Court of Traitors (Bridget Manning #2)

by V. E. Lynne

  She had been so disconcerted, and so shocked, by her discovery that she had nearly forgotten about the last item in the chest, the piece of fabric that lay folded up in the bottom in a neat, small square. She took it up and unfurled it. Initially, she was not entirely sure what she was looking at. Then the wheels of her brain ground into gear and her mouth turned dry as dust. The Five Wounds of Christ, the symbol of the Pilgrimage of Grace, stared unflinchingly up at her from the white cambric. This was the banner that the rebels, or the pilgrims as some called them, had marched under and subsequently died for. If the Aske letters did not secure the abbess a place upon the gallows at Tyburn, then this little piece of embroidery most assuredly would. Others had died for far less.

  Bridget crouched on the floor and tried to control her fears. She had to think clearly but her mind was racing with too many possibilities. She considered writing forthwith to her husband but almost immediately discarded the idea. At the moment, as far as she was aware, only two people, herself and the abbess, knew of the existence of the letters. Cromwell said he had heard rumours, and with him it was always possible that he knew far more than he had let on, but Bridget had no definite proof of that. Aske was dead and could tell no tales. Bridget therefore wanted to keep the amount of people who knew about the missives to an absolute minimum and, to that end, she decided to keep Sir Richard out of it. Besides, an inner voice asked, could she be certain what her husband would do with such information? Would he seek to save himself by casting others to the wolves? Even with his sister involved? Was he capable of that?

  She instantly felt ashamed of herself for even contemplating that her husband would do anything to send his sister to the scaffold, but at the same time, what might a person do in order to save their own skin? Sir Richard was not directly involved in any wrongdoing and had made sure that he stayed safely on the side lines during the rebellion, but these letters were in his house, and the abbess lived under his roof. He could easily be portrayed as an aider and abettor, a secret sympathiser. A traitor. The king did not hesitate to sign anybody’s death warrant and misprision of treason, the crime of concealing knowledge of treason from the notice of the Crown was just as much of a hanging offence as the act of treason itself. No, the permutations got worse the more she thought about it. It was best to keep Sir Richard well away from this.

  That meant that without the aid of her husband Bridget was on her own and must therefore handle the problem herself. Once her initial tide of dread had ebbed away, she made a decision. She slid the false bottom of the box back into place and carefully packed away all of the casket’s innocent contents. She then took the small bundle of Aske letters and walked over to the fireplace. One by one she dropped the pages into the flames, and one by one she watched them curl up and burn. She was so engrossed in her task that she did not hear that someone else had entered the bedchamber.

  “Bridget, what is the meaning of this? What are you doing?” Sister Margaret demanded.

  Bridget looked up and met the former nun’s penetrating gaze. She stepped back from the fire, screwed the Wounds of Christ banner up into as tight a ball as possible, hid it in the folds of her gown, and faced her. Once more, she had a decision to make. Cromwell entertained suspicions regarding Sister Margaret’s loyalty to the king. He had told her as much. Should she question her, here and now, and try and find out the truth? Should she tell her that the king’s chief minister had her in his sights? Or was it better to keep quiet, to keep her in the dark as far as that was possible. As with her husband, Bridget chose the latter option.

  “Sister Margaret,” she smiled artlessly at her, “I did not hear you approach. I am afraid you have caught me out. I was just burning some old letters of mine, letters I confess I should have disposed of long ago. Unfortunately, when I was last at court, a young man developed an infatuation for me. He sent me some missives that were rather . . . over-fond. I am a married woman now, and it is entirely inappropriate that I should hold on to them any longer. So, I have decided to consign them to the flames. The fire is so hot in here that I thought it presented a good opportunity to do so,” she finished somewhat lamely. It was not the most convincing story Bridget had ever dreamt up, and Sister Margaret’s incredulous expression showed she felt the same way.

  Bridget was frantically trying to think of a better explanation when Joanna suddenly sat up in bed and looked around, confused. Both Bridget and Sister Margaret rushed to her side; Bridget was the first to touch the young woman’s forehead. It was cool. It was mercifully, wonderfully cool. A wave of relief crashed over her and tears sprang into her eyes.

  Joanna looked up and frowned. “What is it? Why are you weeping? Am I worse? I thought I felt a little better.” She touched her dry brow. “I have had the most dreadful headache, but it is gone now. The pain in my chest is gone too.” She took a breath. There was no corresponding rattle.

  “Oh, Joanna, you are better! The Saints be praised, you are better! That is why I weep.” Bridget grasped Joanna’s hands. “You have been so dreadfully sick, and we were all so frightened that you would not recover, that we would lose you. But we have prayed, Sister Margaret here most of all, and God has answered those prayers. He has spared you. Now then, even though your fever has broken, I want you to keep warm.” She pulled the covers over Joanna’s exposed arms. “I will fetch the abbess. She will want to know of your improvement at once.”

  Joanna nodded in agreement, and Bridget moved quickly across the room and over to the door. Before she left, she glanced at Sister Margaret. The older woman was staring down into the fire, her gaze fixed and unwavering, as the last of the letters was turned to ash.

  Chapter Seven

  The whole household rejoiced at Joanna’s escape from the clutches of death. They could never be sure whether she had had the Sweat or not, but they preferred not to dwell on that. Bridget suspected she had contracted a mild dose of it, due to her natural defences being lowered by her previous cold. Whatever the nature of the malady had been, it had severely reduced Joanna’s reserves of strength, and it took her a full fortnight before she could eat proper meals, get through an evening without coughing and walk from one end of her chamber to the other unaided.

  Due to her infirmity, they had been forced to remain shut up at Thorns, and Bridget had been unable to join her husband at Windsor. Not that she would have been permitted to do so in any case. There was a plague in London, and that alone would have prevented her from coming within the verge of the court. She was not unduly concerned about remaining at home for a while longer. She wanted to make sure that Joanna had completely regained her health, and of course an enforced absence had another advantage—it saved her from having to attend upon the queen and endure whatever petty indignities Jane, and her ladies, had devised for her.

  It was also pleasant to spend some time with Joanna, the abbess and Sister Margaret, and relate to them in person all that had occurred at court. They was agog when she told them of the incident involving Lady Rochford and the French hood, and saddened when Bridget told them of Will’s indifference, though Sister Margaret merely sniffed and looked at her in disapproval. The abbess and Joanna were sympathetic though, and then Joanna’s eyes brightened.

  “So that is what you were burning in the fire the night my fever broke!” she exclaimed. “I had not been able to decide whether what I saw was a dream or not until now. So much that took place when I was ill seems unreal, like it happened to someone else, but I can distinctly remember you standing by the fire, dropping letters one at a time into the flames, and I could not for the life of me understand what you were doing. But now I do. You were burning Will’s letters. You no longer wish to be reminded of him and I do not blame you. I would not keep his missives either.”

  It was now the end of summer and the four of them, Bridget, Joanna, the abbess and Sister Margaret had all stationed themselves outside in the late agreeable sunshine, but Joanna’s words fell between them like winter rain. The abbess, who had been potte
ring in her garden, stopped what she was doing and stood very still. Slowly she turned her head and looked at Sister Margaret, and some kind of silent message passed between them. Sister Margaret’s mouth flattened into a thin, bloodless line, and she almost indiscernibly shook her head. The abbess’s eyes blazed, and for an instant, Bridget thought she was going to walk across the grass and strike her. Joanna looked back and forth between them all in bewilderment but did not dare to speak. The portentous silence was broken only by the arrival of Tilly.

  “Ladies, dinner is ready,” the maid announced.

  “Thank you Tilly,” the abbess replied smoothly. “Escort Mistress Joanna inside first please and Sister Margaret, would you help her? I still have a few herbs to pick and I require Lady de Brett’s assistance in doing so.”

  Tilly obeyed and she and Sister Margaret shepherded a perplexed Joanna indoors. Once they were gone, the abbess put down her basket and came over to Bridget, who was sitting opposite, her hands twisted almost into claws. “Well, I never thought I would see this day,” she remarked, her tone barely controlled, “when the girl I rescued from penury, the motherless girl deposited on the abbey doorstep by her father, soon to die himself, and brought up as my own would turn on me. The girl I bestowed in marriage to my brother. You might have a title nowadays but I see you are no more than a common thief, a liar and a vandal. Is that what your career at court has transformed you into? Is that what you have become? The girl I knew would never have gone through my belongings, let alone seen fit to burn my precious letters,” she spat. “How dare you! I ought to throw you out and let you beg your bread in the streets and my brother be damned!”

  “How dare I?” Bridget cried, her own temper rising to meet the abbess’s. “How dare you keep treasonous letters from an executed rebel in this house? You ask what I have become, and I marvel that you need even to pose the question, but if you require a recap, I will provide one for you. Yes, you brought me up, educated me, took care of me, and acted as both mother and father to me. I am grateful for all of that. But then the abbey was shut down and you sent me, and Joanna, off to court to be maids to Queen Anne. We thought were so lucky. As it transpired, you had sent us directly into a snake-pit and because of that last year, both of us, were forced to stand on a scaffold at the Tower in front of a crowd of thousands whilst a Frenchman with a sword executed the queen. I held her severed head in my hands. Just think of that for one moment. Think of what it must have been like. I still dream of it, I still see her blood everywhere, and I still taste it on the first May breeze. She suffered the penalty for treason.” The abbess flinched. “And she was innocent. In the end, it did not matter. I could not save her, nobody could have saved her, but I can save you. That is why I went through your belongings, and that is why I burnt the letters. I will not have you share Anne’s fate, not if I can help it.”

  The abbess was momentarily abashed and she stared down at the ground. Then her face turned mutinous. “I am sorry that I upbraided you in such a brusque fashion. I should have realised just how badly that . . . experience with the last queen has marked you. I should have realised.” she said gruffly. “However, I am not sorry that I wrote to Mr Aske, and I am not sorry that I kept the letters. The only thing I am sorry for is that the rebellion, as the king calls it, failed.”

  Bridget tried to shush her, but the abbess would not have it. “Mr Aske and his followers, all those good men, whose heads have ended up on pikes and whose entrails have been hung from trees, they were not rebels but loyal subjects, as I am. All they wanted was to bring the king back to the true path and turn him away from those self- interested upstarts who now surround him, Thomas Cromwell in particular.” She said his name as though he was the devil in human form.

  “Mother, please do not speak about Mr Cromwell in that way. He is second only to the king in power these days, and it is wise to keep one’s own counsel when it comes to him.” She continued to think it prudent not to inform the abbess that Cromwell was the one who had set her on the trail of the letters. The less she knew about that man, the better. “And as for the men who died . . . I am well aware of their ghastly fate and I weep for them. I also do not entirely disagree with their cause, but we all took the Oath—”

  “The Oath!” The abbess laughed bitterly. “Oh, yes, we all took it, we all acknowledged the king as the Supreme Head of the Church in place of the Pope. What choice did we have? And where did it get us in the end? The abbey was shut down, and we were all turned out into the world. I lost my position and was pensioned off to rely on my brother in my old age. I was fortunate. At least I had a home to go back to. Sister Margaret has been forced to come to us because her brother is dead and she is thus reduced to penury. She is not the only one. How many former nuns and priests in her position now wander the roads as beggars? How many has the king executed, and how many more will he send to the hangman? Who stands up for them? Mr Aske at least tried to, and a halter was his only earthly reward. I trust he found a better one in Heaven.”

  The abbess sighed and her shoulders slumped wearily. For the first time Bridget looked at her and saw an old woman weighed down by the cares of age, bewildered and frightened, as so many were, by the vast changes in the realm that the king had wrought. She might not have many years left to her, but Bridget was determined that she would not end them as a martyr. There were very few people in the world whom Bridget truly loved; she would do anything to protect them. It was clear to her now that the abbess required protection, chiefly from herself.

  “Mother, I know that the loss of Rivers was a bitter blow for you, for Sister Margaret, for all of us. I know that you long for the old way of life. But it is gone, it is utterly gone, and railing against the king, or against Lord Cromwell, will bring you only a traitor’s death. I cannot countenance that. I cannot allow it. Besides, the king still believes in what you do—he is still a Catholic. He hears Mass daily, often more than once, and seems as devout as ever he was.”

  “Oh, yes, I forgot his famous piety,” the abbess jeered. “He is such a pious man that he put away his first wife, a blameless, saintly woman, beheaded his second and the Virgin alone knows what will become of the third if she fails to give him a son. Forgive me if I do not set much store by our king’s piety.”

  “Even if you do not, even if what you say is right, you must bite your tongue.” Bridget took her by the shoulders. “I am aware of the king’s failings, but he is the king and I will not have you become another of his victims. England is different now, and we must try and conform ourselves to it, at least in public.” The abbess wrinkled her nose. “We owe our allegiance to His Majesty, but our hearts, and our minds, and our faith, remain our own.”

  The abbess eventually muttered in something like agreement, but her eyes refused to meet Bridget’s. She was about to launch into another argument until Tilly appeared in the archway. She looked worried, after all the food would be getting cold by now, but even so Bridget could tell that the maid was in two minds whether to interrupt their conversation or not.

  Bridget called out to her. “Do not fret, Tilly. We will be along soon.” The appearance of the maid shifted the abbess’s mood and some of her truculence diminished. She picked up her basket of herbs and disconsolately hung it over the crook of her elbow.

  “I know I should not have written to Aske,” she quietly admitted, “and I know I should not have kept the letters. It was foolish of me. But I admired him, Bridget, I admired all of them. They showed a kind of bravery that always eluded me. I wanted to support them at least in words, as deeds were forbidden to me. They had courage, real courage, and I do not think I showed that when the abbey was suppressed. I just let those men come in and destroy us, destroy our home. I have always reproached myself for that; so has Sister Margaret. Oh, not verbally, but I see it in her eyes sometimes. I suppose I saw the rebellion as my last chance at redemption, in this world at least.”

  Bridget put her arm around her. “I understand,” she soothed, “but you are w
rong. You are a tremendously brave woman, and you did try to save Rivers. You wrote to the queen, you went to court to plead our cause, you did everything you could. Were you supposed to lie down in front of the carts? Ultimately, the king and Cromwell had their way. I will not have you think of yourself as a coward. And just remember: there are other ways to show courage than by taking a path of opposition to the king. That, I promise, is a path that leads to only one destination.” The abbess bobbed her head and met Bridget’s eyes. . At last, Bridget saw a measure of understanding dawn there and relief surged through her. They linked arms and walked into the house.

  “Oh, I nearly forgot,” the abbess said, as they approached the dining hall. “You found the letters which must mean you also found the . . . banner. It was Sister Margaret’s; she made it as her own form of rebellion. What did you do with it?” The abbess’s voice was low, but her tone was sharp, and Bridget could clearly discern that the banner was important. In some ways, it posed more of a danger than the letters, as it so unambiguously portrayed the loyalties of the maker, whereas a letter was always open to interpretation. Bridget had not taken the risk of burning it, lest some small remnants of it had remained in the ashes and been found by an enquiring servant. She had decided instead to cut it up into the tiniest pieces possible and then had waited for nightfall. Once it was fully dark, she had gone down to the jetty and flung the remnants of the banner out upon the river. She had watched as the tide had taken them and floated them safely away.