beneath the thin fabric of my borrowed dress.
“I pray to God that no harm in word or deed befalls you, Joanna Stafford,” he said. “For I fear that much hangs in the balance on what occurs today.”
11
I t was not Master Thomas Culpepper but a royal page who escorted me to dinner with the king and queen. I recognized him from the inspection parade, for he was the fairest of the pages and perhaps the youngest, fourteen at most. He had not seen me, masked and hiding in the shadows. His gaze was nothing but respectful. Blank.
Wearing the finest of the dresses His Majesty had pressed on me, I followed the page to the vast hall I’d passed through when I first arrived in Whitehall. At that time it had been filled with gentlemen I did not know. I realized now that the ministers and high noblemen were already in place in Westminster, and now, since they never wanted to be too far from the orbit of King Henry, they gathered in this hall.
I soon perceived that there were two groups of equal size. The Bishop of Winchester stood with the Duke of Norfolk on one side of the long room, surrounded by lords, gentlemen, and clerks sympathetic to their position. I could feel Gardiner’s stare on me from far away. He did not turn as I walked the length of the room; his head never shifted. But those eyes tracked my procession. Closer to the archway that the blond page led me toward was Cromwell’s party. He, too, was flanked by supporters; I recognized Sir Thomas Wriothesley and Richard Rich.
Conversations faltered across the hall as men caught sight of me. Sir Walter Hungerford’s curious questioning was but a harbinger of what was to come. I could no longer attribute the staring to interest in Thomas Culpepper or Catherine Howard. I was becoming notorious.
As I neared the chief minister’s party, I kept my eyes on the bobbing red doublet directly in front of me. I did not want to risk any sort of confrontation with Thomas Cromwell. The words I’d exchanged with Bishop Gardiner in the garden had unnerved me enough. Even a few words of forced greeting—or a bow—from his rival, Cromwell, could destroy my fragile courage.
A stream of workers carrying trays and boxes and bottles blocked our path to the stairs. Feeling the eyes of a roomful of ruthless men on me, I turned, desperate, to face the wall. I would have to make a show of examining whatever was displayed there.
Two large and lavish tapestries covered this wall, with a small painting in between that I now scrutinized. Its first point of distinction was that it was not a portrait. Almost every painting in the palace was of a member of the Tudor family, or of Henry VI, the saintly Lancaster king the Tudors venerated. But this was a painting of a group of people, none of them known to me. They clustered before a castle. One man looked to be royal, wearing fine robes and a crown, accompanied by courtiers. Two people struggled to reach this ruler: a woman and a child in rags, pleading. He seemed oblivious to them.
But that was not the most disquieting thing about the painting. It was that a final figure hovered above the destitute woman and child. Not a person. A smiling skeleton, reaching with bony fingers for the arm of the wealthy ruler.
Why would such a painting be displayed in Whitehall?
When we were finally able to pass through that archway and ascend a winding staircase, even as I entered the privy chamber of the queen of England, I was haunted by that question.
This was the most lavish of all the rooms I had seen so far. The wall tapestries were woven with gold-edged thread. Plates and goblets sparkled on a long, thick table at which we would presumably eat. Scented rushes covered the floor; above, a carved and painted ceiling loomed.
But what struck me most of all was the near-blinding brilliance ofthe room. The queen’s privy chamber was located in the middle of the second floor of the palace—there were no windows. Nonetheless, it was brighter than if
“I pray to God that no harm in word or deed befalls you, Joanna Stafford,” he said. “For I fear that much hangs in the balance on what occurs today.”
11
I t was not Master Thomas Culpepper but a royal page who escorted me to dinner with the king and queen. I recognized him from the inspection parade, for he was the fairest of the pages and perhaps the youngest, fourteen at most. He had not seen me, masked and hiding in the shadows. His gaze was nothing but respectful. Blank.
Wearing the finest of the dresses His Majesty had pressed on me, I followed the page to the vast hall I’d passed through when I first arrived in Whitehall. At that time it had been filled with gentlemen I did not know. I realized now that the ministers and high noblemen were already in place in Westminster, and now, since they never wanted to be too far from the orbit of King Henry, they gathered in this hall.
I soon perceived that there were two groups of equal size. The Bishop of Winchester stood with the Duke of Norfolk on one side of the long room, surrounded by lords, gentlemen, and clerks sympathetic to their position. I could feel Gardiner’s stare on me from far away. He did not turn as I walked the length of the room; his head never shifted. But those eyes tracked my procession. Closer to the archway that the blond page led me toward was Cromwell’s party. He, too, was flanked by supporters; I recognized Sir Thomas Wriothesley and Richard Rich.
Conversations faltered across the hall as men caught sight of me. Sir Walter Hungerford’s curious questioning was but a harbinger of what was to come. I could no longer attribute the staring to interest in Thomas Culpepper or Catherine Howard. I was becoming notorious.
As I neared the chief minister’s party, I kept my eyes on the bobbing red doublet directly in front of me. I did not want to risk any sort of confrontation with Thomas Cromwell. The words I’d exchanged with Bishop Gardiner in the garden had unnerved me enough. Even a few words of forced greeting—or a bow—from his rival, Cromwell, could destroy my fragile courage.
A stream of workers carrying trays and boxes and bottles blocked our path to the stairs. Feeling the eyes of a roomful of ruthless men on me, I turned, desperate, to face the wall. I would have to make a show of examining whatever was displayed there.
Two large and lavish tapestries covered this wall, with a small painting in between that I now scrutinized. Its first point of distinction was that it was not a portrait. Almost every painting in the palace was of a member of the Tudor family, or of Henry VI, the saintly Lancaster king the Tudors venerated. But this was a painting of a group of people, none of them known to me. They clustered before a castle. One man looked to be royal, wearing fine robes and a crown, accompanied by courtiers. Two people struggled to reach this ruler: a woman and a child in rags, pleading. He seemed oblivious to them.
But that was not the most disquieting thing about the painting. It was that a final figure hovered above the destitute woman and child. Not a person. A smiling skeleton, reaching with bony fingers for the arm of the wealthy ruler.
Why would such a painting be displayed in Whitehall?
When we were finally able to pass through that archway and ascend a winding staircase, even as I entered the privy chamber of the queen of England, I was haunted by that question.
This was the most lavish of all the rooms I had seen so far. The wall tapestries were woven with gold-edged thread. Plates and goblets sparkled on a long, thick table at which we would presumably eat. Scented rushes covered the floor; above, a carved and painted ceiling loomed.
But what struck me most of all was the near-blinding brilliance ofthe room. The queen’s privy chamber was located in the middle of the second floor of the palace—there were no windows. Nonetheless, it was brighter than if
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