The King's Mistress (71 page)

Sometimes I fall to brooding over the past. Should I have been more selfish, more stubborn, more rebellious? Have I been too compliant, too quick to give the men in my life what they thought they wanted? Am I a fallen woman, or am I an obedient handmaiden? And ever I return to the puzzle: When had I a choice to be other than I was?

I count myself blessed, all in all. Loving Robert as I do, I no longer yearn for Janyn. But I have not forgotten the passion and the pain of that union, nor the heady honor and deep sorrow of my liaison with Edward.

In the early morning, when Robert and I move out into the fields with our hawks, I often feel as if Edward is with us, as if I can hear his deep laughter just ahead. I always wear red when hawking. And pearls.

I
WROTE THIS
book to satisfy my curiosity about Alice Perrers and to give her a voice, to allow her to speak through me, a feminine psyche. I have a dyspeptic monk to thank for my fascination with Alice. My first encounter with her was in Thomas Walsingham’s
St. Albans Chronicle.
^*

Walsingham used his “history” as a weapon for executing a vendetta primarily aimed at Alice Perrers and John of Gaunt, but in the process he grossly insulted the beloved King Edward III as well: “O King, you deserve to be called not master, but a slave of the lowest order. For since slavery is the obedience of a broken and shameful spirit that lacks a will of its own, who will deny that all who are fickle-minded, all who are lustful, in short, all who are shameless are slaves?” This was rant, not reason.

And yet Walsingham’s description of Alice has long been considered only slightly exaggerated.

I never found plausible the underlying assumption that she had so grossly manipulated the king—that a commoner had been in any position to
choose
to be King Edward’s mistress and that she had somehow bewitched him. Nor could I see the logic in condemning her for staying with him in his last illnesses—an opportunist would have taken the fabulous gifts and wealth she’d accrued and disappeared at the first signs of Edward’s flagging power. Alice must have seen the handwriting on the wall, yet she stayed.

I am grateful to Walsingham for his outrageousness—it inspired me to delve further into the records. I also owe him thanks for a small detail that began to work in my subconscious—his mention of a daughter named nowhere else: “In the mean time the king grew weaker, and the doctors began to despair of him, though Alice and her daughter Isabella would spend the whole night with him.” It was this “Isabella,” a daughter unremarked in any of the histories I’d consulted, who inspired my connecting Janyn Perrers with Isabella, the dowager queen.

Regarding the tumultuous period following Isabella and Mortimer’s rebellion the most famous rumor was that King Edward II had not actually been murdered as reported, but that the story had been concocted to allow the deposed king to withdraw into a continental monastery. But I was more intrigued by another rumor, that Isabella had been pregnant with Mortimer’s child when her lover was accused of treason and taken into custody. She supposedly miscarried almost at once. I decided to explore what might have happened had the child lived, had it been the child rather than the deposed king who was spirited away to a monastery. Janyn Perrers’s death less than two years after the dowager queen Isabella’s death, according to a claim against his estate naming Alice as his wife and executor, led me to wonder whether those who had protected all knowledge of the child would have lost their protection once Isabella was dead. And so the story began.…

I’ve mentioned the source for Alice’s daughter Isabella; most historians count her as having had two daughters, Joan and Jane. Whence came the fourth, Agnes Joanna? I thought it interesting that in her will Alice specifically left “to Joane, my younger daughter,” her manor of Gaynes, in Upminster, and then “to Jane and Joane, my daughters,” all other manors and advowsons. Of course this might have been simply an awkward repetition for legal purposes, but I like to think that Alice had at least another child by her third husband, a man I have a hunch existed—something about the picture of lady of the manor
her will evinces suggested to me that she’d remarried after Wyndsor’s death. Robert Broun’s name appears in many of her land transactions, along with John Hanneye. Robert’s becoming Alice’s third husband is my invention. Her will identified her as “Alice, widow of William Wyndesor, Knight,” and, of course, she was, whether or not she was also the wife of someone yet living. A woman did not always take her husband’s surname.

Geoffrey Chaucer was Alice’s contemporary and of London merchant stock. Several disproved theories have attempted to connect them in various ways, but I’ve used none of them. I simply thought that as Londoners, finding themselves in court circles, they might very well have been friends. From my first reading of Chaucer’s poem
Troilus and Criseyde
I have been moved by the psychological depth and emotional complexity he infused into the tale and have suspected he based his portrait of Criseyde on someone he knew well.

I shaped a life for Alice. I think she might be pleased with it.

M
Y DEEPEST
thanks to Patrick Walsh, my agent and good friend, who has believed in this project—indeed, kept nudging me on—from the beginning, and the talented team at Conville & Walsh.

Kate Elton, Georgina Hawtrey-Woore, and Suzanne O’Neill for their enthusiasm, encouragement, brilliant editing, and absolute support.

Joyce Gibb for being far more than a first reader.

James Bothwell, whose paper on Alice’s properties set me on the right path, who permitted me to use his map of Alice’s properties as the basis for the one in this book, and who encouraged me to contact Chris Given-Wilson.

Chris Given-Wilson for opening up his files containing years of research on Alice.

RaGena DeAragon, who accompanied me to St. Andrews to guide me through the complexities of the primary source files in Chris’s collection in the brief time available and to provide translations, whose expertise on medieval women guided my reading on the subject, and whose feedback on my papers and ideas was invaluable.

Mark Ormrod, who shared with me his discovery of Alice’s first marriage and has continued to share his ongoing research on Alice. This book would have been quite different without Mark’s generosity.

Laura Hodges, who shared with me her expertise on fourteenth-century clothing, provided immensely helpful suggestions in the first-draft stage, and answered questions all along the way.

Gretchen Mieszkowski, whose monograph on the reputation of Criseyde inspired my interpretation.

Anthony Goodman for sharing his research not only on Alice but also on Joan of Kent, and for lively discussions of the period.

The White Hart Society at the Western Michigan University International Congress on Medieval Studies and the Fourteenth-Century Studies group at the Leeds International Medieval Congress for
providing the opportunity for me to present papers on my ongoing research, which reaped a bounty of information and feedback.

The scholars on Chaucernet, so many of whom I count as friends—especially the Thursday-Night Ladies.

Candace Robb for sharing her research with me.

Charles Robb for insightful suggestions and the beautiful maps.

And all the friends and family who have cheered me on.

For this bounty of generosity and camaraderie, I am grateful.

EMMA CAMPION
did her graduate work in medieval and Anglo-Saxon literature and is the world’s foremost scholar on Alice Perrers. Her research on Alice led her to question the accepted reputations of other prominent medieval women, whose lives she plans to explore in future books. She lives in Seattle.