Court of Traitors (Bridget Manning #2) (8 page)

So, the carrot of promotion to the ranks of her ladies-in-waiting was being dangled in front of her, but in the meantime Bridget was to receive the stick. She was to place herself at the queen’s beck and call and no doubt assume the role of her general dogsbody. Queen Jane beamed at her as if she had just bestowed the greatest of honours and Bridget had no option but to feign gratitude. She thanked the queen for her munificence whilst avoiding as best she could the gleeful grins being directed at her from Lady Rochford and Lady Hertford. Queen Jane, puffed up with regal self-importance, accepted Bridget’s thanks, and then dismissed her from her chamber. Bridget, who had dropped into the mandatory curtsey, rose in relief and turned for the door, but at the last minute the queen called her back.

“Oh, how silly of me, I almost forgot. There is one more matter to be cleared up before you depart, Lady de Brett. Lady Rochford.” The queen clicked her fingers at Lady Rochford, and the woman jumped to attention eagerly, like a pet expecting a treat. She strode across the room and stood next to Bridget. There she waited, as though she were a soldier anticipating further orders. They were not long in coming. Almost imperceptibly, the queen raised her eyebrows, and Lady Rochford needed no further prompting—she sprang into action. She reached up and tore the French hood from atop Bridget’s head, taking pins, a portion of the strap and a handful of hair with her. Bridget cried out at the sudden assault and tried in vain to fend it off, but she was too late. Lady Rochford had easily got the upper hand and quickly achieved her objective. Flushed with pride, she headed back to her mistress’s side with a smile, Bridget’s headwear clutched victoriously in her hands.

“Madam, what is the meaning of—” Bridget exclaimed in shock, but the queen would not entertain another word from her.

“We do not wear that style of
hood anymore, Lady de Brett, as Mistress Bassett found out to her and her mother’s cost.” She shot a hard look at the discomfited maid. “I do not care for French styles, French customs or French manners. I am the Queen of England; I will not have foreign fashions holding sway at my court. We are Englishwomen and therefore we will dress as Englishwomen. I do not expect to see you wearing this,” she pointed at the formerly elegant hood, now sadly tattered, “again.”

Bridget, her heart beating wildly against her ribs, murmured, “As you wish, Your Majesty.”

The queen
held her gaze for a long moment, her eyes jubilant, before she said, “I am glad you understand.
Now
you may go.”

Bridget
exited the chamber as quickly as she decently could and leant breathlessly against the door as she shut it behind her. Through the heavy wood, she could clearly hear the sound of delighted chatter break out.

“Did you see the look on her face
?” she heard Lady Rochford crow. “She was so scared I thought we were going to have to pick her up from the floor! At least now we have wiped that smug expression of hers away. She now knows her proper place.”

“
Oh, yes, Lady Rochford,” the queen drawled. “I think she received that message in no uncertain terms, she will not need to be told twice. You made sure of that.”

Bridget reached up and touched the side of her head
; she felt there was now a small bald patch where a clump of hair had been ripped out and she ran her fingers over it slowly. When she drew her hand away there were spots of blood on her fingers and she sighed as she contemplated them. Not even at court for a week, and once more, courtesy of a queen, she had blood on her hands.

Chapter Five

When Bridget told her husband of her audience with the queen and her decree that she attend on her at Windsor, he could not have been more pleased with the news. His campaign of silence ceased at once and his nocturnal attentions resumed. It seemed that, in his mind, if the queen wanted Bridget around her it meant that the king’s interest in his young spouse was purely a platonic one. Surely Queen Jane, or any woman at that, would not willingly admit a potential rival into her midst. It would be madness to do so.

And yet, perhaps it made perfect sense, Bridget reasoned. If Queen Jane did indeed see her as a possible competitor for the king’s affections, and Bridget prayed that was not truly the case, then why not keep her where she could see her, where any threat she might pose could easily be neutralised? An added bonus, from the queen’s point of view, must surely be that whilst she was keeping an eye on Bridget, she could also use the opportunity to heap humiliation on her head and show her who was mistress now. The incident with the French hood demonstrated that Queen Jane wanted to put her firmly in her place and that could just have been her opening salvo. Bridget frowned at the prospect. She did not look forward to whatever awaited her at Windsor.

“Something vexes you, my lady? I cannot imagine what it could be. After all, here you sit in the glorious Greenwich sunshine, young and beautiful, watching our king dazzle us with his prowess at the butts. Even your husband shows us his skills. I would have thought that would cause you to smile like a proud wife and not scowl like a whipped child.”

Bridget looked up and found Thomas Cromwell standing in front of her, an incongruous figure in black on such a hot day, a genial smile lighting up his swarthy face. Bri
dget made an effort to return it and, taking her reaction as an invitation, he sat down next to her.

T
he king had decided to stage an archery competition and a fairly large group of courtiers had turned up to participate. Most of the gentlemen had so far taken a turn, including Sir Richard, who had acquitted himself passably well but not nearly as well as Will Redcliff, who had shone. Thus far, though, the king was winning. It was always a good idea to allow the king to win.

“Was I scowling, my lord? I did not realise.” Bridget curled her lips into a smile. “Is that more pleasing to you?”

“Very much
so,” Cromwell answered with a level of intensity she had not expected. His small, dark eyes lingered on her mouth and, not for the first time, she felt the air between them thicken. Why such a thing should happen she did not, and never had been, able to comprehend. She knew who, and what, this man was. He was a brute, an ogre. An inveterate schemer. A destroyer of innocents. A man of unparalleled ambition, intellect and power. Intrigue swirled around him, like mist on an autumn morn. And yet that was not the full picture, a hesitant voice inside her said. That was not all he was. He had many good qualities—he was known as an affable and generous friend and a magnanimous patron to many. He had gathered a tight group of adherents about him whose allegiance to him was unbreakable.

He had raised up Will, among others, from nothing and given him the inestimable advantages of a good home and an even better education. He had charm, wit and an odd kind of elegance, and his loyalty to the king was beyond question. He oozed power from every pore—the power of his mind, the power of his position and the power of his own personality. It was his dark gift, and it spoke to some little, secret part of herself that Bridget did not like to admit to much less to contemplate. He placed his hand just next to hers so that they were almost touching. She could feel the heat that emanated from his skin. She inched herself further along the bench.

“What do you think of my son?” Cromwell asked.

The question
was so unanticipated that it momentarily flat-footed Bridget.
His son?
She quickly scanned the ranks of the assembled gentlemen until her eyes found the figure of young Gregory Cromwell, the pride of his father’s life. He looked to be about eighteen and was a more opulently, and certainly more colourfully, dressed gentleman than his father, but apart from his rich attire there was nothing in particular that marked him out, nothing that caught one’s eye. He resembled the master secretary in a washed-out sort of way, as though the vital ingredients that made up the father had somehow been diluted in the son. He was good looking, Bridget decided, but funnily enough, that state did not suit him. His handsome looks served only to underline his basic ordinariness. He was not a man to be reckoned with, at least not at this young stage in his life. His turn came with the bow; he stepped forward and took up the instrument with a swagger, but his shot was, predictably, off target. He grimaced and glanced shamefacedly at his father. Cromwell, though, was unperturbed and enthusiastically applauded as if his son had scored a bull’s-eye.

“He is a fine-looking gentleman, my lord, the very spit of you,” Bridget replied, and Cromwell grinned like a boy on Christmas morning.

“
Thank you, my lady. I have great hopes for him. He is to be married very soon, to Elizabeth, the widow of Sir Anthony Ughtred. She is, as you may know, the queen’s sister.”

Bridget tried to hide her surprise at this revelation but could not quite manage it. Cromwell had secured the hand of the queen’s sister for his son? That meant that if all went to plan, Gregory Cromwell could be in a position one day to call the next King of England “nephew.” His father, the son of a shearman, as the Marquess of Exeter had so loftily pronounced, had secured him the most dazzling match possible, short of marrying him to the Lady Mary, a feat that not even Thomas Cromwell was capable of achieving. No wonder he looked so pleased with himself. Bridget arched an eyebrow in admiration. Cromwell accepted the gesture with a self-deprecating shrug.

“Well, so much for my family’s matrimonial matters. I had much rather talk about you. I see you have come unaccompanied to court. I had expected that you would have brought your young friend Joanna with you, or even your old abbess. I hope nothing is amiss with them.”

“
No, no, they are well, at least the abbess is. Joanna was ill with a cold when we left London, otherwise she would have come with me. She will join us when she is recovered.”

Cromwell nodded sympathetically. “I am glad that the
abbess, your aunt Joan as she now is, keeps good health. I am a great admirer of hers, as you know. Which is why I was quite baffled when I heard,” he adjusted a signet ring on his finger, “that she had taken into her household a well-wisher of Robert Aske’s, a woman called Margaret Welles. We think she was a correspondent of his during the time of the rebellion in the North, or the Pilgrimage of Grace, as people are wont to call it. You do know who Robert Aske is, or rather who he was?”

Cromwell’s voice had dropped to a low octave, and Bridget had to bend her head close to his in order to hear him. Her mind was in a whirl as she searched for an answer. Sister Margaret was a “well-wisher” of Aske’s? She was his “correspondent”? How was that possible? Yes, Sister Margaret was very much a traditionalist in her religious observance, and she still mourned the loss of the abbey deeply, as did they all, but none of them had played any part in the chaos of the uprising. Bridget could not remember either her or the abbess even making any particular remarks about Aske, or any of the other rebels, let alone writing to him. But clearly Cromwell knew something. Or was fishing for something. She thought it best to be as discreet and as brief in her responses as possible until she had a better idea of what it was, exactly, that he knew.

“Yes, I know who he was,” Bridget answered slowly. “He was the man who led the rebellion against our king and, for that act of treason, he was hung in chains at York less than one month ago.”

Cromwell
curled his right hand into a fist. “That is correct. An entirely fitting end for a jumped-up lawyer who presumed to tell the king his business. Did you hear that he wanted my head? Oh, yes, that was one of their demands, you know, the rebels, that I be ‘removed.’ Fortunately for me, I enjoy the full protection of His Majesty. He knows I am a valuable servant and, more importantly, a true subject. But can we say the same of Mistress Welles or indeed of the venerable Mistress Joan?”

Cromwell placed his clenched fist on top of Bridget’s hand and exerted a little pressure. “It has come to my attention that Margaret Welles is known as being against the king’s religious reforms. Apparently, she has been quite vocal about it, from the day that Rivers Abbey was suppressed to the present. She has not guarded her tongue since she fetched up at Thorns either. One must wonder, if she is so against the reforms, whether she actually supports the king at all. Perhaps the best thing to do would be for me to question her so I may get a fuller sense of the way things stand—”

Bridget
suddenly moved her hand and placed it on top of Cromwell’s. He looked down at it wonderingly. “Please, my lord,” she said, “there is no need for you to question her. Mistress Welles and the abbess, I mean to say Mistress Joan, are both completely loyal to the king. I do not know what false rumours you have heard, but I can promise you,” she exerted her own pressure now, “that both of them have had nothing to do with either Mr Aske or the Pilgrimage of Grace. Mistress Margaret wrote letters to no one and supported only the cause of the king. She is an old woman, sir, who leads an utterly blameless, quiet, uneventful life.”

Cromwell gazed at her, and Bridget searched for a softening in his expression, something that said that he believed her. Instead, all she saw was a bland visage that gave away nothing. “My lady, I am sure you are right, and I would like to accept what you have said, but when one is dealing with treason, especially of the kind committed by Mr Aske, one cannot be too careful. Not when the security of the realm is at stake.”

He
eyed Bridget thoughtfully. Before she could think of anything else to say to defend the abbess and Sister Margaret, he abandoned the subject and began a new line of questioning. “I have it from a good source that you and your husband were seen in conversation with Sir Nicholas Carew and the Marquess of Exeter in the Great Hall the other day.”

Relieved that he had apparently lost interest in the abbess and Sister Margaret, Bridget replied readily that it was true, they had indeed spoken to those two gentlemen.

“
Really? That is most interesting. Your husband seeks to make . . . unusual allies at court, albeit powerful ones I admit. Carew is one of the king’s oldest friends, and the marquess is a sprig of the white rose, full up to the brim with Plantagenet blood. Sir Richard of course is himself a scion of an old house, so I suppose it is logical that he would make common cause with them.”

Cromwell fixed her with a look of such concentration that Bridget felt as if the ground had fallen away from beneath her feet. “If you are somehow insinuating that because my husband is of ancient lineage, just like Carew and my lord of Exeter, that it puts his loyalty to the king in doubt then I must protest. His Majesty extended an invitation to him to attend court because he knows that he is a faithful subject. He would not seek to have somebody about him whose allegiance was in question.”

A great cheer went up, interrupting their talk. Bridget glanced over and saw that Will had scored the final bull’s-eye and had thus been declared the winner of the competition. Cromwell applauded him heartily and called out his congratulations. The king came over, slapped him on the back and handed him his prize, a fat pouch filled with coins. Will smiled in victory but then caught sight of Bridget sitting tensely next to his master. He made to walk over to them, but Cromwell stayed his advance with a flick of his hand. He turned his attention back to Bridget.

“The king may very well invite a person of doubtful allegiance to court. After all, he did just that with the accursed Mr Aske, who spent a Christmas with his Majesty before he showed his true colours and betrayed his sovereign. But, do not misunderstand me, I did not mean to imply that it was the case with your husband or indeed to impugn his loyalty. But equally you are labouring under a misapprehension and I must disabuse you of it. The reason His Majesty has summoned Sir Richard here has naught to do with him and everything to do with you. To be blunt, he desires to have you and will do so once the queen is safely delivered.” Bridget went to argue, he did not let her. “Let us not be coy with one another—the king is the king and he gets what he wants. Currently, what he wants is you. Once he has had you, once you are his, you may find yourself occupying a position of influence. Valuable information may come to your ears, especially with such people as Carew and Exeter around, two men who are never shy of expressing their opinions. If that occurs, my only request is that you keep me abreast of any and all developments. I must know what the state of play is with them.”
 

“
In short, you want me to spy,” Bridget said flatly, “just as you have asked me to do before. This conversation has a very painful familiarity about it.”

Cromwell sighed and shifted
in his seat. “You do have an unfortunate way with words, my lady. ‘Spy’ has such an ugly sound to it. In any case, I ask no such thing of you. I merely want you to apprise me of any intelligence that may come your way. I don’t ask you to secrete yourself behind walls or under floorboards—just to keep your ears open. You would be well rewarded for doing so.”

“I do not require rewards, Lord Cromwell,” Bridget retorted vigorously. “I never have. Besides, the chances of my discovering any information for you are very slight, as I do not believe the king has romantic intentions towards me, and Carew and Exeter would never tell me anything of interest. Therefore, I cannot ‘apprise’ you of anything, even if I wanted to. I really think, sir, you have utterly misread this situation, and the king.”

Cromwell began to answer but was stopped by the fast approach of Sir Richard. He greeted Cromwell with a display of unctuousness that embarrassed even him. They walked away and fell into conversation, and Bridget was left isolated on the bench. Once more Cromwell had tried to turn her into his creature, and once more she had barely avoided that fate.
But
what if he is right about the king?
her inner voice jeered.
He has flirted with you, favoured you, and looked at you with heat in his eyes. Ah, yes, but he has done that to others, many others,
she silently countered, and besides,
he would never risk his union with the queen for a tumble with me.
His marriage is too important.
But what if she
doesn’t
give him a son? What then? She will have failed him, she will have become yet another failed wife, and he may look for distraction elsewhere. Perhaps he thinks that you can be that distraction.

She pushed the competing thoughts away and closed her mind to them. No. Even if there was some truth in Cromwell’s claims, it would not go that far, she would not let it, and as for the others Cromwell mentioned, Carew and Exeter, well, she hardly knew them. If her husband made friends with them, so much the better for him. They were prominent, powerful men, and Sir Richard most certainly desired both prominence and power. Perhaps if he spent enough time with them, some of those things might transfer themselves onto him.

All of these scenarios were reverberating through her brain when she noticed her husband’s servant, John Walters, stride across to Sir Richard and deliver a sealed letter into his hands. He tore it open and rapidly scanned the contents, his face turning progressively greyer the further on he read. He spoke quickly to Walters, who scurried away, said his farewells to Cromwell, and walked over to Bridget.

“Wife, I have just received very worrying news from my sister at Thorns. She writes that Joanna’s health grows worse, and she requests that we leave court as soon as possible. Unfortunately, I cannot go, for the king expressly wishes me to accompany him to Windsor. I am loath to let you go, given the dangers of attending an ill person, but my sister implores me. I shall ask permission for you to depart and, if granted, you shall leave in an hour on the next tide. Therefore, you should hurry back to our chambers and pack your things.”

Bridget stood up, all thoughts of Cromwell and the king instantly banished from her mind. “Oh God,” she said. “I feared that Joanna’s illness must have grown worse because we have heard nothing of her condition since we got here. I wonder what has gone wrong, why she cannot shake this ague. She is normally such a robust girl.”

Sir Richard shook his head and a cloud of indecision passed across his features. He appeared caught in a dilemma about something, and Bridget’s spirits plummeted further. “What is it, sir?” she asked anxiously. “Is there more? Do you know something about Joanna you do not wish to tell me? What did the abbess say in her letter?”

“She wrote that . . .” he hesitated, then continued, “well, she wrote that Joanna did get over her original cold and that is not what ails her now.” Sir Richard reached out and uncharacteristically drew Bridget close to him. She looked up at him in confusion, a new, nameless fear spreading throughout her body. “My sister said that her concern is that this new illness is not a mere cold or some kind of quartan fever but something else entirely. Bridget, you must prepare yourself for this and God forgive me if, by going to her, you are exposed to any harm. I do not think you will be, I think my sister must be wrong as this affliction takes its victims in the space of a day, sometimes an hour which is why I think it will be safe for you to go. If Joanna truly had this she would be dead by now but my sister said that she… may be suffering from the Sweat.”

Chapter Six

Permission for Bridget to leave court was granted and she took a boat, at the earliest opportunity, from Greenwich upriver to their home on the St
rand in London, the Manor of Thorns. The rambling mansion, set on a large plot of riverside land, had considerable, overgrown gardens that swept right down to the lapping waters of the Thames. It was here, at a rickety, long dilapidated jetty, that Bridget alighted.

She wasted no time in disembarking, collecting up the minimum of baggage she had brought with her, and hastening up the winding path that led to the house. She entered through the garden door and was immediately enveloped in the silent, ancient stillness of the manor. Thorns had been built in the reign of King Henry III, over three hundred years ago, and had hardly been altered in all that time. It therefore fairly creaked and groaned and dripped with age, every step upon its well-worn boards eliciting from the house a heartfelt moan of protest. It smelled of wood smoke, mildew and incense, the odours of centuries of benign neglect. Sir Richard hoped that if he courted favour with the king long enough and assiduously enough, he would be granted a rich sinecure that could finance a new, modern house in London meaning they could then dispense with Thorns. Bridget did not share this hope. Despite its decrepitude and its many inconveniences, she had developed a fondness for the place. There was a homeliness to it, a cosy sense of permanence that all the generations that had lived and died within its walls had left imprinted on its very fabric. She would be sad if they let it go.