Court of Traitors (Bridget Manning #2) Page 7
“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 Strand 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.
Once she was inside, Bridget threw off her travelling cloak and was met in the hall by one of the maids, Tilly Burnard. “Oh, my lady, you have come home! I am so glad. We have all been driven half out of our minds with worry. Mistress Joanna has been so ill that Abbess Joan and Sister Margaret have scarcely left her side. We tried to get a message to you and the master earlier, but there is talk of plague in the city, and we have been afraid to step outside our own front door! Truly, it has been terrible, madam, but now—”
“All right Tilly, all right, there is no need to distress yourself any further. I understand that everyone has had a bad time of it. As you see, the master has not returned with me; he has gone on to Windsor with the king.” Tilly’s brown eyes widened. “But I am home now and there is no need to fret.” Bridget smiled at the maid encouragingly. “Now then, is Joanna in he
r usual bedchamber?”
“No, my lady,” Tilly replied, ushering Bridget toward the great staircase. “Abbess Joan thought it best to move the young mistress into her own rooms, where the fireplace is larger and the bed more spacious. We all had to pitch in and help Abbess Joan and Sister Margaret carry Mistress Joanna down the passageway and into the abbess’s rooms, as she could not walk on her own.”
Bridget’s stomach contracted in dread at this morsel of news, but she put a brave face on for the maid. “Tilly, I thank you for taking care of Mistress Joanna. I know you have done all you can for her. I am confident that she will soon be recovered and up and about in no time, completely under her own power.”
Tilly looked unconvinced and her eyes sparkled with tears as she knocked upon and then opened the door to the abbess’s rooms. Bridget had to stop her own tears forming as she stepped out from behind Tilly and walked into the chamber.
Joanna lay rigidly upon the tester bed, partially buried under a great heap of furs and coverlets, her lank, red hair fanned out around her on a pile of pillows. Her eyes were closed and seemed somehow to have retreated into her face, which was unnaturally pale and running with sweat. Her breathing was rapid, and each time she inhaled, a rattling sound emanated from her throat. She gave every appearance of being half-dead, her skin stretched so tightly across her countenance that her cheekbones jutted upwards like blades.
“Bridget! Oh, thank Jesu you are here. Joanna has been asking for you. As you see,” the abbess stood up from her position next to the bed and gestured to its occupant, “she is grievously unwell. We think it is . . .” She pulled Bridget into a hug and whispered in her ear, “the Sweat.”
In the corner of the chamber, Sister Margaret gathered up her embroidery and quietly left the room, nodding a welcome to Bridget as she went. Bridget returned it with a sigh, and gave herself up to the comfort of the abbess’s familiar embrace. Then, once she had allowed herself a minute or two of despair, she set about her business.
“I know, Mother. Sir Richard informed me of the contents of your letter, but we must not think the worst. It may not be the Sweat, after all that affliction usually claims its victims very quickly. Joanna may have contracted only a mild dose. That means she has an excellent chance of survival. She will survive, I know she will. She is young and strong. We must imbue into her every last drop of our faith. In the meantime, is there any need for her to be so well covered in furs? It is unbearably hot in here, what with the fire burning and the windows shuttered. She may become overheated and that cannot be a good thing. In fact, I think I will open a window, just to let in a little air.”
The abbess stayed her arm and fixed her with a determined gaze. “Leave the windows closed. I had twenty years dealing with illness at the abbey, and I know how to oversee a sickroom. It is imperative that Joanna remains warm. Sister Margaret and I have taken it in turns to take care of her, but we do need another pair of hands to assist us. That is why it was imperative you came home. Oh, do not misunderstand me—Tilly and the others do their best, but they fear catching the illness. They creep up and down the staircase like frightened children. But you will not be afeared. I know you are made of sterner stuff.”
Over the next two days, the three of them quickly fell into a routine of nursing Joanna, with the abbess taking charge and Bridget obediently following her lead. Bridget’s presence in the house allowed the abbess and Sister Margaret to get some rest, a commodity that had wholly eluded them in the days before her return. Bridget took over the nightshifts in Joanna’s chamber, while the abbess took herself gratefully off to bed. Sister Margaret, a light sleeper, would often join her at Joanna’s bedside, a silent but attentive figure. Joanna herself kept drifting in and out of consciousness and was in a constant state of thirst. Mercifully, she did not seem to be in much pain and her fever was not increasing, but neither would it break. She was fighting the ague as best she could, but she grew weaker with every ragged breath she succeeded in dragging into her lungs.
On the third night back, Bridget was sitting beside Joanna’s bed, listening to her tortured breaths when her eye fell upon a small wooden casket that sat in the corner of the room. The casket, a pretty, little oak coffer, was a familiar item to her, as it was a much-loved relic that the abbess had saved from the clutches of Cromwell’s men during the suppression of Rivers. Cromwell. His name fell into her mind like a single droplet of rain, and her thoughts returned at once to the last conversation she had had with him at the archery contest. A list of names silently uncoiled themselves one by one: the king, Exeter, Carew, Abbess Joan, Sister Margaret, and Robert Aske. Those rumours Cromwell had heard regarding Sister Margaret: that she was a “well-wisher” and possible “correspondent” of Aske’s. That she did not support the king. That the abbess, by association, was thus held to be suspect as well, since she had given Sister Margaret a place at Thorns. Bridget had jumped to the abbess and Sister Margaret’s defence naturally enough and had assured Cromwell that they were essentially harmless, old women. She was as certain as she could be about the abbess, she did not know about Sister Margaret. As Cromwell had alluded to, Sister Margaret had taken the suppression of Rivers very badly. Bridget could well remember her screaming and cursing at the agents on the day they were shut down. She could also remember her tears of desolation as everything she held dear was ripped away from her. After that Sister Margaret had gone to live with her brother and that is where she had been at the time of the Pilgrimage of Grace, at least when it had started— so perhaps she had been in contact with Aske and the rebels. She was no partisan of the king that much was true, and she clung with the stubbornness of a mule to the old ways. Was Cromwell truly in receipt of some damaging material about her? Had she indeed been so foolish as to write to poor, ill-fated Robert Aske? And what of the abbess’s role? The casket, so often the receptacle of the abbess’s correspondence in the past, could hold the answers she sought.
Forewarned was forearmed, as far as all matters pertaining to Thomas Cromwell were concerned, and so Bridget felt only the merest pinprick of guilt as she approached the casket and quietly lifted the lid. It was not unusual to find it unlocked, as the abbess was often a little careless about such things, but Bridget still breathed a small sigh of relief when it opened up easily in her hands. She manoeuvred the light of the candle she carried over the casket’s contents and, at first, was not unduly alarmed by what she saw.
The casket was filled with rolls and rolls of parchment, several piles of them, as well as a collection of rosary beads, three jewel-encrusted crosses that she recognised from the abbey and some pieces of jewellery that had once belonged to the abbess’s mother. There was also a leather-bound, beautifully illustrated Book of Hours, its pages made soft by regular use; this was one of the abbess’s most treasured possessions. So far then, nothing to be apprehensive about, but Bridget wanted to make sure, especially as far as the letters were concerned. She picked up one of the rolls of parchment, from the first pile, undid its shiny black ribbon and scanned its spidery contents.
She went through it carefully, found nothing untoward, and moved on to the next. And the next, and the next. They were seemingly nothing more than old letters from the abbess’s days at Rivers, of interest to no one but Mistress Joan. Her heart did lurch once though when she read the signature written so boldly, and so confidently, at the bottom of the one of them—“Anne the Queen.” This must be the letter Anne had written to the abbess towards the end of 1535, offering Bridget and Joanna places at court. She ran her hands over the page with a kind of wondrous sorrow. It felt like touching a document retrieved from another lifetime.
She carefully rolled up the parchment, re-tied the ribbon and started on the second pile. Once again, she found nothing. She rummaged through the rest of the casket’s contents and was about to give up when her hand brushed against the bottom of the box and she felt it move slightly. She let her fingers run over the wood until they found a part that was uneven. She removed all of
the items, put both her hands in and worked them backwards and forwards until she could get her nails underneath the edges of the base. In no time at all, she slid what transpired to be a false bottom to one side and the casket’s secret was revealed: a cache of five small items. It consisted of four rolls of parchment and what appeared to be a folded-up piece of fabric.
She took one of the rolls out and quickly untied it. The candlelight flickered across the pages, and she realised that the handwriting was entirely unfamiliar to her. Had this been penned by the abbess or by someone else? Puzzled, she frantically searched for the signature at the bottom. It was only just legible, and she struggled to read it, but finally she did. Once she had deciphered the name it seemed to start off the page at her, almost mocking her in its clarity—“Robert Aske.” Shaken, Bridget went through the remaining three, and each one bore the same name at the end. Aske, Aske, Aske. Bridget got up and glanced out into the hallway, sure that the sound of her heart beating must be audible to the rest of the house, as it was pounding so loudly in her own ears. The passage, mercifully, contained nothing but darkness.
She padded softly back to the chest, past the form of the sleeping Joanna, and gathered up the incriminating letters in trembling hands. So there had been a correspondence, just as Cromwell had suggested, and since the letters were kept in the abbess’s casket in her rooms, it must have been between her and Aske and not Sister Margaret. What on earth had the abbess been thinking writing to Robert Aske, and why had she chosen to keep that correspondence now that the man himself had been hanged? Did she not know treason when she saw it, for that was exactly what Bridget now held so uncomfortably before her eyes. Treason written in bold, black ink and sealed in red wax. Unless she took action, unless she got rid of these letters, they might prove to be the abbess’s downfall. And it would not stop there.