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Overview
BETWEEN THE CROWN AND THE CROSS STANDS ONE WOMAN
IN 1538, ENGLAND is in the midst of bloody power struggles that threaten to tear the country apart. Aristocrat-turned-novice Joanna Stafford knows what lies inside the king’s torture rooms and risks imprisonment when she is caught up in an international plot targeting the king. As the power plays turn vicious, Joanna understands she may have to assume her role in a prophecy foretold by three different seers.
Joanna realizes the life of Henry VIII, as well as the future of Christendom, are in her hands—hands that must someday hold the chalice that lies at the center of these deadly prophecies. . . .
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781476708669 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Gallery Books |
| Publication date: | 03/18/2014 |
| Series: | Joanna Stafford series |
| Edition description: | Reprint |
| Pages: | 512 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.20(w) x 7.80(h) x 1.40(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Chalice
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.
When I first left the household of Queen Katherine over a year ago, I would not speak to anyone. I wept or I lay in bed, my arms wrapped around my body. My mother had to force food into me. Everyone attributed it to the shock of the king’s request for an annulment—the queen, devastated, wailed loudly; the tall, furious monarch stormed from the room. This happened on the first day I entered service, to be a maid of honor to the blessed queen, as my mother had before me. The annulment was without question a frightening scandal.
But, from the beginning, my mother had suspected something else. She must have pressed me for answers a hundred times. I never, ever considered telling her or my father the truth. It was not just my intense shame. George Boleyn bragged that he was a favored courtier. His sister Anne was the beloved of the king. If my father, a Stafford, knew the truth—that Boleyn had violently touched me, his hand clapped over my mouth, and would have raped me had he more time—there is no force on earth that could have prevented him from trying to kill George Boleyn. As for my mother, the blood of ancient Spanish nobility, she would be even more ferocious in her revenge. To protect my parents, I said nothing. I blamed myself for what happened. I would not ruin my parents’ lives—and those of the rest of the Stafford family—because of that stupidity.
By the time summer ended in 1527, a certain dullness overtook me. I welcomed this reprieve from tumultuous emotion, but it worried my mother. She could not believe I’d lost interest in books and music, once my principal joys. I spent the following months—the longest winter of my life—drifting in a gray expanse of nothing. The apothecary summoned to Stafford Castle diagnosed melancholia, but the barber-surgeon said no, my humors were not aligned and I was too phlegmatic. Each diagnosis called for conflicting remedy. My mother argued with them both. When spring came, she decided to trust her own instincts in nursing me. I did regain my health but never all of my spirits. My Stafford relatives approved of the quieter, docile Joanna—I’d always been a headstrong girl—but my mother fretted.
That morning in Canterbury, when we’d finished dressing, my mother declared we had no need of servants. The priory of Saint Sepulchre was not far outside the city walls.
Our maid was plainly glad to be free of us for a few hours. The manservant was a different matter. “Sir Richard said I was to stay by your side at all times,” he said.
“And I am telling you to occupy yourself in some other way,” my mother snapped. “Canterbury is an honest city, and I know the way.”
The manservant aimed a look of hatred at her back. As much as they loved my father, the castle staff loathed my mother. She was difficult—and she was foreign. The English distrusted all foreigners, and in particular imperious females.
It was a fair day, warmer than expected for the season. We took the main road leading out of the city. Majestic oaks lined each side. A low brick wall surrounded Canterbury, most likely built by the Romans all those centuries ago.
As we neared the wall, my horse stopped dead. I shook the reins. But instead of starting up again, he shimmied sideways, edging off the road. I had never known my horse—or any horse—to move in this way.
My mother turned around, her face a question. But just at that moment, her horse gave her trouble as well. She brandished the small whip she always carried.
The winds came then. I managed to get my horse back onto the road, but he was still skittish. The wind blew his mane back so violently, it was like a hard fringe snapping at my face. By this time, we had managed to reach the gap in the wall where the road spilled out of Canterbury. All the trees swayed and bent, even the oaks, as if paying homage to a harsh master.
“Madre, we should go back.” I had to shout to be heard over the roar.
“No, we go on, Juana,” she shouted. Her black Spanish hood rose and flapped around her head, like a horned halo. “We must go on.”
I followed my mother to the priory of Saint Sepulchre. Dead brush hurtled over the ground. A brace of rabbits streaked across the road, and my horse backed up, whinnying. It took all my strength on the reins to prevent him from bolting. Ahead of me, my mother turned and pointed at a building to the left.
I never knew what struck me. My mother later said it was a branch, careening wildly through the air. All I knew was the pain that clawed my cheek, followed by a thick spreading wetness.
I would have been thrown but for a bearded man who emerged from the windstorm and grabbed the reins. The man helped me down and into a small stone gatehouse. My mother was already inside. She called out her gratitude in Spanish. The man dampened a cloth, and she cleaned the blood off my face.
“It’s not a deep cut, thank the Virgin,” my mother said, and instructed me to press the cloth hard on my skin.
“How much farther to the priory?” I asked.
“We are at Saint Sepulchre now, this man is the porter,” she said. “It’s just a few steps to the main doors.”
The porter escorted us to the long stone building. The wind blew so strong that I feared I’d be sent flying through the air, like the broken branch. The porter shoved open tall wooden doors. He did not stay—he said he must see to the safety of our horses. Seconds later, I heard the click of a bolt on the other side of the door.
We were locked inside Saint Sepulchre.
I knew little of the life of a nun. Friars, who had freedom of movement, sometimes visited Stafford Castle. I had not given thought to the meaning of enclosure. Nuns, like monks, were intended to live apart from the world, for prayer and study. That much I knew. But now I also began to grasp that enclosure might require enforcement.
There was one high window in the square room. The wind beat against the glass with untamed ferocity. No candles brightened the dimness. There was no furniture nor any tapestries.
A framed portrait of a man did hang on the wall. The man wore plain robes; his long white beard rested on his cowl. He carried a wooden staff. Each corner of the frame was embellished with a carving of a leafed branch.
My mother gasped and clutched my arm. With her other, she pointed at a dark form floating toward us from the far end of the room. A few seconds later we realized it was a woman. She wore a long black habit and a black veil, and so had melted into the darkness. As she drew nearer, I could see she was quite old, with large, pale blue eyes.
“I am Sister Anne, I welcome you to the priory of Saint Sepulchre,” she said.
My mother, in contrast to the nun’s gentle manner, spoke in a loud, nervous tumble, her hands in motion. We were expected, she said. A visitation had been granted with Sister Elizabeth Barton, the storm roughened our journey, and I’d been slightly injured, but we expected to go forward. Sister Anne took it all in with perfect calm.
“The prioress will want to speak with you,” she said, and turned back the way she came, to lead us. We followed her down a passageway even darker than the room we’d waited in. The nun must have been at least sixty years of age, yet she walked with youthful ease.
There were three doors along the hall. Sister Anne opened the last one on the left and ushered us into another dim, empty room.
“But where is the prioress?” demanded my mother. “As I’ve told you, Sister, we are expected.”
Sister Anne bowed and left. I could tell from the way my mother pursed her lips she was unhappy with how we’d been treated thus far.
In this room stood two wooden tables. One was large, with a bench behind it. The other was narrow, pushed against a wall. I noticed the floor was freshly swept and the walls showed no stains of age. The priory might have been modest, but it was scrupulously maintained.
“How is your cut?” my mother asked. She lifted the cloth and peered at my cheek. “The bleeding has stopped. Does it still hurt?”
“No,” I lied.
I spotted a book mounted on the narrow table and decided to inspect it more closely. The leather cover was dominated by a gleaming picture of a robed man with a white beard, holding a staff—similar to the portrait in the front chamber but more detailed. The beatific pride of his expression, the folds of his brown robe, the clouds soaring above his head—all were rendered in rich, dazzling colors. Running along the square border of the man’s picture was an intertwined branch: thin with slender green leaves. With great care, I opened the book. It was written in Latin, a language I had dedicated myself to since I was eight years old. The Life of Saint Benedict of Nursia, read the title. Underneath was his span of life: AD 480 to 543. There was a black bird below the dates, holding a loaf of bread in its beak. I turned another page and began to absorb the story. Underneath a picture of a teenage boy in the tunic of a Roman, it said that Saint Benedict forsook his family’s wealth, choosing to leave the city where he was raised. Another turn showed him alone, surrounded by mountains.
I’d been concentrating so closely that I didn’t hear my mother until she stood right next to me. “Ah, the founder of the Benedictines,” she said. She pointed at the branches that stretched across the border of each page. “The olive branch is so lovely; it’s the symbol of their order.”
My finger froze on the page. I realized that for the first time since last May, when I submitted myself to the profligate court of Henry VIII, I felt true curiosity. Was it the violent force of the wind—had it ripped the lassitude from me? Or had I been awakened by this spare, humble priory and the dazzling beauty of this, its precious object?
The door opened. A woman strode into the room. She was younger than the first nun—close in age to my mother. Her face was sharply sculpted, with high cheekbones.
“I am the prioress, Sister Philippa Jonys.”
My mother leaped forward and seized the prioress’s hand to kiss it and go down on one knee. It was not only theatricality: I knew that in Spain, deep obeisance was paid to the heads of holy houses. But the prioress’s eyes widened at the sight of my prostrate mother.
Pulling her hand free, the prioress said, “I regret to hear of your mishap. We are a Benedictine house, sworn to hospitality, and will offer you a place of rest until you are ready to resume your journey.”
My mother sputtered, “But we are here to see Sister Elizabeth Barton. It was arranged. I corresponded with Doctor Bocking while still at Stafford Castle.”
I stared at my mother in surprise. My impression had been that the trip to Saint Sepulchre was spontaneous, arranged in Canterbury or London at the earliest. I began to comprehend that the healing waters served as an excuse to get us here. Coming to Saint Sepulchre, without servants to observe us, was her purpose.
“I have not been informed of this visitation, and nothing occurs here without my approval,” the prioress said.
Most would be intimidated by such a rebuff. Not Lady Isabella Stafford.
“Doctor Bocking, the monk who I understand is the spiritual advisor of Sister Elizabeth, wrote to me granting permission,” my mother said. “I would have brought his letter as proof, but I did not expect that the wife of Sir Richard Stafford—and a lady-in-waiting to the queen of England—could be disbelieved.”
The prioress clutched the leather belt that clinched her habit. “This is a priory, not the court of the king. Sister Elizabeth is a member of our community. We have six nuns at Saint Sepulchre. Six. There is much work to be done, earthly responsibilities as well as spiritual. These visits rob Sister Elizabeth of her health. ‘Will this harvest be better?’ ‘Will I marry again?’ She cannot spend all of her time with such pleadings.”
“I am not here to inquire about harvests,” snapped my mother.
“Then why are you here?”
With a glance at me, my mother said, “My daughter has not been well for some time. If I knew what course to take—what her future might hold—”
“Mama, no,” I interrupted, horrified. “We were ordered by Cousin Henry never to solicit prophecy, after the Duke of Buckingham’s—”
“Be silent,” scolded my mother. “This is not of the same import.”
There was a tap on the door, and Sister Anne reappeared.
“Sister Elizabeth said she will see the girl named Joanna now,” the elderly nun murmured.
“Did you tell her of these guests?” demanded the prioress.
Sister Anne shook her head. The prioress and nun stared at each other. A peculiar emotion throbbed in the air.
My mother did not notice it. “Please, without further delay, show us the way to Sister Elizabeth,” she said, triumphant.
Sister Anne bowed her head. “Forgive me, Lady Stafford, but Sister Elizabeth said she will see the girl Joanna alone. And that she must come of her own free will and unconstrained.”
“But I don’t want to see her at all,” I protested.
My mother took me by the shoulders. Her face was flushed; I feared she was close to tears. “Oh, you must, Juana,” she said. “Por favor. Ask her what is to be done. Sister Elizabeth has a gift, a vision. Only she can guide us. I can’t cope with this anymore all alone. I can’t.”
I had not realized how much my spiritual affliction troubled my mother. Her suffering filled me with remorse. I would go to this strange young nun. The visit should be brief; I intended to ask few questions.
The prioress and Sister Anne spoke together, in hushed tones, for another minute. Then the prioress beckoned for me alone to follow.
She led me down the passageway, through the front entranceway, and down another dim corridor. Following her, I thought of how the elegance of her movements contrasted with the ladies I’d grown up with. Hers was certainly not movement calculated to draw admiration. It was grace that derived from simplicity and economy of movement.
I also tried to plan how I could speak to Sister Elizabeth Barton without disobeying the command of Lord Henry Stafford, my cousin and head of the family. It had been the prophecy of a friar, much distorted, that was the basis for arresting my uncle, the Duke of Buckingham. During the trial, he was charged with seeking to learn the future—how long would Henry VIII live and would he produce sons—so that the duke could plot to seize the throne. Afterward, my cautious cousin, his son, said repeatedly that none of the family could ever have anything to do with prophecy. My father agreed—he harbored a personal distaste for seers, witches, and necromancers. It was one of the many ways in which he differed from my mother.
The prioress rapped on a door, gently. She hesitated, her eyebrows furrowing, and then she opened it and we stepped inside.
This room was tiny, as small as a servant’s. A lone figure sat in the middle of the floor, slumped over, her back to us. There was no window. Two candles that burned on either side of the door provided the only light.
“Sister Elizabeth, will you attend Vespers later?” asked the prioress.
The figure nodded but did not turn around. The prioress said to me, “I shall be back shortly,” and gestured for me to step forward.
I edged inside. The prioress closed the door.
Sister Elizabeth Barton wore the same black habit as the others. She didn’t turn around. I felt awkward. Unwanted. The minutes crept by.
“It’s a wind that brings no rain,” said a young voice.
“Indeed, Sister,” I said, relieved that she spoke. “There wasn’t any rain.” But a second later I wondered how she knew anything about the elements without a window in the room. Another nun must have told her, I concluded. Just as someone told her my name—the monk Doctor Bocking, perhaps. I did not believe that she possessed the powers my mother spoke of. Although devout, I held closer to the spirit of my pragmatic father in such matters.
White hands reached out and Sister Elizabeth turned herself around, slowly, sitting on the floor. This nun was but a girl, and so frail looking. She had a long face, with a sloping chin.
As she gazed up at me, sadness filled her eyes.
“I did not know you would be so young,” she whispered.
“I am seventeen,” I said. “You look to be the same age.”
“I am twenty-two,” she said, and continued: “You have intelligence, piety, strength, and beauty. And noble blood. All the things I lack.” There was no envy. It was as if she mulled a list of goods to be purchased at market.
Ignoring her assessment of me, which I found embarrassing, I asked, “How can you say you lack piety when you are a sister of Christ?”
“God chose me,” she said. “I was a servant, of no importance in the world. He chose me to speak the truth. I have no choice. I must submit to His will. For you it is different. You have a true spiritual calling.”
Sister Elizabeth Barton was confused. “I am not a nun,” I said.
She frowned, as if she were responding to someone else’s voice. She slowly rose to her feet. She was spare and small, at least three inches shorter than me.
“Yes, the two cardinals are coming,” she said. “It will be within the month. They will pass through on the way to London. I will have to try to speak to them. I must find the courage to go before all the highest and most powerful men in the land.”
My mother had said nothing of Sister Elizabeth leaving Saint Sepulchre to go before the powerful. “Why would you do that?” I asked.
“To stop them,” she said.
I was torn. A part of me was curious, but another, larger, part was growing uneasy. There was nothing malevolent about this fragile nun, yet her words made me uncomfortable.
At last the curious part won. “Whom must you stop, Sister?” I asked. “The cardinals?”
She shook her head and took two steps toward me. “You know, Joanna.”
“No, Sister Elizabeth, I don’t.”
“Your mother wants to know your future—should she marry you off in the country to someone who will take you with meager dowry, or try to return you to the court of the king? Your true vocation leaps in her face, but she cannot see. Poor woman. She has no notion of what she has set in motion by bringing you to me.”
How could the Holy Maid of Kent know so much of my family? Yet I said, nervously, “Sister, I don’t know what you are talking about.”
Her lower lip trembled. “When the cow doth ride the bull, then priest beware thy skull,” she said.
My stomach clenched. At last, I had heard a prophecy.
“Those are not my words,” Sister Elizabeth continued. “They come from the lips of Mother Shipton. Do you know of her?”
I shook my head.
“Born in a cave in Yorkshire,” she said, her words coming fast. “A girl without a father—a bastard of the north. Hated and scorned by all. Not just for deformity of face but for the power of her words. Crone, they call her. Witch. It is so wretched to know the truth, Joanna. To see things no one else can see. To have to try to stop evil before it is too late.”
“What sort of evil?” The instant I asked the question, I regretted it.
Again the nun’s lower lip trembled. Her eyes gleamed with tears.
“The Boleyns,” she said.
I stumbled back and hit the stone wall, hard. I felt behind me for the door. I hadn’t heard the prioress lock it. I would find a way out of this room. I must.
“Oh, you’re so frightened, forgive me,” she wailed, tears spattering her face. “I don’t want this fate for you. I know that you’ve already been touched by the evil. I will try my hardest, Joanna. I don’t want you to be the one.”
“The one?” I repeated, still feeling for the door.
Sister Elizabeth stretched her arms wide, her palms facing the ceiling. “You are the one who will come after,” she said.
The gravity of her words, coupled with the way she spread her hands, chilled me to the marrow.
Sister Elizabeth opened her mouth, as if to say something else, and then shut it. Her face turned bright red. But in a flash, the red drained away, leaving her skin ashen. I looked at the candles. How could a person change color in such a manner? But the candles burned steadily.
“Are you unwell, Sister?” I said. “Shall I seek help?”
She shook her head, violently, but not to say no to me. Her head, her arms, her legs—every part of her shook. Her tongue bobbed in and out of her mouth. After less than a minute of this, her knees gave way and she collapsed.
“It hurts,” she moaned, writhing on her back. “It hurts.”
“I will get you help,” I said.
“No, no, no,” she said, her voice a hoarse stammer. “Joanna Stafford . . . hear me. I . . . beg . . . you.”
Fighting down my terror, I knelt on the floor beside her. A trail of white foam eased out of her gaping mouth. She thrashed and coughed; I thought she would lose consciousness. But she didn’t.
“I see abbeys crumbling to dust,” she said. The choking and thrashing ended. Incredibly, the voice of Sister Elizabeth Barton boomed strong and clear. “I see the blood of monks spilled across the land. Books are destroyed. Statues toppled. Relics defiled. I see the greatest men of the kingdom with heads struck off. The common folk will hang, even the children. Friars will starve. Queens will die.”
Rocking back and forth, I moaned, “No, no, no. This can’t be.”
“You are the one who will come after,” she said, her voice stronger still. “I am the first of three seers. If I fail, you must go before the second and then the third, to receive the full prophesy and learn what you must do. But only of your own free will. After the third has prophesied, nothing can stop it, Joanna Stafford. Nothing.”
“But I can’t,” I cried. “I can’t do anything. I’m no one—and I’m too afraid.”
In a voice so loud it echoed in her cell, Sister Elizabeth said, “When the raven climbs the rope, the dog must soar like the hawk. When the raven climbs the rope, the dog must soar like the hawk.”
The door flew open. The prioress and Sister Anne hurried to the fallen nun, kneeling beside her. Sister Elizabeth Barton said just two words more, before the prioress pried open her jaw and Sister Anne pushed in a rag. She turned her head, to find me with her fierce eyes, and then she spoke.
“The chalice . . .”
What People are Saying About This
"Superbly set in the political and religious turmoil between Henry VIII's queens Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves, The Chalice is a dark, twisty thriller that I couldn't put down. Nancy Bilyeau's extensive historical research makes the sense of dread, danger, and mysticism permeating this era tangible. Ex-Dominican novice Joanna Stafford is an especially compelling and sympathetic heroine—I adored her!
"An exciting and satisfying novel of historical suspense that cements Nancy Bilyeau as one of the genre's rising stars. The indominable Joanna Stafford is back with a cast of powerful and fascinating characters and a memorable story that is gripping while you are reading and haunting after you are done. Bravo! The Chalice is a fabulous read.
"Rarely have the terrors of Henry VIII's reformation been so exciting. Court intrigue, bloody executions, and haunting emotional entanglements create a heady brew of mystery and adventure that sweeps us from the devastation of the ransacked cloisters to the dangerous spy centers of London and the Low Countries, as ex-novice Joanna Stafford fights to save her way of life and fulfill an ancient prophecy, before everything she loves is destroyed.
The Chalice offers a fresh, dynamic look into Tudor England's most powerful, volatile personalities: Henry VIII, the Duke of Norfolk, Stephen Gardiner and Bloody Mary Tudor. Heroine and former nun Joanna Stafford is beautiful, bold and in lethal danger. Bilyeau writes compellingly of people and places that demand your attention and don't let you go even after the last exciting page.
Reading Group Guide
This reading group guide for Gold includes an introduction, discussion questions, ideas for enhancing your book club, and a Q&A with author Nancy Bilyeau. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.
Introduction
In 1538, as England is torn apart by violent power struggles between crown and cross, Joanna Stafford, a young novice whose monastic life has been dismantled, finds herself unwittingly drawn into a dark plot targeting King Henry VIII. With great reluctance, Joanna assumes her role in a prophecy foretold by three different seers, each providing another vital piece of this strange, otherworldly puzzle. Ultimately, she is swept up into an international intrigue against her King and country. Joanna realizes the life of Henry VIII, as well as the future of Christendom are in her hands, hands that must someday hold the chalice that lays at the center of these deadly foretellings.
Topics & Questions for Discussion
1) What role does prophecy play in The Chalice? How does this idea of prophecy drive much of the book? What are your beliefs regarding seers and prophecies?
2) Why do you think Bilyeau uses a young novice like Joanna Stafford to carry out such important historic weight as to save Henry VIII or destroy him?
3) “Why must this burden fall upon me?” Joanna asks Edmund when they are in Blackfriars, and he answers, “It’s you. You are a woman unlike any other, Sister Joanna. I’ve tried to define this quality that sets you apart. I’ve never quite been able to.” Can you define it? How does Joanna’s character shape and affect the unfolding of the story? In what ways does Joanna’s character change over the course of the novel? In the end, how have the events of the novel changed her forever?
4) Who directs Gertrude Courtenay to find Joanna? Were you surprised by this revelation? How are Joanna and Gertrude’s lives bound up, beyond the fact of their relatedness by marriage? How do their fates become so entwined? And how does it tie back to Katherine of Aragon? Discuss, as well, how Gertrude and Joanna’s lives are directly impacted by the Boleyn family.
5) Joanna resists meeting the seers and hearing the prophecies, and yet Bilyeau writes, “We’d all been forced to abandon our dream. Yet now, because of what I’d revealed, a restoration was possible. Why didn’t I surge forward, snatching at my place in the prophecy, eager to bring back our way of life? But I couldn’t.” Why do you think she isn’t able to? What are the myriad ways in which Joanna resists her fate and why? Discuss the idea of free will versus fate, and fate versus destiny.
6) Geoffrey Scovill appears in several places to warn Joanna or to help her or to persuade her to be with him. He claims he wants only her happiness, and yet when it is time for Joanna to marry Edmund, he prevents it. What was your reaction to his behavior at that moment? Sometimes Joanna wants Geoffrey near her, yet at other times she pushes him away. What is your impression of their relationship? When they meet again in the cemetery, Scovill regrets that he didn’t appreciate his wife, Beatrice, more before her death. What do you think Scovill has learned about love and life? What do you think the future holds for Geoffrey and Joanna’s relationship?
7) When Joanna is alone in Blackfriars with Edmund Sommerville, Bilyeau writes, “I waited, with eyes shut. After I don’t know how long, his lips pressed against mine, but so gently I almost doubted it was happening. I had never felt a touch this tender. I ached for more from him.” How does Bilyeau handle the delicate issue of desire in a work about celibate religious men and women? How does Joanna deal with her own desire?
8) Just as Gardiner once used Joanna’s father to get her to look for the Athelstan crown, now when Jacquard Rolin threatens Edmund’s life to force Joanna to complete the prophecy. When she complies, what does this say about Joanna’s character? Her sense of loyalty? How might you respond in a similar situation?
9) When Joanna meets Ambassador Chapuys in Antwerp, she says, “I know that you and others look to me to put a stop to evil. But in so doing, I am creating evil…The man who spied for Gardiner in Hertfordshire and now Master Adams? God would not have it so – I know in my heart it’s not right.” What do you think about what Joanna says? How do you think Chapuys feels after she’s said this? Have you ever been confronted with such a dilemma in your life?
10) “Was I indeed a fool not to see that this was the plan from the beginning – for me to kill the king of England?” Bilyeau writes. “I’d hoped, and perhaps it was grossly unrealistic, that in the end I would commit some act, such as the abortive attempt to rescue the body of Thomas Becket, that would turn the tide of history…But how wrong I was, how tragically wrong. This, then, was the prophecy that I’d been intertwined with since I was seventeen. To be a murderess.” Were you surprised by this revelation as well? Were you hoping for a different sort of prophecy as Joanna was? What might it have been?
11) When Bishop Gardiner takes Joanna to see Gertrude in the Tower of London and Joanna asks her if she regrets she entered into conspiracy, given how much she has lost – her husband, her son, her homes and fortune – Gertrude hisses, “Never.” How do you feel about this? Do you find it hard to believe? What sort of a person is Gertrude? How would you feel in her situation?
12) Joanna asks Bishop Gardiner if he has written the article that forbids religious people from marrying with her in mind, and he says, “Did you really think that religious policy for the entire kingdom was written just to strike out at you? Revenge, perhaps, revenge on my part for your failure to secure the Athelstan crown or perhaps for your recent flouting of my will?” Joanna says nothing, and then he finishes by saying, “You have never been a consideration of that import. Not everyone is meant to play a significant part in the affairs of the world, Joanna.” Do you believe him? Does Joanna? What do you think is the truth?
13) In the beginning of The Chalice? , John is a madman, running around Dartford spouting scripture about doom. In the end, he turns up at Joanna’s house in Dartford sane, well-dressed, and working as a wood collector. Do you think he is a symbol and/or metaphor for something in the novel? If so, discuss what it might be.
Enhance Your Book Club
1) Read Nancy Bilyeau’s debut novel The Crown, which also features Joanna Stafford.
2) If you are in New York City and interested in tapestries, you can visit The Cloisters; they showcase two sets of breathtaking tapestries known as the Unicorn tapestries and the Nine Heroes tapestries. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is also a wonderful place to see medieval artifacts, paintings, tapestries, and clothing.
3) If it is more historical information about this period you are after, there are two wonderful books by Alison Weir: Henry VIII: The King and His Court and Six Wives of Henry VIII.
4) Enjoy these films about this period in history: Henry VIII: Mind of a Tyrant, is a wonderful 2009 TV documentary by historian David Starkey which follows Henry from his childhood to the end of his life. But if you’re in the mood for fiction films, try Anne of a Thousand Days and A Man for All Seasons and/or the Cate Blanchett Elizabeth films.
A Conversation with Nancy Bilyeau
1) Both your first novel, The Crown and The The Chalice? , are set in 16th century England. Why have you chosen this particular time period? What resonance does it have for you?
Before I had a protagonist or a single character, I had my chosen time period: the 16th century. I never get tired of reading about it or thinking about it. I guess I’ll be in trouble if I do. I am not sure why I am so captivated—it’s an intoxicating time, it’s the transition from Middle Ages to Early Modern England, with Shakespeare and Erasmus, those vivid Holbein portraits, the music, the fashion, everything.
2) Explain how you decided to write another novel featuring Joanna Stafford after writing your debut The Crown. Are there any other adventures in Joanna’s future?
From the first, I envisioned a series of books about Joanna. I love discovering a book series myself, to know that something I am enjoying so much will be followed by another story by the same author, featuring the same main characters. I want to give readers that feeling when they are reading The Crownand The Chalice. And yes, I have more ideas. I think as I go, I get bolder, too. The adventures will become more surprising.
3) Of all the many facets of the reign of Henry VIII, you chose to focus on the dramatic religious changes. Why this particular aspect?
The marriages and sex life of Henry VIII have been written about quite a bit. They are dramatic fodder for storylines, but ultimately the people who were primarily affected by the king’s many marriages were the wives, children, and extended family. The daily life of a typical English man or woman was not altered by whether Henry VIII was married to Catherine Howard or Catherine Parr. But the violent wrench from Catholic to Protestant affected the entire country in profound ways. Since I wanted to create fictional characters in a time of change, if not chaos, I chose the religious conflict as engine for my narrative. I sought to understand what it would be like to live through a forced reformation. Religious faith was central to your life in the 16th century, and there was little understanding of freedom of expression, of freedom of speech. You had to adhere to the will of the king, who most believed was anointed by God, or face pretty dire consequences.
4) There is a great deal of historical detail in The Chalice. What methods of research did you use to gain such breadth of knowledge? Can you describe how you dealt with the mixing of history and fiction?
I was already very interested in Tudor England when I started my first novel. I have a home library of many books of nonfiction. To write my second book, I took a year off, essentially, and went to the New York Public Library and read extensively in many subjects, from medieval astrology to fashion trends to the streets curfews of London to the intricate European politics of 1538, just lots and lots of reading. I had notebooks full of information.
I also traveled to England to research The Chalice. I spent time inside Dartford's Holy Trinity Church, which is still a functioning church in the center of town; I walked the High Street where Joanna and Edmund and Geoffrey would have walked. I found the block in London where the Red Rose once stood, and I re-visited the Tower of London. It was quite unnerving to stand on the spot where Henry Courtenay and Henry Pole, Baron Montagu, were executed on Tower Hill. And I spent hours searching for the remains of Blackfriars. It was once a thriving, massive monastery, now all that you can find is a bit of wall in a park.
I do like to mix in “real” people from this time, to take a deep breath and decide for myself what Mary Tudor would have looked like, sounded like, behaved like, and then set her in motion. It’s a thrilling creative challenge. In my books, quite a bit of what happens is “real.” It’s faithful to recorded history.
5) What drew you to the world of prophecy and seers? What are your personal beliefs about such phenomenon?
What has not often been written about is how much prophecy and astrology—the arts of seeing into the future—was woven into life. Being religious did not rule out belief in these other ways, many of which pre-dated Christianity. The Tudor-era Popes had their own astrologers, I find that fascinating. Because it was a period of tremendous religious and cultural upheaval, I think people sought out seers more than a generation earlier, to get some answers. Henry VIII himself did not like prophesizing because it strayed into what would happen to him and whether he would have a son to follow him. That was treasonable. As for what I believe, I haven’t quite made up my mind.
6) What has been your inspiration for both The Crown and The Chalice?
The ideas suddenly come into my head, I don’t have a source of creative inspiration. Just my imagination, mixed with love of Tudor England and wanting to bring it to life. I do like to get into the mood for writing my Tudor novels, whether it’s listening to Thomas Tallis, or visiting The Cloisters Museum of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or taking a very long walk in the snow.
7) Do you see parts of yourself in Joanna Stafford? In any of the other characters?
I’ve been told that in some respects I am like Joanna but I don’t see it myself. The only trait that I possess that I deliberately gave her is I have a bad sense of direction. It’s frustrating!
8) Most of your female characters are very strong. Did you consciously craft the book around strong female characters? Are you, in effect, making a feminist statement in writing The Chalice?
I want to write about strong women. Not paragons who effortlessly do the right thing and conquer all obstacles, but women who use their brains and their inner resources to struggle to get what they need, to do what is right. I am drawn to determined women. It could be argued that the story of Joanna Stafford is of a feminist, two and a half centuries before Mary Wollstonecraft. But I don’t want to create an anachronistic character—in the 1530s women simply did not have many rights. Still, you only have to read about Anne Askew or Bess of Hardwick to know that within this period, women could be forceful and act with some independence. Or simply look at Elizabeth the First.
9) When you began writing, did you know that Joanna Stafford would end up not marrying Edmund Sommerville? Or did you discover this during the process of writing? Have you imagined a future for Joanna beyond this book?
I never imagined Joanna marrying him in this book. The complexities and contradictions of their relationship deepened while I was writing. I am pleased that some readers are so taken with Edmund. I like to think he is an original character.
10) You have worked on the staffs of InStyle, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, and Good Housekeeping, and are now a features editor of DuJour Magazine What inspired you to begin writing novels? How do you balance the different demands of magazine editing and novel writing?
I didn’t think about writing novels while building a career in magazines. But after I gave birth to my son, I felt a craving to tell my own stories. I wrote a few screenplays and got pretty far in writing competitions—I have a manager for screenwriting—but then I joined a fiction workshop and was deeply bitten by the bug. I wrote at night or on weekends at Starbucks, an hour here, an hour there. I took some “staycations” when I did research and wrote. I started getting up early in the morning to write fiction before everyone else wakes up. That is a system that works, and I still do it: waking up early to write.
11) What writers have most deeply inspired and influenced you?
My first love was Daphne du Maurier, and I think her books hold up very well. I re-read them all the time, and I have to assume she has influenced me. I read a lot of historical fiction when I was young, primarily Norah Lofts, but also Jean Plaidy and Mary Stewart. When I was at college, I studied F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. I’ve read almost all the books of Edith Wharton and Henry James. I’d have to say I’m influenced by Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, and Wilkie Collins too. I really love Mary Renault and Robert Graves—they are sources of great inspiration. Most recently, I have gotten so much from reading A.S. Byatt, Katherine Neville, Elizabeth Kostova, and Ariana Franklin.