by Anne O'Brien
“Take this gown and brush the hem—so much dust. And treat it with care.”
I brushed. I was very careful.
“Fetch lavender—you do have lavender in your herb garden, I presume? Find some for my furs. I’ll not wear them again for some months.…”
I ravaged Sister Margery’s herb patch for lavender, risking the sharp edge of the Infirmarian’s tongue.
“Take that infernal monkey”—for so I learned it to be—“outside. Its chatter makes my head ache. And water. I need a basin of water. Hot water—not cold like last time. And when you’ve done that, bring me ink. And a pen.”
My reply to everything: “Yes, my lady.”
Countess Joan was an exacting mistress. If she was in mourning for her dead husband—he had been dead a mere few weeks, she informed me—I saw no evidence of it: Her attendance at the offices of the day was shockingly infrequent. But I never minded the summons of her bell. A window into the exhilarating world of the royal Court had been unlatched and flung wide for me to see and wonder at. How would I not enjoy the attention she gave me, even though she never addressed me except to issue orders? She called me “girl” when she called me anything at all, but I was not dismayed. If I made myself indispensible to her, what further doors might she not unlock…?
“Comb out my hair,” she ordered me.
So I did, loosening the plaited ropes of red-gold to free them of tangles with an ivory comb that I wished were mine.
“Careful, girl!” She struck out, catching my hand with her nails, hard enough to draw blood. “My head aches even without your clumsy efforts!”
Countess Joan’s head frequently ached. I learned to move smartly out of range, but as often as she repelled me she lured me back with one astonishing revelation after another. And the most awe-inspiring to my naive gaze?
The Countess Joan bathed!
It was a ceremony. Lady Marian folded a freshly laundered chemise over her arm; I held a towel of coarse linen. And Countess Joan? She stripped off all her clothes without modesty. For a moment, embarrassed shock crept over my skin, as if I too were unclothed. I had had no exposure to nakedness. No nun removed her undershift—it was one of the first lessons taught to me. A nun slept in her chemise, washed beneath it with a cloth and a bowl of water, would die in it. Nakedness was a sin in the eyes of God. Countess Joan had no such inhibitions. Gloriously naked, she stepped into her tub of scented water, while I simply gaped as I waited to hand her the linen when her washing was complete.
“Now what’s wrong, girl?” she asked with obvious amusement at my expense. “Have you never seen a woman in the flesh before? No, I don’t suppose you have, living with these old crones.” She laughed aloud, an appealing sound that made me want to smile, until I read the lines of malice in her face. “You’ll not have seen a man either, I wager.” She yawned prettily in the heat, stretching her arms so that her breasts rose above the surface of the scented water. “Both my husbands were good to look at in the flesh, were they not, Marian?”
“You have been married twice, my lady?” Aghast at my impudence, still I asked.
“I have. And at the same time!” She glanced up at me, intent on mischief. “What do you think of that?”
“That it is a sin!” I replied, unforgivably outspoken.
Her finely carved nostrils narrowed on an intake of breath. “Do you judge me, then?”
“No, my lady. How should I?”
“How indeed. You know nothing about it.” Her voice had become brittle. “But many do. And I’ll not tolerate their interference.…”
“My lady…” Marian admonished.
“I know, I know.” The Countess’s prettiness vanished beneath a grimace. “I should not speak of it. And I will not. Wash my hair for me, girl.”
I did, of course.
Wrapped in a chamber robe with her damp hair loose over her shoulders, Countess Joan delved into one of her coffers, removed a looking glass, and stepped to the light from the window to inspect her features. She smiled at what she saw. Why would she not? I simply stared at the object, with its silver frame and gleaming surface, until the Countess looked up, haughty, sensing my gaze.
“What is it? What are you looking at?”
I shook my head.
“I have no more need of you for now.” She cast the shining object onto the bed. “Come back after Compline.” But my fingers itched to touch it.…
“Your looking glass, my lady…”
“Well?”
“May I look?” I asked.
Her brows rose in perfect arcs. “If you wish.”
I took it from where it lay—and looked. A reflection that was more honest than anything I had seen in my water bowl looked back at me. Then without a word—for I could not find any to utter—I gently placed the glass facedown on the bed.
“Do you like your countenance?” Countess Joan inquired, enjoying my discomfort.
“No!” I managed through dry lips. My image in the water was no less than truth, and here it was proved beyond doubt. The dark, depthless eyes, like night water under a moonless sky. Even darker brows, so well marked as if drawn in ink by a clumsy hand. The strong jaw. The dominant nose and wide mouth. All so…so forceful! It was a blessing that my hair was covered. I was a grub, a worm, nothing compared with this red-gold, pale-skinned beauty who smiled at her empty victory over me.
I was ugly.
“What did you expect?” the Countess asked.
“I don’t know,” I managed.
“You expected to see some semblance of attraction that might make a man turn his head, didn’t you? Of course you did. What woman doesn’t? Much can be forgiven a woman who is beautiful. But an ill-favored one? Such is not to be tolerated.”
How cruel an indictment, stated without passion, without any thought for my feelings. And in that precise moment, when she tilted her chin in evident satisfaction, I saw the truth in her face. She was of a mind to be deliberately cruel.
“What a malformed little creature you are! I wonder why I bother to indulge you?”
Thus was the Countess doubly spiteful, rubbing salt in my wounds with callous indifference. As my heart fell with the weight of the evidence against me, I knew beyond doubt why she had chosen me—chosen me before all others—to wait on her. I had had no part in the choosing. It had nothing to do with the antics of her perverse monkey, or my own foolish attempt to catch her attention, or my labors to be a good maidservant. She had chosen me because I was ugly, while in stark contrast, this educated, sophisticated, highly polished Court beauty would shine like a warning beacon lit for all to wonder at on a hilltop. I was the perfect foil: too unlovely, too gauche, too ignorant to pose any threat to the splendor that was Joan of Kent.
“Leave me!” she ordered in a sudden blast of ill humor. “I find you repellent!”
I might have fled in a burst of emotional tears, but I did not. At least she had noticed me!
What did I think of this woman who stepped so heedlessly into my life and left so lasting an impression? Sometimes I despised her, for her beautiful face masked a heart of stone. And yet I found myself admiring her ambition, her determination to get her own way. Sometimes she was in the mood to talk, not caring what she said.
“I’m here only to curry favor!” she announced, glaring through her window at the enclosing walls of the Abbey, half-shrouded in a relentless downpour of rain.
“Whose favor do you need, my lady?” I asked, because it was expected of me.
“The King. The Queen,” she snapped. “They don’t want it—they’ll put obstacles in my way—but I’ll have him yet! The Prince, dolt!” She flung up her hands in exasperation, causing the monkey to cower. “It’s time he was wed and got himself an heir. Am I not fertile? Do you know how many children I have carried? Of course you don’t. Five. Three sons, two daughters. I can give the Prince heirs. The King wants his precious son to marry a rich heiress from the Low Countries. The Queen doesn’t approve of me. We’ll need a
papal dispensation, since we are second cousins—but that should not be impossible if enough gold exchanges hands.”
“Why would the Queen disapprove?” I asked. I had no finesse in those days. “Is not your husband dead, my lady?”
Her mouth shut like a trap and she would say no more except: “I’ll get my own way; you’ll see. I’ll be a princess yet.”
How could I not be fascinated? And yes, I coveted her possessions. A package was delivered to her from London.
“Open it,” she ordered.
I unrolled the leather to find a set of jeweled buttons clustered in the palms of my hands. A fire in each heart: sapphires set in gold.
“Don’t touch them.” Impossibly wayward, she snatched them from me. “Do you know what they cost me? More than two hundred pounds. They’re not for such as you!”
I think, weighing the good against the bad, I truly detested her.
“I am leaving,” the Countess announced after three weeks. The most exciting, the most exhilarating three weeks of my life.
“Yes, my lady.” I had already seen the preparations—the litter had returned, the escort at this very moment cluttering up the courtyard—and I was sorry.
“God’s Wounds! I’ll be glad to rid myself of these stultifying walls. I could die here and no one would be any the wiser!”
I knew that too.
“You have been useful to me.” The Countess sat in the high-backed chair in her bedchamber, her feet neatly together in gilded leather shoes on a little stool, while the business of repacking her accoutrements went on around her.
“Yes, my lady.”
“I daresay you’ve learned something, other than your usual diet of prayer and confession.”
“Yes, my lady,” I replied quite seriously. “I have learned to curtsy.” She insisted on it every time I entered the room. “And to mend your pens.”
She took me by surprise, and I was not fast enough. Leaning forward, Countess Joan suddenly struck out with careless, casual violence, for no reason that I could see other than savage temper, bringing her hand to my cheek with an echoing slap. I staggered, catching my breath and my balance.
“Don’t be impertinent, girl!”
“But I was not.…”
Nor was I. Countess Joan spent an inordinate length of time in correspondence, and I had learned to mend a quill with great skill. The communication intrigued me—letters sent off every week to names I did not know. To courtiers, for the most part. Once to King Edward himself. More than one to Queen Philippa. And to the Prince—enough letters to keep the Abbey courier in work traveling back and forth to Westminster, and Sister Matilda’s tongue clicking at the expense. I could do little more than write a series of crabbed marks, but Joan’s hand moved over the parchment with speed and accuracy. She had a talent for it and saw a need to keep in touch with the world she had withdrawn from, weaving a web of intricate connections to tie those she knew to her will. Now, that I did admire, both her unexpected skill and the use she made of it.
As if she had not struck me, the Countess rose to her feet. “I suppose I should reward you. Take this. You’ll find more use for it than I.”
I accepted the illuminated Book of Hours, astounded at the generosity, except that it was given with no spirit of gratitude. The giving of the gift meant nothing to her. She did not want it, she had done with this place, and she would forget us as soon as her palanquin passed between the stone posts of the Abbey gatehouse.
“Take this box and carry the Barbary.” The animal was pushed into my arms. “I’ll be at Windsor tomorrow and then we’ll see.…”
So this was to be the end of it—but there was one piece of knowledge I wanted from her. I had thought of this long and hard. If I did not ask now…
“My lady…”
“I haven’t time.” She was already walking through the doorway.
“What gives a woman…” I thought about the word I wanted. “What gives a woman power?” The word did not express exactly what I wanted to know—but it was the best I could do.
She stopped, turned slowly, laughing softly, but her face was writ with a mockery so vivid that I flushed at my temerity.
“Alice. It is Alice, isn’t it?” she asked. It was the first time she had addressed me by my name. “Power? What would a creature such as you know of true power? What would you do with it, even if it came to you?” The disdain for my naïveté was cruel in its sleek elegance.
“I mean…the power to determine my own path in life.”
“So! Is that what you seek?” She allowed me a complacent little smile. And I saw that beneath her carelessness ran a far deeper emotion. She actually despised me, as perhaps she despised all creatures of low birth. “You’ll not get power, my dear. That is, if you mean rank. Unless you can rise above your station and become Abbess of this place.” Her voice purred in derision. “You’ll not do it.”
Resentment flared in me at the ridicule, but I hid it well. “Still, I would know.”
“Then I’ll give you an answer. Since you have no breeding—beauty, then. But your looks will get you nowhere. There is only one way.” Her smile vanished and I thought she gave my question some weight of consideration. “Knowledge.”
“How can knowledge be power?”
“It can. It can if what you know is of importance to someone else.”
“But what would I learn in a convent that is of value to anyone?”
“I’ve no idea. How would I?” Her arch stare was pitying. “But beggars, my dear, cannot choose.”
And in her eyes I was most assuredly a beggar. What could I learn at the Abbey? The thin cloth of my learning was spread before me, meager in its extent and depth. To read. To dig roots in the garden. To make simples in the Infirmary. To polish the silver vessels in the Abbey church.
“What would I do with such knowledge?” I asked in despair, as if I had listed my meager accomplishments aloud. How I loathed her in that moment of self-knowledge.
“How would I know that? But I would say this: It is important for a woman to have the duplicity to make good use of whatever gifts she might have, however valueless they might seem. Do you have that?”
Duplicity? Did I possess it? I had no idea. I shook my head.
“Guile! Cunning! Scheming!” she snapped, as if my ignorance were an affront. “Do you understand?” The Countess retraced her steps to murmur in my ear as if it were a kindness. “You have to have the inner strength to pursue your goal, and not care how many enemies you make along the road. It is not easy. I have made enemies all my life, but on the day I wed the Prince they will be as chaff before the wind. I will laugh in their faces and care not what they say of me. Would you be willing to do that? I doubt it.” The mockery of concern came swiftly to an end. “Set your mind to it, girl. All you have before you is your life in this cold tomb, until the day they clothe you in your death habit and sew you into your shroud.”
“No!” The terrible image drove me to cry out as if I had been pricked on the arm with one of Countess Joan’s well-sharpened pens. “Take me with you!” I pleaded. “I have served you well. I would serve you again, at Court.” I almost snatched at her gold-embroidered sleeve.
“I think not.” She did not even bother to look at me.
“But I would escape from here.” I had never said it aloud before, never put it into words. How despairing it sounded. How hopeless, but in that moment I was overwhelmed by the enormity of all that I lacked, and all that I might become if I could only encompass it.
“Escape? And how would you live?” An echo of Sister Goda’s words that were like a knife against my heart. “Without resources you would need a husband. Unless you would be a whore. A chancy life, short and brutish. Not one I would recommend. Better to be a nun.” She strode from the room, out into the courtyard, where she settled herself in her litter, and as I reached to deposit the monkey on the cushions and close the curtains, my services for her complete, I heard her final condemnation. “You’ll
never be anything of value in life. So turn your mind from it.” Then with a glinting smile she clicked her fingers at her tire-woman. “Give her the Barbary, Marian. I expect it will give her some distraction—and I begin to find it a nuisance.…”
And the creature was thrust out of the litter, back into my arms.
Indignation rose hot and slick in my throat. I considered mimicking the gesture I had seen the louts in the town employ when challenged by their elders and betters, graphic and disgracefully expressive in its lewdness, and would have done so if Sister Goda’s eye had not fallen on me. As it was, I curtsied in a fine parody of deference, clutching the monkey—that scrabbled and fussed with no notion of its abandonment—to my flat chest.
Thus in a cloud of dust Countess Joan was gone with her dogs and hawk and all her unsettling influences. It was as if she had never set her pretty feet on the cold convent paving for even an hour, much less three weeks. It was like the end of a dream with the coming of day, when the light shatters the bright pictures. Fair Joan was gone to snare her prince at Westminster and I would never meet her again.
I would soon forget her. She meant as little to me as I to her.
But I did not forget! Countess Joan had applied a flame to my imagination. When it burned so fiercely that it was almost a physical hurt, I wished with all my heart I could quench it, but the fire never left me, and still it smolders, even today, when I have achieved more than I could ever have dreamed of. The venal hand of ambition had fallen on me, grasping my shoulder with a death grip of lethal strength, and refused to release me.
I am worth more than this, I determined as I knelt with the sisters at Compline. I will be of value! I will make something of my life!
I lost the Book of Hours, of course. Its value was far too great for such a creature as I was. It was taken from me. As for the monkey, Mother Abbess ordered it to be taken to the Infirmary and locked in a cellar. I never saw it again.
Considering its propensity to bite, I was not sorry.
Chapter Two
My crude, impassioned plea to persuade Countess Joan to be the instrument of my escape from the Abbey had, I was compelled to admit, failed miserably. When I achieved it, it was not by my own instigation. It came as a lightning bolt from heaven.
