Court of Traitors (Bridget Manning #2) (15 page)

Holbein swatted the question away, declaring “money is not an acceptable topic for the dining table, we shall talk of it another day”. He then began assessing, almost measuring, Bridget with his eyes, as though he was making a thorough mental sketch of her.

“Excellent
,” Cromwell declared. “Master Holbein, I congratulate you on securing a new commission. We look forward to viewing the finished work, in all its immortal glory. In the meantime, we must proceed to other matters. First and foremost, has there been any outbreak of trouble at court? I hear new, ever more disturbing rumours of it every day.” The guests regarded him in confusion, all except Will.

“No
, my lord, not yet, but it is brewing. The level of ill will between the retinues of Lord Hertford, the Earl of Southampton, the Carews, the Marquess of Exeter as well as our men has reached a fever pitch. There has already been some violence break out in the city. It has not come within the Verge of the court yet but I fear it is only a question of when, not if.”

Cromwell
nodded. “Keep an eye on it, Will. Rivalries and hatreds have always existed betwixt the followers of noblemen but they seem to have grown more serious of late. There is a jostling for position going on and I want to keep a very firm handle on it. You mentioned the Marquess of Exeter which brings me neatly to another subject - I must relate to you all the details of my recent, entirely unexpected visit to his house at West Horsley.”

The assembly sat up straighter in their chairs. “You were invited to West Horsley?” Sir Richard Rich echoed in amazement. “But… the marquess hates you, he always speaks so, so . . .” He fumbled for the right word.

“Ill of me?” Cromwell finished. “Yes
, that he does, and I was as surprised as you, Rich, when I received the invitation. You could have knocked me down with the proverbial feather. Nevertheless, he is an important nobleman, and it would have been disrespectful of me not to accept the invitation, so I dutifully presented myself at his home on the appointed day. I must confess I was half hoping to come upon Sir Edward Neville singing rude songs about me in the garden, as he is wont to do I am told, but alas I was not treated to a recital. The marquess actually could not have been more hospitable; he even presented me with a summer coat and a wood knife as a parting gift.” Cromwell produced the said knife. It was a finely wrought piece, and the master secretary seemed quite taken with it. He ran his fingers down the hilt and let them play, somewhat languidly, across the sharp end of the blade.

“Be that as it may, my lord, you still had best be on your guard where Exeter and his kinfolk are concerned,” Thomas Wriothesley chimed in. “The marquess may have given you presents and put on a show of cordiality, but I heard from a reliable informant that once you left his house, he called you a ‘knave’ and said he hoped to ‘give you a buffet one day.’”

The
party sucked in a collective breath, but Cromwell remained perfectly unaffected. “A buffet, is it? Well, now let me see. I have received a few of those in my life and from a variety of sources, starting with my late, unlamented father, Walter. Now there was a man who very closely followed the old maxim of ‘spare the rod and spoil the child.’ By the Mass he did. And then a little later, once Walter was but a distant memory, I took my share of blows from Italy to France to the Low Countries. I have been buffeted by the best and yet here I sit, still alive in spite of it all. The marquess is welcome to buffet me if he likes. Let’s see if he can do any better! I do not fear his attentions.”

“But we
should
fear him, sir, and all those of the White Rose,” Sir Ralph Sadler said gravely. “They are the last of the Plantagenets and they wear the badge of their ancestry with conspicuous pride. They still entertain designs upon the throne, why they would like nothing better than to marry their man Reginald Pole to the Lady Mary, ‘cardinal’ or not. I wager that such a nicety as his holy orders would not stand in their way for long. Then the two of them would take the crown.”

“Indeed not
, as such niceties as being a cardinal can be so easily overlooked these days,” Sir William Kingston commented quietly, earning him a sharp look from Wriothesley.

“Cardinal Pole?” Sir Richard perked up at the name. “Exeter and his adherents, Carew and Neville mainly, do sometimes talk of him. They praise his intellectual abilities and they wish, somewhat nostalgically, that he was able to come home.”

Cromwell glanced up
from his plate of larks, a quizzical smile on his face. “Do they? Ah, that is right, Sir Richard, you are an acquaintance of the marquess and his circle, I had quite forgotten. Tell me, what else do they say of the good cardinal? I would be fascinated to find out.”

Bridget could see the flash of steel shimmering under Cromwell’s mask of sociability and, under the table, she tapped her husband’s knee, but he either did not notice or paid it no heed. Delighted to find that he was the cynosure of attention, he answered the question with blithe alacrity. “Well,” he began, “the marquess laments that his kinsman, the cardinal, ‘the greatest scholar in Christendom,’ as he calls him, cannot return to these shores because the king hates him more than any man living and, as a consequence of that, has come to hate all the Pole family. They are all most bitter about it.”

“Bitter are they? Well, it is their own fault! The king has good reason to hate Pole,” Sir Richard Rich exclaimed. “Do you know how their beloved cardinal, the great scholar, obtained his fine education? It was at the expense of the king! And do you know how he repaid the king for that generosity? He gleefully and traitorously threw it all back in his face with that blasted treatise he wrote. What was it called again?”

Cromwell cleared his throat. “
Pro Unitatis Ecclesiasticae Unitatis Defensione,
” he intoned, the long Latin title tripping easily off his tongue.

“More commonly known as
De Unitate
” Sir Ralph Sadler said, and Sir Richard Rich slapped the table in disgusted remembrance.

“That is the very
one,
De Unitate
,” he sneered. “Writing that piece of filth was how Pole chose to utilise the education he had been so selflessly given by our king! He fashioned his dearly bought words into weapons and attacked His Majesty with them. He showered him in opprobrium and calumny, and held him up to be made a mock and a jeer of throughout Europe. I do agree with Exeter and his companions though on one point: I also wish that he would come back to England, so he could be racked for what he has done. I would turn the handle myself and I would savour every moment of it.”

Sir Richard Rich was so furious that he shook. He had to take several draughts of wine to calm himself.

“Oh
, come now, Rich, do not distress yourself so,” Cromwell soothed. “You are thinking of this in entirely the wrong way. Cardinal Pole never did a better day’s work than when he wrote his little book, and mercifully it
is
little, as all good books are. For within its pages, Master Reginald sets out everything that he thinks, everything that is in his heart. We find out that he considers our king to be a monstrous ruler, a lecher, a poor father and a ‘worse enemy of the Faith and a greater heretic than any in Germany.’ He even goes so far as to say that the kingdom should be removed from the king’s control. All this he puts down on paper, plain as day, for all the world to see. I do so love it when people will insist on doing that—it is as if they wish to provide their own rope for the hangman to string them up with. Tell me, Sir Richard, have you ever had occasion to read
De Unitate
? Perhaps the marquess gave you a copy to peruse?”

Sir Richard, realising he had fallen headlong into the most perilous of waters, stared down at the partially eaten contents of his plate, as if the right thing to say might somehow lie mouldering miraculously amongst its tepid remains, if only he looked hard enough. He went to take up his cup of wine, but his hand trembled so much that he could not manage so much as a sip. Clearly, he was largely unfamiliar with the history of Cardinal Reginald Pole, not to mention his published works, and regretted bitterly ever opening his mouth on the subject. But it was too late for that. Cromwell had him in his sights and would not let him escape so easily.

“I will take your silence as a no
,” Cromwell said. “It is no matter. We cannot all be scholars. I recommend the document to you, if it ever passes your way. Do you have anything else to report of Exeter’s conversations? You have been most illuminating so far.”

“Oh, no, my lord,” Sir Richard stammered. “They speak mostly of the cardinal, really, and sometimes of yourself—they do call you a ‘knave’ and a ‘cur’ and much else . . .” Bridget closed her eyes. “But Master Wriothesley already told you that. I can add nothing else. But I am sure,” he leaned forward, “I am sure they do not truly mean to be insulting or to belittle you, Lord Cromwell. They are great men, born to old families, and they are used to speaking their minds when perhaps . . . they should not,” he finished lamely.

Cromwell swirled the contents of his cup before swallowing it down in one gulp. “Hmm, you do raise a good point, Sir Richard. Many people, both high born and low, suffer from the problem of possessing an ungovernable tongue. It has led lesser men than those good gentlemen into a great deal of adversity for which the only cure is a sharp one. Let us hope that those gentlemen may avoid such a circumstance.”

Sir Richard, a nerve in his right eyelid jumping, was saved from making any further comment by the appearance of a team of waiters at the hall door. They carried an imposing confection, made from marchpane, and fashioned to resemble Cromwell’s house. They bore it in with great ceremony and set it down in the centre of the table to the general acclaim of the guests. They set about cutting it, with a long, wickedly sharpened knife, and then passed the first piece to their master, but he politely baulked and directed them to offer it instead to Sir Richard. He accepted the offer with subdued grace and carefully placed a morsel, a delicately shaped section of roof, in his mouth. He bit down with a smile, though he appeared as if he had never felt less like smiling in his life. Cromwell watched him chew and applauded as he finished. The rest of the guests then received their portions and they all set about eating them with gusto.

Cromwell
, though, did not. His eyes trained themselves on Bridget, and she forced herself to meet them. The look he threw her way, as she took her first, unwilling bite into the marchpane, was as hard and as unforgiving as nails.

Chapter Eleven

The first that Bridget and Joanna knew of the fight, the first sign that alerted them to trouble, was the shouting. They were back at court, this time at Whitehall, having returned there with Sir Richard, whose experience at the Austin Friars dinner had left him pensive and edgy. His response had been to stick as close by the king’s side as he could and to avoid the company of Exeter and his followers entirely. He seemed to think that, by doing so, he was demonstrating his fealty to the crown. He had also taken to sporting a new black velvet doublet, sewn all over with Tudor roses. He was literally wearing his loyalty on his sleeve. Subtlety was most assuredly not his strong suit.

Her husband’s anxiety over how his loyalties were being perceived was the foremost problem in Bridget’s mind, as she and Joanna wound their way through the labyrinthine palace corridors, hunting out the source of the noise. Had Sir Richard, deeming it insufficient to swathe himself in the symbol of the ruling dynasty, decided he needed to further prove it with his fists instead? There had been all that talk at the dinner of the tensions that were rising between various noblemen’s entourages. A laugh bubbled up in her throat at the thought of her fifty-four-year-old spouse fighting in his shirt with the young bucks of the court, taking on all comers. Then she reconsidered her mirth. Violence ‘within the verge’ of the court, the verge constituting an area twelve miles from the person of the king, was a serious matter. Others had been punished, and severely, for much less.

Apprehension had therefore replaced amusement as she and Joanna emerged into a courtyard, one of the many at Whitehall, and found they had discovered the source of the disturbance. About forty gentlemen, their jackets discarded, were to be found there brawling, the sickening sound of flesh meeting flesh in seemingly mortal combat echoing off the enclosing walls. Bridget grabbed Joanna’s arm and pulled her back into the shadows of the archway just as a man fell onto the stones before them, his jaw hanging at an odd angle. Bridget desperately scanned the warring parties for sight of her husband but, fortunately, he was nowhere to be seen. The main combatants seemed to comprise two groups: the retainers of Sir Gavin Carew, brother of the king’s Master of Horse Sir Nicholas, and one of the household serjeants, whose identity was unknown to her. Whoever he was, he was putting up a manful struggle whilst at the same time being badly wounded. Behind him, a group of men leant anxiously over a fallen figure, who lay dreadfully still. One of the men stood up straight and turned around, his eyes blazing with rage. It was Will.