The King's Concubine

Chapter Six

It was Edward’s private chamber, redolent of masculine luxury. Wood paneling hung with tapestries, a fireplace with burning logs and a favorite hound curled there. A prie-dieu and a crucifix. A coffer, a standing table, a high-polished chair with carved arms and back—opulent, I decided as I took it all in at a glance, used as I now was to such magnificence. Here was everything a nobleman with a taste for prayer and erudition and comfort could wish for. Edward might have spent most of his life engaged in the hardship of campaigning in France, but at Havering, despite its insignificance compared to the royal dwellings at Westminster and Windsor, he enjoyed all that his consequence could bring him. And there were signs of recent habitation. A pole with a falcon that appeared to be asleep. A sumptuous damask and fur chamber robe in deep glowing red cast over the coffer. A flagon for wine and cups, and a platter of what remained of a meal. Books, one open, and a rosary cast on the bed; a bowl and ewer flanked by a candle stand, the fine quality of the candles casting a soft glow.

And a quite superlative bed.

My eye slid quickly away from its silk covers, its red and gold curtains. After the emotion of the past half hour, my control was compromised. I stood hesitantly with my back to the door, an animal at bay, so it seemed, as I waited for the predator to pounce. For surely the King of England was as much a predator as his hawk.

The hawk rustled its feathers and sank further into somnolence. The hound twitched and whined in the throes of some hunting dream.

And Edward walked toward me from where he had been sitting perusing the pages of a book, hand outstretched in greeting. How beautiful he was. How carelessly he wore that beauty, how unself-consciously, how unaware of the impression his fine-carved features and magnificent stature would make on the beholder. Would make on me.

“Alice.” The stern lines of his face softened into the vestige of a smile. “You look as if you’re considering that I might pounce and dismember you.”

“I think I am,” I replied.

Edward’s laugh rumbled. “I’ll not do that.” His hand closed over mine. “You’re freezing—or frozen with fear. Come to the fire.…” Pulling me gently forward, he placed me in his own chair, speaking all the time as if I were some flighty, unbroken filly in need of reassurance. Leaving me to look around, he poured two cups of ruby liquid. “Here. It’s from Gascony. The best wine we have.” He pushed the cup into my hand, hooked his toe around the leg of a stool, and sat at my feet, lifting his own cup to his lips.

“Drink, Alice.” He nudged my forearm. I realized I had been staring at him, my thoughts paralyzed with uncertainty. I still could not look at the bed. For sure the King had not invited me here to have me copy the nation’s accounts into a ledger.

Edward drank, his eyes never leaving my face. Under that intense gaze my nerves faltered, and I looked down at the chasing on the fine silver cup, inconsequentially following the outline of a superbly tined stag with my finger.

“Would it please you to be my mistress?” he asked, as if inquiring about my health.

“I don’t know.”

“That’s honest, by God!”

“It has to be, Sire. I don’t know how to answer you otherwise.”

I took a careless gulp of wine and coughed. One of the logs collapsed with a sigh. The hawk shuffled on dry feet.

“You are a widow.”

“Yes.”

“Then you should not fear this.” His hand gestured toward the bed.

I swallowed. “I am a virgin. My marriage was never consummated. He couldn’t.…” I really had begun to tremble, now that the moment had come upon me. I glanced up to see that Edward was frowning at me. So that was not the answer he had wanted. He had wanted a mistress with some knowledge of what occurred between the sheets. All Philippa’s planning would go for naught. “I can leave, Sire. If you don’t want me here…”

“I’ll tell you when I don’t!” A flash of eye, a brush of temper that surprised me, and then it ebbed as fast as it had flared between us. His voice was very gentle. “Forgive me. This has to be a very private transaction between us.”

“And you don’t trust me to keep my own counsel?”

“That’s not what I meant.” His eyes were on mine, fierce and searching again, and I could not look away.

“I know what you meant. I know you don’t want to hurt Her Majesty.”

“You think it won’t hurt her to know?” Surging to his feet, he was suddenly as far from me as he could get, at the other side of the room. Who was the animal at bay here? I watched him cautiously. “Sins of the flesh,” he murmured. “They will return to haunt us.”

“I am no gossip, Sire,” I replied.

“How old are you?” he asked harshly.

“Seventeen years, my lord, perhaps eighteen.”

“So many years between us, so much experience that I have and you do not. Do you know, Alice? I’ve never been unfaithful to her. Not in all the thirty years of marriage. No matter the rumors that I have taken lovers—from the day I wed her I have not broken my oath. But now…”

But now she has told you to take a lover!

How to keep all the secrets? Was I to be a deft juggler, keeping the separate items aloft in an orderly pattern, dropping none? Or a skilled weaver, melding all the colors into one seemly whole? Was I capable of such discretion? Such skill? Countess Joan’s words slammed into my mind. It is important for a woman to have the duplicity to make good use of whatever gifts she might have. And there she was with her cruel smile. Until I banished her. There was no place for Fair Joan’s cynicism in this maneuvering between Edward and myself. I waited, the nerves in my belly fluttering like finches in a cage.

“When I touch her she has to sink her teeth into her lips not to groan with the agony.” Edward turned away from me to brace his hands against the edge of the coffer, head bent, shoulders rigid as he made his confession. “I love my wife. But I desire you, Alice. Is that very bad?”

“Wykeham would say so, my lord.” I was still chafing at his reproof.

“What would you say?”

The only thing I could. “That you are my King and can demand my obedience, my lord.”

His mouth twisted. “A simplistic answer to smooth over any complication.” Silence fell. Heavy. Full of decision and indecision. And then: “If you are to share my bed, you must call me by my name.”

“Edward.” I tried it, as I had written it of late. I smiled. And the King must have heard the smile in my voice and he looked back at me over his shoulder.

“What is it?”

“It sounds strange.”

“Strange…Do you know how few people call me by my name?”

“No, Sire.”

“I could count them on the fingers of one hand. All the friends of my youth—dead within the last two years. Northampton—the bravest of my generals. Sir John Beauchamp, who carried my standard at Crécy. Lancaster—the most trusted of all my friends. The years are cruel, Alice. You’re too young to see it yet. They rob us of our health and our friends and our hopes, and give nothing back.” His sight was turned inward, his expression melancholy. Another log fell into ash, dislodging others, and as if the sound prompted him to what he was and what he must be, Edward slowly raised his head. His spine straightened visibly, and the lines of his face firmed as his lips compressed. “I am not allowed to grow old. I am King.”

I stood, my own anxieties obliterated by compassion, not that I would ever have dared reveal it. Here was a proud warrior who had lived and fought for a lifetime, yet there was no comfort for him. Nor would he ask it—he would bear the burden of kingship to the grave, whatever the depth of loneliness it demanded from him. I walked slowly toward him, presenting him with my own cup, since his was forgotten on the coffer.

“You will not grow old. You will live forever. And I will call you Edward, if that is what you wish.”

I touched his hand as he took the cup from me, marveling that I could so easily transgress the honor due to the King; all my fears seemed to have fallen away. I let my fingers rest lightly on his, as his eyes captured mine.

“I remember the softness of your mouth. When you smile, your face is illluminated as if a candle is lit behind your eyes,” he said. “It lights you from within.”

“You flatter me.”

“Then we will flatter each other.”

Edward kissed me. His lips were firm and warm against mine. An intimate kiss but with no heat of passion. He was not aroused. Perhaps it was the desire of courtly love he wanted to give me rather than the fulfillment of the flesh.

“God will damn me for this, but…”

He let his hands drop from my shoulders, for there was harsh conscience again. I thought that in his youth there would have been no hesitation in Edward taking what he wanted, but he was not at ease with either his conscience or with me. His authority, within the bedchamber or without, was supreme, but his memories had roused the specter of death and decay.

So what was my role here? It came to me that I wanted nothing more than to give him some level of contentment. To make him smile again. But how…how to distract him from these morbid thoughts that gave him no pleasure? What skill did I have to achieve that? The arts of seduction were unknown to me. What might he want most from me that I was capable of giving? What could I do? Well—I could argue and hold an opinion.…

My eyes were caught by the documents strewn across the table. Affairs of business and policy. I walked to stand before them.

“Tell me what you are doing here, Edward.”

“Interested in royal policy, are you?” Intrigued, he had watched me go.

“Yes.” I looked back at him, a deliberate challenge that he was free to accept or reject. “I am capable of far more than deciding the color of the gown I wear or how my hair should be dressed!”

“Are you, now?” Accepting the challenge, Edward directed me to sit on a stool and reached to select one of the documents, handing it to me. “Family affairs,” he said, resting his weight against the table, interest in my precociousness replacing the melancholy. This was better!

“You are fortunate. I have no family,” I said. “I know nothing of such.”

“I have sons. Magnificent sons. And they bring me power.” And there was the King again rather than the man, his finger on every pulse, his hand wound tight in the reins to keep ultimate control of the kingdom. “What do you see on that document?”

He tapped the one I held. The Latin was close-written in the crabbed script of a clerk, but I could read enough. “Ireland,” I said.

“Good! This is Lionel. He’s in Ireland. A difficult province, a tough job. Once, I’d have gone myself, but I’ve sent Lionel as King’s Lieutenant. He’ll have to tread a path between all the damned interests. God knows it’s a morass of bad blood.”

He took the document from me and gave me another. I felt like a novice again, under instruction, or a clerk under Janyn’s scrutiny, but my fascination with the documents was keen. “And this?” he asked.

This one was more difficult, but the names were clear. “This is Aquitaine.”

“Edward, my heir.” The pride in his voice was unmistakable. “He’ll rule Aquitaine well as long as he curbs his tendency to stamp on the interests of those he rules. Gascony’s restive—he must learn to be patient at the same time as he learns to be king. He is a good commander, a man after my own heart. Now, this…”

He was enjoying himself. A man confident and assured as he spread out before me the heirs to his power who would carry the Plantagenet blood and name into history. I took the new document.

“This is John. John of Gaunt. The Duchy of Lancaster is now his. And Edmund? I was planning on the Flanders heiress for him”—he frowned at a document with a heavy red seal that had cracked on its journeys—“but the French want her, and they have the ear of the new Pope. I’ll have to look elsewhere for him. And then there’s Thomas.…”

“Who’s only seven, and hunting mad like his father.”

“Yes.”

The success of my simple ploy glowed in my heart. Edward was at ease.

“Isabella is the other problem.” He took my cup again and drank as he considered her. “She’ll marry as she sees fit. If I took a whip to her sides it would do no good.”

“I think she will not be averse to any husband of your choice.” I had seen the raging dissatisfaction in Isabella.

“She was more than averse once!”

“But now, with the years passing…she’ll accept any man you choose for her—as long as he is young and good to look at and powerful!”

“I’ll remember that. You see more than I in the domain of the solar.…My fear is that she’ll make her own choice—and someone outrageously inappropriate.”

“Then let her do it.”

“But I need her to make an alliance for the good of England—not to choose some landless knight with a pretty face and formidable muscles to entice her into bed…!”

He stopped abruptly. I looked up from the vellum to his face, unsure what had silenced him. He was looking at me.

“What have you done?” he demanded.

“Nothing, my lord!”

“You are a cunning woman, Alice Perrers!”

And Edward cast the curling documents onto the table and laughed, enough to reverberate from the walls and wake the hound. With a smooth flex of muscle and sinew he pushed himself from the table, stooped with a hand below each of my elbows, and lifted me from the stool to place me firmly on my feet. He held me there before him.

“Did I bring you here to discuss matters of policy?” His eyes were now a clear blue, all shadows obliterated, full of humor. And desire. “Not only cunning, I think. You are a clever woman.”

“Do you think so, Edward?” I tilted my chin, deliberately somber, exquisitively provocative.

“You’ve made an excellent attempt at distracting me.”

“Yes,” I admitted.

“And very successfully. I can only apologize for my ill humor.”

“There is no need.” And because I was so close, I touched the King’s lips with the tips of my fingers. “I am pleased to give you pleasure.”

It was a blatant invitation—and it was meant to be.

Edward needed no invitation. With grave courtesy he helped me remove my gown—how did a man of war deal so knowledgeably with female ties and laces?—allowing me to keep my shift for modesty’s sake. His patience lulled all my virginal fears. Turning back the bedcovers, he helped me to sit against the pillows, then doused the candles except for one, standing far enough away to give me the benefit of shrouding shadows. Without any modesty on his own part, he stripped off hose and tunic, and stood beside the bed.

“I’ll make this as good as I can, Alice.”

“I am not afraid.” Nor was I. Now that the moment had come I knew that Edward Plantagenet would not hurt me.

Curious, I allowed my gaze to travel over what I could see of his body in the single flickering flame. I expect the soft light flattered him. Half a century he had lived, but his flesh was still firm and smooth on flanks and chest; nor could the scars and abrasions from a lifetime of battle and tourneys detract from his splendid physique, despite there being more silver in his fair hair than he might wish for.

The evidence of his desire for me was formidable.

“Do you like what you see, Mistress Alice?” he asked.

I flushed brightly, realizing that I had been staring with open admiration.

“I like it very well,” I replied as calmly as I could. “I can only pray that you will find me as pleasing to the eye and the senses.”

“I’ll let you know! For now, my pleasure in your company is obvious to us both.”

So I lost my virginity to Edward Plantagenet, King of England. It was not an unpleasant experience, and my trembling was from neither fear nor pain. I followed his lead and was brave enough to return his caresses with my own. Sometimes I allowed my own needs, when I recognized them, to prompt a kiss or a caress. Sometimes I made him hold his breath.

He liked it.

And how did I feel? Edward made me feel desired. For the first time in all my seventeen years he made me feel valued, beautiful, even when I knew I was neither. I clung to him, drowning in his embrace.

“How did our lives cross, Alice?” he asked when passion had ebbed.

Your loving wife had something to do with it.

I shook my head.

“We keep this between us,” he murmured, “and Wykeham, who’s to be trusted.”

“Yes.”

Wykeham will damn me rather than you!

And so it was begun: this strange ménage a trois, with the Queen a silent partner who neither needed nor wanted to know more than she did, and Edward unaware of his wife’s complicity. I would keep the secrets of both. And when his hands explored and his body possessed, we tacitly agreed to keep the Queen distant from the room and the bed. We did not speak of her. Enough time tomorrow to allow guilt to creep in. For now the fluid strength of his body, the slide of heated skin against heated skin, occupied all my thoughts.

At the end Edward fell asleep, the fingers of one hand interlaced with mine, but I lay awake, considering the responses of my body. What was love? Love, I suspected, was whatever Edward felt toward Philippa. Perhaps he loved me too in his way, unless it was merely lust. But did I love Edward? Perhaps I fell in love with him a little, if admiration and respect and loyalty amounted to love. My belly clenched with longing when he kissed me, when his hands stroked down my breast to the dip of my waist. I was overwhelmed by his glamour, that this was the King of England who wanted me enough to throw caution to the winds and own me.

Perhaps that was love after all.

Later—how many hours later, for time had no meaning—Wykeham escorted me back to the antechamber in the Queen’s rooms. It was the same journey, in reverse, but even more spiked with his loathing of what had been done. He was beyond censure. He bowed and left me at the door, not even opening it for me, the bow an empty gesture that denied any courtesy.

I had forfeited all his approval. I suspect he thought I had forfeited my soul.

A page returned me to my room, where the damsels slept on in ignorance.

A new day and early sunshine filtered into the room as if it were an ordinary day. I washed my hands and face from the ewer of cold water, flinching from the chill. A day like any other day, and yet not so. I dressed hurriedly before my two companions were astir, with the ready excuse that the Queen might need me if she was still in pain, to give her the strength to attend Mass in her chapel.

What would I say to her? I knew only that I must see her, to learn what she might find to say to me in the cold light of day. Last night was a time of tension and high drama, when we had both allowed emotion to rule. Today might be a time for regret. The Queen might consider my dismissal a just punishment for what I had done, and, in truth, I could not blame her. I must know. I hurried to her rooms, only to be informed by her tire-woman that she had risen even earlier than I—was that a bad sign or good?—and was already at prayer. I slipped into the chapel. No priest was there, but the Queen knelt before the altar, clasping the altar rail to steady herself. I sank to my knees just within the entrance. I would wait. It seemed to me that the fair face of the statue of the Holy Virgin was particularly austere.

“Alice…”

The Queen’s private devotions were complete. I stood, moving quickly toward the altar to help her to her feet.

“Well?” Her eyes were bright and aware. The pain was less this morning.

“It is done, Majesty.”

“It was…satisfactory?”

“Yes.”

How few words, so inconsequential in themselves, to encompass so momentous an act. Any deliberate eavesdropper would have abandoned us for meatier gossip.

“He will…he will send for you again?”

“Yes, my lady.”

“Good. We will not speak of this again.”

A strange relief trickled through my blood, that this three-stranded interweaving might not be impossible, if I had the skill to keep the secrets of both and remain true to each. Perhaps I could be loyal to both Philippa and Edward, betraying neither, harming neither.…But still the claws of treachery fastened in my flesh. I felt the rip of them as the Queen turned her gaze away from her husband’s whore.

When the door opened, disturbing the air so that the candles wavered wildly, we both looked ’round, expecting a priest. And in a heartbeat the serene, ageless atmosphere of the chapel became heated with fury. It was written on her face, in every gesture. She barely waited to approach us before her voice rang out. For here was Isabella.

“God’s Wounds! How could you…!”

She covered the distance with long strides, kicking aside her skirts. I thought her attack was for me, but Isabella swept past me as if I were detritus beneath her feet and pounced on her mother.

“Why are you here with her? Do you know what she’s done? Wykeham will not talk—at least he’s loyal and will keep his mouth shut about this family’s affairs—but he was seen last night—with her! And do you know where he took her?” She all but spit the words, her beautiful face contorted. “She has betrayed you. Your little gutter sweepings, rescued from nonentity and squalor, spent last night in the King’s rooms! In his bed, I presume! And here you are, all but holding her hands!”

“Isabella…!” the Queen remonstrated, to no avail.

“You didn’t even know, did you? Don’t touch her! She is a vile serpent!” And Isabella struck out at me, making contact with her hand against my shoulder with a forceful blow, so surprising me that I lost my balance and fell against the altar rail. “You will dismiss her. Do you hear me? And if you will not, I’ll arrange it myself!”

“I hear you, Isabella.” The Queen sighed.

“Look at her!” Isabella turned on me and snarled as I dragged myself upright. Prudently I stepped away as the Princess’s fingers curled into claws. “You have dressed her and polished her until she’s halfway presentable. And what has she done? Warmed your husband’s bed. As for the King…! Is no man honorable? After all you have given him—the respect, the children. I despise him! But I despise you more, little Alice from the gutter!”

“Isabella! You will be silent!” If I had thought Philippa’s dignity a thing of amazement last night, today she was glorious in facing her furious daughter. “I know exactly…”

“She has cheated you! She has turned the gold of your generosity into dross! She should be flogged!” Isabella advanced on me once more.

“I have not cheated.” I would not retreat again, even at the risk of Isabella’s ire, but my fear was lively.

The Queen in timely manner grasped her daughter’s sleeve. “Isabella!”

“You’re not going to make excuses for her, are you?”

“No. I am going to make them for myself.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“Then curb your passions, and listen. I know exactly what passed between my husband and Alice. Listen to me, my daughter. Forget your sense of ill usage and injustice. This is the reality.” The Queen waited until Isabella had regained at least a semblance of calm. “What do you think? Am I capable of fulfilling my duty to your father?”

“Your duty…?” Isabella looked as if she would rather not discuss it. “I don’t see…”

“Yes, you do see it. Every day you see it. You are not a fool, Isabella. I am incapable of turning back the sheets on my bed for your father. That is the brutal truth.”

“That’s not…”

“If you were going to say something so foolish as ‘that’s not important,’ you’re no daughter of mine. It is always important. Your father is the man he ever was. Do I condemn him to a lifetime of abstinence because I cannot…cannot…” She brushed aside the words she could not speak. “Do you understand me, Isabella?”

“Yes!” Isabella’s fair skin was flushed.

“And if I cannot give him what he needs…”

“You would procure a mistress for your own husband?” Isabella’s disbelief was as strong as mine had been. That gentle, loving Philippa should give her blessing to her husband’s lover. “Why not let him take a palace whore? There are enough of them willing to lift their skirts.…”

“No. Before God, Isabella! You try my patience. If it has to be, I would rather it be someone I know and trust.…”

How I detested this! In that moment I saw the truth. There was nothing new to learn of the Queen’s motives here in this confrontation between Queen and Princess. Had she not bared her soul to me, in all its agony, the previous night? Yet hearing her state the words again made my blood chill. In spite of my loyalty to the Queen I was forced to acknowledge that I was being used. Snarled over like a bone between two royal curs. It was like the creation of an entirely new tapestry, stitched with clever fingers to reveal the whole before my eyes. Better for the King to sleep with an unimportant domicella than with a highborn titled lady who would use her position to sneer at the Queen’s failure as she crowed over her success in bedding the King.

Degradation lapped over me, bitter as the leaves of hyssop. I might have sympathy with the Queen’s motives, but the role that had been created for me was a wretched one. I was a creature, a pawn, to be moved around the chessboard at the whim of the player. And what a skilled player the Queen was. How long, before her eye fell on me, had she been plotting this deep scenario to preserve the Plantagenets from dangerous scandal?

“Could you not find a more acceptable bedmate than this?” Isabella continued to rage, stabbing her finger at me.

Nor, I realized, my blood now humming with my own brand of anger, did I appreciate this exchange of opinion that stormed over me as if I were invisible. I was not the same powerless woman that I had been yesterday.

You are the King’s mistress. You are no longer invisible. Nor are you voiceless. You have his ear. He wants you to come to him again. You do not have to tolerate this. You have a power of your own.…

The words revolved and repeated like the cogs of Edward’s precious clock.

“You will pretend you know nothing, Isabella. You will treat Alice with the respect she deserves for her obedience to me. Do you understand me?” The Queen was laying down her directives with the precision of an army commander.

“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.

“Carelessness is not one of your sins, Alice,” she observed.

“Forgive me, my lady.” I lowered my gaze to the silver-and-blue rosettes on the toes of her shoes.

“Alice…” I looked up to see the Queen nod briskly. “I understand. Come with me. And you too, Isabella. We have time, I think. Half an hour…”

I heard an exhalation around me. Disappointment, perhaps. But what a sense of exhilaration I felt. I had proved stronger than my enemies. I had shown that their hostility meant nothing to me. I would make no excuses; I would not retaliate; I would keep my own counsel. They would see that I had no fear of them. For the first time I learned the true power of self-control.

And that half hour demanded by the Queen?

A half hour was all that was needed to put in place a transformation. The Queen was soon disrobed of her blue and silver and furred gown. My own disreputable garments were stripped from me—I never saw them again—and Philippa’s robes became mine. They were far too large, but with some robust lacing I kept them from falling off my shoulders.

Not a word was spoken other than instructions to breathe or lift or step out.

“Good!” The Queen, regal even in her shift, watched as her silver-edged veil and girdle were added to my ensemble. “Tell the King we will be ready in five minutes, Isabella.” And when the Queen and I found ourselves alone together, she asked: “Will you tell me, Alice?”

“There is nothing to tell, my lady.”

She did not press me but turned again to the matter at hand.

“Fetch the crimson and gold with the gold overrobe. And the gold veil and the ruby collar.”

We returned to the audience chamber, where the atmosphere was thick with the waiting. There the Queen stood in our midst, glowing like a priceless ruby in the silver-and-blue setting of her damsels, whom she addressed with hard-eyed severity.

“We will honor the King today. It is my will. Alice is a loyal subject to both myself and His Majesty.” She looked around at the suddenly bland faces. “I am displeased by the discourtesy to myself and those who serve me. I will not tolerate it.”

Silence.

“Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Majesty.” There was a hurried bending of the knee on all sides.

What an oblique little statement, saying little but acknowledging everything, and as clear as day to anyone with wit.

“Mistress Perrers will sit at my side at the tournament,” the Queen continued with a flat stare. “Now, let us put in a belated appearance. It is always good for a woman to be a little late when a handsome man awaits her. Give me your arm, Mistress Perrers.”

The tournament proved to be a superb exhibition of manly warfare, a triumphal celebration of my position at Edward’s court. And what a contest he fought. If the visiting monarchs had any thoughts of the waning powers of England’s King as he entered his fiftieth year, Edward dispelled them with his mastery of the art of combat.

I should have rejoiced, not least at my own victory, but the whole performance proved to be an edged sword for me. Jealousy is a terrible sin and a vicious companion: an animal that eats and claws and gives no quarter. Thus it attacked me throughout that glorious afternoon. I might be Edward’s lover, but it was to Philippa that he looked, to Philippa that he gave the honors and the chivalric adoration. Not once did he single me out in my royal blue and silver, neither with look nor gesture. Edward accepted Philippa’s scarf as his guerdon and wore it pinned to the sash over his body armor. He kissed Philippa’s fingers and vowed to fight in her name. At the end, when he received the victor’s prize and Philippa’s loving salute, Edward spoke to her alone.

And I? I was woman enough to resent it. Why could he not speak to me? I was ashamed, bitterly remorseful of my envy, but unable to quell it. It assaulted me, as a grub burrows into the flesh of an apple, and I watched the tournament with a smile painted on my face, empty words on my lips, and anger in my heart that the King would take my body in private but not acknowledge me in public. I knew my thoughts were all awry, unfair to both Philippa and Edward, and to the role I had undertaken with my eyes open to the consequences, but still I raged inwardly.

I was simply one of the damsels to fetch and carry.

Until I was in Edward’s bed that night.

“That was a good day’s work.” He stretched and sighed, pinning me effortlessly to the bed, his body slick and sated.

“Which part of it?” I responded primly, similarly replete, the monster of discontent temporarily laid to rest. I had not known that I could be prim, but I was discovering a multitude of skills to beguile a potent man. Edward had pleasured me with skill equal to that shown in the lists, and with far more subtlety.

“Mistress Alice, you have a mischievous tongue. There’s life in the old dog yet.” He turned his face into the curve of my breast, kissing the damp hollow where my heart still shivered with physical delight. “I can still fell a knight half my age with a lance and a good horse beneath me.”

“And still reduce a woman to abject surrender…” I trailed a hand down his shoulder, pressing my palm against his ribs, feeling the answering solid beat.

“I thought I was the one to surrender.”

“Perhaps you did. You deserved to be defeated by a woman after all your male pride today. Wykeham will surely lecture you on how sinful it is.”

He rolled to hold my face between his hands so that I could not avoid his gaze, even if I had wished to. “My victory was for you too, Alice. Never doubt that.”

“No, it was not.” The green-eyed grub in the heart of the sweet apple was not quite dead. “You didn’t think to ask for my guerdon, as I recall.”

My tone was light but not altogether teasing, and he took me seriously, as he often did when I challenged him. “The thought was in my heart. This duplicity does not sit well with me.”

I stifled a sigh and kissed him, allowing him the victory. Were we not both guilty of hypocrisy? “The Queen was the obvious choice as your lady, and you fought magnificently for her,” I assured him. “You gave her great pleasure.”

It was like executing a complicated dance step to which I was not accustomed, but, by God, my skills were improving. “The Queen dressed in red and gold to please you. To be the center of your vision and wish you victory.”

“Rich colors always suited her.” He smiled reflectively, and then his eyes focused, sparkling. “Now, you were perfect in silver and blue. And are even more perfect without any clothing at all…”

Edward’s energies were prodigious.

As I was preparing to leave him, braving Wykeham’s silent enmity, Edward cast a jeweled chain around my neck with careless generosity. He had worn it at the feast that had followed the tournament. I lifted the links in my hand as it lay on my breast, and stared at it.

“What’s wrong?” Edward asked gruffly.

“You don’t know?”

“No. I think it becomes you.”

“I cannot accept this, Edward. I really can’t!”

“Why not?”

“I thought you wished to be discreet.” I took it off and placed it over his head so that it gleamed with far more power against the muscles of his own chest. “There’s nothing discreet about it. The golden links would curb a horse, and the sapphires are the size of pigeon’s eggs.” He was not pleased, as I could see by the flare of his nostrils. I must have a care with his pride, but I must also safeguard my still-precarious position. A wise woman would not stir up more trouble than she needed. “Give me this instead,” I said, and reached to where the Queen’s scarf lay. And with it the brooch that had pinned the scarf to his sash.

“It is a small thing, Alice,” he remonstrated, brows flattening ominously into a line. “Of no value.”

“It is of great value,” I purred persuasively, holding it on my palm. “You wore it in the thick of battle. I would like it for my own. And I can wear it without ostentation. See sense, Edward. How could I wear a chain like that without every finger at Court being pointed at me?”

Edward grunted his acquiescence. “Very well, madam. I’ll be persuaded. But one day I’ll give you what I choose.”

“And one day I’ll let you.” And I knew that, at some distant point in the future, I would.

He pinned the simple jewel, a gold circle set with pinpoints of emeralds, to the linen of my shift, where it gleamed with a strange ostentation against the plain fabric. “This is not easy for you, is it?” It was not the first time he had asked the question. Nor was my reply any different.

“No. How would it be easy?”

“Am I selfish in demanding that you play this role?”

“Yes. But you are King. Are you not allowed to be selfish?”

He laughed, his humor restored, if a little wry.

I kept the brooch. Amongst the jewels that Philippa had given me it went unobserved. One day, as Edward had intimated, I would not be so discreet. One day I would not have need to be, but the obvious reason for this broke my heart. As long as the Queen lived, discretion must rule.

“Are you going to remain silent?” I demanded of Wykeham as he escorted me once more along the route I knew only too well. “You can’t refuse to speak to me forever. When did you become so prudish?”

“When I perjured my soul in keeping the King’s disgraceful secret,” he responded without looking at me. “I’m leaving Havering to undertake some building at Windsor,” he added through his teeth.

“I wager you’ll find that more rewarding than associating with me.”

“God’s Wounds, I shall!”

“But I’ll still be here when you return,” I could not resist adding with a spark of naughty levity.

“I’ll pray for a miracle that you are not!”

Wykeham went to Windsor to build a new tower. I missed him. I missed his severity and his honesty, but I no longer needed him as an escort, for I was given a room of my own, with freedom to make my own way to the royal accommodations. So my position was laid bare before the whole Court, yet the conspiracy of silence for Philippa’s sake continued.

And when it did not?

“Whore!” hissed an ill-advised damsel when her moral indignation got the better of her good sense.

The result was a succinct audience with the Queen. Her possessions were packed, and she left Court within the day. I had enemies, but I had friends too, who were far more powerful. I still trod carefully, but with growing poise and confidence in every step. How would I not? Philippa’s royal gown—all blue and silver and costly fur—was recut and restitched so that it fit me perfectly. I gloried in its possession.