I don’t have any idea how long I knelt, but when the sound of footsteps came again, my prayers were unanswered. I got to my feet just before the young lieutenant and maidservant Bess came through the door.
“You are to be moved
to Beauchamp Tower,” he said.
Outside, on the green, I could see ragged clouds chase one another across a blue sky. A warm breeze stirred my hair. I followed the lieutenant down a well-trimmed path, Bess a step behind, toward a three-story stone building, just west of the square, white keep. A string of mulberry trees stretched along the path, their branches thick with pale-green leaves. Under one of them, a boy shook a branch, hard. White berries fell in a rain of gentle plops onto a dark blanket he’d spread on the ground.
Where on Tower Green did they perform the executions? Brave men had met death here—More and Fisher—as well as infamous criminals. The witch Anne Boleyn was executed on the green one year ago, as well as her infamous brother, George Boleyn. He was one of five men convicted of adultery with the queen.
But I could not think of George and Anne Boleyn now if I wanted to keep hold of my sanity.
Clang. Clang. Clang. Clang.
The sound of bells rippled across the green. I looked to find the church it came from, to draw strength from it, but there was nothing. “Those are the bells of Saint Paul’s,” Bess said.
“Is it so close?” I asked.
“No, but the sound carries in the wind, and today all the bells must be—”
The lieutenant whipped around to silence her with a look.
Once inside Beauchamp Tower, I was led to a circular stone staircase, its steps worn smooth. On the second floor, we turned down a narrow passage. At regular intervals the walls were marked with wooden doors, bars built into the top half. I didn’t look inside any of them as we passed. I heard no voices, no sounds at all, but I was certain that each cell contained a prisoner.
At the end of the passage, the lieutenant beckoned for me to follow him through an archway and down another, even longer passage. As I passed one door, I heard a man’s sob, low and broken.
It was that pitiful sound that robbed me of courage. My head swam, and I reached out to the wall to steady myself.
“Mistress Stafford?” called out the lieutenant, at the end of the passage, his hard young face empty of sympathy.
Bess squeezed my elbow.
I thought about my uncle, the Duke of Buckingham. He’d impressed all with the dignity shown when imprisoned here, in the Tower. I forced myself to walk the rest of the way.
This cell was smaller and dimmer than my former quarters: rectangular, with a pointed-arched recess at the end, two narrow windows carved in the stone. A bare fireplace along one wall, a bed against the other. My nose and eyes burned from a strong smell. It was lye, used within the hour to scrub the floor and walls—they gleamed with damp patches.
“I will bring you dinner,” Bess murmured and left.
I peered out the window. My view was of a raised outer walkway along the top of the castle wall, an allure running between this tower structure and another. Beyond it, the massive stone wall, William the Conqueror’s wall, blocked out all. I could see nothing of the green.
“I have a request,” I said to the lieutenant, who stood near the door, impatient.
“Yes?”
“May I have papers and pen, to inform my family and the prioress of my order that I am confined here?”
“Sir William Kingston was clear that you should have no means of correspondence. He will see that all are informed.”
He turned to leave.
“Wait,” I said, my voice breaking. “May I not have books? I thought that prisoners were allowed books.”
The lieutenant hesitated.
“The writing of Thomas Aquinas?” I said quickly, before he made up his mind to deny me. “How could there be harm in that?”
“I can make no promises,” he said. “I will pass the request to Sir William.” And he left.
Moments later, Bess reappeared with a tray of food: bread and a large chunk of cheese.
That is when the singing came. It was faint but lovely: many voices, at least a hundred, raised in common song.
“Bess, is that a Te Deum?” I asked, wonderingly.
“Yes,” she said. “It is the court. The king ordered the Te Deum sung. That is where Lady Kingston and Sir William have gone. All those who serve the king were summoned to Saint Paul’s.”
“Why?”
She looked at me for
a moment. “It is Queen Jane,” Bess said. “The child has quickened in her womb, and all must celebrate. The king is certain that this time he will have his son and heir. This wife will succeed . . .” her voice trailed off.
Where the others had failed.
That was what I thought, what anyone would think. His first wife, Katherine of Aragon, discarded after she could bear only a daughter. His second, the witch Boleyn, put to death when she could do no better.
Aloud, I said cautiously, “A prince would be a source of great joy for our kingdom.”
Bess nodded, but her eyes stayed troubled. Her shoulders sagged. That nervous, gossipy spirit of this morning had vanished. “Were you punished for allowing me to look out the window?” I asked.
“Oh, no. Lady Kingston cared only about the royal summons to Saint Paul’s. She was afraid Sir William would be held back here too late and they would miss it.”
“Then why are you so troubled?”
She shook her head. “I cannot tell you.”
“Please, Bess.”
She peered over her shoulder at the door, and then sidled close to me, to speak into my ear. “I heard what Sir William said to my mistress before they left for Saint Paul’s. The Duke of Norfolk told him that to catch you and your father in treason would be of great value to the king. That in so doing all the Staffords might finally be crushed and the crown made safer from challenge. If they could succeed in breaking you . . .” Bess fell silent.
“Go on.”
“Then there would be reward in it for the duke and for Sir William. The king would be grateful and be bound to give them lands.”
The voices of the court trilled higher on the final chorus of the Te Deum, the Latin words that give humblest thanks to God. The music slowly died away.
“Thank you, Bess,” I whispered. “I will say nothing. Please take the food away.”
As she picked up the tray, I saw a tear trickle down her cheek.
I fell onto the narrow straw bed and turned to face the wall. I did not close my eyes or move a muscle. I stared at the stone wall and watched the
light grow dimmer against it. Night closed in. The Tower yeomen warders shouted to one another, conveying orders on the castle allure and in the passageway. I heard the word
bonfires
.
After a time, the men fired cannon to salute the king in his time of joy: once, twice, three times, more. It was very loud. A faint acrid smell drifted in through the window, perhaps from the celebratory bonfires, perhaps from the cannon. But through it all the walls of my prison cell never trembled. The walls of the Tower are the thickest in the land, and they never, ever tremble.
9
T
hat
first night in Beauchamp Tower, I couldn’t know it was to be the first of many. I was rigid with terror all night, until the blackness shifted to dawn. The next day, I lapsed in and out of wakefulness, but rarely rose from bed. I ignored the periodic openings of the cell door, the trays of food shoved inside by a yeoman warder, then reclaimed, untouched. I kept thinking of those Carthusian monks and how they would die by slow starvation at Newgate for their beliefs. How could I take food while they suffered? And why would I even wish to live? I was to be questioned, taunted, and disbelieved—over and over—by the Duke of Norfolk and other hateful men, until they’d gathered facts deemed sufficient to destroy me, my father, and every other member of the Stafford family.
But on the second morning, when the door swung open, and a woman lowered a wooden tray of food, I staggered toward it. The woman was not Bess. She was older and taller, with a long face and black hair nearly covered by a white hood. I fell on the food, the hard chunk of cheese, like an animal. I felt shame over my weakness. But I couldn’t deny this wish to live, even if the rest of my existence was to be frightening—and short. After eating I fell back onto the bed and slept for hours, untroubled by dreams.
I awoke later that day physically strengthened but consumed with dread. Would this be a day of more questioning? The day that they determined to “break” me? I prayed and waited, listening for an approach on the passageway. But no one appeared besides the yeomen guards and servants.
This continued, one day after the next. In the morning came the serving woman in her white cap, who I later learned was named Susanna. And in the late afternoon came one of two yeomen warders who worked in Beauchamp,
Henry or Ambrose, with dinner. The food bordered on rancid; the ale tasted sour. I ate and drank very little.
After one week, the yeoman warder named Ambrose explained my situation. “If you want decent food, or some furniture, or wood for your fireplace, anything at all, you must pay,” he said. “Those are the rules.”
After a moment, I couldn’t help but laugh. “Do you see any coins or jewels here, sir?” I asked.
“Your family,” he said patiently. “I will help with conveying the letters back and forth and making the arrangements. It’s the families that pay.”
I shook my head violently. “I will not contact anyone. It would not be fitting.”
He blinked in surprise. “I thought you were of a noble house,” he said.
“No more,” I muttered. “No more.” I turned away from the yeoman warder. I heard him walk down the passageway and, a moment later, tell another of my refusal to better my situation. I could hear snatches of talk outside my cell, but after that day it never pertained to myself—or to my father. One morning, the prisoner down the passageway who wept was taken away. His tears had been a terrible trial for me, but I discovered there was something worse than listening to a man weep, and that was no longer listening to it. Where else could he have gone but to his death?
I lay half asleep, listless, on my bed, early one afternoon when the door swung open and there was Lady Kingston, dressed in her finery. On this occasion, she wore a gabled headdress beaded with tiny jewels.
“Are you well, Mistress Stafford?” she asked.
I shrugged. The question seemed more than slightly ridiculous.
“You look ill.” Her face filled with worry, and I wondered if this were one of her guises, assumed to draw out confidences, so I said nothing.
She pressed something into my hands. To my surprise, it was several heavy books. On each cover was engraved
The Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas
.
“Thank you,” I whispered, stroking the
covers.
“What else do you require?” she asked.
“Now that I have this, nothing, Lady Kingston.”
She looked at me for a minute. “How unusual, for a lady to have no demands of me,” she said, a strange vehemence to her words.
She swept out of the room, and if it were not for the books in my hands, I would have thought this a dream, the encounter so strange. Within the hour, I had another visitor. The lieutenant came to my cell and, with his usual curtness, bade me follow him. I felt a wave of fear, mixed with bitterness. To give me books on the eve of my destruction seemed cruel, even for the Tower.
He led me a different way than the one I’d come, out onto the castle allure. I blinked hard in the sun when I stepped outside; I was unused to brightness. We walked its length, about thirty feet, and then he paused. I waited for him to open the door, but instead he turned and led me back to where we started. He paused again.
“What are we doing?” I asked.
“You are to take exercise, Mistress Stafford,” he said. “Sir William and Lady Kingston order it.”
“Why?”
He did not answer, merely jerked his head forward, and I had no choice but to accompany him, back and forth along the allure. If I craned my neck at the far end, I could see the mulberry trees on the green, more thickly leaved.
“Can you tell me anything about my father?” I asked.
“No, and if you persist with inquiry, I will return you to your cell,” he said sharply.
It was the least congenial walk I had ever taken. Still, I had no wish to hurry back to confinement; I held back any other questions until the lieutenant was poised to leave me: “How long have I been here in the Tower?”
I expected him to refuse an answer or to hazard a guess. But he said, “Twenty-three days.” It was odd how he’d had the number ready.
In the next week, my prison conditions improved dramatically. Susanna or the yeomen warders delivered mutton stewed with potage, boiled beef, roasted capons,
or larks. All served on pewter, with ale. Furniture materialized, a chair and a table. My cell was cleaned more frequently. Fresh rushes were laid down on the stone floor. I was even supplied with clean linens.
“Who bears the cost of this?” I asked Ambrose.
He shrugged and spread his hands. “Someone with means,” he grunted.
I spent most of my days reading, working on my Latin, absorbing the wisdom of Thomas Aquinas. I studied his interpretation of the four cardinal virtues: prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude. I found special significance in the beliefs about personal resolve. In the absence of Mass, the denial of the Blessed Sacraments, his teachings comforted me beyond measure.
Once a week, the lieutenant appeared for silent walks along the allure. I was grateful for any release from my cell, which was often hot and airless. Anyone could tell the lieutenant disliked this duty. I yearned to know why the Kingstons insisted I get exercise, who paid for my food, and why no one ever interrogated me. But his stiff shoulders as he stalked ahead made it clear I would get no answers.
I was shocked when he broke the silence one day with a question.
“What did you
do
all day, shut up in a priory?” he asked.
I sought ecstatic union with a merciful, wise, and loving God.
Aloud I said, “Religious observances.”