The Tapestry (32 page)

I tried to tell Geoffrey that we were bound for Bishop Gardiner, but it seemed to agitate him, and so I spoke of only soothing things, and tried to make him comfortable.

Late in the afternoon his breathing turned raspy, and red spots flared in his cheeks. “Your friend is worse,” said Brother Theodoric.

“How much farther to Regensburg?” I pleaded.

“If the weather holds, late tomorrow,” the monk told me.

“Cannot we ride through the night?” I asked.

“Even if it were safe to travel the road at night—and it is not—these horses must rest,” Brother Theodoric said firmly.

We found a small village at sunset, with a shrine to the Virgin at the gateway, a lamp burning. This would be a place of safety. I spent a sleepless night tending to Geoffrey, trying to ease his pain and fever with the remedies and herbs supplied by Saint Michael’s. I tried to convince myself that he was improving, while a growing dread clawed at me. Geoffrey could die, here, in a Bavarian village. We finally found our way to each other—and I had found a way out of our prison—yet now I would lose him.

At dawn, Geoffrey croaked, “You should . . . have left me.”

“Oh, that is ridiculous,” I said.

To my amazement, Geoffrey smiled. “From the beginning,” he said, “you’ve been the same.”

“I know,” I said. “You, too.” I caressed his feverish face. “But, Geoffrey, how could I abandon you? You’ve never abandoned me.”

Brother Theodoric and I carried him to the coach, for he could no longer walk. Geoffrey fell into a restless sleep as our coach
moved faster and faster. When Brother Theodoric grew too exhausted to control the horses, I took the reins. I didn’t want to stop to eat, and only rested and fed the horses because I knew it was necessary. Every moment we delayed was a moment in which Geoffrey worsened.

Through my fear, I saw that a carpet of light green grass covered the ground; the trees were thick with leaves. And vivid flowers, yellow and white and pink, dotted the side of the road. Their scent was so strong, it burned my nostrils. We passed small villages that offered little shrines of prayer, and the countryside was sprinkled with white stone crosses and slender ones of wood, too. A wild and desperate hope took hold: Were these signs of God’s forgiveness? Would He bless our journey and spare Geoffrey’s life?

Peering over the horses’ heads as we emerged from the woods, I gasped at the sight of a wide and tumultuous river, sparkling and blue, with red-roofed houses and gabled churches and gardens and markets crowded alongside it. It was a large city, larger than Heidelberg.

“Is this Regensburg?” I cried.

“Yes, on the other side of the Danube,” Brother Theodoric said, and pointed at a stone bridge of many arches spanning the river. “That’s the only way into the city.”

The abbot had told Brother Theodoric where the dignitaries would be housed, and we made our way to that section of the city, through the thickening crowds. I had never seen so many finely appareled men walking on the streets of a city. Peering down a dark, narrow street that led to a courtyard, I glimpsed row after row of soldiers, in tight formation.

“That is the imperial guard, they travel wherever the Emperor Charles goes,” explained Brother Theodoric, who had taken the reins again for our entry into the city. No one gave a second glance to a coach guided by a Benedictine monk; he was the best possible guide.

“Charles the Fifth himself is in Regensburg?” I tensed next to him on the front seat of the coach. It was something I had never ex
pected, to be in the same city as the Holy Roman Emperor.

“That is the Street of the Ambassadors, I’m fairly sure of it,” Brother Theodoric said, pointing to a prosperous row of three-story buildings. “Do you see them? Those must be the churchmen summoned to the Diet, with their staff.”

A cluster of cardinals and bishops and priests, in the various bright robes and insignia of their countries, talked animatedly in front of a towering residence on the corner, their secretaries and clerks surrounding them in a more sedate-colored circle. They were like a flock of many birds, gathered to cluck over a hill of seeds.

I scanned each of the religious representatives. I was so overcome with the import of finally meeting the bishop, hysteria mounted. I’d finally made it here—and yet where was Gardiner? If he was not among them, how would I find him? I couldn’t bear any more obstacles or delays.

A heavyset scarlet-robed cardinal moved away and I saw him: Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, wearing white. He was nodding at something the man next to him was saying, a younger man, tall and handsome with shoulder-length, wavy white-blond hair, wearing the dignified doublet of a secretary to an English bishop. At the sight of him, I began to tremble as a rushing noise rose up in my head, as strong as the Danube itself.

It can’t be him. The exhaustion and fear, they have addled me.

But I blinked, and blinked again, and the secretary’s face came into even clearer focus. There was no doubt. It was Edmund.

35

A
t first there was only confusion.

Both Edmund and Bishop Gardiner were astounded to find me alive and before them in Regensburg. It was so odd—all of the emphasis was on
my
whereabouts. The last thing anyone in England heard was that I’d planned to go to Cologne to inspect tapestry workshops. After I did not return to Brussels or send word to anyone, King Henry ordered messengers sent to those two cities, and to Paris, to make inquiries. It seemed I had disappeared. The king and queen were greatly worried.

“But, Edmund,
you
are the one who was missing—no one has had word of you,” I said, frustrated. “John Cheke tried for so long to find you.”

“I wrote to Cheke last month,” said Edmund. “When the Diet officially began in April, I was permitted to do that, before then everything had to be kept secret. I’ve not had a letter back yet. It takes a very long time for correspondence to reach England.”

Bishop Gardiner interrupted to say, “Master Sommerville has been here, in Regensburg, preparing for this Diet and for my arrival, since last November. A level of discretion was called for, due to the sensitivity, the international importance, of this conference. But certainly I’ve known of his whereabouts for much of last year. Do you forget, Joanna, that I first met Edmund when he was a Dominican friar in Cambridge? I have followed his progress from afar ever since. When Cheke was at Winchester House, he had only to ask me and I would have told him and saved you this extraordinary effort.”

I could no longer control myself. It was as if a floodgate opened. I laughed and cried at the same time, and had to stagger back to the coach to hold on to its side to keep from collapsing onto the ground.

“If only we knew,” I cried. “If only we knew.”

“Mistress Stafford, please compose yourself,” the bishop said. “The eyes of the world are upon us.”

Edmund followed me to the coach. “Why do you keep saying ‘we’?” he asked, glancing, uncertainly, at Brother Theodoric, sitting wide-eyed on the coach. Because we’d said everything in English, he had no notion of what transpired.

Geoffrey. How could I have forgotten about him? “Geoffrey Scovill is here, Edmund, he was hired by John Cheke to find you. We were attacked and robbed and held captive in Heidelberg. Oh, Edmund, he is terribly sick.”

For several hours after that, all attention went to Geoffrey. The bishop ordered him taken to his own palatial residence, with the crest of the Tudors over the door. The bishop said Geoffrey and I would stay there during our time in Regensburg. The bishop dispatched messengers, and soon physicians and apothecaries and barber-surgeons flocked to the bedside of the unconscious Geoffrey. All of their efforts were channeled through Edmund, who’d tossed off his formal diplomatic clothing and worked steadily at Geoffrey’s bed, the sleeves of his high-necked linen shirt pushed up his elbows.

After nightfall, Edmund, in consultation with the physicians, pronounced that Geoffrey would survive the illness, although the recovery time could prove lengthy.

Edmund himself looked exhausted, and I had had only a few hours of sleep in the last two days. Still, there was no choice but to begin our conversation, for I was desperate for an explanation. It began that night and continued most of the next afternoon, as we walked the streets of Regensburg.

He said quietly, “After what happened in Dartford on our wedding day, my relapse into weakness and sin, I felt that I could not continue in this world, Joanna, unless I found some path to accepting my action
years ago in signing the Oath of Supremacy.”

I’d long known that that was the darkest moment of Edmund’s life. Years ago, the king’s commissioners stormed his Dominican friary demanding that everyone formally submit to Henry VIII as the head of the church. All of those friars and monks at other religious houses who’d refused to sign the oath were imprisoned and sometimes executed. Edmund loathed himself for lacking a martyr’s courage. That was why he took his first dose, to dull the pain of his failure in submitting to the king as head of the church.

“Did you seek out Paracelsus because of his expertise with opium? I have learned that when you first told me about that evil substance in the priory and called it the ‘stone of immortality,’ you were quoting him.”

Edmund said, without shame, “Yes, that was part of it. Paracelsus created laudanum, the tincture that was the safest method of administering opium. I thought that if anyone knew how to control it, he would. But I wasn’t the only man to travel to Salzburg with that as my quest. And he had no patience with me at first. It took me weeks to earn his trust. He said he despised me as a taker of opium—which he believed should be used only to ease the physical pain of the dying—and as a former friar and as an apothecary. He said the apothecary shop was a ‘foul scullery from which come nothing but foul broths.’”

To my amazement, Edmund laughed, those faint lines crinkling in the corner of his brown eyes.

“Once I’d won him over—no easy task—we had many fascinating conversations,” Edmund continued. “I gained such insight from Paracelsus into the human mind, the possibilities of healing, and most of all the forces that connect us to the natural world. Some decry his theories as magic, and the work of sorcery, but they are not seeing everything, Joanna. Beliefs of all sorts are being questioned. Do you know there’s a mathematician in Poland who believes he has proven that the earth revolves around the sun? The rumors are that this Nicolaus Copernicus is preparing to publish his book
On
the Revolution of the Celestial Spheres
, and I expect it to change everything we believe. Everything.”

Listening to him, I couldn’t help but think that the greatest change of all was in Edmund. I should have been ecstatic to see him this way: laughing and full of enthusiasm. Perhaps it was because I had spent so long thinking of him as anguished and lost. But whatever the reason, I found it difficult to make the adjustment. It did not help that he seemed full of praise for someone who practiced a form of magic. Paracelsus.

After his time spent with the controversial physician, Edmund said that he realized he needed to find his faith again. He had heard of a Dominican order in Pforzheim, a town at the entrance to the Black Forest, and decided to see if he could be accepted. It was a great distance between Salzburg and Pforzheim, and the morning that he was to set out, he was seized with a conviction. He should travel the entire way in the spirit of Saint Dominic: without possessions, humble, walking barefoot from village to village, preaching the word of God. Edmund possessed a real talent for languages, and he soon learned enough German to make himself understood. The journey was a profound experience, full of lessons on the goodness of mankind, Edmund said, his eyes shining.

“But why didn’t you write to John Cheke after you saw Paracelsus?” I asked. “That’s when the letters stopped, and he began to worry.”

“I was devoted to the word of God, and England seemed like another man’s life.” Edmund shook his head. “It must sound terrible to you, but it simply didn’t occur to me that anyone would miss me or wonder at my absence. I know I can never make amends to you and Geoffrey and John Cheke for this mistake. All I can do, Joanna, is ask for your forgiveness.”

Forgiveness was one matter. Understanding—and acceptance—was another.

“How did you come into the employ of Bishop Gardiner?” I asked. “There was a time when you and I both despised him and feared him. Now you seem devoted to his service, and he seems to
trust you utterly.”

Edmund continued his saga: “I did reach the Black Forest, stopping first at Pforzheim. The prior and friars were good to me, but I couldn’t formally enter their order. With the German friars pouring in from other parts that had turned Lutheran and closed their monasteries, there was no room for an Englishman. Winter approached, and although it was difficult, I traveled farther into the Black Forest. I spent time at another monastery near Freiburg, offering my skills as an apothecary. I was sent to a nearby village where illness struck some children, and I tended to them for many days. But after I returned to the monastery, the abbot took me aside and said that some men came looking for me, men that seemed to him to be capable of violence. They were sent away; the abbot told them he didn’t know me. I couldn’t understand who they were or what they might want with me. I still don’t.”

With growing horror, I realized that those must be the men sent by Jacquard Rolin. When the spymaster grew frustrated with my intransigence, he decided to seize Edmund to try to force me to cooperate. When Señor Hantaras learned that Edmund had left England, a search was launched for him and imperial operatives found a trail into the Black Forest. But there they lost him and gave up the quest.

Edmund said, “I did not want to draw the attention of evil men to the monastery at Freiburg, so I left. I missed the company of books and had heard admirable things about the university at Heidelberg, so that was my next destination.”

“You were in Heidelberg?” I asked, shocked. The way our stories intertwined, whether Edmund was aware of it or not, left me shaken. I had sent Brother Theodoric back to Castle Heidelberg, with my profound thanks. I saw that the good monk who’d liberated me also took back to his monastery a gift of money from Bishop Gardiner. The abbot’s gamble had paid off in many ways.

Edmund said, “I registered there as a visiting scholar, and I began a translation that I’d long planned of Saint Augustine. I was very surprised to receive one day a letter from Bishop Gardiner. Somehow
he learned of my work there—he has a vast network of informants, after all. The bishop wrote that he was sure that there would be another Diet, and this one could settle the question of religion for good. He intended to be there personally, and wanted me to prepare for his attendance with detailed theological research. Once he arrived, he asked me to work as his principal secretary because of not only my research but my facility with German.”

I told Edmund I still found it hard to accept his agreeing to the position, knowing our history with the bishop. Edmund once told me that he had longed to be employed by Gardiner, to be trusted by him. But the Bishop of Winchester only used his weakness for opium to force him to do his bidding. Something had shifted.

Edmund said, “The objective is so much more important than anything that transpired in the past. Don’t you understand, Joanna, that this is the time, this is the opportunity, for Catholic and Reformer to stop fighting, for compromises to be reached? The Holy Father recognizes the need for change, for greater purity in the Catholic Church. We can find a new path to one Christian faith again—yes, it is possible. King Henry asked Bishop Gardiner to serve as his ambassador to the Emperor Charles, to ask the emperor, when the time comes, to arbitrate between the pope and the king. It is possible that England will become faithful to the Catholic religion once more. I feel that
this
is the reason God put me on this earth, to help in every way I can to heal the breach and return us all to grace.”

It was a perfect spring afternoon as he said that, and we’d come to the end of a cobbled street overlooking the Danube. A long boat loaded with boxes eased by.

After a long, tired silence, Edmund said, “Do you know that Regensburg was a Roman outpost raised by Marcus Aurelius, and ever since the Danube has served as a trade route? Once we were Christian, the boats men of Regensburg brought crusaders to the Black Sea.”

This was familiar to me, Edmund’s love of the past. Was this not what he labored on now, a return to one church? Although I was
not ready to share Edmund’s conviction that the two sides could be brought together, I did understand, finally, why he would have devoted himself to the cause. And I understood a man of God who cut himself off from everyone while he did it. But I couldn’t help but feel there was a selfishness to what Edmund had done. His obliviousness to the feelings of his friends almost cost Geoffrey his life.

As for my life, Bishop Gardiner offered to write personally to King Henry and attempt to explain that I had chosen to take this journey to find a lost friend in the German lands. “His Majesty may be angry with you for neglecting your tapestry duties,” the bishop warned. “You shall have to express great penitence for what he shall see as an insult and a mistake.” Realizing I needed the support of the bishop as never before, I agreed.

It took a few more days, but finally Geoffrey recovered enough from his illness to be able to talk to me. A barber had shaved him, and I was happy to gaze at his beardless face again, though he was shockingly thin.

“I am so happy that you’re recovering,” I said, sitting on a stool by his bed. An apothecary assistant mixed potions by the windows.

“Yes, when he was not too occupied saving Christendom through his work for the Bishop of Winchester, it seems that Edmund Sommerville saved my life,” Geoffrey said sourly.

And so we were returning to the dislike of our days in Dartford. My heart sank. Seeing my expression, Geoffrey muttered, “I’m sorry, Joanna.”