The Tapestry (37 page)

40

A
lthough Catherine had never been a woman of much religious conviction, truth be told, and her crimes were of a moral nature, her husband the king commanded, after he was certain of her guilt of adultery, that she be taken to Syon Abbey, once a prestigious nunnery, rather than to the Tower of London. No one was sure what would happen to her next, although most assumed she would follow the example of her cousin Anne Boleyn and be sent to the block. Still, Queen Anne was dispatched swiftly, with just seventeen days between her arrest and her decapitation. It was not the same with Queen Catherine. Some said the king was indecisive with grief, others that he had sworn to torture Catherine personally. Still others said he mulled over who should be his sixth wife.

King Henry returned to Hampton Court after his wife had been removed to Syon. I sent two letters to Sir Thomas Heanage, chief gentleman of the privy chamber and groom of the stool, asking to see the king. I had no clear idea who was in power now. Norfolk had fled and his ally Bishop Gardiner was weakened. Some said the Seymour brothers were in ascendance. Others were betting on Wriothesley. No matter who fought their deadly game for a seat at the council table, I suspected that Heanage still held sway with the king. Just a few days after Culpepper’s execution, a message came back granting my request. That month at Whitehall had taught me enough.

The first snowfall of the season was settling on the grand red-brick walls and towers of Hampton Court when I was ushered inside. A smooth-faced page escorted me to the presence chamber, as graceful as Thomas Culpepper must have been when he eagerly
began serving the king of England.

Along the way, tapestries shivered and dazzled along the walls—different ones, ones I had not studied and catalogued in Whitehall. As Heanage moved inside the innermost chamber to announce me, I was struck by the one hanging on the opposite landing, the Hercules tapestry I’d seen and approved purchase of in Brussels. Here was the half man half god committing his acts of strength, conquest, and lechery.

Henry VIII sat under his cloth of state, his leg propped up, completely alone except for Heanage. I had not seen the king for eighteen months. He looked to have aged by at least a decade. The ruddiness was gone from his skin. Although he wore a purple robe lined with fur and his fingers were laden with diamonds, the overwhelming color was gray: wrinkled pasty gray skin and hair now more gray than red.

As I sank into a curtsy, I felt an emotion I never expected and did not welcome: pity.

“I thank Your Majesty for granting this audience when I know that I have offended you,” I said. “I did not carry out my duties as tapestry mistress to your satisfaction.”

“You did prove a disappointment,” he said indifferently.

“I propose to remedy that with offering myself in a new position of service,” I said.

He said nothing and did nothing but raise an eyebrow.

I took a deep breath and said, “I have experience in a nunnery. Install Queen Catherine in a nunnery of your creation and I will run it for you and see that all is done the way you would wish. You can be merciful, knowing that I, your kinswoman, will ensure she is kept away from the world.”

Henry VIII’s gray face mottled with red. His voice shrill, he said, “Do you not realize there are laws in our kingdom and she broke the law? She is guilty of high treason.”

I took a step closer and then knelt, bowing my head.

“You are the law,” I said. “You are our anointed king and supreme head of the Church of England.”

This was the moment. He would either move toward considering my idea or punish me savagely for suggesting it.

But Henry VIII did neither.

“Do you think I do not realize how they laugh at me?” he said, his voice now rough with pain and grief. “How forsaken I appear to every man in England. If I let Catherine live, I am no longer a ruler of this land.” He had dropped the royal “we,” I realized with a start.

I could think of nothing else to say but, “She is nineteen. Can you not find it in your heart to show mercy?”

There was silence as I stared at the polished floor, still on my knees. I prayed to God to move the king’s heart. Through my prayers, the stench of the king made me feel like choking. There was no more musk or floral waters. There was only the rotting of his leg. Like the stench of death.

“If I spare her, I could lose my throne.”

I understood now. For so many years I’d feared him, we’d all of us feared him. But beneath the jewels, crowns, satins, and furs, behind the heroic tapestries and posturing murals, was the truly terrified man. So much of the violence, both of the flesh and the soul, was committed from his fear, not his strength. Culpepper said weak men were drawn to the center of the court. But at the center was the weakest of all.

“You may see her, to say farewell,” said Henry. “That is all I can do.”

I rose and curtsied a last time, my eyes filling with tears, as I managed to choke out, “I thank Your Majesty.”

Sir Thomas Heanage gently guided me from the chamber and made the arrangement for me to go to Syon.

As I walked across the room once used by sisters and novices and abbey servants and now devoted solely to Catherine, I saw a woman changed as much as her husband. She had lost all her plump, dimpled, girlish prettiness. The fallen queen who sat rigid in her chair was a haunted beauty of high cheekbones and solemn eyes.

“Joanna,” she said simply, her hands in her lap.

“I’m told I can only have a moment or two,” I said.

“Shall we pray together?” she asked.

“If you wish,” I said, “but I think I should tell you about what happened when I saw Thomas Culpepper.”

Her face blazed with life. “You saw him?” she said. “I thought no one saw him.”

I told her that I had prayed with and spoken to Culpepper. “I know that you loved Thomas very much.”

She bowed her head. “I tried my best to be a good wife, to be the queen that Henry wanted me to be, what my uncle the Duke of Norfolk needed me to be.” She paused. “In some ways, my husband is not as terrible a man as you think he is, Joanna. In other ways, he is very much worse.” Her face hardened at some difficult memory. “But I betrayed him, and now no one speaks for me or attempts to see me. Except for you.”

“I am so sorry,” I said.

“Some days I have courage, like today, but others I am so afraid, Joanna.” Her voice trembled. “Is there anything you can tell me that Thomas said, anything that could help me through what we both know is still to come?”

“He said his chief regret was hurting you, for committing this sin,” I said.

She took that in. At first it comforted her, but then her face fell again. “Nothing else, Joanna?” she asked, desperate. “Nothing to help me?”

I took a deep breath, asking God for forgiveness. I would pray for her, by her side, now, and before the altar of every church I entered for the rest of my life. But there was something I could do for her today to ease her suffering, even though to do so was a sin.

I said, “Thomas told me that you were the only person in his life he had ever loved.”

Catherine collapsed into my arms, saying, “Thank you,” again and again. The last words she spoke to me rang in my ears for days and weeks afterward:
You were always my dearest friend
.

41

A
nd so, the week before Christmas, I returned to Dartford for good. I planned never to set foot in the court of Henry VIII again. And I would never sell
The Sorrow of Niobe
. I would keep it with me, always. Before leaving London, I’d heard the king ordered the destruction of every painting of Catherine Howard, the works created by Master Hans Holbein and every other artist. My tapestry could be the only image of her that survived.

I ordered another drawing from Brussels. I would not have royal commissions, but there were other people in England who would pay good money for a beautiful tapestry.

By the time the new drawing arrived, I would be busy indeed. I’d received word from Stafford Castle—my cousin Henry had finally agreed to send Arthur back to Dartford. His mind had been changed by the Earl of Surrey, who apparently materialized at Stafford Castle and made a passionate case for me. Being half Stafford, he was listened to. What a passionate, reckless person my cousin was. So he had been listening in Whitehall when I told him how much I wanted to get Arthur back. All these months later, he decided to do something about it. He careened through life, damaging some people’s fortunes, repairing others. I suspected there was guilt in his actions, but if it brought Arthur to me, I didn’t care.

Tapestries to weave, Arthur to raise, friends to cherish. It was what I wished for. Yet soon there was more.

The day before Christmas, Edmund reappeared. I saw his familiar gait as he made his way up the High Street, his white-gold hair gleaming in the winter sun. I went back to my house, considering
what to do. After an hour of pacing around my house, I followed in the direction I had seen him walk.

My heart pounded as I made my way up the street, passing the townsfolk I had come to know. Gregory, our onetime porter, waved to me, his baby daughter in his arms, and I forced myself to smile in return.

Yes, Edmund returned to the infirmary he once ran. It had stood empty, the simple furniture remaining but the medicines and herbs sold off. He had a box of fresh potions with him, and was restocking the shelves.

“Oh, Joanna, you’re here,” he said, smiling as I slipped in the door.

“Are you no longer in the employ of Bishop Gardiner?” I asked.

“No,” said Edmund. “It was impossible.”

He explained that he had resigned as secretary for the bishop. The reason was the work he had been compelled to do to substantiate the bill to be put through Parliament to justify the execution of Catherine Howard. “It was clear to me that an annulment was more just because her intimacy with Francis Dereham constituted a marital precontract,” said Edmund. “And I believe the king could have been persuaded, but Bishop Gardiner would not risk attempting it.”

“No, of course he wouldn’t,” I said bitterly.

Edmund said, “I think it came down to a question of how much was I willing to sacrifice of my soul, my conscience, for what Bishop Gardiner called a higher purpose. He
would do anything if it meant bringing him—and this kingdom—close to God.”

“He has always been that way.”

“The bishop felt that to fight to spare Queen Catherine’s life would weaken him too greatly and that the spiritual cause in England was more important.” He shuddered. “I could not live with myself, though, the sins of omission when it came to the queen. I could not do it.”

“He must have been angry with you,” I said.

Edmund said quietly, “The bishop was disappointed.”

Glancing at the half-stocked apothecary shelves, I said, “So now
you will use all of those skills in diplomacy and negotiation, your study of theology, here, in Dartford?”

Edmund, placing his hand on a box of dried, greenish-brown herbs, said, “Paracelsus taught me that the meaning of creation, of the life God gives, can be understood in the properties of the humblest plant.” His brown eyes saddened. “Paracelsus died at the end of September. I just had a letter telling me of it.”

I told Edmund how sorry I was for his loss.

“It is time for me to step forward—I have too long sought out mentors to guide me: my priors when I was a friar, Bishop Gardiner, even Paracelsus.” He looked out the window and then back at me. “The bishop said that he would still sponsor the exception allowing me to marry. I shall be an apothecary for the rest of my days. My vows as a Dominican friar can be permanently set aside.”

I sat down at his apothecary bench, fingered the familiar grooves in the wood.

“Is that what you really want, Edmund?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

I looked at Edmund for a long moment. I had to be certain. When I knew that I was, I took out the letter I’d brought with me when I saw his return. John Cheke sent it to me, with an accompanying note: “Once I showed you a letter to bring about a result. Now I share with you another letter, and I think you will see why.”

I put the letter on the table. “You wrote this to John Cheke in Regensburg, before I came,” I said. “In it you expressed excitement because you’d met someone at the Diet who spoke of forming a new order and you were considering joining.”

Edmund stared at the page of his own writing. “Yes,” he said. “The pope last year gave permission to Ignatius of Loyola to form a Society of Jesus, to strengthen and purify the Catholic Church.” He looked up at me. “But the order is based in Rome. And the men who join it must be ordained priests.”

“I know that,” I said.

Edmund’s sensitive face quivered with warring emotions. “But,
Joanna,” he said so softly I could barely hear him, “I don’t want to leave you again.”

“You can’t go back, neither of us can,” I said. “What we must do is seek ways to go forward. There is an artist in the king’s court, his name is Hans Holbein. He became my friend. He spoke to me of the need for transformation. I was never certain of what he meant until today.”

Edmund nodded, closing his eyes.

“It is a most confusing world, full of danger and sorrow,” I said. “But there are possibilities, too. I know that your hope for our church is what gave you strength. You have to follow that hope.”

He opened his eyes and said, “You are the only woman I ever loved, and the only woman I shall ever love.”

I pushed myself up from the apothecary table and I said good-bye to Edmund Sommerville.

I needed to ask three different people where the house of Geoffrey Scovill was. The tanner knew, and I set out, the winter sun creating a bit of a muck on the narrow road leading out of town. By the time I’d reached his small farmhouse, my skirts were drenched and dirty.

Geoffrey was chopping wood behind his house. I called out to him when the ax was down. I knew that he would be surprised by my arrival and I certainly didn’t want the ax to fly out of his hand.

“May I speak with you?” I asked.

He took a long look at me, a smile curled and was gone, and he said, “I suppose so, but Christmas is tomorrow, and I have many matters to attend to.”

In his kitchen, he poured me some sweet wine to sip while he lit a fire. Then, sitting down across from me, he said, “What’s wrong, Joanna?”

“Quite a few things,” I said. “I hope you can help.”

He nodded, resigned. “Please relay the list.”

I said, “What’s wrong is that I don’t have you to talk to. Or to walk with, to laugh with, to quarrel with. I don’t have you to make
plans with.”

Geoffrey showed no reaction.

This was a mistake.

My heart beginning a fast, painful beat, I went on. “I suppose you are right—we don’t get on well.”

“No, we don’t,” Geoffrey said. He was coming around, pulling me to my feet and kissing me, cupping my face in his hands, pulling off my cap so he could run his hands through my hair.

“You came,” he said, kissing my throat. “You finally came.”

“I wasn’t sure you wanted me to,” I said. “We’ve been here, in Dartford, for three months, and you didn’t say a word.”

“I made a new covenant with myself, Joanna. I vowed that I would not harry you or work to persuade you or anything else. If we are to marry, then it must be what you really want. Not many women would come to a man to tell him how they feel. But you’re not a typical woman, Joanna. I just had to wait.”

I kissed Geoffrey, the sort of kiss that I knew would banish any doubts that he could have about me ever again. The fire crackled and snapped, and finally burned down, before we let go of each other.

“Geoffrey,” I whispered, “Merry Christmas.”

And we laughed, together, and I kissed him again, and told Geoffrey Scovill to rebuild the fire.