“My predecessor, Prioress Elizabeth, took ill this summer. By September it was clear she would not recover. I wrote to Cromwell personally and made him aware of the situation and of my qualifications for the position. His approval was sent by letter last week. You may examine it if you wish.”
Brother Richard and Brother Edmund exchanged a look of dismay. I knew little of the procedures involved in selecting a new prioress while one lay dying, and whether she had flouted any rules. But I suspected their alarm had more to do with the direct involvement of Cromwell.
“Now, on to the business at hand,” she said briskly. “Bishop Gardiner has arranged for the two of you to be transferred from the Cambridge friary to Dartford. I have no objection. Brother Richard, I will see that all of the account books are passed to you tomorrow.” She glanced at the fair-haired friar. “You must be Brother Edmund.”
He bowed his head.
“The priory’s infirmary in the hamlet of Stanham has been lacking for many years, and the one here, within our walls, is inadequate as well. If you possess half
the skills that Bishop Gardiner claims, then it will be worth the cost of feeding and sheltering you.”
Brother Richard grimaced. It was not the most gracious way to welcome new members to a religious house. But Brother Edmund himself showed no emotion.
“Yes, Prioress,” he said.
Brother Richard said, “I have a trunk that needs to be brought to the friars’ quarters and a horse that requires stabling. Our party came by wagon; those horses need to be fed and watered before the return journey, and the driver given sup as well.”
Prioress Joan shrugged. “Those are matters for the porter to arrange.”
“Your porter proved himself inept when we arrived.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, he was indulged by Prioress Elizabeth for years and is now next to useless. One of my first actions after her burial will be to pension him off and get a younger man.”
I felt chilled by the prioress’s judgment, but I detected a glint of grudging respect in Brother Richard’s eyes.
“As for you, Joanna Stafford.”
My insides churned.
“I am ordered by Bishop Gardiner to accept you back into the priory. He said the investigation against you has been dropped and you are not guilty of any crime.”
She paused for a moment.
“But in my eyes, you are guilty of a great deal. You broke your vows of obedience and honesty and violated the sacred rule of enclosure. You brought censure and suspicion upon us—that a novice of Dartford would behave such—at a critical time for all English nuns. Bishop Gardiner says that you are not to be questioned about your confinement in the Tower, that it is to be put into the past. But I tell you, I shall never put my trust and faith in you. As you stand before me today, I question whether you should be allowed to profess your full vows and become a bride of Christ.”
I stared at the floor. My whole body ached, as if I were a dog that had been kicked and whipped.
“Sister Agatha, take her to be changed into a habit before she is permitted inside the novice dormitory.”
“Yes, Prioress,” said Sister Agatha meekly.
My face burning, I followed
Sister Agatha out into the passageway. I longed to break away from her, to run from Dartford Priory. I couldn’t face the novices or nuns; it was impossible to remain here, so loathed. Begging my bread on the open road would be preferable.
We reached the closet room, and she found me a novice’s habit. I put it on, felt the rough cloth on my arms and legs again. It had been so long; now, finally, I wore the white habit and brown belt of a Dominican novice.
But I felt so unworthy. I covered my face with my hands.
Sister Agatha patted my arm, awkwardly. “It must have been a shock to you, the death of Prioress Elizabeth. You were close to her, weren’t you?”
I nodded, grateful for sympathetic words.
“I am glad you have returned to us well and safe,” she said.
My throat tightened. “I fear that Prioress Joan is not glad.”
“Our prioress is a determined woman, but she comes into her new responsibilities at a difficult time,” Sister Agatha said. “She is beset by challenges. And she does not even have the letter of Prioress Elizabeth to guide her.”
“Letter?” I gasped.
“Yes, it is a sacred tradition at Dartford Priory that each prioress write a letter of instruction and pass it on to her successor, for her eyes alone. Prioress Elizabeth wrote a letter. I saw her composing it myself. But this morning, when it was first discovered that our holy leader had passed into God’s hands, the letter was nowhere to be found. Prioress Joan ordered the room searched repeatedly. But the letter was gone.”
18
I
had been back at Dartford for twelve days when the Westerly children begged me to marry their father.
On Thursday, at the end of dinner, I stepped forward to take the basket of leftover food to the Westerlys. For a week I’d volunteered to perform the task. It gave me a chance to talk to the children; I’d always been fond of them. And it took me away from the nuns and their blatant disapproval. In the Bell Tower, when Bishop Gardiner spoke to me of returning, I had longed to serve God at Dartford Priory, to be part of something again, something fine and beautiful. It hadn’t occurred to me that the acceptance I’d felt there was built on trust. Now that trust was gone, as dead and buried as Prioress Elizabeth, laid to rest below the chancel of the church, next to the other prioresses of Dartford.
This very morning, after High Mass, I’d made confession with the others. Doing so filled me with anguish. The day after my return I’d confessed to all sins committed at Smithfield and in the Tower except for agreeing to Gardiner’s charge, which I still hadn’t voiced. Although I knew I’d be damned for this omission, I couldn’t disclose my search. I had sworn to speak of it to no one, and that included poor old Brother Philip, our friar chaplain and confessor, on the other side of the confessional. Only the fear for my father’s life could have driven me to commit this sin. I could not hope to experience grace at Dartford without the cleansing act of true confession.
Carrying the basket, my throat tight with grief, I shoved open the pantry door. It led to the vegetable garden and orchards and, beyond that, the barn and friars’ brewery.
The children’s mother, Lettice Westerly, the priory’s head laundress, was a good-tempered and tireless woman who had, one month before my return to Dartford,
collapsed with a pain in her head. She grew steadily worse and now lay in the infirmary, near senseless. Before her ailment struck, the children had been favorites at the priory, permitted visits by the sisters. Now they were here every day. No one had the heart to discourage it.
“Children?” I called out.
“Sister Joanna—here we are!”
The Westerlys’ small forms materialized before me. It was as if they were sprites grown from the very shrubbery.
I held up the basket of food. The first to reach me was Harold, a sturdy, compact boy. Then came the littlest one, the scamp, Martha, no more than four, clutching her doll. Last to join us was nine-year-old Ethel, darkened by a surliness I couldn’t fault. She was old enough to grasp the likely fate of her family.
As their eager fingers seized the food, I took stock of them: dirtier than usual and more disheveled. Martha’s matted hair even sported a broken twig.
“Ethel, when was the last time you were home?” I asked. I suspected they were sleeping in one of the outlying priory buildings, to be close to their mother. They couldn’t be sleeping outside—it was too cold, and I remembered that last night it had rained. They didn’t look wet.
Ethel shrugged as she crammed the largest crust into her mouth.
“It’s not safe or proper,” I reminded her. “You must stay in the village, with your father.”
Harold piped up: “He’s never home, Sister.”
I glanced at Ethel for confirmation. “He’s gone to London again,” she muttered. “He says there’s not enough work in Dartford for a rag-and-bone man.”
I sat on a stump, pulled Martha onto my lap, and tried to tug the twig from her hair. She did not flinch from the pain, even though I could feel the roots of her hair arching from her scalp. She held her smiling rag doll with one hand and with the other stroked the rough cloth of my habit. When I’d finally extricated the twig, she turned and looked up at me. “Will ye be our mother when she’s gone?” she asked in her sweet singsong.
“Yes, yes!” Harold clapped his hands. “We wanted to ask ye. Ye are our favorite. Marry our father.
Please
.”
I patted Martha’s little shoulder. “No, children,” I said as gently as I could. “You know I will help
you, but I can’t do that. I’m a novice here at Dartford.”
“I told ye she wouldn’t do it,” said Ethel. But her lower lip trembled, and I realized that she, too, might have hoped for this.
“I’m sure your father is a fine man, but I will never be anyone’s wife or mother,” I told her.
Ethel squinted at me. “Is there going to be a priory much longer?” she demanded.
Even the children of our servants doubted the future of Dartford. That left me shaken. At times, while I was performing my daily duties, or raising my voice in song or prayer, the threat to the monasteries receded from my thoughts. Of all people, I should know how very real it was. But when following in the faithful footsteps of the novices and nuns who had gone before me, lived and died by the Rules of Saint Benedict for centuries, it felt impossible that this way of life could end. Now, sitting with the children on the grounds of Dartford, panic clawed inside me. The ground itself seemed to rise and tilt—unsafe for me, for all of us. Cromwell’s soulless army advanced each day.
I murmured to the children, “Eat your food, I must return the basket.” After they’d finished, I hugged each of them to soften the blow of my rejection. Ethel was like a scratchy twig in my arms.
Inside, all was quiet. Everyone was occupied. Much of the work of the priory, from gardening to baking and brewing to studying Latin, took place between noon and five. There was more cleaning expected than ever before. Prioress Elizabeth had run an orderly priory, but her successor immediately laid down additional requirements for scrubbing and sweeping. I doubt there was a more spotless convent in England. The sisters who worked as teachers were not excluded from manual labor, either. Girls from good local families attended afternoon lessons on the upper floors of the front rooms. Only eight students appeared these days, when once it had been three times that, but teaching was still a priority.
My afternoon responsibility was tapestry work. I hurried down the south passageway to the tapestry room, near the Dartford library. The library door stood slightly ajar. It was a room carefully supervised because of some of the manuscripts’ fragility. This was the home of the priory’s cherished private book collection,
to be used for study in a connecting room. This library was a source of great joy to me from the moment of my profession. Few Englishwomen could read, apart from the ladies of the court. And even for them, reading was an accomplishment mastered so that the men of the family would be duly impressed and honored. In the convents, reading and study was a way to honor Christ, yes, but it was also a path to greater understanding of the spiritual world, to the improvement of our minds, which were not neglected here but respected.
It was a wondrous privilege for me to study the books of the Dartford library, but rarely was it unlocked and unattended. I had never seen the library door hang open midday.
I peered inside and saw no one, although candles burned on a table in the middle of the room, far from any books for chance of fire. Someone must have lit the tapers and then stepped out. Taking a deep breath, I slipped inside.
Since the evening of my return, I’d learned absolutely nothing of the crown, not a scrap of information that could be of interest to Bishop Gardiner. Whenever I was not under direct scrutiny by the other sisters—which was seldom—I searched the priory for clues. I found an opportunity to examine the precious objects gathered in a large ornate chest behind the altar, but there was nothing resembling a crown among them. I had looked in every room for something significant, except for the prioress’s own chamber. Nothing. In less than a week I’d reach the date the bishop set—All Saints’ Day—and the only finding I had to report was that Prioress Elizabeth’s letter to her successor had gone missing. To an outsider it might appear the letter was stolen, but only a nun could have entered the private room of the dying prioress, and the thought of a sister of Dartford committing such an act . . . I recoiled from it. And yet how could such a letter be misplaced?
It was highly unlikely I’d find it wedged among the manuscripts. But perhaps I’d learn more of Dartford’s origin and background, anything that could help explain why a king would hide a mysterious object here—and where to find it now.
I scanned the covers of the books. Most were devotional, of course, such as
The Mirror of Our Lady
and
The Book of Vice and Virtues
. We owned three illuminated manuscripts,
exquisitely rendered by monks and of great value. But the cornerstones of the collection were the books written by spiritual women of the Dominican Order: Saint Catherine of Siena, Saint Margaret of Hungary, and more.
There was nothing to be found about the origins of Dartford Priory.
The last place to look was a small section on general topics. Impatiently, I examined them. One was on legal contracts, another on the reigns of the early Plantagenets. And then I saw it. A slender book, dark brown, with the title:
From Caractacus to Athelstan
. I blinked several times; I couldn’t believe I was looking at the word.
I pulled the volume out and opened it, my hands quivering. A quick skim revealed it to be a history of early England, beginning at the time of the Romans and Emperor Claudius’s conquest of our isle. Caractacus was a Celtic ruler who defied Rome. Chapters followed of life under Roman occupation, the decline of the Caesars and their withdrawal from England, the Saxon invasions, the conflicts with the Danes. The book seemed straightforward, even ordinary. I leafed through to the last chapter, titled “Athelstan the One King.”