Joanna is more than a match for the challenge she faces although her personal wishes, and her search for a peaceful private life are once again compromised by the great games being played out around her.
A cunning new villain, Jacquard, is introduced - a man whose clandestine activities are masked by his initial assistance with the tapestry making venture. Events place her yet again at the heart of a conspiracy, bring her into contact with doomed defenders of the old Catholic faith, and once again into the orbit of the dangerous men who seek to control the King and his latest choice of wife - Anne of Cleves.
The quiet life is not yet Joanna Stafford's destiny as she gets pulled into further dark intrigues around the Tudor court, and she has to leave Dartford yet again to unwillingly place herself in peril at Court, in the Tower, and in the Low Countries as she is driven to fulfil a mysterious prophecy surrounding the Chalice of the title. All the characters from The Crown (the first Joanna Stafford novel) are here and personal horizons are widened as romantic love beckons in the form of both former friar Edward Sommerville and the constable who rescued her from the gruesome Smithfield execution of her cousin Margaret, Geoffrey Scoville, who is still watching her back as dark forces drive her reluctantly into the orbit of her Stafford family and their risky heritage - something which Joanna's earlier experiences of Court life make her anxious to avoid to no avail! The convent was famed for its tapestries, and Joanna hopes to build on this tradition to make a living for herself and her ward, young Arthur. Sister Joanna's story picks up after the dissolution of her beloved Dartford convent, with her new life as a dispossessed nun and putative tapestry maker.
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