The King’s Concubine: A Novel of Alice Perrers (24 page)

The King should have listened to Wykeham.

Our invading forces, beset by storms and gales and a shortage of food, were reduced to a fifth of their original size, with no booty or prisoners to compensate. Sitting in his chamber or pacing the halls of Havering, Edward could do nothing to determine events except to rely on his sons to uphold the English cause. Inactivity gnawed at him day and night. Why did he not go himself, to lead as he once had done? Because he too saw the waning of his powers. The future was with his sons, and it hurt him, seeing the end of his glory. However hard I tried through that winter, I could not heal the wounds for him.

As for English affairs in Ireland, they seemed likely to sink to their death into the famous bog. Edward’s son Lionel scrabbled at an impossible settlement, reducing Edward to vicious oaths against his son’s ineptitude.

Philippa despaired and wept.

And I? How did I fare? Did we, Edward and I, emerge from the morass of black despair? Holy Virgin! It was balanced on a knife’s edge, and I could have lost everything, for we faced a crisis that was, I admit, of my own deliberate making.

Frustrated with the cold rooms of Havering, in a fit of pique Edward departed to Eltham at the turn of the year, and at Philippa’s insistence we moved also, the whole Court, to be with Edward.

“You’ll see,” she fretted as her possessions were packed around her, setting her teeth against the prospect of a painful journey in a litter, however luxurious the cushions. “Eltham has more
space
. He feels hemmed in here. And we must hear good news from Gascony soon. We can’t leave him to brood. It does him no good.”

But, despite the new planned gardens and Edward’s own pride in the newly planted vineyard, Edward brooded in the spacious accommodations at Eltham as effectively as he had at Havering. He roared through the halls and audience chambers, patient with no one except Philippa, insisting on taking out the hounds, hard ground or no, snarling at the grooms when they were slow to deal with icy fingers and frozen leather. He snarled at me too.

“Come with me,” he snapped. “I want you with me!”

He kept me waiting, shivering in the cold outside the stables, while he listened to a report of a courier just ridden in. Only the week before he had given me a mantle of sables, wrapping my naked body in his gift in a moment of brittle good humor. I wore it now, but I might have been wearing the lightest of silk for all the good it did to keep me warm in the bitter wind.

“Let’s go!” he ordered, his temper on as short a leash as the hounds. “What are you waiting for?”

“Her Majesty is not well, my lord. I should be with her.” It was not quite an excuse. The journey to Eltham had stirred her joints to a new level of agony. Sleep for her was a distant memory without a draft of poppy.

“We’ll be back before noon.”

“Jesu! It’s too cold for this,” I murmured.

“Then don’t come. I’ll not force you.” He swung up into the saddle. The courier’s news had not pleased him.

For a moment I considered accepting his surly irritability and leaving him to his ill humor. Then perversely I joined the hunt. I regretted it, of course, returning with damp hems and frozen feet and mud-splattered skirts. My blood felt sluggish in my veins. Nor had the hunt been a success. We put up nothing for the hounds, everything of sense having gone to ground. We were frozen to the bone and Edward in no better mood.

He had spoken not one word to me—other than to “keep up, for God’s sake”—when we galloped after a scent that proved to be as ephemeral as the King’s good temper. Back at the palace, our steaming horses led away to the stables, I trailed after him as Edward stripped off gloves and hood and heavy cloak, thrusting them into my arms as he strode into the Great Hall as if I were his body servant. Without even a glance in my direction, he raised his hand, a royal summons, without courtesy.

Rebellion spiked my blood. Was this all I was to him, a servant to fetch and carry and obey unspoken orders? I halted, my arms full of muddy cloak. It was only when Edward had crossed the antechamber to the staircase leading up to the royal apartments that he realized my
footsteps were not following him. He halted, spun ’round. Even at that distance I could see that his jaw was rigid.

“Alice…!”

I moved not one inch.

“What’s wrong with you, girl?”

I considered what I should say. What would be wise? I thought briefly that it might be prudent to say nothing and simply follow. And promptly consigned wisdom to the fires of hell and remained exactly where I was.

“I’m cold. Don’t just stand there.” Edward was already mounting the stairs.

I abandoned prudence too.

“Is that all you can say?” I asked.

Edward froze, his eyes a steely glint. “I want you with me.”

For a moment we were alone in the vast arching chamber. There was no one there to hear us. I raised my voice. I think I would have raised it if we had had an audience of hundreds.

“No!”

“I want a cup of wine.”

And at the same echoing pitch I responded: “Which you are perfectly capable of pouring for yourself, Sire. Or you can summon one of your many pages or even a servant to do it for you. I will not.”

Edward stared as if he could not believe what I had just said. Nor could I. I had been his mistress for three years, and never had I addressed him in this peremptory manner. But then, I had never had the need. I watched Edward’s face, the range of emotion as he absorbed my words, their tone. Astonishment. Affronted arrogance. A strange despondency. And a fury that suffused his face with color. I trembled, and not from the damp skirts clinging to my legs.

Arrogance won. Edward’s manner when he replied was as icy as my fingers. “Mistress Perrers! I want you with me!”

“No, Sire. You kept me waiting until my feet were well-nigh frozen to the cobbles. You did not care whether I hunted with you or not. You told me as much after dragging me from the Queen’s side. I made my own decision to hunt, and I will make it again now. I will not go with you. I will wait on the Queen.”

My blood was up and I held my breath. This was no childish temper. This was a deliberate ploy, and a dangerous one to rouse the sleeping Plantagenet lion. I saw anger flash bright in his face as my refusal struck home. It brought the King striding across the chamber until he towered over me. Holy Virgin! In that moment he was the King, not Edward. He grabbed my wrist, even as I still had my arms wrapped around his cloak, and held it tight, unaware of his strength.

“God’s Blood, Alice!”

“God’s Blood, Edward!” I mimicked.

The silence was heavy. Thick as blood. Threatening as a honed sword edge.

“You will obey me.”

“Because you are the King?”

“Why else?”

My shivering increased but I held his gaze. “When did anyone ever deny you anything, Sire?”

“Never! Nor will you!” His fingers tightened still further, but I did not wince. “Do you question my authority?”

“Your
authority
?” I tilted my chin. My control was superb. “I don’t question your
authority
, Sire, only your bloody arrogance.” I bit down on a hiss of breath. “Do you intend to command my obedience through pain, Sire?”

“Pain…?”

“Your royal fingers are digging into my flesh!”

He eased his grip but did not release me.

When I was seventeen and newly come to Court, I would have obeyed the King without question, wary of the repercussions. I did not feel of a mind to do so now. It was a gamble, and filled with jeopardy. He might dismiss me out of hand, order Philippa to dismiss me. But now I was the mother of his son. Now I had been his mistress for three years. Now I was a woman full-grown and I did not think he would dismiss me. I thought I had more power than that, and I thought I had earned the King’s respect.

Well, we would see. I would gamble on that power and respect to wean Edward from his black mood.

“You would defy me, woman?” he roared. No respect here. I might just be wrong.

“Yes, when you are boorish and unreasonable, Sire. I’ve been away from the Queen’s side all day. I am her damsel as well as your…” I allowed a little pause. “As well as your whore.”

“By God, I order it! You’ll come with me!” His hand fell away.

“By God, I won’t!”

Even as rank astonishment ripped across Edward’s features, I opened my arms to deposit his garments in a heap on the floor, at my feet and his. Then I let the sables slip from my shoulders to join them. And I stepped around him and climbed the stair, leaving him standing alone with the heap of costly fur and velvet cloth on the muddied tiles. A page entered at the far door. What Edward might have said if we had remained alone I had no idea. At the top of the staircase I looked back to see him, as unmoving as an oak, hands fisted on hips, looking after me, the garments still at his feet.

I waited until I was sure his attention was wholly mine. Then I made a magnificent curtsy. Again I pitched my voice so that he would surely hear.

“There are other palace whores who will be more than willing to keep you company, no matter how sour your humor, Sire. You can give her my sables. I make you free of them.”

I did not wait to see if he would respond. Or if he picked up the garments.

I admitted to a terrible apprehension as I closed the door of my chamber behind me. I might have destroyed everything, and the terrible melancholy might still hold Edward imprisoned in its shackles.

I did not wait with an easy mind. The King made his displeasure felt. When he hunted I was not invited. When he visited the Queen, if I was present, he made a point of shunning me, gesturing without words for me to vacate the chamber. There was no question of my sharing his bed linen. I missed my sable mantle. The damsels gossiped, engrossed in our obvious estrangement. The Queen was anxious, but such was our relationship that we both kept our own counsel. Until the tension, colder indoors than out, became more than she could tolerate.

“Have you quarreled with the King, Alice?”

“No, my lady.” It was not exactly a quarrel.

“Have you displeased him?”

“Yes, my lady.” Definitely.

“He’s very, very restless.”

“Yes, my lady.”

“Should you apologize, do you think?” Her broad brow creased in concern.

“No, my lady.”

So the Queen abandoned any attempt at reconciliation, and I waited with increasing anxiety. He was the King, after all, and I was nobody. I had risked all and must pray that I had not staked my future ill-advisedly.

It took a sennight.

I was combing my hair in preparation to sleep alone when a soft knock sounded on the door. Wykeham, I thought. Carrying a message from the King to attend his pleasure. I opened the door, the refusal leaping to my lips.

“I will not.…” The words dried.

Edward. He had come himself. And over his arm lay the glossy pelts of my mantle.

“My lord!”

I curtsied low on the threshold, hiding my face. The King had come to my room. Was this to be the dismissal I had feared, the sables a final gift to mark my ignominious departure? If I looked at him, what would I see? I raised my eyes to his—better to know immediately—but Edward, master of negotiation, was giving nothing away. If it was dismissal, it would be done in cold blood, not in the heat of passion at my lack of respect.

“Well, will you let me come in?” His voice was rough. “I don’t think the King should be expected more than once in his lifetime to conduct an intimate argument in a public space for all his subjects to see and hear.”

I stood back, pushing the door wide, but still for all his impatience, he did not step across the threshold. Instead he held out the mantle.

“This is yours, Mistress Perrers.”

I took it from him, tossing it over a coffer beside me as if I did not care.

“I was wrong, mistress. I treated you with unforgivable discourtesy.”

He was excruciatingly formal. As long as I did not waver…I remained mute.

“I’m here to ask your forgiveness.” It was still more of an order than a plea.

“It is easy for the King to be uncivil and demand to be forgiven,” I said.

“I don’t demand.”

“No?” I folded my arms in an uncompromising manner.

“Mistress Perrers…” Now he stepped in and thrust the door closed at his back. “You will doubtless accuse me of overbearing pride, but I really don’t want an audience for this!” And he sank elegantly to one knee. “I ask your compassion for my lack of chivalry. No true knight would have been as…boorish…as I was. Will you forgive me?”

I angled my chin, considering. He looked magnificent, like a knight from one of the illustrated books, kneeling in a blaze of blue and red and gold at the feet of his lady. He’d dressed deliberately, regally, to impress me. Here was the King of England kneeling at my feet. What was more, he possessed himself of my hand and kissed it.

“No subject has ever challenged me before.”

“I know.”

“Well? Will you keep your King in suspense?” His expression was not that of a lover. The lines of irritation sharpened. “I have missed you more than I should. You’re only a slip of a girl! How could I miss you so much? And all you could do was scowl at me from the ranks of my wife’s damned women, or behave as if I did not exist.”

“Until you dismissed me from the room.”

“Well—I should not have done that.”

“No. And I am not a slip of a girl. I am the mother of your son.”

“I know. Alice…” The formality was waning.

“Nor am I merely your whore. I give you more than the pleasures of the flesh. I thought you cared more for me than that, Sire.”

“I do. God’s Blood, Alice. Have mercy! I was in the wrong.”

“We both agree on that.”

He released my hand and, still kneeling, spread his arms wide. “I
have learned this for you, as any foolish troubadour would to woo his lady. How’s that for love…”

And he pressed his hands over his heart like a lovelorn troubadour and spoke the verse. The words were ridiculous, foolish, but there was no mockery in his voice or his face. The sentiment came from his heart, and with it a sadness, a poignancy for things past. Like youth that was gone forever.