Court of Traitors (Bridget Manning #2) (13 page)

Beside the prince walked four gentlemen of the privy chamber—Will was one—and together they held a gold cloth of estate over the prince’s head. The appearance of the Lady Mary, engulfed by a large group of ladies, rounded out the procession. She was to be the prince’s godmother, and Bridget curtseyed to her deeply as she glided by.

The train of worthies entered the chapel and Bridget, together with Joanna, discreetly followed them and took their places near the back. The chapel was ablaze with candlelight that arced off the stained glass windows and illuminated the gorgeous blue- and gold-painted ceiling. Archbishop Cranmer officiated and he performed the rites with aplomb. A ripple of satisfaction ran through the congregation when he intoned that the prince’s name was to be Edward. Lord Hertford beamed at his namesake, no doubt thinking of the day when this infant would be king and the importance, not to mention the power, he would then enjoy as his uncle.

The newly named Edward was duly baptised with holy water from the silver font, which was draped all about with cloth of gold. Garter King of Arms cried out in a voice that echoed to the star-spangled rafters, “God of His almighty and infinite grace, give and grant good life and long to the right high, right excellent and noble Prince Edward, Duke of Cornwall and Earl of Chester, most dear and entirely beloved son to our most dread and gracious lord, King Henry VIII.”

The words of the
Te Deum
swelled upwards and the tiny sleeping prince, wrapped warmly in his richly embroidered robe, was brought back down the aisle, across the black- and white-chequered floor, to the unending flourish of trumpets. The procession reformed itself, in precisely the same order, and the congregation all made their collective obeisance to it as it went by.

“Are we
supposed to follow them to the queen’s apartments?” Joanna asked after they had gone.

“I do not know. We will see if my husband waits for us outside
.” Sure enough, Sir Richard was there, cooling his heels impatiently in the passageway.

“Hurry, Their Majesties are receiving guests in the queen’s chambers. Was not the ceremony magnificent, and does not the prince look bonny? Edward is a fine name; the king chose it because he was born on the eve of St Edward and also doubtless to honour Her Majesty’s brother, Lord Hertford, who is an excellent man of impeccable repute.”

Sir Richard chattered on excitedly all the way to the queen’s rooms and only quietened down when they entered the royal presence. Bridget stepped into the chamber behind her husband, and the cold fingers of a long ago remembrance ran up and down her spine. The feeling was so strong she had to work hard to hold her smile in place.

The room smelled, quite simply, of blood. There was no other way to describe it, and Bridget was surprised that no one else had detected the odour. Then again perhaps somebody had, and that would account for the unusually pungent perfume that hung so heavily in the air. It was an attempt at disguise. But despite the cloying nature of the beeswax scent, and the fire that burned so brightly and warmed every inch of the great chamber, the aroma of blood still lingered stubbornly beneath it all, billowing around them all like an ill wind. Bridget had smelled this particular brand of blood twice before. Firstly, when she was four years old and her mother had died giving birth to a stillborn daughter, and secondly, when Queen Anne had miscarried her son at Greenwich. She recognised its sour, coppery tang as a harbinger of death, so much so that she could almost feel its approach as she took Sir Richard’s hand and walked toward the king and queen.

Queen Jane was sitting, propped up like a doll, in a pallet bed that was smothered in velvets and furs. She was bedecked, as always, in a multiplicity of jewels, topped off by a golden diadem that balanced awkwardly upon her damp blonde hair. She smiled and laughed as she greeted each of her guests and looked, perhaps for the first time in her life, genuinely pretty.

Beside her sat the king, with his son held closely in his arms. He proudly showed Prince Edward off to everyone, taking time to point out his “strong fingers” and “red hair.” The baby’s hair was rather more yellow than red, and his fingers were the most delicate things that Bridget had ever seen but, of course, no one gainsaid the king.

When it was their turn to gaze upon the prince, Sir Richard praised him to the skies and Bridget diplomatically complimented him on his beauty, which was quite true. He was an angelic looking child, with alabaster skin and a halo of flaxen hair. The queen beamed at her remarks and beckoned her to come closer. Bridget obediently pressed nearer to the bed, and the waft of blood, fresh blood that hit her nostrils confirmed all her worst suspicions. Not only was the queen undoubtedly bleeding, but up close her face was coated with sweat, and her chest rose and fell with rapid breaths. Underneath her carefully crafted appearance, she was struggling, but her unrestrained joy and furious triumph at finally producing the Tudor heir was buoying her up.

“Look at my son! Is he not fair? Is he not robust? He will be a great king one day. King Edward! I have done what nobody else could do, what nobody thought
I
could do. I have secured this kingdom. I have made my husband the happiest of rulers and of men. Is he not happy now? Finally, after all of his tribulations, after all of his misfortunes, he is happy. And it is all because of
me
.”

Bridget glanced over at the king, who was now parading his boy around the chamber to the delight of the onlookers. Happy would be a mild way of describing his mood. Euphoric was much nearer to the mark.

“Yes
, Your Majesty, it is because of you and I congratulate you for it. We could not have wished for a finer prince than the one you have given us.” Bridget lowered her eyes in what she hoped was an attitude of proper submission.

The queen
regarded her. “I am pleased to see that you have dressed as a proper Englishwoman tonight; it becomes you. Perhaps I may be able to find an appropriate place for you in my household now that you are conducting yourself in a more decorous manner, and in light of the fact that your husband enjoys the king’s confidence as a member of his privy chamber. Come and attend on me once I am fully recovered and we shall see what can be done for you.”

Bridget murmured her thanks, whilst displaying the correct amount of decorum she trusted, and the queen nodded at her in dismissal; the Lady Mary was approaching and she had far more important personages to entertain. The king, meanwhile, had finished exhibiting the prince to all and sundry and had summoned the wife of his close friend, the young Duchess of Suffolk, to convey him back to the nursery.

The waiters and servants entered, carrying platters of bread and wafers and vessels of wine and hippocras. Bridget took some hippocras and let the sweet taste of it slide deliciously down her throat as she surveyed the room. Sir Richard was too busy talking to Sir Nicholas Carew and the Exeters to bother with her, and Joanna too had gone off and was engaging some of the queen’s maids in conversation. Bridget was alone. She took another sip of the honeyed liquid and nearly choked on it when the voice of Thomas Cromwell sounded in her ear. A little of the wine spilled onto her gown, and the master secretary laughed and offered her his handkerchief.

“My lord
, you startled me! You have a very unsettling habit of simply materialising in my midst, as if you had hidden yourself behind the hangings.”

“Ah, no,” Cromwell lightly answered, “though a tapestry is an excellent hiding place and has been known to cover a multitude of sins, but, alas, I am probably too well fed to secrete myself behind one these days.” He patted his solid stomach. “I apologise for startling you, ’twas not my intention. I merely wished to ask your opinion of the queen, as I saw you conversing with her.”

“My opinion?” Bridget repeated quizzically. “I do not understand what you mean, sir.”

“Oh
, yes, you do,” Cromwell countered, his eyes bright as coals. “I watched you as you came in and I noted your reaction, though you strove to hide it rather well. You smelled it immediately, as did I, underneath all that beeswax. You smelled the blood.”

There was no point in denying it, so Bridget did not try to. She merely raised her eyebrows and allowed Cromwell to hold her gaze for a long moment. Words were superfluous. Bridget was surprised to see little shadows of regret, and of pain, flicker across the master secretary’s visage. He must have grown to care about the queen, but then another, more likely, reason came to her mind. Cromwell had lost his wife and two young daughters some years ago, a triple tragedy that many said had wounded him so deeply that he was never able to speak of it. Was the pain on his face a remembrance of his own grief or was he anticipating the desolation that was perhaps in store for his beloved sovereign? Either way the emotion was written very clearly on his face or he made no attempt to conceal it from her.

The sound of the queen’s laughter drew their attention, and they both swivelled their heads toward her. There she sat among her adoring ladies, like a character from legend: Jane the Velvet Queen, perched high on a cushion of scarlet damask, her jewels gleaming, her wide smile announcing to all her hard-won victory even as the bloody outriders of death galloped in, ever closer, around her.

Chapter Ten

The queen survived
the birth of her son by an agonising twelve days. After the christening, her one, unforgettable day of glory, the childbed fever took hold and her health steadily declined. It was a testament both to her character and her iron will to live that she held on for as long as she did. But childbirth was ever a dangerous business, for queens and commoners alike, and it claimed Jane Seymour for its own as it had claimed so many others before her.

The king went away to Whitehall after she died. He could not bear anything to do with sickness or mortality, and he absented himself as quickly as he could, leaving the Duke of Norfolk in charge of organising his wife’s obsequies and the Lady Mary to oversee the break-up of the late queen’s household.

The entire court, which had been so uplifted by the birth of the prince, now sank into the profoundest of mourning at Queen Jane’s death. Every courtier was clad in black, from top to toe, and a silent darkness hung over the palace like a curse of perpetual midnight.

Masses went on continually for the repose of the queen’s soul, and Queen Jane’s body lay on a bier in her presence chamber, dressed in gold tissue, while her ladies prayed all around her. Bridget sought permission, through the good offices of the Marchioness of Exeter, to come and pray with them and it was, to her slight surprise, granted. She entered the chamber as unobtrusively as she could and took her place on her knees next to Lady Rochford who, for once, did not notice her presence. She was almost collapsed with grief; she wept without cease, as did every one of the other ladies. In fact, that was virtually the only sound to be heard in the whole palace—the muffled drum of falling tears.

Queen Jane was buried was great pomp at Windsor in November. Bridget did not attend the funeral, having held no official place within the late queen’s household in life, she had no role in death. The king secreted himself away, with only a few attendants at Greenwich and was said to be prostrate with the force of his loss. She and Sir Richard went home to Thorns where they, along with everyone else, observed a very quiet Christmas.

Soon after the subdued festive season a change came. A messenger, clad in the inevitable green and white, came clattering into their courtyard bearing a summons to appear at court for the New Year. Sir Richard, who had been so restless with inactivity that he had taken to wandering the gardens at Thorns since November, began packing and handing out orders as soon as the messenger rode away.

“Wife, we go to court tomorrow and we must bring His Majesty a gift to mark the New Year. What do you think we should choose? One of the silver
platters? The clock that is in the library, the one with the pearl-encrusted face? The king might like that. Then again, he already has so many clocks. Oh, what about that ruby ring that was my grandfather’s? He always said that it had once belonged to St Edward the Confessor, for whose memory the king has a great regard. Yes, that ought to do nicely, but I shall have to find it in this rambling, old house first. I wonder if my sister might know where it is. Joan? Where the devil are you . . .?”

The ruby ring, once eventually located, turned out to be not nearly as impressive as Sir Richard remembered it, so they settled instead on the pearl-encrusted clock, which was a charming item and sure to please His Majesty.
Providing he does not care for any of the other clocks he has been given,
Bridget thought, as they stood in the gift-giving line at Greenwich. She critically surveyed the array of presents that had already been deposited on a long table in the presence chamber. There was a whole section comprised exclusively of clocks, one of which was cleverly designed to look like a book, and another that appeared to be fashioned entirely out of gold. She inspected their own offering with a rising feeling of dismay, but there was nothing now to be done about it. Hopefully, the king would be so taken with his other gifts, and goodness knew there were enough of them, from purses full of coin, to embroidered shirts, to Suffolk cheeses, that he would barely notice theirs. That was the consoling thought that Bridget tried to keep to the forefront of her mind as they reached the head of the queue.