The King’s Concubine: A Novel of Alice Perrers (7 page)

But what was I? It seemed I was neither flesh nor fowl. Here I stood in a house that was not mine, a wife but a virgin, with the knowledge that my marriage vows would make absolutely no difference to my role in the household. I would wager the whole of my sudden windfall on it. Signora Damiata would never retreat before my authority. I would never sit at the foot of the table.

The scuff of leather against stone came to my ears and made me look up.

I was not the only one occupying the narrow space. Detaching himself from a similar stance, farther along in the shadows, Master Greseley walked softly toward me. Since there was an air of secrecy about him—of complicity almost—I hid the pouch within the folds of my skirt. Within an arm’s length of me he stopped and leaned his narrow shoulder blades on the wall beside me, arms folded across his chest, staring at the opposite plasterwork in a manner that was neither companionable nor hostile. Here was a man adept through long practice at masking his intentions. As for his thoughts—they were buried so deep beneath his impassivity that it would take an earthquake to dislodge them.

“You weren’t going to hide it under your pillow, were you?” he inquired in a low voice.

“Hide what?” I replied, clutching the purse tightly.

“The morning gift he’s just given you.”

“How do you…?”

“Of course I know. Who keeps the books in this household? It was no clever guesswork.” A sharp glance slid in my direction before fixing on the wall again. “I would hazard that the sum was payment for something that was never bought.”

Annoyance sharpened my tongue. I would not be intimidated by a
clerk
. “That is entirely between Master Perrers and myself.”

“Of course it is.” How smoothly unpleasant he was. Like mutton fat floating on water after the roasting pans had been scoured.

“And nothing to do with you.”

He bowed his head. “Absolutely nothing. I am here only to give you some good advice.”

Turning my head, I looked directly at him. “Why?”

He did not return my regard. “I have no idea.”

“That makes no sense.”

“No. It doesn’t. It’s against all my tenets of business practice. But even so…Let’s just say that I am drawn to advise you.”

I thought about this. Why not? There was no compulsion to accept it. “So what is your advice?”

“I’ve already told you. Don’t hide the money under your pillow or anywhere else in this house. She’ll find it.”

“Who?” Although I knew the answer well enough.

“The Signora. She has a nose for it, as keen as any mouse finding the cheese safe stored in a cupboard. And when she sniffs it out,
you’ll
not see it again.”

I thought about this as well. “I thought she didn’t know.”

“Is that what Janyn told you?”

“Well—not exactly.” But the implication had been there.

“Of course she does. Nothing happens in this place without her knowledge. She knows you have money, and she doesn’t agree. Any profits are the inheritance of her nephew.”

The absent heir, learning the business in Lombardy. I could well believe it. “Since you’re keen to offer advice, what can I do? Short of digging a hole in the garden…”

“Which she’d find…”

“A cranny in the eaves?”

“She’d find that too.”

“So?” I was beginning to be irritated with his smug assumption of knowledge.

“Give it to me.”

Which promptly dispersed my irritation. I laughed, disbelieving. “Do you take me for a fool?”

“I take you for a sensible woman. Give it to me.” He actually held out his hand, palm up. His fingers were blotched with ink.

“I will not.”

He sighed as if his patience were strained. “Give it to me and I’ll use it to make you a rich woman.”

“Why would you?”

“Listen to me, Mistress Alice!” I was right about the patience. His voice fell to a low hiss on the syllables of my name. “What keeps its value and lasts forever?”

“Gold.”

“No.”

“It does!”

“Gold can be stolen—and then you have nothing.”

“Jewels, then.”

“Same argument. Think about it!”

“Then since you are so clever…”

“Land!” The clerk’s beady eyes gleamed. “Property. That’s the way to do it. It’s a generous purse he gave you. Give it to me and I will buy you property.”

For a moment I listened to him, seduced by the glitter in his gaze that was now holding mine. His nose almost twitched with the prospect. And then sense took hold. “But I cannot look after property! What would I do with it?”

“You don’t have to
look after it
. There are ways and means. Give me your morning gift and I will show you how it’s done.”

Well! It deserved some consideration.…“What would you ask in return?” I asked sharply.

“An excellent question. I knew you had the makings of a businesswoman. I’ll let you know. But it will not be too great a price.”

I looked at him. What a cold fish he was. “Why are you doing this?”

“I think you have possibilities.”

“As a landowner?”

“Why not?”

I didn’t have a reply. I stood in silence, the coins in my hand seemingly growing heavier by the moment. I tossed the little bag and caught it.

“We don’t have all day!” Greseley’s admonition broke into my thoughts. “That’s my offer. Take it or leave it. But if you think to keep
it safe within these walls, then it will be gone before the end of the week.”

“And I should trust you.”

“Yes.”

Would I trust him? Trust had not figured highly in my life, but this strange man with his love for figures and documents, seals and agreements, had sought me out and made me this most tempting of offers. Should I hand over to him all I owned in the world? It was a risk. A huge risk. A gamble when I did not even know what the odds were. The arguments, conflicting, destructive of one another, rattled back and forth in my brain.

Say no. Keep it for yourself. Hide it where no one can find it.

Take the risk! Become an owner of property.

He’ll take it and keep it for himself.

Trust him!

I can’t!

Why not?

My exchange of views came to an abrupt halt when the clerk pushed himself upright and began to walk away. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you!”

And there was the final blast of the voice in my head.
You can’t do this on your own, Alice, but Greseley can. This clever little louse has the knowledge. Learn from him! Use him to your own advantage!

Well, I would. “Stop!” I shouted.

He did, but did not return. He stood there, his back to me, waiting.

“I’ll do it!” I called.

He spun on his heel to face me again. “Clever girl!”

“How long will it take?”

“A few days.”

I held up the pouch. Hesitated. Then dropped it into his outstretched palm. I was still wondering if I was an idiot.

“If you rob me…” I remarked.

“Yes, Mistress Perrers?”

It caused me to laugh softly. It was the first time I had been addressed as such.

“If you rob me,” I whispered, “I advise you to employ a taster before you eat or drink in this house.”

“There’ll be no need, mistress.” From his bland smugness, he
thought I was making empty threats. I was not so sure. A good dose of wolfsbane masked by a cup of warmed ale would take out the strongest man. I would not care to be robbed.

The purse vanished into Greseley’s sleeve, and Greseley vanished along the corridor.

Would I live to regret this business dealing that I had just leaped into? All I knew was that it created a strange, turbulent euphoria that swept through me from my crown to my ill-shod feet.

At some time in the following day, my room was searched. It was not done with any degree of discretion or finesse, but a rough tumbling of my pallet and bedcovers, a riffling through the coffer that contained a spare shift and a pair of stockings. For the rest of the day Signora Damiata stomped about her business. The look she cast me was not friendly.

I know you have it! I’ll get my hands on it; you mark my words.

Greseley frowned, his spiky brows meeting over his unprepossessing nose. Janyn did not notice. Meanwhile, I preserved a perfectly bland insouciance.

Fool! Idiot girl!
I berated myself with increasing fury over the following days.
A sensible woman, he called you. A businesswoman. And you let yourself be gulled. He knew how to dupe you, to wind you ’round his grubby fingers!

By God he did! By the end of the week I knew I had seen the last of my morning gift. Greseley was elusive, exchanging not one word with me and avoiding my attempts to catch his eye. And when my impatience overcame my discretion…“What have you done with…” I hissed in his ear as he slid onto a stool to break his fast.

“Pass the jug of ale, if you please, mistress,” was all I got. With one gulp he emptied his cup, crammed bread into his mouth, and left the room before I could pester him further.

“Stir this pot,” Signora Damiata ordered, handing over a spoon.

So there was no chance of my hunting him down, and later that day he was sent into the city on business that kept him away overnight.

How could I have been so ingenuous as to trust a man I barely knew? I had lost it. I had lost it all! I would never see one of those coins again, and my misery festered, even though I was kept hopping from morning to night. My mind began to linger on the effect of a large spoonful of wolfsbane on the scrawny frame of the clerk.

And then Greseley returned. Well, he wouldn’t get away with ignoring me this time. Was he suffering from guilt? If he was, it did nothing to impair his appetite, as he chomped his way through slices of beef and half a flat bread, completely undisturbed by my scowling at him across the board.

“We need to talk,” I whispered, nudging him between his shoulder blades when I smacked a dish of herring in front of him.

His answering stare was cold and clear and without expression.

“Careful, girl!” snapped the Signora. “That dish! We’re not made of money!”

Greseley continued to eat with relish, but as I cleared the dishes, he produced a roll of a document from the breast of his tunic, like a coney magicked from the sleeve of a second-rate jongleur, and tapped it against his fingertips before sliding it into an empty jug standing on the hearth, out of the Signora’s line of sight. It was not out of mine. My fingers itched to take it. I could sense it, like a burning brand below my heart.

At last. The kitchen was empty: Janyn closed the door on himself and his ledgers, the Signora climbed the stair to her chamber, and I took the scroll from its hiding place and carried it to my room. Unrolling it carefully, I read the black script. No easy task! The legal words meant nothing to me, the phrases hard on my understanding, the script small and close written. But there was no doubting it. He had done what he had promised. There was my name: Alice Perrers. I was the owner of property in Gracechurch Street in the city of London.

I held it in my hands, staring at it as if it might vanish if I looked away. Mine. It was mine. But what was it? And more important, what did I do with it?

I ran Greseley to ground early the next morning with his feet up on a trestle and a pot of ale beside him.

“It’s all very well—but what am I expected to do with it?”

He looked at me as if I were stupid. “Nothing but enjoy the profits, mistress.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I doesn’t matter whether you do or not. It’s yours.”

He was watching me closely, as if to test my reaction. I did not see why he should, so I said what I wanted to say.

“It does matter.” And in that moment it struck home how much it meant to me. “It matters to me more than you’ll ever know.” I glowered. “You won’t patronize me, Master Greseley. You will explain it all to me, and then I will understand. The property is mine and I want to know how it works.”

He laughed. He actually laughed, a harsh bark of noise.

“Now what?”

“I knew I was right.”

“About what?”

“
You
, Mistress Perrers. Sit down! And don’t argue! I’m about to give you your first lesson.”

So I did, and Greseley explained to me the brilliance for a woman in my position of the legal device of “
enfeoffment to use.
” “The property is yours; it remains yours,” he explained. “But you allow others to administer it for you—for a fee, of course. You must choose wisely—a man with an interest in the property so that he will administer it well. Do you understand?” I nodded. “You grant that man legal rights over the land, but you retain
de facto
control. See? You remain in ultimate ownership but need do nothing in the day-to-day running of it.”

“And can I make the agreement between us as long or as short as I wish?”

“Yes.”

“And I suppose I need a man of law to oversee this for me?”

“It would be wise.”

“What is it—this property that I now own, but do not own?”

“Living accommodations—with shops below.”

What else did I need to ask? “Was there any money left over from the transaction?”

“You don’t miss much, do you?” He tipped out the contents of the purse at his belt and pushed across the board a small number of coins.

“You said I needed a man of law.” He regarded me without expression. “I suppose you would be my man of law.”

“I certainly could. Next time, we will work in partnership.”

“Will there be a next time?”

“Oh, I think so.” I thought the slide of his glance had a depth of craftiness.

“Is that good or bad—to work in partnership?”

Greseley’s pointed nose sniffed at my ignorance. He knew I could not work alone. But it seemed good to me. What strides I had made. I was a wife of sorts, even if I spent my nights checking Janyn’s tally sticks and columns of figures, and now I was a property owner. A little ripple of pleasure brushed along the skin of my forearms as the idea engaged my mind and my emotions. I liked it. And in my first deliberate business transaction I pushed the coins back toward Greseley.