by V. E. Lynne
She did not look at him as he bid her farewell and walked away down the corridor. She could not bear to. Instead, she lifted her hand and turned it over. The line of fate glared out at her, its narrow path turned a rosy red from where she had struck her palm against the stones, making the deep channel it cut across her skin seem even more pronounced. “Beware of the brewer’s son,” the gypsy had told her. “You have beguiled him, and he seeks to entwine his path with yours.” Well, he had. Thomas Cromwell had won; he had beaten her utterly. God, she had been a fool. A sad, deluded, wretched fool. And for that, for that sin, a woman would die.
Epilogue
November 1539
The Manor of Thorns, London
It was three months since Sister Margaret had gone to her death at Tyburn. After her arrest in May, she had been left to languish in the Tower in the hopes no doubt that she would die and save the authorities the time and trouble of hanging her. Despite being locked up in a small, nearly airless cell during the height of summer, she had not expired. In fact, she had clung to life. The abbess had managed to see her on a handful of occasions, as the guards allowed only one visitor, and they had demanded a handsome bribe for the privilege.
Sister Margaret had been in good spirits on those days, the best that the abbess had ever seen her. “I go to my death on the same spot where the Holy Maid, Sister Elizabeth Barton, suffered. It is God’s will and I am ready and willing to accept it. In fact, I long for it. I have had enough of this world.” She had smiled when she said that. Smiled and laughed. It was just as Cromwell had said. She was determined to become a martyr.
The weather broke and the heavens opened on the day that her ascent to martyrdom finally came. With the rain beating down on the heads of all those who had gathered to witness the spectacle, they had brought her out in a rough cart through the muddied streets to Tyburn. Sir Richard had forbidden them all to attend, but that was one order none of them could not obey. They had all gone to see it, the rain fortunately allowing them to don their heaviest cloaks, and thus hide their identities from any prying eyes. Bridget was sure she’d spied her husband’s old retainer, and Cromwell’s spy, John Walters, amongst the multitude, no doubt there to provide a report to his masters. She drew her hood as far over her head as she could and shrank back against the shadows of a house when she saw him loitering on the other side of the street. He crossed over and passed her by without as much as a glance.
In the midst of the summer downpour, Sister Margaret was pulled unceremoniously out of the cart and hustled up the steps to the scaffold. Once there she was permitted to say a few words. Taking a deep breath, and looking openly about her, she recited the Apostles Creed in Latin: “Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentum, Creatorem caeli et terrae, et in lesum Christum, Filium Eius unicum, Dominum nostrum.” The crowd joined in and recited the words along with her. The officials in charge, embarrassed and clearly ill at ease at having to put to death a woman, particularly an old former nun, cut short her recitation. They put the halter over her scrawny neck, and then the men charged with killing her moved swiftly. Cromwell had kept to his word—she was spared the full rigours of a traitor’s death. She would not be drawn and quartered, only hanged. The executioner did his job well. By a miracle, her neck broke almost as soon as she was launched, the sound of it breaking echoing around the scaffold like cannon fire. She was left to hang there for some while, her body twisting slowly in the warm breeze. Once she was dead, Bridget noticed something drop from her hand and fall between the boards. Pushing her way to the front, she reached down in the dirt and grabbed. It was very small and ragged but she still recognised it. It was the fragment of St Veronica’s veil that had once been kept, as a precious relic, in a golden chest at Rivers. The fragment that had been thrown down into the dust and retrieved by Sister Margaret on the day Rivers had been suppressed. She had always wondered what had become of it. Now she had her answer.
In the wake of the execution, Bridget kept close to Thorns. She hardly left her rooms and received no visitors. No summons from the king arrived; her husband ignored her as well and made it plain he had no desire for her company. That suited her—she had no desire for his, not after everything he had done and had caused to be done. In September he ordered the abbess and Joanna to go to their estate in Lincolnshire. Joanna’s marriage to Will was to be discussed and terms reached. “My wife may stay in London,” he had written. “I have no use for her here.”
And so at Thorns Bridget had remained with only a small contingent of servants for company and only one activity left available to her. Thinking. The days were long and provided ample opportunity for Bridget to go over mentally all her life’s preceding events, from the end of her time at Rivers Abbey, to what felt like the end of her existence here at Thorns. The more she ruminated the further she tumbled into a deep well of melancholy.
She tried writing lengthy, chatty letters to Joanna and the abbess, full of talk of the weather and how pretty the gardens were, but her heart was not in them. They fooled no one. Relations between herself and those two ladies were stilted now; she could not forgive the abbess for hiding her knowledge of Sister Margaret’s letters and she could not forgive Joanna for wanting to marry Will. Their letters to her, in contrast, were brimming over with concern and apologies and promises, chiefly that Sir Richard would soon send for her. But he never did. The only happiness that she allowed herself to experience each day was that it brought no message from him. The rest of the time she wallowed in her sadness, isolation and loneliness. She wanted to do so; it was the least she could suffer. She wanted to be consumed by despondency. Drowning in self-pity was the only way her dreams were kept at bay—dreams of Anne standing on the scaffold in the shadow of the White Tower, the executioner creeping up behind her, sword in hand. Dreams of Sister Margaret being strung up at Tyburn, her neck snapping in two like a dry twig. Dreams of Thomas Cromwell, his eyes boring into hers, his hands stroking her face and then snaking themselves around her throat. She never failed to wake with a start, her body drenched in sweat, her heart pumping with fear and with something else: pure, unadulterated rage. Directed mostly at herself, but also at him. She wanted to make him pay. She had to. She desired it above anything.
She was sitting outside in the orchard, on a dull grey day that promised imminent rain, when Fortune’s Wheel turned for her once again. A servant of the king’s came calling; she heard the clatter of horses’ hooves that announced his arrival in the courtyard, then the scurrying of servants inside the house that presaged the opening of the door.
“My lady? My lady, where are you?” Tilly called out insistently. “A Master Culpeper is here to see you, madam. He says he brings a message from the king.”
Bridget, who had been reclining against a tree and therefore was obscured from view, stood up and walked toward the sound of the maid’s voice. She found her, and Culpeper, waiting just outside the entrance to the garden. She smiled broadly and received him as though they were old friends, although nothing could be further from the truth. He returned her smile with equally feigned delight.
“Master Culpeper,” she said, “what an unexpected pleasure this is. Welcome to the Manor of Thorns. I am afraid you find us somewhat unready for your visit, but I am sure we have plenty of wine, or ale if you prefer, to offer you as refreshment. You must be tired from your ride. Tilly, would you see to it please?” Bridget motioned to the maid and she scuttled off to do her mistress’s bidding before Culpeper could demur.
“I thank you for the offer, my lady, but I cannot stay long. I am needed at Whitehall. I am here to deliver two things. Firstly this.” He removed a letter from his doublet and handed it to her. “It is not a personal missive but merely a summons back to court. I give it to you with His Majesty’s good wishes. He hopes to find you in good health as I trust you are?” Bridget nodded. Culpeper allowed his eyes to run up and down her slender frame, and he could not help his expression turning lascivious. Bridget stifled a shudder.
�
�I am in excellent health, sir, you may assure His Majesty of that,” she replied, her voice still all sweetness and light. “And the other thing you mentioned?”
“Oh, yes,” Culpeper said. “I deposited it inside. If we may repair thither I will show you.”
“By all means.”
They went indoors and Culpeper gestured toward a large item, wrapped in a heavy cloth that he had placed in the corner of the hall. “That is also from the king,” he announced. “He finds that he has no use for it in any of his palaces. I understand that your husband has . . .paid the necessary price for it. I am sure he will make room for it somewhere. You seem to have a number of empty spaces on the walls.”
He took up his riding cloak and made for the door with an amused grin on his face.
“It looks like a painting,” Tilly said wonderingly after he had gone. “How odd for the king to send you a painting.”
It was not odd at all, because Bridget could guess, without even unveiling it, what the painting was. It could only be the portrait of her that Master Holbein had been working on, that she had sat for several times. The portrait that had been reserved for the king’s eyes only. The portrait that was going to make her immortal. But, now that he was to be married, his eyes desired hers no longer—not even on canvas. She approached it.
“Tilly, could you fetch me some bread and cheese? I did not break my fast today; I find I am uncommonly hungry.” Tilly obeyed, albeit reluctantly. She clearly wanted to see the painting, but Bridget was not ready for that. She wanted to be the one to see it first; she wanted to expose it alone.
She took off the covering in one movement and drew in a breath. There she was, the Viscountess de Brett, a young woman dressed in her best brocade, smothered in jewels, her dark gaze directed slightly to the side and yet seemingly staring straight out of the canvas. A woman she hardly knew. The portrait was everything she had anticipated it would be: utterly beautiful, charmingly expressed and expertly done. But it was also other things. Holbein had managed to capture not only her face, but her character perfectly—her naïveté, her simplicity, her utter lack of guile. Her eyes looked out at the world with gullibility etched in every shadowed stroke. The foolishness that had gotten Sister Margaret killed jeered at her from each artfully rendered angle. The stupidity that had delivered her into the king’s bed and, more fatally, into Thomas Cromwell’s web shouted at her from every corner of the canvas. She reached out her hand to touch it and in doing so almost dropped the king’s letter, which was still held in her grasp. She had not even opened it; there was no need to, as Culpeper had told her what it contained. It was the summons at last, as promised. She was being ordered back into service, back into the household of another queen. Ordered back to her role as Lady de Brett, the most witless woman ever known at court. She glared down at the epistle with a deep frown, its fat scarlet seal almost mocking her. On a side table lay a knife, a small, paring knife. She went and picked it up. The blade, though not long, was wickedly sharp. It would do nicely.
She turned toward the portrait. Before she could change her mind, before Tilly came back in and cooler heads were given a chance to prevail, she ran the blade down the centre of the painting. By so doing she cut her own face neatly in half, straight down the middle, the two sides of her visage peeling off like dead skin. She ripped them both away, crumpled them up and tossed them into the fireplace.
“Madam!” Tilly cried from the doorway, her voice full of shock. “What are you doing? Have you run mad? The painting . . . did not Master Culpeper say that it was from the king? You have cut it to ribbons. Won’t His Majesty be angry, not to mention Lord De Brett! Madam, I am worried about you, your face is very flushed. This is not like you. Not at all.”
“Is it not?” Bridget mused, admiring her handiwork. “I think that it is very much me Tilly, though perhaps I did not realise it until just now. In fact, I feel more like myself than I have in a long, long time. As for the king and Lord de Brett, do not upset yourself about their reactions. This painting was one that nobody wanted; it was a piece of badly crafted rubbish, which is why it was sent here. They wanted rid of it. I have simply obliged them.”
Tilly was obviously unconvinced, but it was not her place to comment further. She handed Bridget the plate of bread and cheese she had asked for and then quietly left the room. Bridget took up a piece of the manchet loaf and chewed it cheerfully, more so than she had done in many months. The silly girl that she had seen depicted in that portrait was gone. Destroyed. Riven clean in two, never to return, and for that she was glad. That girl had been nothing but trouble, both for herself and for those around her. It had been a relief to end her existence.
But the woman with the knife who had taken her place was wiser, she was cannier. She was harsher. She had the scars on her heart to prove it, and once she was back at court, she intended to put all those scars to very good use. No more would she eschew ambition; no more would she disdain the scramble for preferment and the struggle for power. She wanted it all, every last scrap she could grab. She wanted to rise, and once she had, she could achieve what she really desired, her ultimate aim. For others to fall.
The End
Historical Note
Firstly, thank you for reading my novel ‘Court of Traitors’, the sequel to ‘Ambition’s Queen’. For those who did not read the first book, Bridget and the de Brett family, Will Redcliff, Sister Margaret, Rivers Abbey and the Manor of Thorns are all fictional people and places. All occurrences pertaining to them are therefore products of my imagination. As for the real people and events that I have portrayed in this story I have tried to stick as close to the historical record as I could. Sir Edward Neville, the Marquess of Exeter and Lord Montague were all executed in December 1538 for their parts in the so called ‘Exeter Conspiracy’. The evidence for the conspiracy largely rested on the confessions, obtained under torture, of Sir Geoffrey Pole, brother of Lord Montague and Cardinal Pole. It is doubtful that any true conspiracy to depose the king existed but Exeter and company had certainly been indiscreet in their talk and had far too strong a claim to the throne to be allowed to live. The king essentially, it seems, wanted rid of them and Cromwell found him a pretext to do so. Sir Nicholas Carew, who was executed in March 1539 also for conspiracy to depose the king, was likely removed because he was a strong supporter of Katherine of Aragon’s daughter, the Lady Mary. Gertrude, Marchioness of Exeter, was attainted for treason but never went to the block.
St Veronica’s veil was one of the most famous and venerated relics of the medieval Roman Catholic Church. The story goes that St Veronica of Jerusalem encountered Jesus on his way to Calvary. She wiped blood and sweat from his face and, miraculously, an image of his likeness was left imprinted on her veil. This episode is depicted as the sixth of the fourteen Stations of the Cross. From the 12th century onwards, the veil resided in Rome where it was one of the wonders of the city and was paraded in public until it disappeared when Rome was sacked in 1527. As far as I know, no fragment of the veil ever made its way to England.
