The Tapestry Read Online Free PDF Page A

protect you,” Agatha called after me, her voice shrill.
    As much as I wanted to, I did not turn around.

4

    W ith a graceful beckon, the page led me past a long, wooden gallery overlooking a garden and orchard. We took a walkway direct to the tallest of the white stone buildings. He walked quickly; I had to scramble to keep up. There was no question of walking side by side. I would trail him all the way to the keeper of the wardrobe.
    When I stepped over the threshold, it was the first time I’d entered a royal home since the terrible day in 1527 when I arrived to carry out my duties to Henry VIII’s first queen, Catherine of Aragon. Whitehall was grander than my memory of Greenwich. The page led me to a hall that seemed to stretch forever.
    The hall, like the courtyard, was filled with men, though these were calm. High above their heads stretched a ceiling possessing as much meticulous grandeur as the gatehouse. The same black-and-white checks, the judicious sprinkling of fleurs-de-lis. Mullioned windows were set high in the walls. It struck me that this was a very modern palace. I strained to remember what I knew of Whitehall—it was the London home of the archbishops of York until Henry VIII’s first minister, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, took ownership and spent a fortune expanding it. After the king turned against Wolsey, he took Whitehall. Just as, years earlier, he had my uncle the Duke of Buckingham executed on trumped-up charges of treason and then took all his properties. That was what Henry VIII did—he took.
    It seemed that my destination was not within this hall but beyond it. As I hurried after the page, I passed groups of men talkingin low murmurs. Everyone seemed well acquainted. My whole life I’d felt an outsider, but here the feeling was most pronounced.
    My fervent hope was that I not encounter the Duke of Norfolk, Bishop Stephen Gardiner, or any of the other men whom I had antagonized in the last three years. So far there seemed little chance of that. The men of the king’s court I passed all looked very prosperous and respectable, but they were not attired in the sables, silks, and furs, the robes and chains of office that denoted the highest ranks.
    It would have been a source of great pleasure to see the Lady Mary, the king’s eldest daughter. We became friends two years ago when she learned I was among those who’d nursed her beloved mother, Queen Catherine, during the last weeks of her life. But I knew from the Lady Mary’s last letter that the advent of spring had sent her from court lodgings to Hunsdon House, her favorite establishment in the country.
    There was only one other person whom I would have liked to see—my young friend Catherine Howard, one of the queen’s maids of honor. But that could require seeing the queen herself, Anne of Cleves, and I did not want to do that. The prophecy called for the murder of King Henry before he could father a second son by the German princess, for that son would have set the world on fire. In place of killing Henry VIII, I gave him just enough of the drink from the chalice to sicken him and render him unable to be a husband to his bride. I did what I had to do, but Anne of Cleves did not deserve it. When I met her on the ship from Calais, she was kind and dignified—and generous. She paid a great deal for The Rise of the Phoenix , and this added to my guilt and confusion.
    All emotions receded as I caught sight of the king’s own tapestries. Behind the clusters of men, they covered the walls, one after another: arresting, glittering tapestries. I had never seen any this huge. They looked to be twenty feet wide. At Dartford Priory, we created far smaller ones. These must have been made in Brussels, the center of all tapestry production in Europe, making use of long looms and many workers. To create a story from a biblical source or mythology or history—a war, a tournament, a wedding—showing this many humanfigures, ten and more, would demand a