After the death of Ethelward, his half brother, Athelstan, succeeded in 925, although born of a concubine. Many kingdoms opposed Athelstan. The Danes were not idle. They sent boats to take York once more, and plotted to drive south. They raided many villages and committed grievous atrocities, as was their wont. The Scots planned their invasions as well.
In the first year the Saxon nobles were discontent with their new king. Athelstan’s younger brother Edwin was said to plot against him with the nobles and was condemned. Edwin protested his innocence and took a sacred oath before priests. But Athelstan set Edwin to sea in a boat with no sail and neither food nor water. The boat was never seen again.
I shivered a little, thinking of that young man on the boat, cast out. Frightened. Starving. How pitiless King Athelstan was. Then I resumed my reading.
Athelstan later made penance
for his brother’s death. He was a monarch who showed a ruthless spirit to his enemies but was pious and virtuous above all others. He heard Mass three times each day. He founded many monasteries and was known throughout Christendom as a collector of holy relics.
“You are a lover of books?”
I gave a cry and dropped what I was reading. It hit the floor with a loud
clap
.
Brother Richard stood inches away from me. I had been so absorbed I hadn’t heard him come in.
“Did I startle you?” he asked
“Yes, Brother.” To my horror, my voice broke.
“I’m pleased to see the works amassed in nearly two centuries; this is a fine little collection at Dartford,” he said in his patronizing way.
“Yes, Brother.” My voice had calmed. I bent down to pick up the book.
“May I see what you were reading?” he asked.
I held it out to him.
“Ah, this is not a time that much is known about,” he said, leafing a few pages. “Rome . . . the Celts . . . the Saxons . . . Alfred the Great.” He paused. “And his grandson, King Athelstan.”
He closed the book but did not give it back to me. “You have curious interests, Sister Joanna.”
I bowed my head slightly, turned, and left the library, my heart pounding. I could feel his eyes burning into my back.
Tapestry work was well under way when I hurried in to join my fellow novices. Sister Christina and Sister Winifred paused in their weaving as I rushed over to my place on the bench before the large wooden loom. Ours was the only such loom at a priory in all of England; most tapestries were woven in Brussels. At the turn of the century, a farsighted Dartford prioress had arranged for the loom to be brought here, and a special room made to accommodate it: large windows allowed more light into this room than reached any other. It took a year for three weavers, sitting side by side, to make one tapestry that reached five feet in length.
I sat between the other
novices. They looked nothing alike. Sister Christina was tall, with piercing eyes and high cheekbones. Her piety was profound. Beneath her formidable exterior, though, was a perceptive spirit. She noticed things others missed. As for Sister Winifred, she was much smaller than either Sister Christina or myself. With her large liquid eyes and heart-shaped face, she seemed childlike, and the older nuns tended to coddle her. But I had seen her push herself to accomplish difficult tasks. Her determination could never be discounted.
This afternoon, my arrival drew only a cold stare from Sister Christina, who had given no sign of ever forgiving me for my crimes against Dartford, but Sister Winifred flashed me a smile. Perhaps, for that friendship, there was hope.
I braced myself for reproof from Sister Agatha, sitting at the head of the room to supervise the novices. But her face was creased with worry, her eyes cloudy. She didn’t comment on my lateness. Behind her, Sister Helen, our tapestry mistress, small and elegant, sorting out her silks, didn’t say anything, either, but since she hadn’t spoken to a soul in three years, it was no surprise.
Prioress Elizabeth received special dispensation from the Continent for Sister Helen to remain with us, even though she did not sing, chant, nor pray aloud. It had been that way since her older brother, a monk, was hanged in chains in Tyburn for refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy to the king. In the beginning, when the king first attacked our way of life, some brave monks and friars and nuns and abbots chose to oppose him. They were punished with stunning savagery. Following that, most took the oath.
Sister Helen, perhaps to compensate for silence, put great effort into the tapestries, her domain for some twenty years. They were original, exquisite, haunting. I arrived at Dartford an adept seamstress; under my mother’s tutelage, I’d mastered the most complicated stitches. But we did not stitch these tapestries, we wove them, with a bobbin, in and out, through the warp threads. Sister Helen taught me how to weave quickly yet carefully, and when to push the pedals beneath our feet. Most remarkably of all, it was Sister Helen who came up with the design of each tapestry, what story it would tell. A talented artist, she drew the picture to be followed and then painted the life-size cartoon.
Before beginning each tapestry, the cartoon was cut into vertical shreds and fastened beneath, to show patterns. We were more than halfway finished with this latest one.
As my bobbin went in and out, I thought not of my work but of the book I’d discovered. Athelstan was a real person, a king in the time of the Saxons. He would indeed have possessed a crown. But why would it be hidden at Dartford? Monasteries had existed in England during that dark, turbulent time; he himself founded them. So why did Edward the Third not use one for hiding the crown instead of building Dartford Priory from the ground up, as Bishop Gardiner had suggested?
I thought about Brother Richard’s reaction to finding me with the book, how his fingers had closed tightly on the volume. He’d known at once the identity of Athelstan, even though he was an obscure ruler, born in the last years of the first millennium.
A low moan from the front of the room jarred me from my thoughts. It was Sister Agatha. Tears glittered in her close-set eyes.
We novices looked at one another, unsure what to do.
It was Sister Christina who spoke up, as was usual. She was the senior. “Are you well today, Sister?” she called out.
Sister Agatha shook her head, as if angry. “It isn’t fair—you are young; you have prosperous families who could take you in. I have nowhere to go. My family is dead, and I’ve no money of my own.”
“What do you mean?” Sister Christina asked.
She shook her head. “I should not speak so. But I heard this morning that Cromwell’s commissioners have started another round of visitations. Of the larger monasteries. I had hoped it was all over, that we were safe. But the new reports from London say otherwise.”
Sister Winifred looked at me, frightened. I made a face of surprise, though it was anything but news to me. Whispered fears must be racing up and down the passageways of all the large houses, from Syon to Glastonbury.
“God will protect us.” Sister Christina’s voice rang out. “And, Sister Agatha, never think us more fortunate than you. I myself will never leave Dartford, no matter what occurs. If I must, I will do the Lord’s work in the rubble.”
I looked sideways at Sister Christina. She’d stopped weaving; her jaw tightened with resolution.
Sister Agatha seemed
heartened by such conviction: “Yes, it is quite impossible to believe the king could ever suppress Dartford. We are a priory favored by the nobility.” She glanced at us—not angry anymore, but with hope. “The king’s own aunt was a nun here, before I professed.”
“Wasn’t her name Sister Bridget?” asked Sister Winifred.
“Yes, Sister Bridget,” said our novice mistress. “She was the youngest sister of Queen Elizabeth. The old queen visited her on occasion—once she brought along her son, Prince Arthur.”
A sharp pain pierced my left palm. I had scissors in my lap. I looked down: a perfect circle of blood bloomed on my skin. I’d jabbed myself at the name “Arthur.”
I grabbed a scrap of cloth and pressed it into the heel of my palm. “When was that, Sister?” I asked quickly. “When did they visit Dartford?”
Sister Agatha thought for a moment. “I believe it was just after Prince Arthur married Katherine of Aragon. I’m told Queen Elizabeth wanted Sister Bridget to meet Arthur’s wife, so they traveled down one day.”
Struggling to keep my voice casual, I said, “Katherine of Aragon was at Dartford?” The throb in my palm grew worse; I pressed the cloth harder.
“Yes, yes, that’s right. Blessed Queen Katherine was just a girl then. So long ago. Before my time.” She calculated in her head. A minute crawled by. She was not quick with sums. “More than thirty years ago. Yes, that’s it. You see? We have direct ties to the
royal family
. How could the king ever suppress Dartford and turn us out onto the road?”
So that was no deathbed hallucination of Queen Katherine’s. She did come here with her young first husband.
I looked down—I could not staunch the blood flow, and so weaving must stop. I mustn’t drench these delicate light blue and white silk threads with blood.
Sister Winifred started coughing. A rasping cough with a ragged wetness to it.
Sister Christina and I both knew what that meant, and we jumped to our feet.
“Loosen her habit,” I suggested.
“No, it’s too late for that,” Sister Christina said.
Sister Winifred’s white face flushed scarlet as
she fell back on the bench, gasping and coughing.
“This is your fault,” Sister Christina called out accusingly to Sister Agatha. “You upset her with talk of being turned out into the road. We are supposed to work in
silence
here.”
Sister Agatha sputtered with indignation. “I am your novice mistress—you cannot criticize me.”
Lifting up Sister Winifred, I announced, “I am taking her to Brother Edmund.”
After I’d ferried Sister Winifred to the door, I paused, but no one tried to stop me. Our novice mistress was caught up in her quarrel with Sister Christina.
I glanced over at Sister Helen, in the corner, sorting through her silks as always. But she was far from indifferent. I saw a long tear drip off her cheek.
19
I
could
hear the man screaming from the cloister garden.
The infirmary came off the east side of the cloister, at the end of that passageway. To shorten the distance, I pulled Sister Winifred straight across the garden, minding that we kept to the paths. She staggered alongside me, and I had to be careful she didn’t overturn the baskets full of harvested valerian or bump her head against the branch of a quince tree. The sound of screaming made her shudder, but I tightened a grip around her heaving shoulders. “All will be well,” I said.
When we came through the infirmary doors, I saw Brother Edmund bending over someone, his hands running across the man’s collarbone and shoulder. It was John, one of our stable hands, slumped forward on a pallet, his shirt loosened, his eyes bulging. I was relieved that this was Brother Edmund’s time to work in our infirmary, and not in the one he managed in Stanham, which was nearby.
“It hurts, Brother. Christ’s blood, it hurts.”
“Do not blaspheme,” Brother Edmund murmured. His fingers halted their exploration. “I will adjust your shoulder now. The pain will be sharp, but then it will ease. Prepare yourself.”
John made a wild sign of the cross with his one hand, the other dangling at his side. Just as he’d finished, Brother Edmund threw himself onto the man’s damaged shoulder, his black friar’s cape whipping into the air as he attacked.
“Brother, no!” I cried out. But I was unheard, drowned out by John’s agonized screech. He collapsed onto the pallet.
As Brother Edmund stepped back to straighten his robes, he spotted us standing in the corner.
“Sister Winifred is having another fit,” I said.
Brother Edmund hurried to
his oak cabinet, a key gleaming in his hand. “Set her down anywhere,” he said over his shoulder.
I helped Sister Winifred, whose choking had settled into bursts of wheezing, onto another pallet. A tendril of blond hair hung down in her face, and I tucked it back under her novice cap.
“When did it begin?” Brother Edmund asked me as he briskly ground a dark plant in a bowl with mortar and pestle.
“Just ten minutes or so,” I said. “She was agitated, then began the choking.”
“What agitated her?” Brother Edmund stooped before the low fire with his bowl.
I told him of Sister Agatha’s laments over the future of the priory.
“I see.” He stopped grinding. “I am going to apply the remedy. Step away, Sister Joanna. It is best you do not inhale it as well.”
I backed into the corner, watching as he propped her up and placed the smoking bowl under her face. I had been in the infirmary last week when he administered the same remedy. He had brought many new medicines and potions—and new skills—to this position. Sister Rachel, a sharp-tongued nun, had been in charge of the infirmary when he arrived and was furious to be ousted. But even she had to admit that Brother Edmund was an apothecary to be respected. And it was a simple matter for him to move between the priory infirmary and the small one in town, skimpily attended since the death last year of Brother Matthew. Friars were accustomed to moving among outsiders. They were not monks or nuns, living in retreat from the world.
“Breathe,” he commanded. “Again. Again.”
Sister Winifred took a final deep breath and groped for his hand. “Thank you,” she moaned. He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it lightly, then eased her back down to rest. Seeing them together, I was struck by the siblings’ resemblance. The same brown eyes, pale eyelashes, and wide mouth with thin lips. But I also noticed that Brother Edmund did not look well today. His skin had a yellowish tint, and lines crinkled around his eyes.
I crept toward the smoldering bowl. “What is this cure?” I asked.
“
Ephedra helvetica
is a remedy, not a cure,” he said. “The leaf of a plant grown in Italy. A Swiss brother traveling to Cambridge had a supply for himself and told me
of it. I send for it every six months. I’ll need a greater supply now. Dartford is not the best climate for Sister Winifred—there are so many marshes nearby—but there’s no help for that. So I must redouble my course of remedy.”