The King’s Concubine: A Novel of Alice Perrers (17 page)

Could I have prevented it? No, I could not. For at the eleventh hour it was taken out of my hands.
I
was not to be
deus ex machina
.

That night I waited, apprehension churning in my belly to the extent that nausea threatened to send me running to the garderobe. Taking a sip of ale, I sat on the side of my bed, feigning interest in the gossip of the two damsels as they plaited each other’s hair for the night. I pretended to be unraveling a stubborn knot from a length of ribbon, except that I made it worse. Abandoning it, I took off my veil and folded it. Refolded it. Anything to keep my hands busy. I could not sit. I stood abruptly to prowl the room.

What division of loyalties was here in my mind, my heart. Commanded by the King, recipient of his kisses. Servant of the Queen, who honored me with her confidences. This was a betrayal. A terrible riding roughshod over the Queen’s trust, stealing from her what was rightfully hers. It was impossible to argue around it.

I looked around the room, at the damsels quietly occupied. What to do now? Was it all a mistake? Had I misunderstood? There would be no royal summons after all, and my guilt could be laid aside.

A knock sounded on the door. I jumped like a stag, and my hands were not steady as I opened the door to a page in royal insignia.

“It is the Queen, mistress. She cannot sleep. She has sent for you. Will you come?”

“I will come,” I replied quietly.

So this was how it was to be arranged. A royal stratagem. A clever, supremely realistic ploy to remove me from my room without rousing the least degree of suspicion. Would I be waylaid in some dark corridor, product of some careful planning, to be led to the King’s apartments instead of the Queen’s? I detested the thought of such secrecy, such underhanded deceit. I did not want this—but I was trapped in a web that might have been some of my own making.

While the page waited I wrapped a mantle around me and made to follow.

“I may not return before dawn,” I told the other damsels, my hand on the latch, impressed that my voice was steady. “If the Queen is ill and restless, I’ll sleep on a pallet in the antechamber.”

They nodded, lost in their own concerns. It was so easy.

The King wants you in his bed.

I shivered.

I was not to be waylaid after all. Instead I was shown by the incurious page into the smallest of the antechambers, with a second door leading into the Queen’s accommodations. It was a room I knew well, often used for intimate conversation, or to withdraw into if one felt the need for solitary contemplation. Had I not used it myself in the hour after the King made his intentions plain, after the affair of the clock? Built into one of the towers, it had circular walls, the cold stone covered with tapestries, all flamboyant with birds and animals of the forest. As I stood uncertainly in the center, deer stared out at me with carefully stitched eyes. Wherever I turned I seemed to be under observation. An owl fixed me unblinkingly with golden orbs; a hunting dog watched me. I turned my back on it to sit on one of the benches against the wall. I started at every sound, and strained in the silence when there was no sound.

What now? I could do nothing but wait. Whatever was to transpire within the next hour was not within my governance. What would I say? What would I do? The palms of my hands were clammy with sweat as my thoughts flew ahead. What if I displeased Edward? My knowledge
of what passed between a man and a woman within the privacy of the bed curtains was so limited as to be laughable. My education with the nuns had not fitted me for the role of mistress, royal or otherwise. As for Janyn…I gripped the edge of the bench on either side of me until it hurt.

Holy Virgin, don’t abandon me!

But how was I fit to call on the Queen of Heaven?

The door opened. I leaped to my feet.

In my anxiety I had not noticed that it was the door from the Queen’s rooms, not the one from the corridor. I faced it, expecting another page to take me further along this treacherous journey.

Ah, no!

My blood froze. My feet became rooted to the spot. Fear was a stone in my belly.

The Queen stood there on the threshold.

She stepped slowly forward, as regal as if entering a state chamber, and closed the door behind her with the softest of clicks. She might be clad in a night shift beneath her loose robe, her hair might be plaited on her shoulder, but she was every inch a queen. Her face might be lined and pinched with long-suffered pain, but her innate dignity was superb. For a drawn-out moment we stood, alone in that little room except for the static gaze of hundreds of embroidered eyes, and regarded each other.

Philippa held herself stiffly, the elbow of her damaged arm supported by her opposite hand, yet still she had come here to see me, to remonstrate, to curse me for my presumption. It was as if she cried out to me in her agony.

And because I could not speak, I sank into a deep obeisance, hiding my face from her. Was I not stripping from her the duty and honor of her husband’s body and name? Was I not about to create a scandal that would cloak her in humiliation? What I was about to do could destroy her.…

At that moment I knew in my heart: I could not do this thing.

“Alice…” My name was little more than a sigh on her lips.

“My lady…Forgive me.…”

“I knew you would be here.”

She
knew
. Of course she knew. How would she not? Such an emotional tie as I had seen between them. Sometimes it seemed to me that Philippa knew Edward was present even before he entered the room. So she knew. She must know, through that same inner sense, that her husband, the one love of her life, intended to betray her.

I could not do this to her.

I fell to my knees before her. “Forgive me. Forgive me, my lady.”

Without words she touched my hair and I looked up. Her face was wet with tears, so many that they dripped to leave dark spots on the damask of her robe. So much sorrow, it struck at my heart. I lifted my hands to cover my face so that I could not witness such depths of grief. There were tears in my own eyes.

“I would never harm you, Lady.…”

“I know.”

“I’ll go back to my room.” I heard my words muffled by my hands. “I’ll not do it. I promise I will not.”

Bending awkwardly, the Queen gripped my forearm and with a grunt of pain urged me to my feet.

“I’ll tell the King that…” I continued, shame a bloody sword in my flesh. Tell him what? The words dried on my lips.

“What will you tell him, Alice?”

“I don’t know. I’ll leave Court if I must.…” Anything to heal the wound of bitter betrayal. I turned my face away. I could not look at her.

“No, Alice.”

I shook my head. “I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but…”

The grasp of Philippa’s fingers, which must have hurt her as much as it did me, silenced me. “No, Alice,” I heard as she took a breath. “You will do as the King wishes. Do you understand?”

It made no sense. No sense at all.

“No…no!”

“You will go to the King. When the King’s page comes, you will go with him.” How accepting her voice was.

“I can’t. I can’t be so disloyal…” I protested.

“You are not disloyal. I
want
you to go to him.”

Which confused me beyond reason. “No…!” I covered her hand with mine even though she was Queen, as if I could force her to acknowledge
what she was saying. “You can’t want that! Don’t you see…?” I could not put it into words.

The Queen raised her free hand to hold my chin so that I must look at her, and she at me. She gave an infinitesimal nod of her head, then released me and took a step away, creating a little space between us.

“Look at me, Alice. Look at
me
!” she insisted. “Not as the Queen but as a woman.” She lifted her hands so that I had no choice but to see the ravages of the disease that was slowly but inexorably engulfing her. “I am almost fifty years old.” She smiled with her lips. “I have worn my years less well than my lord. My body is wearing out. My fortitude might have been strong but the deaths of my children have robbed me of that too. I feel death treading on my hem, Alice.”

“No,” I urged. “I can make the pain less for you.…”

“I know you can. And you do. But sometimes it is so great. And I cannot bear to be touched.…”

The Queen sighed and I took her meaning. The swollen flesh, the stretched skin, the displaced shoulder. Some days it took the Queen all her willpower to walk from bedchamber to solar. “I know, my lady.”

“Of course you do. Edward is virile, as much as he has always been. He has needs, as all men do. He needs a woman to warm his bed and pleasure his flesh. How can I do that? The weight of the bed linen is an agony to me. I have loved my lord. I have borne him twelve children and was honored to do so. I still love him more than life itself—but I cannot be a wife to him in the flesh. It hurts my heart, but I cannot.”

“No…” There was nothing more to say.

“Once, I could barely wait until he came to me at night. My skin warmed. My loins melted. Now I fear what he might demand from me—not that he is ever cruel or thoughtless, you understand. He does not demand what I cannot bear. I don’t want fear to stand between Edward and me—so I must make my own remedy.”

How honest she was. How heartbreakingly transparent. I watched every stark emotion chase across her face and waited for her decision. And there it was.

“Do this, Alice. Do this for me. I thought I could stand back and allow it to happen without speaking to you. But I could not. You deserve to know what I have done. You are too intelligent to be treated
as a cipher, your will to be disposed of at a whim in so personal a matter.” She ran her tongue over dry lips as if she had to steel herself to continue. But she did. “I have told my lord to take a lover because such intimacy is beyond me.”

Oh, Philippa! I could imagine what it had taken her to do this. How she had to deny her pride and her position as Edward’s wife.

“I want him to have you, Alice. Why do you think I have placed you in his way?”

A new emotion began to surface in my mind. “So you planned this.…”

“Planned? Perhaps I have, although I do not like the word. It has been in my mind, let us say.”

“Does the King know?” I was suddenly horrified that it had been arranged between them, with me as the pawn to be moved on the chessboard at will, and I felt the heat of resentment in my belly.

“No.” Philippa’s brief laughter was harsh. “He is a man who has always made his own decisions, and he will do so in this. Would any Plantagenet prince allow a woman to choose his lover? Never! We all dance to Edward’s tune.”

The crawling horror subsided a little. “But with all the beautiful women at Court…”

“My husband is well aware of the beauty around him. If he wanted a particular woman as his lover, he would take her. But you have a strange charm, Alice. I have prayed he would see it and respond to it.”

“But it is betrayal! And is it not degrading to him? Even for us to be speaking in this manner?” I found my voice had dropped to almost a whisper, as if the vividly embroidered creatures might hear. “It is a dishonor to his manhood.”

“No, my dear girl. Never think that. It would be too much of a burden for him to embrace chastity—he is a high-blooded man—yet he has done so in recent months for my sake.” Her smile held a world of acceptance. “This is my gift to him—and yours to me. I lifted you up from nothing, Alice. Now you can repay me.”

“My gift to you.” I let the words filter through my mind.

“Yes. You speak of humiliation. But think! How could I bear it if
he were to take a common whore in the heat of frustrated passion? Or a titled woman of my own Court? A man in the throes of passion does not always discriminate. And I could not bear the scandal.…The worst is always believed, and I haven’t the strength to hold up my head against it.…”

Soft footsteps sounded in the distance, drawing nearer.

“Are you sure about this, my lady?” I asked. The moment had arrived. There would be no going back for either of us.

“More sure than I have ever been of anything.” She leaned forward, clumsy but determined, to place a kiss between my brows. “I must go—I don’t want us to be found here together. This is no plot, and Edward must not consider it as such. Give him what he wants, Alice, knowing it is with my blessing.”

She turned to go, but I stopped her with my question.

“You once told me that you had a role for me to play. Is this it?”

“Yes.” She looked back. “You will find that Edward is a magnificent lover.” The grief was almost her undoing; I heard the sob in her throat. “I will make it as easy as I can for you.”

For the length of a breath, but which seemed an age, we regarded each other: Philippa with a certainty born of desperation, I with astonishment at her courage and knowledge that it would not prove to be a simple role for her or for me. How could a loving wife accept her husband’s whore as her own daily companion? It would be beyond my tolerance. Now I understood exactly what the Queen had meant by a grievous burden.

Then she was gone, and I was left in a quagmire of unbelief, my mind racing. The door to the corridor opened as the one to Philippa’s rooms closed. I raised my chin and prepared to become the King’s mistress with the blessing of his wife. All I had to do was follow the royal page.…Before God! This was a night for courage, and I suspected I had used all that was allotted to me.

There was Wykeham, regarding me as if I were a louse to be burned in the candle flame.

He stepped aside with the most dismissive of gestures. Not once did his eyes meet mine, not even fleetingly, but stared somewhere over my left shoulder. It was as if he could not look at me, for fear of acknowledging
the terrible transgression that was about to be branded on my soul.

“You are to come with me, Mistress Perrers.”

So Wykeham was to be Edward’s minion on this sensitive mission. Yesterday he would have called me Alice. Yesterday he would have greeted me with a smile and asked after my health. Today he scorned me as the most despicable of creatures.