The King’s Concubine: A Novel of Alice Perrers (48 page)

De la Mare bowed. “We are honored, Sire.”

And I sank back to my seat as I waited for the blow to fall, as de la Mare faced Edward.

“Majesty. We are concerned that Mistress Perrers has acted toward you with a degree of insincerity that is beyond belief.”

How smooth he was. How terrifyingly, horrifyingly respectful before plunging the metaphorical dagger into Edward’s unsuspecting heart.

Edward blinked, hands clutching.

“We believe she has put Your Majesty’s soul in mortal danger.”

Would he dare to accuse Edward of being complicit in adultery? My nails dug deep into my palms.

“Were you aware, Sire, that Mistress Perrers had entered into matrimony? That she has been married to the knight William de Windsor for two years or more?”

Bewildered, Edward shook his head.

“Were you so aware, Sire?”

“No…!” Again I was on my feet. How dared they question him! This was my guilt, not his.

“Be seated, Mistress Perrers.”

“It is not right.…”

“It is very right.” De la Mare swung back to the King. “Did you know, Sire?” I sat again, forcing myself to look at Edward in his extremity and accept that this was all my doing. “Were you aware, Sire, that the woman who is acknowledged as your mistress is married?” The question was hammered home once more.

And I heard Edward reply. Calm and clear. Unemotional. “I was not aware.”

“Would you swear to that, Sire?”

The Speaker would dare to ask the King of England to swear an oath? Edward’s face was ravaged, but he replied, “I swear on the name of the Holy Virgin. I did not know.”

“So she tricked you, Sire.”

“I don’t know. How could I know…?”

Oh, Edward! How could I have put you in this position?

It was all de la Mare needed. Facing me now, he flung out an arm in a dramatic all-encompassing gesture.

“You are guilty. You have willfully put the King into the state of adultery. You tricked him with your lies and deceit. The fault is yours.”

I waited for the noxious taint of witchcraft to fill the chamber.

“What is the punishment for your crime? There are those here who demand your execution. The means you have used are unholy, disgusting in the sight of God. We have evidence of…”

I tensed. This would be the moment.
Maleficium!

“Sirs…!”

I looked across the chamber. It was Edward. De la Mare hesitated.

“I beg of you,” Edward said, each word carefully formed as he looked at me at last, his eyes weighted with sorrow, confusion, and, astonishingly, a hard-won determination. My heart was wrung. “Show her mercy, sirs. I beg of your compassion. She does not deserve execution. If you have any loyalty to me, your King, you will show this woman leniency in your judgment. She has done wrong, but she does not deserve death.”

I held Edward’s gaze. In that final sentence he had both betrayed and upheld me. All hung in the balance.

“Mistress Perrers deserves a lesser punishment than death,” Edward repeated. “I beg of you…”

And grief all but overwhelmed me.

“We honor your request, Sire.” De la Mare could not disguise his self-congratulation, so smug that I felt an urge to vomit. “Stand up, Mistress Perrers.”

I did so, bracing knees that refused to obey me.

“We are decided.…”

De la Mare spelled out the terms of my punishment. As it flowed
from his lips, detailed, thorough, I knew that it had been decided all along. There had been no need to put Edward through this pretense. Grief was transmuted into an anger that shook me as I absorbed the extent of de la Mare’s revenge. Even Princess Joan could not have thought up any better.

Banishment!

The single word hung in the air with all the heaviness of its meaning. I was banished. Never to see Edward again.

“You will live at a distance from the royal Court. You will not return. If you disobey, if you make any attempt to approach the King, you will lose everything you own and suffer permanent exile overseas.” The Speaker’s lips widened into a rictus of a smile over his discolored teeth. “If you break in any way the terms of this banishment, all your property, your goods and chattels will be seized and confiscated.” His pleasure disgusted me, but I stood unmoving, unresponsive. I would never give him the satisfaction of seeing how much this penalty wounded me.

Glancing at Edward, I knew that he did not understand. His eyes were closed, his mouth lax. He had no inkling of what they had just done. If I walked across the chamber to him now, I would be left with nothing and banished from England.

With blood drained from my face, my hands as cold as ice, I did what they wanted. My lips pressed to the crucifix presented to me, and I swore that I would never return to the King. I would live apart, away from the royal Court. I would never see Edward again.

Thus I abandoned him, or so it felt in my heart.

Where to go? I collected my immediate possessions and went to Wendover, Wykeham’s old manor that Edward had gifted to me. My sore heart urged Pallenswick, but I knew Parliament would consider it too close to Sheen, or the Tower, or Westminster, wherever Edward might be, and with too easy a route along the Thames. So I went to Wendover, a good three days’ journey, to lick my wounds, after I had risked seeing Edward for the last time. Surely a final farewell would be allowed.

He did not know me. When I stood before him and spoke his name, he did not answer. His eyes made no contact with mine.

“Edward!”

There was no flicker of acknowledgment in his empty gaze.

“I have come to say farewell.”

Nothing. I was not pardoned. His wayward mind could not encompass me or what I had done. I kissed his forehead and curtsied deeply.

“Forgive me, Edward. I would not have it end like this. I would never have left you.”

At least he was spared the pain of parting. I closed the door of his chamber, swallowing my tears. I was Alice Perrers, King’s Concubine no longer, humiliated, repudiated, maliciously destroyed.

Who was not in the Painted Chamber to witness my downfall?

Gaunt.

Who made no attempt to see me, to stand for me?

John of Gaunt.

He too had abandoned me. The alliance, tenuous at best, did not bring him to my side when I most had need of him. I was no longer of any value to him. He’d been refused the position of regent for his nephew Richard by the magnates who feared his power, and I had no means of helping him. It would do no good for Gaunt’s name to be coupled to any degree with mine.

He turned his back on me.

And my poor, lost Edward? I had Wykeham tell me how he fared. On the days when he was driven by anger, he accused Windsor far more harshly than he accused me. And then there were times when old loyalties returned to Edward, when he looked for me, asked for me, and was told that I could not come. Days when his senses deserted him. I knew of the hours when he sat in uncomprehending gloom with tears on his cheeks. The King was nothing but a lonely, forgotten old man, with no one to stir his spirits to life. Who would reminisce with him? Who would talk to him of the glory days, as I had done?

No one.

Gaunt was too busy plotting revenge against de la Mare and the
Earl of March, who now stood with Wykeham as one of Edward’s councilors. Isabella was back with her husband in France. There was no one to remember the past.

I also knew of the increasing number of days when Edward’s thoughts turned inward.

“I will bury my son, my glorious Prince, and then I will die.”

I wept for him. I did not write to Windsor. I could not find the words; nor could I bear his pity.

Chapter Fourteen

F
or the first days at Wendover I grieved until hot rage blew through me like a wind before an August storm. It shook me by its virulence as I heaped my hatred on the absent, crowing, self-satisfied Master Speaker.

“May Almighty God damn you to the fires of hell! May your vile body be gnawed on by worms, your balls roasted in everlasting flames and…” I was not circumspect in my choice of language, but it brought no release.

Never had my life stretched so emptily, so helplessly before me, my hands so idle and without power. My knowledge of the outside world in those terrible weeks was reduced to what was common gossip, brought into the house by my servants and passing peddlers. Poor stuff! The Prince’s body lay embalmed in state in Westminster Abbey week after week. There were no moves to bury him, Edward unable to make a decision. Princess Joan and the young heir were at Kennington. Gaunt was biding his time, but furious with events. The Good Parliament had ended its days, preening over its success in holding the King to account.

“And I am banished, by God! How dare they! How dare they!”

With a need to occupy my hands and my mind, I swept through the manor, stirring up steward and servants to clean and scour and scrub
every surface, every nook and cranny. There was absolutely no need for me to disturb their perfectly adequate daily routines, but I could not rest. They would have to suffer me, perhaps for the rest of my life. God’s Blood! At thirty-one years I could not contemplate it.

Braveheart slept at my feet, oblivious to my mood, uncaring of whether we were at Wendover or Sheen.

I stalked from room to room, my pleasure in my surroundings and my acquisitions dimmed. Even the magnificent bed—a gift from Edward—carved and swagged with deep blue damask hangings, the oak tester and pillars polished to a rich gleam, did not satisfy me. I saw far too much of that fine weaving that closed me in, for my nights were troubled. If I had had a looking glass, I would have abjured it. It would have shown me all too clearly the effect of my lack of appetite and restless thoughts. My collarbone pressed against the cloth of my gown, and my girdle must be tightened or it would fall around my ankles. As I pressed my fingers against my sharp cheekbones, I grimaced, suspecting that the dark thumbprints of weariness would not enhance my looks.

Lured by the soft warmth of autumn, I took the side door out into the orchard, where the apple trees hung heavy with the fruit and doves preened in the dovecote, a lovely scene if I were of a mind to admire it. But before I could take a breath, an unbidden image leaped into my mind, so that I sank down on the grass, helpless, enclosed in that one moment of the past.

“
Today you are my Lady of the Sun,” Edward says as he hands me into my chariot.

And there I sit, garlanded with flowers, swathed in cloth of gold, pulled by four shining bay horses. I am no less superb. A cloak of shimmering gold tissue, opulent in its Venetian style, is spread around me, so disposed to show a lining of scarlet taffeta. My gown too is red, lined with white silk and edged in ermine. Edward’s colors. Royal fur fit for a queen, no finer than the myriad of precious stones refracting the light: rubies as red as fire; diamonds; sapphires, dark and mysterious; strange beryls capable of destroying the power of poison. Philippa’s jewels. My fingers are heavy with rings. “Today you are the Queen of the Ceremonies, the Queen of the Lists,” Edward says. He is tall and strong and good to look upon.

I am the Lady of the Sun.

I blinked as a swooping pigeon smashed the scene, bringing reality back with a cruel exactitude. How low I had fallen! I was caged in impotent loneliness, like Edward’s long-dead lion. Powerless, isolated, stripped of everything I had made for myself.

I was nothing.

Impatient with myself, I rose to go back inside and harry someone into doing something, but was stopped by my two daughters, Joanne leading her younger sister in their escape from their governess. Joanne, six years old, was fair and strong limbed like her father. Jane, two years younger, was a shy child, not like me at all, despite her dark hair and plain features. They ran laughing through the orchard, shouting to each other in their joy of freedom. And my heart tripped a little at their innocent pleasure. I did not remember running or laughing in my childhood. I recalled very little joy. God help me to keep their lives safe.

Seeing me, they ran to jump and caper, full of chatter and news. With promises that we would ride out in the afternoon, I dispatched them back to their lessons. They would read and write and figure. No daughter of mine would lack for such skills, and nor would my sons. I wanted no ignorant, untutored gentlemen with the King’s blood in their veins and nothing between their ears. John, as befitted a lad of royal birth, learned the lessons of a page in the noble Percy household. Nicholas, at eleven, was taught his letters by the monks at Westminster. I had such a pride in them. As for my girls—they would each have an advantageous marriage as well as an education. I smiled a little as I stooped to pick up a much-worn doll that Joanne had dropped on the grass. Combing my fingers through its disordered hair, I vowed that I would ensure that my daughters were capable, even without a husband.

A movement caught my eye. A robin flew up into the boughs of the apple tree, making me look up.

“Is this you?”

I hadn’t heard, neither the approach of horses nor the soft footfall. Nor even felt the movement of air. Startled for a moment, the fear still lively that Parliament might not have finished with me, I took a step back. And then I clutched the doll to my breast, because I knew the voice and the solid figure outlined by the sun through the branches.

The years rolled back and away to the day I first set eyes on Edward in the great hall at Havering, his body backlit by the low rays of the afternoon sun, the hounds at his feet, the goshawk on his wrist, a corona of light around his head and shoulders. He’d been crowned with gold. I had simply stared at such an aura of power.

But this was another time, another life.

William de Windsor stepped forward, and the moment passed as he was enclosed in dappled shadow. I suddenly felt an upheaval in my belly, my mouth dry with nerves, my whole body weak with longing. I would run to him, cast myself into his arms, press my mouth against his, and feel the solid beat of his heart under the palm of my hand. It was three years since I had seen him last. Three long years! I could cover the distance between us within the space of one heavy beat of my heart and…