The King's Mistress (40 page)

She leaned her head back against the chair for a moment, her eyes closed. “To love a king, Alice, is to dance a dizzying dance, spinning toward him, spinning away.” After a deep sigh, she said in a strained voice, “Now you must call the servants to assist me to my bedchamber, and you may take your ease until morning.”

“Your Grace, thank you for allowing me to speak with Dom Francisco, and—”

“Go now, Alice. We have said enough.”

A
S EVER
when I did not know what to do with my racing mind and tumultuous emotions, I sought comfort in riding Melisende. Gwen insisted on accompanying me. We spent most of what was left of the afternoon on horseback. As I rode I opened my heart and soul to the emotions boiling in my stomach, permitting myself to feel my sorrow, the terror of Janyn’s and Tommasa’s last hours, and the fury that built within as I imagined all of this. I was furious with Isabella’s and Edward’s use of my family, furious with Edward for not having the courage to be there when I learned the truth, furious about his
heartless retreat. Though Melisende was accustomed to carrying me as I wept or cried out to the wind, that day my emotions were wild enough to make her shy a few times, bringing me back to my senses. I would slow, compose myself, and reassure her. In such wise we rode through many cycles of both fury and calm.

When the groom insisted that my horse must rest we turned back toward the stables. Gwen and I walked then, through the gardens to the river, and at last I confided in my long-suffering friend all that the priest and Queen Philippa had told me. I felt the need to speak of it all just once, and knew that I could trust Gwen to remain silent. I had spent my anger for the moment. What I experienced as I spoke was a desperate yearning for a different truth, a different outcome. Had Isabella’s bastard died earlier, my life might have been so sweet. But that child had grown to manhood, and my husband’s family had suffered because of him. And now so did I and my precious Bella.

“At least now you know that Her Grace does not intend to throw you out,” said Gwen.

“But I do not know Edward’s heart.” I had thought I did, and then he’d left without a word. “Though he left it to her to tell me, fearing I would despise them.” A dizzying dance, Philippa had said.

O
N THE
following day I received a summons to Hertford Castle to spend a few days with my daughter. When I asked permission of Queen Philippa, she was bemused that I had not guessed at once she had been the one to suggest it.

“With Isabella’s bastard dead, you are safe to visit your daughter. There is no longer any secret to protect. We have ensured the news has reached the right ears.”

In my rush of joy I could think of nothing more eloquent to say than “God bless you, Your Grace.”

She seemed to take pleasure in giving me even more good news, that Fair Meadow was being readied for me and any members of my birth family I cared to invite. It would take a month or so to prepare, and she and Joan had thought it a good idea for Bella and me to have a little time together at once. She would spare me for a few months in summer.

Queen Philippa leaned heavily on my arm as we entered the sunny antechamber in which the ladies had been picking at their needlework
in silence in the hope they might overhear what we discussed behind the shut door.

“Mistress Alice will be leaving us for the summer to be with her family,” she announced.

The headdresses shivered as the women glanced at one another, their expressions secret codes. They were bursting with curiosity about my private sessions with the queen the past few days. What to make of my spending the summer with my family? It could mean so many things! Either reward or punishment! And what had I done to deserve it? I sensed their minds spinning, and as I settled to my own needlework I found myself breathing deeply as if I might thus calm us all.

When at last I returned to my chamber to prepare, I hugged Gwen and cried, “I am free, Gwen! Free to be with Bella, free to be with my family without putting them in danger. I will think only of that now, of this modicum of freedom.” Not of my fear that Edward would forsake me.

Indeed, my heart was overflowing with joyful anticipation of seeing my precious daughter as we chose clothes for the journey. I fretted about not having time to make a pretty gown for her. Gwen calmly suggested that we take one of my old gowns and that the three of us might turn it into something for Bella while we were together. I said many prayers of thanks that night, quite a few of them for Gwen.

I remember nothing of the river journey except that the countryside seemed to me more beautiful than it had ever been, and it made me cry.

Bella was at an age in which even a few weeks could work great changes. As I approached the castle I feared I might not recognize her. But stepping into the garden where the children were at play, I knew her at once, for her curly dark hair and large eyes were those of her grandmother, Dame Tommasa. She was tall for her age, slender and graceful. She would be five years old in a matter of weeks, yet she seemed more mature to me, more reserved than Mary, Will, or I had been at that age.

Her wide brow crinkled in confusion when I rushed to her and crouched down.

“Mother,” she said, with a little bow, then touched the pearls on my sleeves. “Nurse says we can be together again.”

“That is so, sweet Bella.”

Something shifted in her face and I realized she fought back tears. “My father called me Bella.”

“He did, my love, and so did I. Do I.”

“Her Grace told me that he is dead. And both my grandmothers.”

The fear in her eyes told me more of the climate in the household than I would surely learn if I asked.

“Many more of your kin are alive and will be so very happy to see you this summer. Do you remember the pretty house where your father and I taught you to ride a pony?”

It took a little time for us to be at ease with each other, but then our days together were delightful. We made a pretty gown and headdress, we planned parties and long rides in the country, and when it was time for me to depart, Bella clung to me and I to her. I swore to myself that I would move heaven and earth to ensure she did not return to Queen Joan’s household.

I would be twenty that September, a mature age. I had been a mother for almost five years, a wife for almost six, two changes that had taken me from girlhood to womanhood. I had lived at court for over three years. Yet something innocent in me had remained—or, more accurately, I had clung to a naïveté I now understood I must shed, for my sake and for Bella’s. It was time for me to act, to win my daughter back to me.

Janyn was still lost to me, but I felt as if I might find some happiness if I could be with Bella and my family now and then. I had lost so much—years of my precious daughter’s life, years of joy with her father, years of my siblings’ lives. I prayed that Edward might hold and cherish me for many years to come, for I needed his love now, more than ever, as I closed the door on the past and my former dreams.

III
THE KING’S MISTRESS

I
HAD BEEN
holding my breath for two years, half believing Janyn would reappear, fearing how Queen Philippa felt about my growing love for her husband. I had found court overwhelming—so grand, so complexly stratified. I’d found a modicum of steadiness in narrowing my attention to caring for the queen’s wardrobe, being the best companion to her that I might be, and, of late, in loving my king
.

I had thought that he might anchor me. But he was, in truth, more my siren than my anchor. Philippa had said that to love a king was to be caught up in a dance, toward Edward and away from him. I was to learn that dance all too well—in one movement being pulled toward him in heady surrender, in the next being sent spinning away in sad solitude. I would know moments of exquisite joy and tenderness, feeling that we shared one body, one heart, and I would know desolate stretches of loneliness, emptiness, as he became a figure out of legend, unreachable, untouchable, unfathomable. I must find my own balance in the momentum of that dizzying shift
.

When had I a choice to be other than I was?

• 1362 •

O
NE OF
the first times I remember Father inviting me down to his undercroft was to meet a merchant from Ormuz who specialized in pearls. He had brought with him a small drill used to pierce them, promising to show Father how it was done, and Father, quite rightly, thought it something I would never forget. At first it was the merchant who fascinated me, so tanned by the sun that his skin looked like well-worn leather with wrinkles fanning out from the corners of his dark eyes into the folds of his white-and-silver turban. He had the whitest teeth I had ever seen, and showed them a lot as he grinned at me. His hands were of two shades, dark leather on top and what I thought of as “skin color” beneath. He wore many beautiful rings. When he moved he perfumed the air with anise and cinnamon and sandalwood. I wondered what it would be like to live in a land where all men smelled so sweet and dressed so richly.

When he picked up a pretty, not quite perfectly round pearl that shifted color as he moved it under the lamplight, I asked him what he had done to the little holes. For everyone knew that all pearls had little holes so that they could breathe underwater. At first his dark eyes grew wide, so wide that I could see that the whites of his eyes matched the brilliance of his teeth.

“So that the pearls might breathe?” he repeated, eyes widening even more. Then his entire face creased and he threw back his head to laugh, a deep-throated, anise-scented laugh.

And his turban did not fall off.

“Alice, who told you such a tale of pearls?” Father asked, clearly embarrassed.

“I thought that it must be so.”

The merchant—I do not recall his name—asked me if I had ever seen an oyster. He drew a misshapen gray shell from his pack. Cupping his dark, beringed hands around it, he told me to examine it closely. Bringing his hands nearer to the lamp, he opened them, the shell falling open as well, and in each palm appeared a vessel lined with pearl, as if many pearls had melted and flowed over its rough surface, blanketing it with beauty.

I timidly touched a fingertip to it, expecting it to be frozen like ice around a branch. But it was merely cool. And solid.

“It is called mother-of-pearl,” said Father.

The merchant told me that the oyster produced fluid to line its shell. “For comfort!” he said. “Is that not a miracle?” And when a grain of sand or some other rough particle flowed inside, the oyster would cover it as well with the pearly fluid, until it was so smooth it no longer caused discomfort. “It is a gem to us, but a featherbed to the oyster. Or perhaps a featherbed covered in silk.”

“Is this not clever?” Father asked me. “And now he will show us how he pierces this pearl.”

The merchant brought out a very slender steel drill, driven by a lead wheel and belt, and held the pearl to it. It was simple to see how it worked, though I cringed to watch such a beautiful thing pierced, expecting disaster. But there was only a little dust. He widened the hole using wire and a little sand, and then slipped the pearl onto a silken string.

“God bless the oyster,” I said. I do not remember saying that, but Father told the story over and over again. He said that neither he nor the merchant had the heart to complete my education by reminding me that the oyster would have been eaten.