The King's Mistress (69 page)

On my knees before bed I prayed God’s forgiveness for allowing
my son to become a battlefield between William and me. I tried to accept that John was doing what he truly wanted. “Grant him peace and joy,” I prayed. “Even if it means he is far from me.”

In late winter he departed for Cherbourg.

On his last evening at home he had talked of making a name for himself so that he might find a wife who respected him for his accomplishments, not for being the late king’s bastard. As I had feared, it had been gnawing at his heart all this time.

“Your father was proud of you, John, so very proud of you. That you were a bastard diminished you in no way in his eyes. He insisted that you be knighted.” I did not mention his insistence also on the betrothal to Mary Percy, the seed of all this anguish.

John gave me back Edward’s signet. “Keep this for me until I have earned it.”

My heart bled for him. I had not fully appreciated until now that being Edward’s son was both a gift and a curse.

And in my mind I raged at William.

“If he makes me proud, I shall change my will in his favor,” he’d said during one of our more amicable meals together.

Damn William Wyndsor, the bane of my fine, noble son!

All through that spring and summer I felt as if I were treading on unsteady ground that might open up and swallow me at any moment. My sister thought perhaps I was praying too much and not spending enough time out in the sun and air. Bella understood that I was doing penance for my own part in John’s unhappiness, and urged me to remember that all God’s children were blessed, no matter what their parentage, and that my son’s despair or imagined shame was his burden to bear or to shed.

“That is his path, Mother, his cross. You cannot take this burden from him.”

Nor could any of my loved ones lift my burden from me. And it only grew heavier. For in late summer, the ship on which John was sailing home to meet William and the king in order to discuss the problems at Cherbourg vanished in a sudden storm. Frantic, I waited and waited, praying for word that it had safely berthed elsewhere.

I thought I might go mad. Lost at sea … John might yet live. A boat might have plucked him from the waves. He might lie ill and bereft of memory somewhere. I had nightmares linking his disappearance to Janyn’s. I shunned sleep. Robert held me through the night,
praying, singing, talking of my other children, anything to pull me from my darkness.

William, pale and hollow eyed, came to beg my forgiveness. “It should have been me.”

“Would that it had been! Or your hateful nephew. Not one of my precious children.” I could not be troubled to comfort him. “Are you happy now? You have done your worst. You have torn out my heart.”

He replied that he had loved John as well, but I could not bear his presence.

“My son had a good heart, but you poisoned him with your bitterness.”

“You
made
me bitter.”

“I take no responsibility for your crabbed heart, William. Go. Get out of my house!”

But I did blame myself for not better shielding John from him. I agonized over what else I might have done—whether I should have told him all the truth about my marriage to William from the beginning, not waiting until the damage had been done, or risked Edward’s ire in refusing to betroth John to such a changeling as Mary Percy. There must have been something I could have done to save my son.

It was Gwen who tried to wake me up to the fact that I was neglecting Joan and Jane in my grief. “You must accept that John is gone and see to your daughters, Mistress. They are inconsolable. John was their beloved brother, a handsome, gallant knight, a last reminder of their glorious father. They have lost him as well. They need you to hold them, to show them how they must accept their loss, pray for their brother’s soul, and find peace.”

I saw the wisdom in her words. That very night I invited them into my bed, and the three of us wept until we had no more tears to shed.

H
ENRY PERCY
came to the requiem Mass that King Richard arranged at Westminster Abbey. He spoke of what an admirable young man John had been, and expressed his regret that Mary had annulled the marriage. Well he might say that now he need no longer fear my son’s contamination. Lancaster also attended, as my son’s godfather, half brother, and lord, speaking of his martial skill, his honor. Princess Joan embraced me and wept with me for my beautiful son.

William swore that he would change his will, that John’s death had shaken him to the core. “I have been cruel and do repent, Alice. All I
ever wanted was to live with you as your husband, and I have poisoned my chances.”

I wanted nothing to do with him. He showed me a new will he had signed leaving my properties to Joan and Jane. I thanked him for that, but could not bring myself to forgive him. Though my son had been free to refuse William’s suggestion that he be his deputy at Cherbourg, I blamed him for making the offer, and he knew it. We could not find a way to cross the chasm that divided us.

He stayed away for a long while. Robert helped me heal, pick up the pieces of my life, and move on. Joan, Jane, and I planted oaks at each of our homes to remind us of John, how tall and strong he had been. How he had blessed our lives.

I
N LATE
summer, almost a year to the day after John’s disappearance, William came to me in London, deathly ill of a fever. All through the autumn Gwen and I nursed him; Robert saw to everything else. This time he did not need to leave. With illness in the house, I arranged for Joan and Jane to board at their school. William rarely spoke, never looked me in the eyes, ate and drank as little as possible. It was clear from the first that he did not intend to recover.

He died shortly after Michaelmas. We mourned the passing of a life, but all the household seemed to breathe a concerted sigh of relief at the possibility of moving forward. I prayed for the grace to forgive William and allow him to rest in peace.

But I could never forgive his nephew John. Upon William’s death, John Wyndsor produced a copy of the old will, favoring himself. I searched everywhere for the one William had shown me, but never found it. I swore I would fight John Wyndsor in the courts until I won back all that was rightfully mine. This was my poison, my purgatory, my inheritance from William, the last lingering resentment. It was the only thing that ever came between Robert and me. He could not understand why I allowed that one thorn to continue to infect my soul.

In the same month in which William died, I petitioned parliament to withdraw the judgments against me. William had been clever, focusing his petitions on the reclamation of my properties in his name, refraining from any attempt to clear my name.

Eventually I did forgive him, and even mourned him. How strange that in his death, without the noise of our arguments, I remembered how he had initially charmed me. I mourned my brief dream of the
handsome, exciting knight I thought had loved me. I mourned my dreams for my son John. I mourned all the dreams that had been destroyed by my tie to the house of Plantagenet.

Now I abandoned the old dreams and reached for peace.

A
FTER WILLIAM’S
death, Princess Joan invited me and my daughters to Kennington for a fortnight. Though my sentence of exile had been withdrawn, I had not been in a royal palace since my marriage in Westminster. At John’s funeral I had kept to the abbey grounds, avoiding the palace. It was strange to be back in a royal household, strange to have occasion to wear my jewels and grandest gowns.

The once renowned beauty had grown fat and walked with a cane—albeit an exquisitely wrought cane with silver chasing and a mother-of-pearl handle. Her gown was resplendent with jewels, as ever, her hair still pale gold, though years of ensuring that color had left it looking brittle. I learned that she suffered from gout and seldom rode, never hawked.

“Let me inspire you to move about. You know that is the cure for what is ailing you,” I offered. There was a time when we had talked so, encouraging each other.

She shook her head. “If gout were the sole cause of my decline, I would have fought it with all my will, Alice.”

One afternoon when we were alone, the children on an expedition with some of Joan’s wards, she looked me in the eyes.

“You have been so good, listening to my woes. Now I must ask yet another favor. I must beg your forgiveness, my friend. It is time I confessed to you that it was I who betrayed you regarding William Wyndsor. I mentioned his passion for you to my husband Edward, never dreaming he would use the information. I am certain he told his brother John.”

I had blamed Henry Percy, or sometimes Geoffrey—he did so love to gossip. Never Joan, though I had suspected she long knew of the agreement that I would wed William.

“You might have saved me a great deal of pain had you kept your counsel,” I said. Yet I saw how easily it might have happened.

“They used you, Alice. Edward and John protected you as long as they needed you as their father’s caretaker, and then they sold you to William. I am sorry. I wish that there were something I might do. If you have need of me …”

I excused myself and went out to walk off my anger. She was aged, she was weak, and in her proud way she was apologetic.
I am sorry
. How easily that was said, how little it did to comfort me.
I will walk on burning coals in penance. I will tear out my hair
. Those words might begin to express how she should suffer for what she had done to me. But she had not intended me harm. As I tired, I abandoned my wish that she might suffer. She had not foreseen such use of her gossip. How could she? But I would use her in her turn.

I told her of my petition to parliament, of the contested will.

“I shall speak to Richard,” she said. “But do not expect too much. He does not hold the hearts of the barons as his grandfather did. Or parliament.”

“When you speak to him, remember that I might yet have had my son to hold to my heart, Edward’s glorious son, had William and I not been forced together in unholy matrimony.”

“I did not know until the king’s death what they planned,” Joan whispered, her eyes haunted.

As I departed from Kennington I sensed that I would not come that way again, that Joan, like William, would surrender soon to eternal rest. Sad, aching, disappointed.

Yet I felt a lifting of a curse from my shoulders, the curse of Isabella of France and her love child. At last I was free. I felt I owed Edward’s family nothing, and they could do no more to me.

• 1384 •

W
IDOWED A
third time—for in my heart I was Edward’s widow—at forty-two years of age I prayed that I might at last order my own life. I had been with Janyn for almost four years, two of them happy; with Edward for roughly fifteen years, many of them happy, many unhappy; I had endured seven years of William, my time with him unrelievedly painful, but with Robert’s love supporting me.

Not all of my unhappiness had been caused by others—I was only too aware of my own sins, of my passions, my weaknesses. I’d misjudged the value of my security in worldly goods and neglected the importance of strong alliances. I had not stood up against my son’s betrothal to a young woman I’d known to be devoid of compassion and honor.

At last, however, I was free to choose how to conduct the rest of my life.

My first choice was to give my daughters a long winter of my undivided attention. Joan was now fourteen, Jane thirteen, and I wished to enjoy them, for in a little while they would be wanting husbands, and we would be caught up in the excitement of courtships and celebrations. Bella visited often. Her abbess was a woman with a kind heart. My daughters were my salvation, lifting me from my sorrow, my regrets. How could I regret having birthed these magnificent creatures? One of my favorite pastimes was turning the gorgeous fabrics of gowns I no longer wore into pretty clothes for Joan and Jane. To watch their delight rekindled in me an appreciation for the beauty all round me. Though I wore dark colors in memory of Janyn, Edward, and William, my headdresses were of silk and my gowns fashionably cut and powdered with the pearls and gems my brother had saved for me. I played my part of grand lady of the manor and benefactress of the parish. My daughters loved to see me so, as did the friends who visited often. Robert and I remained discreet in our arrangement for a while.

We both most enjoyed one surprisingly regular houseguest, Geoffrey. He came and stayed without Pippa—indeed, they were now seldom seen together. “We are not so fond,” he said in response to my concern. “It is as it is.”

I must have winced when he said that.

“Is it not the truth, Alice?”

“‘It is as it is’ was one of Edward’s mottos.”

Geoffrey pressed hands to heart and made a little bow. “Forgive me. I’d forgotten.”

“There is nothing to forgive. Your gift to me is your willingness to listen to me. I am grateful to have a friend in whom I can confide without fear of lectures or censure.” Each night after my daughters and Robert went to bed, Geoffrey and I would sit and talk—or rather I would talk. I revealed my heart to my old friend, my loves and hates, my dreams for my marriages and my children, my regrets.

He claimed that being in my home inspired his poetic endeavors.

“And I am much admired by His Grace and the queen, so I must provide them with fresh verse.”