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  Contents

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Part One: Ten Years Earlier

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part Two

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Part Three

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Part Four

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Part Five

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Part Six

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Acknowledgments

  Reading Group Guide

  About Nancy Bilyeau

  To Kate McLennan, for her encouragement,

  just when I needed it

  And Jesus said, “Father, if you be willing, take this cup from me.”

  —Luke 22:42

  PROLOGUE

  When preparing for martyrdom on the night of December 28, 1538, I did not think of those I love. Hiding in a narrow cemetery with seven men, all of us poised to commit violence at Canterbury Cathedral, I instead stared at the words carved into the tombstone I huddled behind: “Here lieth interred the body of Brother Bartholomeus Giles, of Christ-Church Priory, Canterbury, who departed this life on the sixteenth of June, 1525.”

  How fortunate was Brother Bartholomeus. He prayed, sang, labored, and studied, and after his body weakened, was moved to the infirmary, to die there, blessedly ignorant that his was the last generation to serve God in an English monastery. This humble monk had known nothing of the Dissolution.

  A gibbous moon hung above me tonight, swollen and bright in the sable sky, illuminating all the gravestones and memorials. But somehow it was a soft moon, not the sharply detailed orb I’d seen on other winter nights. It must be because we were near the sea. I’d been to Canterbury one other time—the same journey during which I learned of my destiny. Against my will, I was told of a prophecy. It was one I feared above all else. Yet here, tonight, I stood ready to fulfill it.

  We had each of us picked a stone of concealment in this graveyard, a paean to a departed brother. These seven were like brothers to me now, and one most particularly so. Brother Edmund Sommerville, standing but a few feet away, looked over, and I nodded my readiness. We both knew the time approached. He blew on his frozen fingers, and I did the same. Our hands must be supple enough to grip the weapons we’d brought. I carried a rock with a sharp edge; Brother Edmund held a cudgel. We had no training in combat. Our faith would supply the needed strength.

  After King Henry VIII ordered the surrender of our home, Dartford Priory, we had become, to the world, simply Edmund Sommerville and Joanna Stafford. I’d struggled to prevent that. In the last months of Dartford Priory’s existence, under duress, I’d searched the convent for the Athelstan crown, an object that Bishop Stephen Gardiner swore to me would stop the destruction. But the search took unexpected—and deadly—turns, and when it was over, our priory, 180 years old, closed its doors forever, as did the other monasteries. So ended the chaste splendors and humble glories of the only house for Dominican sisters in England. We had no choice but to relinquish our habits and veils and depart. I moved into the town close by and, with a handful of other priory refugees, tried very hard to make a new life for myself. Now that was over, too. The cruelty of the royal court had swung close to me once more. I’d seen fear and treachery and loss—and courage, too—and innocent blood spilled on Tower Hill.

  The figure of a man darted through the cemetery. In the moonlight, the face of Brother Oswald, a onetime Cistercian monk, was a sliver of ivory within his hooded cloak. His wounds of face and body, inflicted by those who hate us and call us Papists, were hidden.

  “We will move on the cathedral soon,” Brother Oswald said in a ragged whisper.

  My hand tightened on the side of the gravestone. Within moments, men sent by King Henry would emerge from this dark cathedral carrying a sacred wooden box. And we would be waiting.

  Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, was murdered inside that cathedral 368 years ago because he would not submit to the will of an earthly king. After his death, Rome proclaimed Becket a saint. His grave became a shrine—the holiest destination in all of England. But Henry VIII had declared our revered saint a criminal, stripping his shrine. Tomorrow was the anniversary of Becket’s assassination. Before the first valiant pilgrims arrived, the desecration would have taken place. King’s men were at this moment stealing the feretrum, the adorned box containing the bones of the archbishop. The remains of Becket would be burned, his ashes scattered to the wind.

  It was the final cruelty from the king who had already taken everything from me and from all of us who had lived enclosed and spiritual lives.

  “I heard the prior’s prayers from the side door,” said Brother Oswald. “He begged the king’s men to be allowed to pray before they took away the feretrum, and they relented. We shall go to the street in a few minutes.”

  The monk crossed himself. “God will be with us,” he said, a little louder. “We do His work tonight. Do not forget—the Holy Father will bless us. He has no knowledge of our business here, but once it is done, all Christendom will give profound thanks.”

  Not much time remained. Brother Oswald, our leader, dropped to his knees and prayed, his hands trembling with fervor. Thirteen months ago, when Brother Edmund and I met him, he was a monk who smiled, suffused with hope. Brother Oswald had been turned out of his monastery but was confident he’d learn God’s purpose by roaming the land with a dozen other displaced monks. Weeks ago, I found him again, this time fending off blows. There were no more smiles from Brother Oswald. But when was the last time I had smiled, or, for that matter, eaten a meal or slept a night through? I wasn’t sure.

  A dog barked on the cobbled street between the cemetery and the cathedral. Its mad cries echoed off the towering cathedral. I hunched over, covering my mouth with my hand so my warm breath wouldn’t form a white cloud above the tombstone.

  Another dog answered, farther down the street. The first beast ran toward it, barking ever more frantically. Then they ran together, through Canterbury, seeking mischief. Their sounds died away.

  “Sister Joanna?”

  It was Brother Edmund. Even lit by moonlight, the change in him startled me. His determination to take this course of action se
veral days ago had blessed my friend with a serenity of purpose. But now his brown eyes flickered with pain.

  “Are you no longer of a mind to do this?” I whispered.

  He opened his mouth and then shut it. “Is it Sister Winifred?” I asked. I knew how much he loved his younger sister. As did I—she was my closest friend.

  He still didn’t answer. The others were finishing the Rosary; the sounds of murmured prayers and clicking beads drifted across the graves.

  “And you—what of Arthur?” Brother Edmund finally said.

  I looked down at Brother Bartholomeus’s tombstone. I didn’t want Brother Edmund to see my eyes, fearing he would read my thoughts. For it wasn’t Arthur, the orphaned boy who depended on me, who had leaped into my mind but a grown man. I could see the angry face of Geoffrey Scovill and hear his words once more: “You’re a fool, Joanna. What you’re doing is madness—and it will change nothing.”

  If I were killed here, tonight, on the streets of Canterbury, it would free Geoffrey, the constable who had helped me time and again. Our bond, so fraught for so long, would be severed and he could begin a new life. He was twenty-nine years old, two years older than I. Not quite young, but not old either. This was a selfless goal. I should have taken strength from it, and yet I felt quite the opposite. My belly leaped and tumbled; I was so dizzy I had to rest my forehead against the gravestone.

  “It is time, brothers—and sister,” said Brother Oswald. The others stepped out from behind monuments. Brother Edmund moved forward with determination. I pushed off from the grave marker with one hand—clutching my sharp stone with the other—and took my place in the line moving slowly toward the street.

  The gate creaked as our leader pushed it open and slipped through.

  One of the monks cried, “They’re coming out!” Lights moved deep inside the cathedral.

  There was a loud clattering of hooves on the narrow cobbled street, and a single man on horseback appeared. I recognized his green-and-white livery as Tudor colors. He was a king’s soldier—he must have been stationed outside while the others charged into the cathedral. He pulled up on his horse and stared at us, arrayed before him in an uneven line.

  One of the monks next to me hissed. It was taken up by another. Then another.

  The soldier flinched in his saddle; his mouth dropped open. He was young, I could see that now. Eighteen at the most. In our long tattered cloaks and robes, hissing at him, we must have seemed terrifying wraiths.

  He shook the reins and kicked the side of his horse, to return to the front of the cathedral and doubtless warn the other soldiers. Brother Oswald scrambled after him, and his followers went with him.

  Brother Edmund looked at them and then at me, torn.

  “Go, go, go,” I choked. “Don’t tarry.”

  I pushed Brother Edmund away from me with all my strength. To my relief, he went. But I couldn’t follow. My legs were frozen. The moon spun slowly in the sky.

  A distant door opened with a thud and men cried out. I could hear it all, the noises boomed from the front of the cathedral, but I couldn’t see anything. A noise pulsed in my ears. It was like the roaring sea. Snow came down faster, in stinging gusts. I stuck out my tongue to taste the flakes—I’d do anything to stave off fainting.

  I staggered to the wall of Canterbury Cathedral. How could I be struck down by such weakness? This was what was supposed to happen—and my place in it was critical.

  “What you’re doing is madness—and it will change nothing.”

  I kept hearing the words, scornful yet pleading, of Geoffrey Scovill. It was as if he sapped my strength from miles away. Frustrated, I grabbed the bricks to pull myself along the wall. I had to fight alongside Brother Edmund and the others. No matter the consequences, I’d finally determined to do this, to stop hiding from the future.

  I dragged myself to the end of the wall.

  Two fresh torches blazed on either side of the entranceway. Cowering in the doorway was the plump prior, his hands cupping his shiny face. He had no idea of our plans tonight, any more than he had of the royal mission to defile Becket’s shrine. It had been easy for the soldiers to despoil the cathedral. That was one thing that always worked in King Henry’s favor: the paralysis of the faithful, our inability to resist the destruction of our faith because we couldn’t believe this could actually be happening to us. Until tonight. Each of us had sworn to take control of our destiny by trusting in God that this was what God wanted us to do. It did not matter whether we survived. Only whether we succeeded.

  In front of the prior stood four of the king’s soldiers. I had expected more than this. One man carried a long box—the freretum. The others charged forward, to confront the monks, who formed a semicircle on the street.

  Brother Oswald thundered: “In the name of the Holy Father, I command you to cease your desecration.” His hood fell back. In the torchlight his albino skin glowed like an advent candle of purest white wax.

  I was accustomed to Brother Oswald’s pallor, but the sight of him had a terrifying effect on the soldiers. One of them cried, “God’s blood, what is he?”

  My attention was drawn to the aged box, gripped by a king’s soldier. Within seconds, my dizziness evaporated. A fiery rage surged through me, singeing every inch of my body. Everything I’d been told in London was true—the night before the anniversary, the king’s men were secretly removing the holy remains.

  I could not let them defile the bones of Saint Thomas.

  This is the city where it began, I thought as I raced toward the door, gripping my rock. And this is the city where it will end.

  PART ONE

  TEN YEARS EARLIER

  1

  CANTERBURY

  SEPTEMBER 25, 1528

  Before the lash of the wind drew blood, before I felt it first move through the air, our horses knew that something was coming.

  I was seventeen, and I had made the long journey down to Canterbury from my home, Stafford Castle. At the beginning of each autumn my father traveled to London to attend to family business, but he had not wanted me or my mother to accompany him. A bout of sweating sickness struck the South that summer and he feared we’d lose our lives to the lingering reach of that disease. My mother would not be dissuaded. She told him she feared for my life if I did not take the healing waters at a bath she knew of in Canterbury, to cure me of melancholia.

  Once in London, my father remained in our house on the Strand, seeing to business, while we rode on with two servants to Canterbury. The day after we arrived, my mother, greatly excited, took me to the shore overlooking the sea. But when we reached it, and I gazed for the first time at those churning gray waves, my mother’s temper changed. She had not seen the sea herself since coming to England from Spain at fourteen as a maid of honor to Katherine of Aragon. After a few moments of silence, she began to weep. Her tears deepened into wrenching sobs. I did not know what to say, so I said nothing. I touched her shoulder and a moment later she stopped.

  The third day in Canterbury I was taken to be healed. Below a tall house on a fashionable street stretched an ancient grotto. We walked down a set of stairs, and then two stout young women lowered me into the stone bath. It brimmed with pungent water bubbling up from a spring. I sat in it, motionless. Every so often, I could make out strange colors beneath the surging water: bright reddish brown and a deep blue-gray. Mosaics, we were told.

  “A Roman built this bath,” explained the woman who administered the treatment. “There was a forum in the city, temples, even theaters. Everything was leveled by the Saxons, but below ground it’s still here. A city below the city.”

  The bath mistress turned my head, this way and that. “How do you feel, mistress? Stronger?” She so wanted to please us. Outside London and the ranks of the nobility, it was not known how much our family lost in the fall of the Duke of Buckingham, my father’s eldest brother. He was executed after being falsely accused of high treason, and nearly all Stafford land was seized by the Crown.
Here, in a Canterbury bath, we were mistaken for people of importance.

  “I feel better,” I murmured. The woman smiled with pride. I glanced over at my mother. She refolded her hands in her lap. I had not fooled her.

  The next morning, I expected to begin the journey back to London. But while I was in bed, my mother lay next to me. She turned on her side and ran her fingers through my hair, as she used to when I was a child. We had the same black tresses. Her hair thinned later on—in truth, it fell out in patches—but she never grayed. “Juana, I’ve made arrangements to see a young nun,” she said.

  There was nothing surprising about her making such a plan. In Spain, my mother’s family spent as much time as possible with nuns and monks and friars. They visited the abbeys that dotted the hills of Castile, to pray in the churches, bow to the holy relics, or meditate through the night in austere cells. The religious houses near Stafford Castle could not compare. “Not a single mystic within a day’s ride of here,” she’d moan.

  As we readied ourselves, my mother told me about Sister Elizabeth Barton. The Benedictine nun had an unusual story. Just two years earlier she’d worked as a servant for the steward of the Archbishop of Canterbury. She fell ill and for weeks lay senseless. She woke up healed—and her first question was about a child who lived nearby who had also sickened, but only after Elizabeth Barton lost consciousness. There was no way she could have known of it. From that day on, she was aware of things happening in other rooms, in other houses, even miles away. Archbishop Warham sent men to examine her and they concluded that her gifts were genuine. It was decided that this young servant should take holy vows and so be protected from the world. The Holy Maid of Kent now resided in the priory of Saint Sepulchre, but she sometimes granted audiences to those with pressing questions.

  “Her prayers could be meaningful,” my mother said, pushing my hair behind my ears. There was a time when meeting such a person would have intrigued me. But I felt no such anticipation. With our maid’s help, I silently dressed.