The Tapestry by Nancy Bilyeau Page A

treaty and threatened invasion. But now that treaty is broken; our kingdom doesn’t need Cleves any longer to survive. And if she falls, she takes Cromwell with her.”
    I felt chilled to the marrow, remembering the hopeful young countenance of the princess in the boat that crossed the channel, bringing her to her new home.
    Gardiner frowned as he studied me. My emotions, the mixture of guilt and pity for Anne of Cleves, must have shown. “Do you not still support the True Faith, Joanna?” he asked.
    â€œWith my life, Bishop,” I said.
    Gardiner, still frowning, reached out and snapped an errant brown branch from the side of the hedge. But he did not toss it aside.
    â€œDo you know a Doctor Robert Barnes?” he asked, now pulling a green bud off the branch so that no new life remained.
    I shook my head, wary of this new direction.
    â€œAh, if only you would trouble yourself to follow the affairs of the kingdom, Joanna, you would be truly formidable. But that is something you don’t do. A part of you always craves the cloister, to hide from the ugliness of the world. It’s understandable; yes, it’s understandable. But the time for hiding is over.” Still gripping the branch, he peered across the garden, at the glowing walls of Whitehall Palace.
    â€œDoctor Barnes began as an Augustinian friar, at my very own Cambridge University. But he ran afoul of the Cardinal Wolsey and was seriously questioned. I spoke for him then. I defended him and said he was worthy and capable of reform. But as soon as he was able, Doctor Barnes made a mockery of us all. He left England, journeyed to Germany, and became a faithful friend to Martin Luther. His views were so extreme that since Doctor Barnes’s return, a passionate and committed Lutheran, King Henry had him imprisoned not once, but twice . Even apart from his heresies, he was a rash and intemperate person. Yet this very same man preached the Easter sermon at Saint Paul’s this year, going out of his way to personally denigrate me. He was made to apologize by the king himself for it, and then he insulted me a second time. You may well wonder: How is that possible? I am the Bishop of Winchester.”
    Throughout Bishop Gardiner’s strange rant about the heretical Doctor Barnes, I’d watched those large white hands running up and down the branch, tearing at bits of bark. With every few words, apiece of bark would fly from the branch and drift to the ground. To claw at it so must have caused him pain, but he showed no sign.
    â€œBishop, forgive me, I don’t understand these matters,” I said. And I didn’t. The rapidly changing fortunes of those surrounding the king and Cromwell left me bewildered.
    â€œDoctor Barnes had protection —he possessed a second good friend besides Martin Luther, and that person is Thomas Cromwell, our newly elevated Earl of Essex,” Gardiner said, near to choking on his bitterness. “When I criticized Barnes’s heretical statements last year, Cromwell used it as a way to persuade the king to ban me from the Privy Council. Then at Easter, it was Cromwell who instructed his puppet to mock me before the entire court.”
    Suddenly, violently, Gardiner broke his branch into pieces, heedless that a flurry of splintered bark now clung to the bottom of his white robes.
    His eyebrows furrowed, he said, “Do you relish being called Papist, Joanna? Of living in fear that the king will take those final steps toward abominable heresy, and knowing that when he does, your soul will be lost forever?”
    â€œNo,” I said, anguished. “No.”
    He reached out and laid both his hands on my shoulders. He had touched me in this manner before—it meant the moment had come to pray. I closed my eyes, my fingers leaping to the chain around my neck holding the crucifix.
    But then the bishop pressed down, with those same hands that had clawed a branch to pieces. He would