Free The Tapestry by Nancy Bilyeau Page A

fresh interest. No longer able to stop myself, I opened my mouth to make an angry retort, but Catherine spoke first.
    “I am so pleased that Joanna can stay with me for a few days.” Her tone was calm and cheerful
    I expected the duke to react to the news, but at this, too, he showed no surprise. So he knew all. Who was it who informed him—the maid who served Catherine or the young man outside the door?
    “How did this come about?” he asked.
    “Joanna has friends staying in Southwark, but no idea how long she will need to remain at court, so it seemed the best course. It’s a treat for me, Uncle. Joanna was such a friend to me at Howard House, teaching me a dozen embroidery stitches, helping me prepare for court. And you know how I hate to be alone. I’m used to sleeping in a chamber with lots of girls, as I did at the dowager duchess’s in Horsham.”
    I was astounded. Catherine was chattering as if the man in the room were a trusted, gentle friend, not the vicious Duke of Norfolk. Surely he would make a mockery of every word she said.
    “If it pleases you, Catherine, then it is well done,” he said. Just for a second his gaze raked over me, not with his usual contempt but almost as if he were worried about something. He had certainly never looked at me that way before. It unsettled me more than one of his bursts of rage might have.
    A man’s cry was heard outside the door. Someone opened the door to better hear.
    Bang, bang, bang. It was the sound of a stick pounded on the floor of the corridor just outside our dining chamber.
    “Be it known that today His Majesty King Henry the Eighth hath created Thomas Cromwell the Earl of Essex, Vice Regent and High Chamberlain of England, Keeper of the Privy Seal, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Justice of the Forest beyond the Trent,” declared the royal crier.
    The duke of Norfolk stared at the table, his face flushed dark. I expected him to throw something, scream curses, lash out at whomever was closest. But instead he looked up, the wrinkles of his face carved deep, his focus on one person: his niece, Catherine Howard.
    The way that the two of them stared at each other, it was as if no one else existed in the room. Neither spoke a word.
    “Shut the door,” muttered the duke, and he reached down to stroke the head of his younger dog.

9

    W hen the thirty-six pages of His Majesty King Henry VIII stood in the line arranged by Thomas Culpepper, they stretched from one end of a Whitehall chamber to the other. I stood in a narrow gallery running across the upper half of the chamber. As I looked down at this restless parade of red Tudor doublets, I felt both frightened and resolute. And faintly ridiculous. At the last moment, Culpepper thrust a black mask into my hand and urged me to hold it in front of my face. The mask was carved into an expression of a lady’s petulant sorrow, the corners of her mouth turned downward.
    “I could not persuade the master of pages to order them all here without telling him that a lady had made complaint,” he admitted. “But I would not give him your name.”
    “So they all know of the crime?” I said, horrified.
    “The pages know nothing,” Culpepper said firmly. “They were told only of a need for inspection. And so long as you keep the mask in front of your face, the master of pages won’t know who you are.”
    Oh, but he wanted to know. That said master, a man of stout belly and long whiskers, stood at the end of the chamber, calling out orders to the pages. Yet every moment or so, he’d crane his neck in the most unnatural way, to scrutinize me. I stood but fifteen feet or so above him in the gallery, clutching my mask with one hand and pressing against a cold, smooth column with the other.
    Stop looking up here , I silently pleaded.
    It was high morning; a forceful yellow light streamed throughthe mullioned windows on the other side of the chamber. This was why Culpepper had arranged for the “inspection” to be held