I twisted the fabric of my dress in my hands. What was it they imagined me guilty of? “I have told you everything there is to know, Your Grace,” I said.
It happened very fast. He sprang out of the chair, his arm raised high, in a streaking blur. Whack. The whip hit the wooden table a few feet from where I stood.
“God’s blood, I don’t have time for this!”
I did not move. The Kingstons did not move. The duke stood there, quivering. “Very well, Kingston, we shall proceed as planned,” he said finally.
My heart beat faster as the Kingstons hustled out of the room. I heard men’s voices in the passageway, a chain of orders being given. But the duke did not leave. Nor did any yeomen warders remain behind. It was just the two of us. He paced back and forth by the windows, frowning, as if thinking of something else. Something unpleasant.
Keeping my voice as humble as possible, I said, “Your Grace, may I ask you something?”
His gaze returned to me, but unwillingly, annoyed.
“You spoke of my father,” I pressed on. “Have you seen him?”
He grunted. “I have.”
“And what is his condition?”
“His condition?” The duke considered his answer, and then a smile twisted his gaunt features. “Let’s just say he’s not the handsomest Stafford anymore.”
At first I felt pain, as if I’d been kicked, and hard. But then came the anger, flooding my heart, my mind, every inch of me. I could hardly breathe or see or hear. My fingertips were numbed by it.
From a muffled distance, I heard the door swing open, and Sir William returned, without his wife, carrying something. The duke held out his hand for it.
“Mistress Stafford, I show you this,” he said curtly.
The duke set down on the table before me Margaret’s letter, the one I had carried with me to Smithfield. Yes, of course, they had searched my dress.
The duke read Margaret’s letter aloud. His harsh voice made a mockery of her words, the way she congratulated me for seeking to become a nun and lamented the suppression of the monasteries and priories of the North.
As he read it, I thought of the hunt. When my father tracked boar in the forest, a group of young menservants followed. Boars are hard to kill. So after my father sighted one, the servants would chase, harry and confuse it, one after another, in stages, until, weakened and frightened, the animal stumbled into a thicket and met with sharpened weapons, the spears and knives.
Silence thickened in the Tower room. I realized the duke had stopped reading, and he and Kingston waited for me to respond.
“Yes, I brought my cousin’s last letter to Smithfield,” I said coldly.
The duke dangled something else in his fingers; it was the necklace with the Thomas Becket pendant that Margaret had given me years ago. I’d stitched it into the lining of the purse, to keep it safe, the day before I came to Smithfield.
“What is the significance of this?” he asked.
I shook my head, aching to rip the pendant from his worn fingers.
The duke roared: “You will tell me why you brought this to Smithfield.”
Now, instead of being a sin and a hindrance, my anger was a helpmate. I would not cringe before Thomas Howard, no matter his actions. I said, “The pendant was her gift to me ten years ago. I thought that after she died, if I could lay claim to her body as her kinswoman, I would see Margaret buried with it.”
“That’s very touching. But we suspect it has another meaning.”
The duke began to pace: half-dozen steps away, then back around toward me, while Kingston watched, tense. “Thomas Becket defied his king. He put pope before king, just as Margaret and all the other rebels did, and just as you are doing now. You brought this to Smithfield as a symbol of your defiance.”
I shook my head, but he didn’t notice. His pacing grew quicker; his words came faster. They rang off the long walls of my cell. “When the king ordered me to lead his army to the North, to defeat the wicked traitors who took up arms against their sovereign, he gave me a special charge, Mistress Stafford. Do you know what his letter commanded? ‘To cause such dreadful execution to be done on a good number of the inhabitants of every town, village, and hamlet that have offended that they may be a fearful spectacle.’ ”