, the gardens welcomed me. I could smell the flowers and hear the birds calling and feel the insects’ teasing wings.

  Someone wept, though, and it was ruining the garden. I looked around to see who it was. No one.

  “Please, Sister Joanna,” a woman wept. “Please.”

  There was no help for it. I’d have to leave the garden. I couldn’t let the weeping go on—that would be selfish, remiss. I tried to go in the direction of the weeping, but my legs wouldn’t move. I reached up, with all my strength. The vibrant flowers and warm sun left me; grayness returned. The crying grew louder, and I finally knew who it was: Sister Winifred.

  I opened my eyes, at last. I was lying on a bed, and Sister Winifred’s blond head was next to me, pressed facedown as she wept.

  I reached for her; it was much harder than I expected. My fingers moved only a few inches. But she felt the movement. Her head shot up.

  “Sister Joanna!” she cried. “Oh, thank the Virgin.”

  “Don’t upset yourself—it’s bad for your health.” My voice sounded terrible, like a croaking bird.

  Sister Winifred laughed, joyful. “Brother Edmund, Brother Edmund,” she cried out.

  And then he was there. His bony, tender hands were feeling my wrists and my throat. He lifted my eyelids and peered into my eyes. I peered back. He looked tired, but much like himself. His eyes were not the serene yet dull brown that I now knew was the product of a dangerous flo
wer. They were full of aching concern.

  “I greet you, Brother Edmund,” I said.

  He smiled. “And I greet you, Sister Joanna.”

  It rushed over me then, the fear and the horror in the tunnels under the priory. I shrank away and immediately felt a burning pain in the back of my head.

  “No, Sister Christina, no!” I was frantic.

  “It’s all right, it’s all right,” Brother Edmund said quickly. “Sister Christina is gone. She can’t hurt you. Don’t move, Sister Joanna.”

  “My head,” I groaned.

  “You have been dealt a serious head wound,” he said. “We had the barber here as well, and a physician came from London yesterday.”

  I stared at him. “Yesterday? How . . . how long have I been asleep?”

  “You have been unable to speak or move for several weeks,” he said quietly.

  Sister Winifred took my hand and held it tightly. “It was thought you would die,” she said.

  I looked at her, at her loving face. And then at Brother Edmund, who was checking the bandages on my head. I could hear the crackling of a high fire in the infirmary fireplace. It was full winter now.

  “I won’t die?” I asked.

  “You won’t,” Brother Edmund said firmly. “You will recover, though it may take some time.”

  I tightened my grip on Sister Winifred’s hand. “My father,” I said.

  They exchanged a quick look. Brother Edmund leaned down and said, “We have not yet found him.”

  “But he was to be freed!” I cried. “Bishop Gardiner promised the princess.”

  “He was freed three days after we went to Lambeth. We know it for certain. Geoffrey Scovill rode to London and confirmed it.”

  I stared at him, confused. Finally, I said, “Then he must be at Stafford Castle.”

  “We wrote a letter, to your cousin, Sir Henry. He replied that he’d not seen your father, nor heard word. The letter came to the priory yesterday.”

  Salty tears burned in my eyes.

  “Geoffrey Scovill is looking for him, Sister Joanna,” he said. “And we know that when Master Scovill sets out to find someone, he succeeds. He is quite stubborn.”

  “Like me,” I said.

  “Yes,” said Brother Edmund. “He is like you.” Brother Edmund ducked his head and looked away.

  The bells pealed. It was time for prayers. Sister Winifred looked at us, questioningly.

  “Go, please,” I said. “I want you to.”

  “Tell them of Sister Joanna,” Brother Edmund said. “There can be prayers of thanks today.”

  When Sister Winifred left, I asked him about the crown.

  He shook his head. “It’s not to be found, either. There was a place for it, a room very much like the one at Malmesbury, but it was empty. I have searched the tunnels, every inch. Nothing.”

  “Sister Christina.”

  “Yes,” he said. “When the men were taking her away, one of the things she screamed is that we would never find the crown. That she had sanctified it.”

  I swallowed. “Yes. Brother Edmund, her father’s evil drove her mad. Sister Helen—she must have seen things no one else had and suspected that Sister Christina had murdered Lord Chester. But the tapestries—what did they mean?”

  “The sisters dance for their father, Atlas, a god whom Zeus condemned to hold up the heavens on his shoulders. They mourn for him, but in some myths they blame him, too, for not protecting them from capture. The Pleiades all gave birth to children conceived from gods or demigods, sometimes through force. There’s a version in which the sisters turn against their father. They hate him. In this tapestry, yes, their dance was angry.”

  I nodded. “That is why she wanted me to see the story, even though other nuns wove it long ago.”

  Now I had another frightening thought. “And what about Bishop Gardiner?”

  “He returned to France after one week spent in London. He had been summoned by the king to hear in person his specifications for a new wife. Gardiner’s charge is to negotiate with King Francis for a French princess.”

  “Poor princess.” I shuddered. Something shifted in Brother Edmund’s expression; I could see he had more to tell me. It would not be pleasant hearing.

  “What is it, Brother?” I pressed him.

  “Sister Christina has already been charged with murder and found guilty in the Courts of Assize.” He hesitated.

  “Tell me,” I whispered.

  “Sister Christina will be hanged,” he said.

  I took it in. I said nothing for a long while. And then I managed to whisper: “She would rather be burned.”

  The room was beginning to swim in front of my eyes. “Rest now,” he said soothingly. “Don’t think about Sister Christina, or the crown, or Bishop Gardiner. All will be well.”

  The grayness returned.

  I began to recover. It took me two days before I could sit up without fainting. And my arms and legs were so weak and uncooperative—it was extraordinarily frustrating. Brother Edmund and Sister Winifred set up a regimen for me. Each day I endeavored to do more. To sit up, to reach with one hand and then the other. Finally, I could stand, but I couldn’t walk. It was frightening how my legs collapsed under me.

  I had visitors. Every time I was up to it, a different sister would come to sit with me, pray with me. Sister Agatha had to be reminded that it wasn’t fair for her to take up all the visitor time.

  Prioress Joan asked to see me with only Brother Edmund present. She sat by my bed, and her face was very serious and yet without a trace of anger or distrust.

  “I think that if you had not come when you did, she would have ended my life,” said the prioress. “Sister Christina meant to kill me—she told me several times she would. But it was very hard for her to kill a Prioress of Dartford. The training she received had had its effect, even on a girl who was mad. She hated me, yet she respected and feared me, too. She was praying for the strength to kill me when you appeared.”

  “And Brother Richard?” I asked.

  The prioress’s head sank. I could see how difficult this would be.

  “Sister Christina sat next to me, with her knife pointed at my throat, while we listened to him come down the passageway. He kept calling out, ‘Prioress? Prioress?’ He sounded so worried for me. I wanted desperately to warn him. The sound of his voice, the way he called out for me, I can’t seem to put it out of my mind. Every night I hear it, and every day I . . .” Her voice trailed away. After a long moment of silence, she continued. “When he came around the corner, she sprang on him. Brother Richard died quickly.”

  We all three fell silent, as we greatly mourned the loss of the brilliant Brother Richard.

  She finally cleared her throat. “I wish to speak to you about the crown of Athelstan.”

  I tensed. A quick glance at Brother Edmund revealed he was not nervous about the subject. Yes, of course. They had already spoken, while I was senseless.

  “Commissioners Legh and Layton told me they were certain you had been handpicked by Bishop Gardiner to search the priory for a relic called the Athelstan crown. They said there were rumors for many years of its existence, and Cromwell had them inquiring at all the monasteries, in particular Malmesbury Abbey, where King Athelstan was buried, but no one had found it. Certain reports of late led them to believe it was at Dartford. I was told that if I could find it, Dartford would not be suppressed—we would continue here. But they told me I must not directly confront you three and thus stir Gardiner to direct intervention. I must search with discretion. I was assured that the king would honor the ancient crown of a king.”

  I snorted in disbelief.

  The prioress flushed, and then continued. “When Brother Richard said you were both recalled to London by orders of Bishop Gardiner, it sounded patently false. But I did not try to stop you, because I thought it would be easier to achieve my goal with just one agent of Gardiner in competition with me, not three. After many days of effort, and studyin
g diagrams of other priories and monasteries, I realized there must be significance to the difference in the stone carvings over the bookcase in the locutorium, and was able to gain entry to the stairs. But I never found the correct room. Sister Christina seized me.”

  “Sister Christina found the crown,” I said.

  The prioress nodded. “She taunted me about it. She said she had removed it from the priory weeks earlier and sanctified it.”

  Sanctified. That word again.

  “But how did she do that?” I asked.

  “She told me she threw it in a fire and melted it. She broke it into pieces. Then she threw the pieces in the river.”

  I shuddered at the madness of Sister Christina.

  “In truth, she was much more concerned with her father and his crimes against her and Sister Beatrice than with the crown. The greatest error of my life was agreeing to Lord Chester’s coming to Dartford Priory. Prioress Elizabeth had forbade him from coming to the priory, but I didn’t know why because I never read her letter. He meant to flaunt his power before his daughter, I think. What he did to her was a horrific crime against God and man.” She shook her head. “She said her father became enraged when she said she wanted to take vows here, but she managed to send a letter to her uncle the Bishop of Dover and to enlist his support. She wanted to rebuild her life here, to try to forget the past and dedicate herself to God. Perhaps if Lord Chester had not come here, to the feast, she might have succeeded. I don’t know. God is merciful. But when her father laid hands on the reliquary at our feast, something inside her snapped. There was no going back then.”

  The prioress straightened in her chair. “I have to find a way to live with this mistake, which has cost all of these lives. I shall ask for forgiveness and spiritual guidance every day that is left to me on earth.”

  I reached out to the prioress, I touched her hand. She looked at me, surprised—and then grateful.

  “What happens to us now?” I asked.

  She said simply, “Dartford Priory will be suppressed. I wrote to Cromwell and informed him of what happened, and he sent me a letter two weeks ago making it plain what must occur. I am surrendering the priory to the will of the king. There will be no persecutions or arrests. It will happen to us, the same thing that is happening to all the larger monasteries all over England. At least we will be spared another visit from Commissioners Legh and Layton. After Easter, we must all leave Dartford Priory. Pensions have been arranged.”