The King's Mistress (37 page)

“I fear what will happen to me when you discard me.”

He drew me to him and kissed my forehead. “Alice, my sweet Alice, why are you so certain I’ll prove faithless?”

“It is said that you have discarded women after a fortnight, again and again. I cannot think why I might be different.”

“And you believed the gossip?”

His sad tone gave me pause. I had not thought to question the rumors. I propped myself up on one elbow so that I might look him in the eyes. “Is it not true?”

The skin around his eyes crinkled with his affectionate, reassuring smile.

“I have strayed from my queen before, but seldom. Though I have often enjoyed the companionship of pretty young women, most of them have been disappointed by how chastely we dined and talked. The few to whom I have made love still enjoy my protection and discretion.” He dabbed at my tears with the counterpane, then kissed my lips. “You will be ever near me, my comfort and my delight,” he declared.

“And when you tire of me?”

“I shall never tire of you.”

I wanted so to believe that. “But what if you do?”

“Then I shall find you a husband. Someone worthy of you. But I do not like to think of that.”

His voice had sharpened and it was that change in tone rather than all his reassurances that made me believe him, or at least accept that he believed he would not tire of me.

“I shall owe you much if that day ever comes, for I feel as if you have returned my youth and vigor to me, Alice. But I would owe you for more than that. I fear I have not been so discreet about our liaison as I have been with other lovers. In truth, I do not wish to be. I have boasted to my close friends how you have renewed me.”

I felt sick to my stomach. “Are the pearls part of your penance?”

For each night or day we lay together, Edward gave me one large pearl or several small ones.

“No, they are not proffered as penance,” said Edward. “I have told you what I wish.” He wished me to wear them on my gowns, my headdresses, my slippers, or in my hair, so that whenever he saw me he would know that I cherished him. “They are not so much gifts for you as for me. And so you must tell me what I might give you for you, what is your heart’s desire.”

“My heart’s desire?” I could not think what to ask for.

“Search your heart, my sweet Alice.”

What I truly wanted was to be with Bella and to give her brothers and sisters, legitimate children fathered by a man who was free to wed me. But even as I formed this wish I felt torn, being otherwise so happy with Edward. How could I not cherish his love? What things might I ask for beyond the beautiful clothes and jewels, the hawks and horses, the fabulous surroundings? I owned Fair Meadow, and Richard Lyons held the house in London for me, and though I could not use either home until such time as Edward felt it was safe for me to do so, I felt reassured by knowing I might return to them someday. The tenements in Oxford provided the income to maintain my homes. Beyond that, in order to ensure that Bella had the opportunities that Janyn and I had wanted for her, I needed to build on the foundation he had left me using the training he had given me.

I thought about his emphasis on the acquisition of land. He had believed that though a man acquired gold, jewels, silks, and spices, if he did not own land, if he had no rents, he was merely a merchant. Land brought respect and a voice in civic matters. He had told me that my father’s one flaw was his neglect of this part of his potential. If a man did not step into the civic arena, he was irresponsible. Selfish. Although as a woman I had no place in civic affairs, extensive landholdings would provide me with a status that would attract eligible suitors for my daughter. It was essential I achieve a status in my
own right that might overshadow any taint from my liaison with the king.

“Property,” I said when I was next with Edward. “I wish for more land and city rents in my name. For myself and Bella.” Inwardly I cringed at how acquisitive I sounded, but reminded myself of the loss of reputation I suffered from this liaison.

We were lying in Edward’s great bed, wrapped in delicately scented silk bedclothes, with a casement wide open to invite within the soothing sound of a spring rain. Now he propped himself up on some pillows and looked down at me. I lay flat, stretching my limbs. He ran his hand from the middle of my breastbone to the soft hair between my legs, then idly stroked my nearest thigh. “I am glad you have given this some thought. You are so young. You will live on long after I am dead, and I want to leave you with a comfortable income, worthy of a king’s mistress. I would grant you a life of ease. I had not thought of property, but it does seem precisely what you need. You speak of such things with confidence. I recall your pride in speaking of how much you had learned about trade from Janyn and your father. What else did you learn from your late husband?”

Even at such a moment, secure in Edward’s love, I held my breath in anticipation of the pain inherent in conjuring up that happy time, receding now so quickly into long ago. “Before our betrothal I had never ridden a horse or held a hawk.”

“Such an innocent!”

“Nor had I been outside London.”

“He opened up the world to you.”

“He dreaded the time when he’d have no more to show me.” A time he’d not lived to see.

Edward took my hand and kissed it. “You loved him very much.”

“With all my heart and soul,” I whispered.

“I pray that you can forgive me for the manner in which I told you of his murder.”

I took a deep breath to steady my voice. “It is the absence of him that tightens my throat, the thought of him suffering, not how it was told me.”

We talked into the night then of how my life had changed with my betrothal to Janyn. It was an evening that brought Edward and me closer as friends, sharing food and wine, laughing, even teasing each
other, and for me it was a turning point, lending me more assurance. I felt it was extra security for me to be Edward’s companion, someone with whom he enjoyed being, both in and out of bed. I believed he might be more faithful to a friend than to a lover.

“I shall include you more often in my dinners with merchants,” he said. “It will be most helpful to me to hear your impressions.”

I began to see how I might fit into his world, and that was a comfort to me. But I also regularly drank the bitter mixture Gwen had learned to prepare, to prevent conception.

I did not see Edward every day, managing to find a balance, a way to live what seemed a double life, between the public and the very private. I noticed others again, paying attention to my friends Geoffrey, Richard, and the de Roët sisters, who albeit tending to silliness regarding a new obsession with the opposite sex were still refreshingly candid and curious about everything. Even some of the other women of the queen’s chamber softened toward me as we bonded together to assist our mistress.

Sadly, it was becoming increasingly plain to all at court that Her Grace was ailing. It was now more than four years since her riding accident, and her long struggle with pain was visibly taking its toll. As far as I knew she had never been a beauty, always slightly plumper than the ideal, with an awkwardness of movement and a voice that creaked and cracked from chronic coughs and catarrhs. But with clever face paint and skillfully designed gowns and veils she had always looked pleasant, indeed often radiant, and never less than regal. Alas, it grew much more difficult to mask the broken veins on her face, and her halting gait and crooked posture. She was forty-seven years old, two years Edward’s junior, but looked a decade older.

She did not allow herself to be deluded by the reassuring platitudes and denials voiced by many of her ladies.

“Your pauses emphasize gravitas, Your Grace,” Lady Eleanor once declared.

“Were I not wheezing so loudly I drown out the minstrels,” the queen retorted. “Are you, too, going deaf?”

Queen Philippa preferred to talk openly of her aging. “You will not be so intent on avoiding the sunny seats in the garden when your joints are as old and worn as mine,” she teased Katherine de Roët.

“But it colors my skin most unbecomingly,” Katherine protested.

“Darker skin hides more wrinkles,” the queen replied with a teasing laugh.

In fact, she had recently commissioned her tomb, and often spoke to me of her wish to be beautifully gowned and bejeweled to await Edward, who would lie beside her.

This talk of death reminded me of my own uncertain future. I must never forget I was a commoner. Once Philippa was gone, would Edward take another wife, and would she willingly share him with me? I was troubled as well by the specter she had raised of Edward’s own eventual death.

Despite her failing health, the queen insisted on attending all the Garter festivities over the days around the Feast of St. George, even those requiring her to walk a distance on uneven ground, to stand still for long periods of time, or to sit on uncomfortable seats for most of the day and well into the evening. Her face would be pale as alabaster when we helped her to bed, and she would cry out or moan most piteously as she sought a comfortable position. Her physician mixed potent drinks to ease her pain and induce a healing sleep. He urged her to have a day of rest. But each morning she would insist that the sleep had worked its miracle. Of course it had not.

Along with all the queen’s other ladies I was fully occupied assisting her through that busy time and heard of the arrivals of only those especially favored by my companions and the queen. And so I was taken by surprise when I glanced up from the dais in the great hall where I was arranging cushions on the queen’s chair, in preparation for her imminent arrival at a feast, and beheld William Wyndsor striding toward me through the crowd of servants. He hesitated as he reached me. Though he was smiling there was a guarded quality to his eyes. He took my hands.

“You are more beautiful than ever, Alice.” He tried to pull me close to him.

I took a step back and attempted to withdraw my hands, but he held fast and stared at me with a boldness I did not like.

“I thought you were in Ireland,” I said.

“I have been in the northern marches. But soon I take ship to Ireland. You must say that you will be my wife now, Alice. I love you more than ever. Let us wait no longer.”

“That is impossible, William.”

He put his hands on my shoulders and searched my face, his frown deepening. “You’ve been promised to someone else?”

“You do not know?” Was it possible that a man supposedly in love with me would not have inquired, would not have heard about Edward and me? I drew him away from the servants setting out the wine cups so that we might not be overheard. “The king has taken me as his mistress.” I thought the clean thrust of the truth would, in the end, afford the cleanest break.

He stood there for one of the longest moments of my life. Then a sound began in his throat, like the low growl of a wild animal, and gradually rose in pitch.

“He has no right!”

“Hush, William, I beg you.” Some of the servants were watching us with interest. “Of course he has the right. He is the king. And I love him.”

An unwise comment. He lifted his arm to strike me, but caught himself and rushed away, pushing servants out of his path as he went. As I watched him kick over a small table and storm out of sight, I felt a deep sense of dread.

My unease lasted through the evening. I did not see William, nor did I hear anything of him. That night, as I lay watching Edward sleep, I wondered whether I had been a fool to send William away. A husband might take me from court, give me a life no one would censure. William had done me a great favor by taking me to my family during the pestilence, at considerable risk to himself. But even as I thought these things, I knew in my heart that such a refuge was not for me. I loved Edward. I could not abandon him.

Over the next few days I searched the crowds for William, remembering his anger, dreading his next actions. For such emotion seldom gave way to peaceful resignation. For three days I fretted.

I surrendered myself to the full-time task of seeing to the queen’s comfort, grateful to have little time to think, for the grandeur of the nobles crowding the castle humbled me, emphasizing the gulf between Edward and me.

In the intimate setting of the bedchamber or on the marshes with our hawks and dogs, Edward and I were a man and woman who enjoyed being together, mutually satisfying our appetites and sharing stories. But the grand processions, the tournaments and jousts, the splendor and the sense of ancient rituals and noble blood surrounding
the Feast of St. George and the Order of the Garter, all this overwhelmed me with Edward’s status as a divinely anointed king. I felt small, common, naïve, alone.

He seemed beyond human as he rode at the head of the twenty-six Garter knights, his white hair flowing beneath his crown. All were dressed in the indigo-and-gold ceremonial robes of the Order of the Garter, but his cloak was the most magnificent, lined in ermine. They rode in solemn ceremony around the jousting field as family, fellow knights, archbishops, bishops, retainers, clerks, and servants cheered. The queen proudly stood in the center of the stands wearing a matching robe of indigo and gold, an honorary lady of the Order of the Garter. Her surviving daughter, Isabella, and her sons’ wives encircled her, and the wives of the Garter knights stood behind the royal family. I was one of half a dozen of Philippa’s ladies waiting in the shadow of the stands, ready to come to her aid with cushions, lap robes, and refreshments. The sound of the horns sent shivers down my spine, as did the answering cheers. I was thrilled to witness such magnificence, but felt no part of it.

Philippa and her daughters, by blood and marriage, impressed me as much as the knights on their high-stepping steeds. They stood so tall, looking so regal from head to toe. Just this morning sweet Blanche had received devastating news of her dear sister Maud’s death. Philippa, Joan, Isabella, and Elizabeth, Countess of Ulster, had gathered round the stricken lady to comfort her, sharing tears and memories, and then, almost as one, had resolved to say nothing of the tragedy until the close of the Garter festivities.