Court of Traitors (Bridget Manning #2) (16 page)

“They have killed him!” he roared, and with that, he, and others of Lord Cromwell’s affinity who had joined in the fray, launched themselves at Carew’s men. Carew turned and started to fight Will.

“God above, where are the guards? Why does nobody put a stop to this?” Bridget cried
. “This is turning into a riot.” She grasped Joanna’s hand and said, “Go and find Lord Cromwell. You know the direction of his quarters?” Joanna nodded. “His own men are now involved in this, not to mention one of the king’s serjeants at arms; perhaps, he can reassert some semblance of order over this chaos. Go, quickly.” Joanna took off at a run.

In the meantime, Sir Gavin Carew had stopped brawling with Will and returned to his original assault on the serjeant, whose injuries had caused him to fall to the ground. Cromwell’s men came to the serjeant’s aid, and a fresh fight was just breaking out when, at last, a contingent of the guard arrived. They ran in with halberds at the ready, and many of the men scattered at the first sight of them. Carew however refused to retreat and stood his ground; he was eventually overpowered, though not without a struggle. In the end, he was dragged away, loudly protesting his innocence.

Once their master had been taken, Carew’s men took to their heels and Cromwell’s followers gave chase. A few remained to assist the incapacitated serjeant and also to stand sentry by the dead man, whose blood now stained a wide area of the cobbles. In the distance, the sound of renewed brawling floated out over the courtyard. The unrest must have spread as more men heard of it and came forward to throw themselves into the fray, no doubt seeing it as their chance to settle some long simmering scores.

Will had gotten to his feet, but he could barely keep his balance. He was favouring his right side, and pain was etched all over his face. Bridget had kept herself out of harm’s way, but she was not prepared to be a bystander any longer. Regardless of the proprieties, she made a sudden decision and went to him. “What is it?” she asked urgently. “Are you bleeding? Have you been stabbed? Let me help you.”

“My lady, you should not be here
!” Will managed between ragged breaths. “This is no place for you. Trouble could start up again at any time, and I will not have you caught up in it. Besides, there is naught wrong with me, I am perfectly fine. I just fell awkwardly, that is all.” He tried to prove this assertion by walking away, but he could complete only a few steps before Bridget was forced to grab him round his waist to prevent him from collapsing.

“Fine
, is it? I don’t think so.” She pressed her hand to his side, and he flinched. Happily she could see no blood when she pulled her hand away.

“There is no blood, so I do not think you have been stabbed, but clearly you are injured. Come on, we must get you away from here. I will assist you, and do not concern yourself with the proper decencies. There is no time for that. It sounds like the riot may be heading this way again and you, more than me, cannot afford to become embroiled in it again. Now then, let me take your weight.” He made a feeble attempt at an argument, but he was in no fit state to mount one and conceded almost as soon as he began. He leant on Bridget and allowed her to lead him, with careful steps, away from the courtyard.

He was muscular and therefore heavy, and Bridget’s arms screamed with the effort to keep him upright, but she did not dare to stop and rest. She had to get him back to the de Bretts’ lodgings as quickly as possible. Eventually, after a struggle, they reached the rooms and Will could not help but slump into a chair as soon as they were inside. Bridget hurriedly poured him a cup of wine, and he drank it down as though he were a man dying of thirst in the desert.

“Take off your jacket
,” she ordered, her tone brisk and business-like. “I need to see what damage has been done.”

“No, Bridget,” Will replied with as much conviction as he could summon up. “We must observe at least some modesty here. You are another man’s wife, and you cannot aid me in that way. It is bad enough that you had to drag me in here, to the quarters you share with your husband. I just pray that we were not seen in all the confusion. I thank you for your assistance, but now I have had that wine, I am feeling much restored. I must return to my men.”

He got up and made it to the door before he almost buckled against the frame. Bridget pulled him up and virtually carried him, with difficulty, back to the chair. She shoved him unceremoniously into it, braced her weight on the carved armrests and looked him in the eye. “I have never said this to you before, and perhaps I should have long before now, but shut your mouth. Sit there, keep quiet and let me do this.”

She began to remove his jacket, and Will, meekly following orders, allowed her to do so without further objection. She carefully slid the partially torn material off his shoulders and placed it to one side. “Right, now this.” She nodded toward his shirt, and with a sigh, he quickly pulled the sweat-soaked cambric up and over his head, clenching his jaw against the fresh burst of pain as he did so. Once it was completely off, Bridget was able to properly assess the extent of his injuries. Mercifully he had sustained no deep cuts to his arms, chest or torso, but he had suffered numerous abrasions, and deep bruises were already forming in several places. She gently ran her hands over his ribs and he jumped at her touch. His skin was hot and slick with sweat from the exertion of the fight, and she could feel his heart beating strongly beneath her palm. After a moment, he lay his own hand over hers and held it in place, as if he wished to imprint the feel of her onto his skin. She closed her eyes against the answering wave of heat that ran right through her.

“It is possible your ribs are only bruised,” she rasped, “but they may be broken. Either way they need to be bound. I will do this for you now; it will greatly ease your discomfort.” Will protested, but Bridget had already broken away from him, fetched a length of cloth and had set about fashioning it into a makeshift bandage. “Stand up” she said, her voice now under more control. “It will not take more than a minute to accomplish the binding. Then you may return to your men.”

She was true to her word - she wound the cloth speedily around his body, pulling it as tight as he could bear it, whilst trying to ignore the rise and fall of his powerful chest. Will’s eyes followed the movement of her hands and a rapid pulse beat strongly in his throat. In an attempt to distract themselves from their close, physical proximity, Bridget asked him about the genesis of the brawl.

“
You spoke of friction with Carew’s men when Sir Richard and I dined at Austin Friars. Long standing rivalries and hatreds were mentioned. Is that the true cause of the friction? If so, these rivalries must run very deep, for we all know what a serious business it is to commit violence within the verge of the court, especially for gentlemen of the king’s privy chamber. You could all lose your places over this.”

“That won’t happen, at least not for me” Will answered confidently. “The king knows how things stand. As we spoke about at Lord Cromwell’s residence, tensions have been festering between the entourages of several lords for some time and they finally spilled over a few weeks back when one of Lord Hertford’s men killed a man in a duel. He fled into sanctuary at Westminster Abbey. The Earl of Southampton’s men then got involved in a fight, in which another man was slain, and now Sir Gavin Carew has entered the fray. He and his men caused the death of that yeoman, whose body you saw spread out upon the cobbles, and God knows what else they may have done by now. The violence will have spread, and every man who has ever bitten his thumb at another will be looking for revenge.”

“But why? Is it just because of Lord Hertford’s man and the duel? There must be more than that.” Bridget finished binding Will’s ribs and handed his shirt to him. He hastily put it back on, only flinching once as he drew it down carefully over his newly bandaged body.

“There
is. There are always rivalries between opposing groups of retainers at court, usually because their masters belong to different factions and are at loggerheads over something or other. Most of the time it can be managed but some of these enmities have been heightened recently due to the state of the king’s health. It’s his leg—it is bad again.”

The king’s leg was fast becoming the bane o
f his existence, ever since the day he had fallen so heavily from his horse in the tiltyard at Greenwich. Bridget well remembered the incident. Queen Anne, then pregnant, had been visited by her uncle the Duke of Norfolk and told that the king had fallen and was unconscious. In a state of great anxiety, she had ordered Bridget to go down to the tournament ground and find out for her what was going on. It was while she was standing outside the king’s tent that Bridget had first met Will. And Cromwell. She had been the one to give the queen the welcome news that the king had survived his fall. She had also borne witness to the queen’s miscarriage just a few days later. Yes, she recalled that day very well; it had been a momentous one for many people, not just the king.

“His Majesty’s leg has never fully healed from that accident. The physicians do their best with it—they bind the wound up, and that works for a while. But it always bursts open again,” Will explained. “And this time has been particularly bad. He has been in such distress that he weeps from the pain, it is so intense. The extent of his ailment, and the seemingly incurable nature of it, has caused some to . . . consider their options.”

Bridget was perplexed. “Options? If the king were to . . .” she mouthed the word “die,” which safer than uttering it aloud, “then Prince Edward would be king.”

“
Yes and he is a baby. An infant on the throne,” Will said, “would mean, of necessity, that the country would have to be run by others, by a regency council, headed most probably by Lord Hertford, as the king’s senior uncle. What would that state of affairs mean for the kingdom? Would it mean yet more alteration in religion? Such a scenario is fraught with danger, and some would seek to avoid it by placing an adult ruler, in the form of the Lady Mary, on the throne. She is of full age and, depending on your point of view, of the right religious persuasion. These are the tides of peril that currently swirl about the king, and this is the reason I personally fear no repercussions from what has occurred today. His Majesty knows that I, and my men, are fighting on the right side—
his
side—and that of his son.”

Despite his brave words, his hands shook as he shrugged on his jacket, and Bridget had to complete the task for him. Their fingers entwined and the air between them stilled. “Bridget, why have you done this? I am grateful you helped me, I acknowledge now that I required it, but you did not have to be the one to do it. One of my men would have hauled me away, eventually. You should have just left me, removed yourself from the situation. You are after all, a married woman.” He grimaced. “For my sake, you have placed yourself in a potentially compromising position and I must ask myself why, especially in light of the fact that I have not treated you very . . . courteously since your return.”

Bridget smiled wryly and considered her response. “It is true, your behaviour to me lately has been that of a spoiled child who needs a good whipping.” Will laughed ruefully. “But that does not mean that I would fail to come to your aid when you need it. When I saw that you were being attacked by those men, when I saw you fall . . .” her voice wavered, “I did not hesitate to go to you, regardless of the rights and wrongs of it all, regardless of my ‘position’. I couldn’t just leave you. I couldn’t just turn away. I had to make sure that you were all right. That you were safe.”

“Did you not think of your husband? Did you not think about that ring on your finger? Because I did, I
do
. I think about it all the time. It gnaws away at the back of my mind and will give me no rest. I think about the fact that you are lost to me, that you bear another man’s name and share another man’s bed. And it is my fault that it is so, I admit it. It is all my fault. Every day I reproach myself for the way I acted toward you at Greenwich after you had just witnessed, participated really, in the queen’s execution. I should have realised that you were in shock, that it was the worst possible time to ask you to make any kind of decision. I should have just taken you in my arms and let you cry on my shoulder. But no, I pushed you, and then my vanity got in the way and I made a mess of things. And, because of that, I lost you.”

“Will,” Bridget reached out and touched his cheek, “do not speak so. What happened was not entirely your fault and nor was it as simple, or as clear-cut, as you seem to remember. Yes it’s true, I was in shock, but things had happened so fast between us anyway that it was bound to go awry. And then there was your loyalty to Thomas Cromwell—” Bridget cut short her words at the sound of footsteps approaching down the corridor. The two of them moved apart, thus creating enough of a chaste distance when the door opened a moment later. Joanna entered whom, in the uproar and confusion, Bridget had entirely forgotten that she had sent on an errand to locate Lord Cromwell. She saw, to her chagrin that she had not failed in her assignment.

Bridget’s discomfort at the arrival of the master secretary was as nothing however compared to the expression of horror that quickly emblazoned itself on Will’s countenance.

“My lady, I have fetc
hed Lord Cromwell, as you asked,” Joanna announced, rather unnecessarily.

Bridget
did not immediately answer, leaving Cromwell himself to fill the void. “Yes, Mistress, I am sure Lady de Brett can see that I have been fetched. I am not invisible, after all, although she rather looks as though she wishes
she
were at this moment.” He took in the sight of Will and Bridget, noting the rumpled clothes and flushed faces, and his eyes narrowed into tiny slivers of ebony light.

Will was the first to recover himself. “My lord, as we feared, the tension at court has come to a head. There was trouble with Sir Gavin Carew’s men, they caused the death of a yeoman and beat a serjeant at arms. I and others were forced to step in and stop them before they did any further damage. Lady de Brett came upon the scene and she has kindly rendered me some assistance with the injuries I sustained.”

Cromwell’s black gaze raked him from head to foot.
“Injuries, Will? You seem to be in one piece to me.”

“His ribs
, sir, they are hurt, possibly broken,” Bridget interposed. “I have done what I could for him, but he most likely needs the care of a doctor. He was fortunate, all in all, to emerge relatively unscathed, considering the violence of the situation.”

“Yes, yes, you are correct, my lady. He is most fortunate. The court is spiralling out of control and steps must be taken to restore the proper balance,” Cromwell muttered, mostly to himself, “and they
will
be taken. Meanwhile, I am happy to report that the guard is back in full command and the ringleaders have been rounded up. Acts of violence committed within the verge are treated with the utmost gravity. The king’s security has been threatened and he will have something to say about it.” He fixed Will with a hard look. “But for the time being, I thank you, Lady de Brett, for rushing to Master Redcliff’s relief and for ministering to his wounds, such as they are. I will see to it personally that his ribs are closely monitored from now on.”