The Tapestry by Nancy Bilyeau Read Free Book Online

“A place to rest from the proceedings? Contemplation?” He pivoted. “I must hurry now, it’s to begin any moment.”
    And with that he was gone.
    I chose to wait on the bench. It was quiet here, giving me the first opportunity to collect my thoughts since I left Dartford at dawn. I was exhausted, and thirsty, too. So much had transpired, and there was so much yet to come.
    In this dim little room, recalling what happened since I set foot in Whitehall, it all became absurd. Why would a page wish to hurt me, a woman of a fallen family carrying a commission for tapestries? For there was no question that he knew who I was, he used my name in that passageway, when trying to convince me, against my judgment, to follow him. Had he used my name earlier? I thought back to the beginning, when I stood before the gatehouse, when I handed my summons to the official, when the page stepped forward to escort me, when I said good-bye to Agatha. And then it hit me, a realization so frightening that the breath rushed out of my body.
    Neither I nor anyone had ever said my name aloud at the gatehouse or in the palace. And the page never read the summons.
    Impossible , I whispered into the dusty quiet. For this would mean that he was prepared for my arrival, he was waiting for me. There was a plot to hurt me—perhaps to kill me—and the page was the instrument. He was not a deranged creature but an assassin.
    This was not a matter for chivalrous Thomas Culpepper, nor for any of my innocent friends. I should get as far away from the court as possible. The only question was where. Where?
    As I sat there, convulsed with fear, the door opened, and a man walked into the room. The ceremony must already be over.
    But this was not gentleman of the privy chamber Thomas Culpepper.
    He was thicker and older than Culpepper. He did not speak nor turn toward me, and as he moved toward the window, I saw at once that he did not know anyone else was within. He thought the room empty and did not detect my presence in the shadowy far end.
    I should declare myself—I opened my mouth—when something about his profile made the words falter in my throat. Had I seen this man before?
    Before I could place him in my memory, the man turned from the window and buried his face in his hands, his shoulders hunched.
    “No,” he groaned. “No.” Was this illness? Or grief? Had he suffered some loss? It was quite wrong of me to bear witness to such a private moment. This man was in distress.
    I must have shifted on the bench—made a noise—for the man turned to face me, his hands dropping from his face. We stared at each other, both of us shocked by the face beheld across the room.
    The man in the room with me was Thomas Cromwell.

6

    J oanna Stafford,” Thomas Cromwell said, as if he could not himself believe it. “Why are you here?”
    I could not speak, could not move.
    He bore down on me and I flinched, as if preparing for a blow, the sort of vicious smack I’d suffered more than once from the Duke of Norfolk. But the king’s chief minister did not strike me. He took the summons from my hand and read it.
    “Of course,” he said, his voice very quiet. “Gardiner uses the king’s passion for tapestry to set his spy on me.”
    That helped me find my voice.
    “I am no spy, my lord,” I sputtered. “The Bishop of Winchester had nothing to do with my coming to court. It is your signature on the summons.”
    “Why come here ?” he countered. “This summons directed you to the keeper of the wardrobe, not to Westminster Hall. This is where Parliament convenes. It’s a stupid mistake, and we both know you are not a stupid female.”
    His calm words were laced with anger. It was not my being in this room that infuriated him but the fact that I had witnessed his distress, his fear. He was the second-most-important man of the kingdom. I knew that Cromwell and Gardiner were enemies, but he couldn’t truly believe that the wily bishop would ask me to follow