by Anne O'Brien
“Alice…!”
I moved not one inch.
“What’s wrong with you, girl?”
I considered what I should say. What would be wise? I thought briefly that it might be prudent to say nothing and simply follow. And promptly consigned wisdom to the fires of hell and remained exactly where I was.
“I’m cold. Don’t just stand there.” Edward was already mounting the stairs.
I abandoned prudence too.
“Is that all you can say?” I asked.
Edward froze, his eyes a steely glint. “I want you with me.”
For a moment we were alone in the vast arching chamber. There was no one there to hear us. I raised my voice. I think I would have raised it if we had had an audience of hundreds.
“No!”
“I want a cup of wine.”
And at the same echoing pitch I responded: “Which you are perfectly capable of pouring for yourself, Sire. Or you can summon one of your many pages or even a servant to do it for you. I will not.”
Edward stared as if he could not believe what I had just said. Nor could I. I had been his mistress for three years, and never had I addressed him in this peremptory manner. But then, I had never had the need. I watched Edward’s face, the range of emotion as he absorbed my words, their tone. Astonishment. Affronted arrogance. A strange despondency. And a fury that suffused his face with color. I trembled, and not from the damp skirts clinging to my legs.
Arrogance won. Edward’s manner when he replied was as icy as my fingers. “Mistress Perrers! I want you with me!”
“No, Sire. You kept me waiting until my feet were well-nigh frozen to the cobbles. You did not care whether I hunted with you or not. You told me as much after dragging me from the Queen’s side. I made my own decision to hunt, and I will make it again now. I will not go with you. I will wait on the Queen.”
My blood was up and I held my breath. This was no childish temper. This was a deliberate ploy, and a dangerous one to rouse the sleeping Plantagenet lion. I saw anger flash bright in his face as my refusal struck home. It brought the King striding across the chamber until he towered over me. Holy Virgin! In that moment he was the King, not Edward. He grabbed my wrist, even as I still had my arms wrapped around his cloak, and held it tight, unaware of his strength.
“God’s Blood, Alice!”
“God’s Blood, Edward!” I mimicked.
The silence was heavy. Thick as blood. Threatening as a honed sword edge.
“You will obey me.”
“Because you are the King?”
“Why else?”
My shivering increased but I held his gaze. “When did anyone ever deny you anything, Sire?”
“Never! Nor will you!” His fingers tightened still further, but I did not wince. “Do you question my authority?”
“Your authority?” I tilted my chin. My control was superb. “I don’t question your authority, Sire, only your bloody arrogance.” I bit down on a hiss of breath. “Do you intend to command my obedience through pain, Sire?”
“Pain…?”
“Your royal fingers are digging into my flesh!”
He eased his grip but did not release me.
When I was seventeen and newly come to Court, I would have obeyed the King without question, wary of the repercussions. I did not feel of a mind to do so now. It was a gamble, and filled with jeopardy. He might dismiss me out of hand, order Philippa to dismiss me. But now I was the mother of his son. Now I had been his mistress for three years. Now I was a woman full-grown and I did not think he would dismiss me. I thought I had more power than that, and I thought I had earned the King’s respect.
Well, we would see. I would gamble on that power and respect to wean Edward from his black mood.
“You would defy me, woman?” he roared. No respect here. I might just be wrong.
“Yes, when you are boorish and unreasonable, Sire. I’ve been away from the Queen’s side all day. I am her damsel as well as your…” I allowed a little pause. “As well as your whore.”
“By God, I order it! You’ll come with me!” His hand fell away.
“By God, I won’t!”
Even as rank astonishment ripped across Edward’s features, I opened my arms to deposit his garments in a heap on the floor, at my feet and his. Then I let the sables slip from my shoulders to join them. And I stepped around him and climbed the stair, leaving him standing alone with the heap of costly fur and velvet cloth on the muddied tiles. A page entered at the far door. What Edward might have said if we had remained alone I had no idea. At the top of the staircase I looked back to see him, as unmoving as an oak, hands fisted on hips, looking after me, the garments still at his feet.
I waited until I was sure his attention was wholly mine. Then I made a magnificent curtsy. Again I pitched my voice so that he would surely hear.
“There are other palace whores who will be more than willing to keep you company, no matter how sour your humor, Sire. You can give her my sables. I make you free of them.”
I did not wait to see if he would respond. Or if he picked up the garments.
I admitted to a terrible apprehension as I closed the door of my chamber behind me. I might have destroyed everything, and the terrible melancholy might still hold Edward imprisoned in its shackles.
I did not wait with an easy mind. The King made his displeasure felt. When he hunted I was not invited. When he visited the Queen, if I was present, he made a point of shunning me, gesturing without words for me to vacate the chamber. There was no question of my sharing his bed linen. I missed my sable mantle. The damsels gossiped, engrossed in our obvious estrangement. The Queen was anxious, but such was our relationship that we both kept our own counsel. Until the tension, colder indoors than out, became more than she could tolerate.
“Have you quarreled with the King, Alice?”
“No, my lady.” It was not exactly a quarrel.
“Have you displeased him?”
“Yes, my lady.” Definitely.
“He’s very, very restless.”
“Yes, my lady.”
“Should you apologize, do you think?” Her broad brow creased in concern.
“No, my lady.”
So the Queen abandoned any attempt at reconciliation, and I waited with increasing anxiety. He was the King, after all, and I was nobody. I had risked all and must pray that I had not staked my future ill-advisedly.
It took a sennight.
I was combing my hair in preparation to sleep alone when a soft knock sounded on the door. Wykeham, I thought. Carrying a message from the King to attend his pleasure. I opened the door, the refusal leaping to my lips.
“I will not.…” The words dried.
Edward. He had come himself. And over his arm lay the glossy pelts of my mantle.
“My lord!”
I curtsied low on the threshold, hiding my face. The King had come to my room. Was this to be the dismissal I had feared, the sables a final gift to mark my ignominious departure? If I looked at him, what would I see? I raised my eyes to his—better to know immediately—but Edward, master of negotiation, was giving nothing away. If it was dismissal, it would be done in cold blood, not in the heat of passion at my lack of respect.
“Well, will you let me come in?” His voice was rough. “I don’t think the King should be expected more than once in his lifetime to conduct an intimate argument in a public space for all his subjects to see and hear.”
I stood back, pushing the door wide, but still for all his impatience, he did not step across the threshold. Instead he held out the mantle.
“This is yours, Mistress Perrers.”
I took it from him, tossing it over a coffer beside me as if I did not care.
“I was wrong, mistress. I treated you with unforgivable discourtesy.”
He was excruciatingly formal. As long as I did not waver…I remained mute.
“I’m here to ask your forgiveness.” It was still more of an order than a ple
a.
“It is easy for the King to be uncivil and demand to be forgiven,” I said.
“I don’t demand.”
“No?” I folded my arms in an uncompromising manner.
“Mistress Perrers…” Now he stepped in and thrust the door closed at his back. “You will doubtless accuse me of overbearing pride, but I really don’t want an audience for this!” And he sank elegantly to one knee. “I ask your compassion for my lack of chivalry. No true knight would have been as…boorish…as I was. Will you forgive me?”
I angled my chin, considering. He looked magnificent, like a knight from one of the illustrated books, kneeling in a blaze of blue and red and gold at the feet of his lady. He’d dressed deliberately, regally, to impress me. Here was the King of England kneeling at my feet. What was more, he possessed himself of my hand and kissed it.
“No subject has ever challenged me before.”
“I know.”
“Well? Will you keep your King in suspense?” His expression was not that of a lover. The lines of irritation sharpened. “I have missed you more than I should. You’re only a slip of a girl! How could I miss you so much? And all you could do was scowl at me from the ranks of my wife’s damned women, or behave as if I did not exist.”
“Until you dismissed me from the room.”
“Well—I should not have done that.”
“No. And I am not a slip of a girl. I am the mother of your son.”
“I know. Alice…” The formality was waning.
“Nor am I merely your whore. I give you more than the pleasures of the flesh. I thought you cared more for me than that, Sire.”
“I do. God’s Blood, Alice. Have mercy! I was in the wrong.”
“We both agree on that.”
He released my hand and, still kneeling, spread his arms wide. “I have learned this for you, as any foolish troubadour would to woo his lady. How’s that for love…”
And he pressed his hands over his heart like a lovelorn troubadour and spoke the verse. The words were ridiculous, foolish, but there was no mockery in his voice or his face. The sentiment came from his heart, and with it a sadness, a poignancy for things past. Like youth that was gone forever.
Fortune used to smile on me:
I didn’t have to try:
Good looks and charming manners
Were mine in full supply:
She crowned my head with laurels,
And set me up on high.…
But now my youth has faded;
I’ve seen the petals fall.…
He stopped. “To hell with verses! My looks are fading and my manners have been less than charming. I have no excuse for either, but I beg your understanding.”
“A Plantagenet, begging?”
“There’s a first time for everything!” The poignancy was gone. Back was the pride, the authority, even though he still knelt. I swallowed my sudden tears. I was indeed charmed. “Don’t leave me in suspense, Mistress Perrers.”
“I would not dare! I have made my decision, Sire.” What mischief prompted me to keep him in suspense for one more moment? I touched his shoulder, with all the grace of the lady in receipt of her knight’s love, to urge him to his feet.
“Well?”
“I forgive you. It is impossible to reject so fine a wooing.”
“Thank God!”
He drew me into his arms, carefully, as if I were some precious object made of glass. Or as if I might still reject him. His lips were cool against mine until I melted against him, and then his embrace became a brand of fire. I had missed him too.
“It’s in my mind to give you a gift…perhaps a jewel.…You have given me a son, a gift beyond price. I should show my gratitude.…” His chin rested on the crown of my head, my hair heavy on his shoulder.
“No…not a jewel.”
“What, then?”
The thought had come immediately into my head. I knew what I wanted. “Give me land and a house, Sire.” My insecurities never left me, and Greseley had trained me well.
“You want land?” His chin lifted and I heard the surprise in his voice.
“Yes. It is in your power to give it.”
“You would be a woman of property. Then it’s yours. For Mistress Alice, who shines a light into the dark corners of my soul.”
It took my breath away. “Thank you, Sire.”
“On one condition…”
I was suddenly wary. It never did to underestimate a Plantagenet.
“That you call me Edward again. I’ve missed that.”
The rock beneath my heart, which had been there since the day I dropped my sables at his feet, melted away. “Thank you, Edward.”
There was love and gratitude in the giving of the gift, and in my receiving it. I offered my lips, my hands, my body. All my loyalty. My absence had stirred Edward’s passions, and he had no thought of celibacy. He made love to me on my less-than-sumptuous bed that could barely contain his long limbs, and wrapped me again in my sable mantle. I was no longer just his whore. We both knew it. My challenge had awakened the King to the truth of our relationship. Here was a permanence.
“I will never dismiss you,” he murmured against my throat in the dying of passion and with touching insight. “You are my love. Until death separates us.”
“And I will never willingly leave you,” I replied. I meant every word of it. My respect and admiration for him had reached new heights.
He gave me the little manor of Ardington for my own.
I carried a second child for Edward. Another son, Nicholas. A happy event. I was free to travel now as I wished to the manor, where John grew and played and shouted in his games of knightly conquest. I had no fears that I would not be free to return to Court as it pleased me. My position might still be unacknowledged, but it possessed a strange viability of its own.
“And what will become of you?” I asked the mewling infant who resembled Edward far more strongly than did his brother, John. “What will be your path to wealth and power?” I thought of Wykeham, an excellent example for any boy.
“When you are older, I will introduce you to a man who I can sometimes claim as a good friend.”
“What do I give you in recognition of this new gift?” Edward asked later, holding his son in his arms. “Don’t tell me.…”
Nor did I have to.
He gave me the wardship of the lands of Robert de Tilliol and the gift of the marriage of his heir. It was extensive, four manors and a castle far to the north of England, with the promise of gold for my coffers.
As gifts from the King to a queen’s damsel, these were out of the ordinary. They began to draw attention, but I could withstand the sidelong glances. I simply informed Greseley that his management on my behalf would take more of his valuable time.
I trust you will pay me well for my time, Mistress Perrers, he wrote back in habitual complaint.
I will pay you when I see the results, I replied, then added, I will be astonished if you too do not benefit from these investments.
To receive back very promptly: As do you, Mistress Perrers. Your acquisitions are bringing you—and me—an excellent return.
I smiled at his final response. What an exceptional man of business Greseley was.
Chapter Eight
A sense of unease touched my spine, like the light scratch of a lover’s fingernail on delicate skin. I shivered, every sense alert. Then, since there was no repetition, I concentrated once more on the explosion of ill temper unfolding before me.
This was a high-powered, formal reception, deliberately staged: King and Queen seated in carved chairs on the dais in the largest of the audience chambers at Westminster. Before them swaggered a young man, just entering his third decade, boldly clad with all the éclat of indulged youth. Despite his shining arrogance he bowed deeply, his entourage following suit. And what an impressive escort it was, weapons as visible as the jewels and embellished tunics. Philippa beamed, but the King was not in a mood to admire.
> “Why are you here?” he demanded.
“I can do no more in that godforsaken, bog-ridden province.” The young man was not rebuffed by the King’s displeasure. Undeniably handsome, he had a hardness, a carefully shuttered expression, and a shocking lack of reverence. “I wash my hands of Ireland and all to do with the bloody Irish.”
“Wash your hands? You young fool! Did you think it would be an easy task? What in God’s name have you been doing?” Edward strode down from the dais to strike the young courtier on the shoulder, a punch of a fist, not entirely a sign of affection. “Are you trying to destroy all my good work in that damned province by leaving as soon as you meet opposition? Before God, Lionel…!”
So this was Lionel, Edward’s second son to survive the rigors of childhood. Handsome, stylish, ambitious, and King’s Lieutenant of Ireland for the past handful of years, he possessed an abundance of charm, so smooth and slick as to be like a coating of goose grease on the chest of a sniveling child. Still, his unwarranted return had brought a flutter of excitement to stir the dark days of the Court. At least Lionel, newly made Earl of Clarence in Edward’s birthday generosity, had brought a smile back to the Queen’s face. For that I could look on him with more favor than I was at first inclined.
“That’s unfair, Sire! I met opposition from the first day I set foot there!”
“I’ve a good mind to send you back as soon as you can saddle a fresh horse.…”
“No, Edward…No!” Philippa could not stand. It was a bad day for her. “He is our son!”
“And a thorn in my flesh! No son of mine would have abandoned his charge. We’ll have the whole place up in arms before we can sneeze.”
“I see no cause for the peasants to object.…” Lionel’s voice had acquired an unpleasant whine.
“Of course they will object!” Edward continued to stand eye to eye with him. “Your job was to keep the peace, not stir the hornets’ nest!”
“Oh, Lionel…” The Queen stretched out her hands.
The young man promptly evaded his father and fell to his knees before the Queen, where he bowed his head in unctuous regret. “Mother. Forgive me.…”
