The King’s Concubine: A Novel of Alice Perrers (20 page)

“And you trust her?” Unimpressed, unmoved, Isabella flung a contempt that would have coated my skin in shame if my fury had not built mightily from a hum to a roar in my belly. “What else will she get from him? What gifts will she persuade my besotted father to give to her?”

How much more of this could I withstand? As hot as I was, the Queen was glacial.

“What do you mean?” she demanded.

“She’ll not do it for nothing. What whore does? Jewels, money—a title even.”

“And if she does gain material benefit? If Edward chooses to reward her with gifts…”

“You’re wrong,
Maman
! You’re making the gravest mistake of your life.”

“Not so! It’s the best decision I have ever made.”

I could remain a silent onlooker no longer. “Stop!”

My voice sounded weak even to me. I might as well not have spoken.

“It is an obscenity.…That she should act as one of your simpering maids of the bedchamber and slither into your husband’s bed at the same time.” Isabella was beyond subtlety. “I’ll not trim it with the words and gestures of romance. It’s lust, and you should be ashamed to encourage it.”

Enough! After my night with him, I could not bear that Edward be discussed in this manner. This time I raised my voice, caring nothing for the words I used in the presence of royal blood.

“Be silent!”

They looked at me, as startled as if the carved figure of the Virgin herself had come to life and spoken.

“I’ll not be squabbled over like a piece of meat on a butcher’s slab.” There were things that must be said to Isabella. “Have you no respect for your father, the King? You denigrate him, defile him with crude
words. Does he not have enough enemies across the sea to do that, without his own beloved daughter slandering him? His will is law in England, and you speak of him as if he were a toothless lion, an aging man who can be pushed and maneuvered at the will of others. Is he so weak that he needs his wife to arrange for a woman to warm his bed? I say he does not. I say his blood is high and his spirit great.” I took a breath. I think I had never made so long a speech. “You do the King and yourself no honor. He is at the beck and call of no man. And I deny that he took a mistress at the behest of the Queen.”

“Well…!” Isabella sought for words.

“I have not finished,” I continued, my voice strengthening with conviction. “I will say what needs saying. You may consider me despicable, my lady, yet you will hear me. I am the King’s mistress.” How strange it sounded to say it aloud. I lifted my chin and held her gaze. “He chose me. He sent for me, and I will play the part with honor. I will be discreet as long as His Majesty wishes me to fulfill that role. I will not draw attention to what I do—that is in the King’s gift. I will ask for nothing, take nothing but what the King gives me. If he wishes to reward me, then so be it. It is his decision. For myself, I will be loyal. I will not gossip or spread unseemly calumny. And I will continue to serve the Queen in every way I can. For as long as she wishes it.”

Slowly Isabella’s lips curved, an expression of sour acknowledgment. “Well, now. The whore has found its voice. I must curtsy to you.” She did so, all mockery.

“You may mock me, my lady, but this is the King’s wish—and the Queen’s. From this day I am the King’s lover.”

Isabella’s eyes flashed. “And if the Queen, with some judicious thought over her poor choice for a King’s whore, objects to your new Court position? If
I
object…”

I lifted my shoulders in a perfect, elegant shrug. “I wish you no ill will, my lady, but I serve the King first and the Queen second. And I think
your
wishes are irrelevant.”

“We’ll see about that!” And Isabella marched from the chapel.

I was left to the mercy of the Queen. How could I have been so insolent, so careless of the difficulties of my new status? I waited for Philippa’s judgment.

“Alice!” She laughed shakily. “Well, I was right in my choice. You are intrepid enough—more than enough if you will challenge my daughter. King’s lover, indeed…What a magnificent defense you made for the King.”

She did not despise me, or if she did, she hid it well. Tears glinted momentarily on her seamed cheeks until she wiped them away. “Have you courage enough to withstand the hostility of the Court?”

With shocking naïveté, I had not considered the answer to that question. “We will be discreet,” I said with more confidence than I felt.

“I’m sure you will. But it cannot be kept secret forever. And Isabella will be your adversary. I’ll keep her from doing too much damage, but she is willful.…”

“And Wykeham is no longer my friend.” I sighed.

“Can you live with that?”

I thought about it, my anger ebbing as I stood at the foot of the Virgin, who would surely condemn us both for casting this marriage into adultery. What an impossible burden for me to shoulder. The King’s love. The Queen’s respect. And then the vilification from those who knew. The loss of Wykeham’s regard. Did I have the courage? Whether I took little or much from Edward’s generous hand, I would still be damned as the adulterous enemy. Not the King for his uncontrollable lust. Not Queen Philippa for her connivance worthy of a sinful daughter of Eve. Only I would be anathema.

I studied the serene painted face, but the Holy Mother gave me no guidance.

I had promised Isabella that I would take only what the King offered me. And so I would. But the possibilities were suddenly far beyond my imagining. Woven through this complex tapestry I saw the strand of my own future. It could be as strong as steel if I had the will and the boldness to make it so. It glinted gold in the weaving. I thought, if stitched with a clever hand, it could shine as bright as the sun at midday, or the stars in the Virgin’s crown. On the other hand, Edward might fall out of desire for me within the week and take a different whore to his bed. I would once again be cast into the pool of insecurity.

I gave a little shrug. I must make sure that he did not. I was young, and not without resources, it seemed.

“What is it?” the Queen asked. “You were smiling.”

“Was I? I did not know, my lady. But in answer to your question: It is yes,” I said. “Yes, Your Majesty. I can live with it.”

The Queen left me to offer up what prayers I might.

I came of age during that night and the day that followed. I stepped over the painful line from innocence to a hard-edged maturity. I was finished with being a young girl, the pet of the damsels, allowed to play and continue my youth. I played no more. And perhaps I regretted it.

I was the King’s mistress: Philippa’s damsel by day, Edward’s lover by night. What a strange two-sided coin it was.

And every day I waited for the repercussions.

Wykeham might be furiously circumspect and stonily silent, but my anonymity must be compromised, even though whoever had initially informed Isabella had been effectively silenced.

For weeks it was as if I walked on the thinnest of thin ice, waiting with every step for it to give way beneath me to plunge me into a freezing torrent. I was summoned. I obeyed. Wykeham was always my escort. The Queen’s health was always the excuse to take me from my room. But was our subterfuge not obvious? I could see the cracks radiating out from my feet every time I trod the same route in that first month.

And then the whispers began amongst the damsels. A slide of eye as I entered the solar. A comment that died away behind a flutter of fingers. It was nothing more than the faintest breath of scandal; the whispering remained barely audible, like the soft shiver of spring leaves in the forest canopy, as if it were known but agreed that it would not be spoken of. A strange conspiracy of silence: everyone knowing the truth of it, but no one prepared to unwrap the secret and lay my deceit open for all to see. No one challenged me to my face.

And why?

Not out of any respect for me. The silence was for Philippa. Such was the love she engendered that it was agreed she should not be told the despicable truth, that her youngest damsel lay naked in her husband’s arms.

How unfair. How appallingly unjust! The situation hemmed me in and forced me to uphold the pretense that the Queen was as innocent and ignorant as she was believed to be. I was the guilty one. I had slithered my way into the King’s bed like Eve’s snake. For in all those weeks, I heard not one word of condemnation of Edward, as if it were acceptable that he, the King, would take a woman to his bed to replace his poor suffering wife. The King was beyond reproach.

Why Alice? they asked. I could read it in the slant of their glances. Why not choose someone better-born, more talented—someone beautiful—if lust itched at his loins? I was no longer their pampered pet, no longer clasped to their collective bosom.

“Are you made to suffer for this?” Edward demanded in his forthright way. “Any man who maligns you will be dismissed.”

How typical of a man. It was in the world of women, the cruelly gossiping henhouse of the solar, where I was held up for judgment.

“No one speaks ill of me,” I replied.

I lied. I lied well. What point in telling him that the sharp dagger of ostracism was held to my breast all day, every day? It was not that he was uncaring, simply that no one dared whisper when the King was present.

At least my enemies took their lead from Isabella, whose demeanor toward me was rigidly polite, so icy that her stare could have frozen the Thames in August. So cold that it hurt.

It could not last. It was not in the nature of women, enclosed in the hothouse of solar politics, to tolerate a sin for long without a bite, a snap, a pinch. How publicly I was brought to book. In the manner of its doing, I would never forgive them for it. The occasion was a royal visit in November of 1363, when I had been Edward’s lover for a little more than a month: a celebration of true splendor, when the rulers of France, Cyprus, and Scotland visited the English Court to be overawed by our magnificence. At a tournament at Smithfield, Edward would joust and lead one of the forays in the
melee
. At Edward’s request, we were to attend with the Queen, clad in royal colors to support the symbolic victory of England over her enemies. We gathered in the audience
chamber before making our procession to the ladies’ gallery, a mass of silver and blue and sable fur, an eye-catching display of royal power as we damsels clustered around the Queen, who also shone in blue and silver with sapphires on her breast. A flutter of anticipation danced through the ranks.

Until the flutter of anticipation evolved into a rustle of shocked delight as I became the center of attention. As I knew I must.

The Queen’s eye fell on me.

“Alice…”

I could have made my excuses and absented myself. I could have hidden, motivated by cowardice, by humiliation, for was that not the intent?

My enemy had misjudged me. I would not hide.

“Majesty.” I curtsied. My skirts, as all could see, were not silver and blue and furred with sable.

“Why…?” The Queen gestured toward my threadbare clothing, which I’d deliberately chosen. I wore the garments I had first arrived in and kept for no good reason, since I had had no intention of ever wearing them again. Worn and crude, stained and creased from their long sojourn in my coffer, now they clothed me from head to foot as a lowly servant in coarse russet. I stood out in the midst of this jeweled throng, a sparrow worming its scruffy way into a charm of goldfinches.

So! I had thrown down my gauntlet. Now I considered my reply most carefully. Did I state the blatant truth? The idea appealed to me as my temper roiled beneath the rough overgown of a
conversa
. Every one of the innocent-faced damsels would know it, so why not unroll it like a valuable bolt of velvet for all to gloat over? Or did I exert some subtle dissimulation? Subtle? How could I be subtle? How could I lie, when fury beat in my head like a blacksmith’s hammer?

All I could see in my mind was the beautiful gown laid out for me on my bed, the most beautiful I had ever owned. The silk and damask was slashed and torn beyond repair, the fur edging ravaged. The veil was rent in half, the embroidered girdle cut in two. I had worked hard on it for so many weeks, but in the space of an hour someone had wielded a pair of shears with no skill and much vengeance. All my hard-worked stitching—when I had employed more patience than I
had ever dreamed possible—entirely undone. Someone had delighted in taking out their hatred of me on Philippa’s gift: The soft leather shoes with damask rosettes had entirely vanished. I could have wept when I saw the destruction, but those who shared my room would have enjoyed my grief far too much. For a moment I had stood and looked, swallowing the tears, moved not so much by this evidence of my isolation but by the disfigurement of so beautiful a thing. I heard a choked giggle that hardened my resolve. I carefully folded the ruined garment and veil and with fierce deliberation changed into the cheap fustian fit for a domestic drudge. If I could not wear the best, I would not compete with second-best. I made no attempt to hide what I had once been and what had been done to me.

Truth or dissembling? I looked ’round at the waiting faces, hearing the words in my mind.

One of your damsels disfigured my gown out of spite, Majesty.

Well, that would get me nowhere. I had no proof, only the evidence. I would merely look foolish.

“She cannot attend like that,” Isabella observed when I had still not explained.

“No,” the Queen agreed. “She cannot.”

“I suppose there is a reason for the disobedience.” I could hear the smile in Isabella’s voice. Not that I thought she was the guilty one. Such a vendetta was beneath her, and she knew the Queen’s wishes in this.

I raised my eyes to Philippa’s face. “I am not willfully disobedient, Majesty.”

Her face was serene, her eyes clear. “A misfortune, perhaps…”

She had thrown me a lifeline. “Yes, my lady. It was my own carelessness.”

“And so great a carelessness that the gown is beyond wearing?”

“Yes, Majesty. The blame is mine.”

I looked at no one but the Queen, praying that she would understand and allow me to retire without punishment.