The King's Concubine

‘Why did you choose me, my lady?’

When the Queen looked at me, her eyes were hooded. She closed her free hand tightly around the jewelled cross on her breast, and her reply held none of her essential compassion. Indeed, her voice was curt and bleak, and she drew her hand from my ministrations as if she could not bear my touch.

‘I chose you because I have a role for you, Alice. A difficult one perhaps. And not too far distant. But not yet. Not quite yet …’ She closed her eyes at last, as if she would shut me from her sight. ‘I’m weary now. Send for my priest, if you will. I’ll pray with him before I sleep.’

I left her, more perplexed than ever. Her words resurfaced as I lit my own candle and took myself to bed in the room I shared with two of the damsels. Sleep would not come.

I have a role for you. A difficult one perhaps. And not too far distant …

Chapter Five

IT BECAME my habit to keep a journal of sorts. I was not wishful to lose the skill I had learned with such painstaking effort. No one had a need of my ability to write in a palace where men of letters matched the vast number of huntsmen. Sometimes I wrote in French, sometimes in Latin, as the mood took me. I begged pieces of parchment, pen and ink from the palace clerks. They were not unwilling when I smiled, or slid a long-eyed glance. I was learning the ways of the Court, and the power of my own talents to attract.

And what did I write? A chronology of my days. What I wished to remember. I wrote, as I recall, for over a year.

Did I ever consider that the damsels might discover what I wrote? Not for a moment. They mocked my scribbling. And what I scribbled was excruciatingly dull. Once, to satisfy their curiosity, I read aloud …

‘Today I joined the damsels in my first hunt. I had no enjoyment of it. The King celebrates his fiftieth year with a great tournament and jousting held at Smithfield. We all attend. I am learning to dance.’

‘By the Virgin, Alice!’ Isabella yawned behind her slender fingers. ‘If you have nothing better to write about, what in heaven’s name is the value of doing it? Better to return to scouring the pots in the kitchens.’

Dull? Infinitely. And quite deliberate, to ensure that no damsel was sufficiently interested to poke her sharp nose into what I might be doing. But what memories my writings evoked for me upon reading them again when my life was in danger and turmoil. There on the pages, in the briefest of record, the pattern of my life unfolded in that fateful year. What a miraculous, terrifying, life-changing year it proved to be.

Today I joined the damsels in my first hunt. I had no enjoyment. The gelding I was given was a mount from hell. I would never see the pleasure in being jolted and bounced for two hours, to come at the end to a baying pack of hounds and a bloody kill. Truth to tell, the kill happened without me, for I fell off with a shriek at the first breath-stopping gallop. Sitting on the ground, covered with leaf mould and twigs, beating the damp earth from my skirts, I raged in misery. My crispinettes and hood had become detached, the hunt had disappeared into the distance. So had my despicable mount. It would be a long walk home.

‘A damsel in distress, by God!’

I had not registered the beat of hooves on the soft ground under the trees. I looked up to see two horses bearing down on me at speed, one large and threatening, the other small and wiry.

‘Mistress Alice!’ The King reined in, his stallion dancing within feet of me. ‘Are you well down there?’

‘No, I am not.’ I was not as polite as I should have been.

‘Who suggested you ride that brute that thundered past us?’

‘It was the Lady Isabella. Then the misbegotten bag of bones deposited me here … I should never have come. I detest horses.’

‘So why did you?’

I wasn’t altogether sure, except that it was expected of me. It was the one joy in life remaining to the Queen when she was in health. The King swung down, threw his reins to the lad on the pony, and approached on foot. I raised a hand to shield my eyes from the sun where it glimmered through the new leaves.

‘Thomas—go and fetch the lady’s ride,’ he ordered.

Thomas, the King’s youngest son, abandoned the stallion and rode off like the wind on the pony. The King offered his hand.

‘I can get to my feet alone, Sire.’ Ungracious, I knew, but my humiliation was strong.

‘I’ve no doubt, lady. Humour me.’

His eyes might be bright with amusement but his order was peremptory and not to be disobeyed. I held out my hand, and with a firm tug I was pulled to my feet, whereupon the King began to dislodge the debris from my skirts with long strokes of the flat of his hand. Shame coloured my cheeks.

‘Indeed you should not, Sire!’

‘I should indeed. You need to pin up your hair.’

‘I can’t. There’s not enough to pin up and I need help to make it look respectable.’

‘Then let me.’

‘No, Sire!’ To have the King pin up my hair? I would as soon ask Isabella to scrub my back.

He sighed. ‘You must allow me, mistress, as a man of chivalry, to set your appearance to rights.’

And tucking my ill-used crispinettes into his belt he proceeded with astonishingly deft fingers to re-pin my simple hood, as if he were tying the jesses of his favourite goshawk. I stood still under his ministrations, barely breathing. The King stepped back and surveyed me.

‘Passable. I’ve not lost my touch in all these years.’ He cocked an ear to listen, and nodded his head. ‘And now, lady, you’ll have to get back on.’

He was laughing at me. ‘I don’t wish to.’

‘You will, unless you intend to walk home.’ Thomas had returned with my recalcitrant mount and before I could make any more fuss, I was boosted back into the saddle. For a moment, as he tightened my girths, the King looked up into my face, then abruptly stepped back.

‘There you are, Mistress Alice. Hold tight!’ A slap of the King’s hand against the horse’s wide rump set me in motion. ‘Look after her, Thomas. The Queen will never forgive you if you allow her to fall into a blackberry thicket.’ A pause, and the words followed me. ‘And neither will I.’

And Thomas did. He was only seven years old and more skilled at riding than I would ever be. But it was the King’s deft hands I remembered.

The King celebrates his fiftieth year with a great tournament and jousting. Magnificent! The King was superlative in his new armour. I could not find words, burnished as he was by the sun, sword and armour striking fire as his arm rose and fell, the plumes on his helmet nodding imperiously. And yet I feared for him, my loins liquid and cold with fear. I could not look away, but when blood glistened on his vambrace, dripping from his fingers, I closed my eyes.

No need of course. His energy always prodigious, he was touched with magic that day. Fighting in the mêlée with all the dash and finesse of a hero of the old tales, he had the grace at the end to heap praise on those whom he defeated.

Afterwards, when the combatants gathered in the banter much loved by men, the Queen’s ladies threw flowers to the knight of their choice. I had no one. Neither did I care, for there was only one to fill my vision, whether in the lists or in the vicious cut and thrust of personal combat. And I was audacious enough to fling a rosebud when he approached the gallery in which we women sat with the Queen. He had removed his helm. He was so close to me, his face pale and drawn in the aftermath of his efforts, that I could detect the smear of blood on his cheek where he had wiped at the dust with his gauntlet. I was spellbound, so much so that the flower I flung ineptly struck the cheek of the King’s stallion—a soft blow, but the high-blooded destrier instantly reared in the manner of its kind.

‘Sweet Jesu!’ Startled, the King dropped his helm, tightening his reins as he fought to bring the animal back under control.

‘Have you no sense?’ Isabella snapped.

I thought better of replying and steeled myself for the King’s reproof. Without a word he snapped his fingers to his page to pick up the helm and the trampled flower. I looked at him in fear.

‘My thanks, lady.’

He bowed his head solemnly to me as he tucked the crumpled petals into the gorget at his throat. My belly clenched, my face flamed to my hairline. Proud, haughty, confident, he was the King of England yet he would treat me with respect when I had almost unhorsed him.

‘Our kitchen maid cannot yet be relied upon to act decorously in public!’ Isabella remarked, setting up a chorus of laughter.

But the King did not sneer. Urging his horse closer to the gilded canvas, the fire dying from his eyes as the energy of battle receded, he stretched out his hand, palm up.

‘Mistress Alice, if you would honour me.’

And I placed mine there. The King kissed my fingers.