Court of Traitors (Bridget Manning #2) (18 page)

Sometimes, though, the court did not let go so easily. It came looking for you, it searched you out, clad in the colours that could make Bridget’s blood run cold like no others—green and white. Thus it was on a day of glorious sunshine that the two-toned messenger hammered on their door, a velvet pouch in one hand, a letter in the other. Tilly conducted him inside and quickly fetched Bridget. He executed a smart, little bow when he saw her and promptly launched into his clearly rehearsed speech.

“My lady, I am commanded by His Majesty, King Henry
VIII, to present you with these.” He handed her the letter and the velvet pouch. “Both are given as tokens of His Majesty’s highest regard and esteem for your ladyship’s beauty, grace and honour.”

Bridget accepted both items with hands that were not entirely steady. All eyes were on her as she opened the pouch and retrieved the delicate object that was hidden inside. She drew it out slowly and dropped it, almost reverently, into the centre of her palm. Once again, she had to work hard to prevent her true reaction showing through, for in her hand sat a heavy garnet ring, set in gold and flanked by two pearls, identical to the one she already wore on a long chain around her neck. The two rings were identical - the king must be in the habit of doling them out to ladies he ‘esteemed’ such as Anne Boleyn and, in her turn, Jane Seymour. Bridget had no desire to add her name to the list of recipients. That made her next move a relatively easy one.

“Good sir,” she declared, whilst putting the ring back in the pouch, “I am honoured that the king would present me with such a valuable gift, but I am a married woman and therefore I cannot accept it.” She handed the small bag back to the messenger and pressed the king’s letter, unopened, into his unwilling hand. His face reflected utter astonishment, and he seemed on the verge of making a comment but then thought better of it. He simply bowed and took his leave.

“Bridget! My God, why is the king sending you gifts?” the abbess demanded incredulously once he was gone. “Have you become his mistress? Has he propositioned you? Does my brother know of this? When I think of the upbringing you had at Rivers, and all you have experienced subsequently, I cannot believe that you would forget yourself so far!”

“I can
believe it, Mother,” Sister Margaret said quietly. “I warned you long ago, at Rivers, when that Boleyn woman offered places to Mistress Joanna and Mistress Bridget that if you sent them to court it would prove to be a terrible mistake. You would not listen to me; you thought it was such a good opportunity for them both. You were wrong - look at what it has done to them, to Bridget especially. A mere five months after arriving to serve the Boleyn witch they found themselves having to attend on her when she lost her head! Bridget was forced to pick it up out of the gore! Now that mouldwarp, the king, seeks to claim her, as he has claimed so many others. Oh yes, she
has
forgotten her upbringing at Rivers and it is no surprise. None at all.”

“I have forgotten nothing,” Bridget responded sharply. “And please, Sister Margaret, do not blame the abbess for the events of the past. She was right to send Joanna and me to court. Nobody could have predicted what would befall the queen, who was incidentally a kind mistress to us, and absolutely no witch. As for the king, of course I am not his mistress and nor do I ever plan to be. I am Sir Richard’s wife; I made a vow before God. I honour my vows. And even if I were not married, even if I were free, the role of mistress to King Henry VIII is not one I would ever pursue. No sane woman would.”

“That may be true, Bridget, but who says you have a say in the matter?” Joanna commented gently. Bridget, the abbess and Sister Margaret looked at her quizzically, but the young lady was undaunted. “Oh please, do not give me that disbelieving look. I merely state the obvious, and certainly nothing that warrants open-mouthed stares. Mother, you asked why the king should send Bridget gifts. The answer is simple: he does so because he likes her, he is attracted to her, which is only natural, as she is just about the prettiest woman at court. The king is all powerful; he may do as he wants. He may
have
whom he wants. At the current time, he wants Bridget, and you may all rightly recoil at such a prospect, but if it comes to it, how will she ever be able to refuse him? In one way, and it sounds awful, it would be much better to be his mistress as a married woman, for that way he will never see you as a potential wife. He will never be tempted to offer you the Earth only to end up burying you in it. You would be safe from that, at least.”

“Safety, is it?” Bridget echoed. “If I became his mistress, my status as a wife would protect me from any chance of becoming his fourth queen and in that Joanna, I concede, you are correct. I would certainly keep my life, but would I keep my reputation, which is all, ultimately, a woman has to call her own in this world? No, I would not. And what would happen when he tired of me, as inevitably he would? Would I be banished, sent away to a little bolthole somewhere in the depths of the countryside, far away from his gaze, pensioned off as a titled whore? God, what if there was a child?” Bridget blanched at the prospect. “No. There is no possible advantage to me in any of it. More importantly, I
want
none of it. The very thought makes me want to void my stomach.”

“My dear child, I fully agree with you, but Joanna does sadly have a point,” the abbess reluctantly said. “The king is not a man like others whom you may easily reject. He is set above us all—as the maker of the rules, he absolves himself entirely from following them. He may initially take your refusal to accept his ring and his letter as a sign of your moral rectitude and innate good character. He likes such displays; he has a taste for the prim and proper. But only for so long. He has no wife, no woman to warm his bed and pay him compliments, and if he wants you to fulfil that role then . . . I really do not see how you can resist forever. Not without courting considerable trouble.”

The abbess’s words, about the king liking displays of the prim and proper, jolted a memory loose in Bridget’s mind. She thought back to a day almost two years ago at Greenwich when another messenger had arrived, this time bearing a letter and a purse full of money for Jane Seymour. She had reacted just as Bridget had – she had refused the gift, though she had done it with considerably more theatricality. His Majesty had declared himself delighted with her response, no doubt considering it to be the ‘correct’ one. But it had changed nothing. He had continued to send her presents, and Jane had not always scrupled to decline them. It had eventually developed into a pattern, a kind of dance between them, and Bridget realised with an appalling certainty that the same thing would happen to her. The messengers would just keep on arriving until, finally, she gave in.

“I must go back to court,” she announced, gathering herself. “I must go back there and take my rightful place at Sir Richard’s side. The king would not dare to pursue me under the noses of everyone, most especially my husband, who is, after all, a member of his own privy chamber. I shall be close at hand yet out of his reach, and then, surely, his ardour will cool and he will lose interest in me. If I stay here, we will be assailed without cease by an unending parade of the green-and-white gentlemen bearing gifts. I have said ‘no’ once, but as Mother pointed out, it is another thing entirely to keep on saying it. I will therefore try another approach. Even though Sir Richard has not written to summon me, nonetheless I will go to him. It is the only thing I can do. Tilly!” The maid came hurrying in. “Collect up my belongings please, I leave for court as soon as possible.”

She and
the surprised Tilly hastened upstairs leaving the abbess, Joanna and Sister Margaret standing below. The latter watched Bridget hurry away and her eyes narrowed. “The foolish girl will be his mistress by Christmastide,” she declared, fixing the abbess with an unwavering glare. “You may demur, Mother, you may shake your head, but you will see that I am right. By the time we are burning the Yule log, she will be in his bed and then,” she clicked her rosary beads, “all that we will be able to do for her is pray.”

The court was still in residence at Greenwich and Bridget wasted no time getting herself there, hiring a boat on the next available tide. She took Joanna with her, and their journey downriver was conducted for the most part in a kind of charged silence.

Finally, as the waterside palace
hove into view, Joanna spoke. “Bridget, I have known you all my life. You are like a sister to me and I want you to know that I will always support you. But I cannot see how, with the best will in the world, this tactic of yours has any chance of succeeding. I cannot see how coming here, and putting yourself directly into the path of the king, will deter him from chasing you. From wanting you. If anything, you are just making things that much easier for him. He does not have to pursue you anymore; he does not have to send pages laden with gifts to knock on your door. He can just summon you to his bedchamber and be done with it. It is as if you think that if you willingly walk into the lion’s den you will not be eaten. Sister Margaret thinks your plan is doomed. She thinks that you will be his by Christmas.”

Bridget sighed in frustration. “Does she now? Well, given her views, that opinion is hardly surprising. Perhaps she has a point but whatever I do, whichever course I take, it involves putting myself at risk. It is unavoidable,” she said. “In any case, if I
am
walking into the lion’s den, are you not in favour of that? I thought you saw some merit in my becoming the king’s mistress. I am married and therefore not available for him to wed. You said I’d be ‘safe’ under those circumstances.”

Joanna
exhaled a long breath, as if she were trying to control her temper. ”In favour is the wrong way of putting it and you know it. I just recognised that the king is the one man in the land to whom the word ‘no’ may not be used, at least not very often. Of course I do not
want
you to become his mistress—you are my oldest friend and married to my uncle for God’s sake—but just think of the fates of his previous mistresses, and then think of the fates of his previous wives, and ask yourself, who got the better part of the bargain?”

She was right. All of the king’s former mistresses were still alive, and happily so, and all of his former wives were dead. It did not take a towering intellect to work out which was the best group to be in. Even so, everything in Bridget rebelled against joining their ranks. Setting aside any other considerations, she was not fitted for it; she was not the sort of clay from which courtesans were moulded. Apart from her natural reserve and lack of a flirtatious spirit, she did not hail from a powerful family, she had few people to support or promote, and no children for whom she could secure plum positions at court. All she was, ultimately, was a former maid of honour to a disgraced queen, and an erstwhile novice nun who had married a middle-aged baronet whom she did not love, but who had provided her with a comfortable home and a creditable situation in life. She had no pretensions to be anything else or to rise any higher. The whole court was driven by the overweening desires of ambitious men, but she had served an ambitious woman and had seen her lose her head when Fortune’s Wheel turned against her. When the king turned against her.

Bridget was no creature of ambition, but at the same time, she desired to keep her head upon her shoulders. That was not the easiest of tasks to manage at the best of times at the Tudor court—it meant walking a very fine line, through all the factions and the plotting, with fatally steep drops rearing up on either side. She needed a refuge, a safe haven. For once, she needed her husband.

The boat drew up to the jetty and was secured speedily to the side. The boatman leapt out and handed Bridget and Joanna ashore before getting back into his vessel to retrieve their baggage, which was passed over with equal alacrity. Bridget paid the man his due and watched him row away, setting his course for London once more. She envied him his freedom, his ability to determine his own destiny, to sail by the light of his own star. She would have given much at that instant to swap places with him.

She and Joanna gathered up their belongings and presented themselves to the guards at the gate. Fortunately, Bridget was known to them by now, and they let the duo through with a smile and a friendly greeting.

“Do you think we will be
lodged in the same rooms?” Joanna asked. “They turned out to be quite comfortable last time.”

“It would be nice
,” Bridget agreed. “If we are not, we shall have to find one of the Lord Chamberlain’s men and make enquiries of him. Wait! Look, there is Sir Richard’s man, John Walters.” Bridget called out to him. “Walters, where is your master? Are we housed in our former quarters?”

At the sound of his name, Walters whipped around, and his broad face registered both shock and dismay. Nevertheless, he quickly covered his reaction and approached the two women with the utmost courtesy. “Sir Richard is with the king, my lady. He did not tell me that you and Mistress Joanna were supposed to arrive today; otherwise, I would have met you at the water stairs. I am sorry that you have had to carry your baggage all this way.” The man had turned pink and was full of apologies.