The King's Concubine

‘I think you do.’

‘Would it matter whether I did or not? I am the Queen’s damsel.’

‘As I very well know, God save me.’ His temper still simmering. ‘Tell me your thoughts on this debacle, Alice.’

‘Then I will. For it is a debacle. Yet I think you are the most amazing man I have ever met.’ For was that not true?

‘Is that all? I want more from you.’ He was all authority, his hand strong on mine, his whole body as taut as a bow string. ‘I want to see you again before tomorrow. I will arrange it. Come to me tonight, Alice.’

No permission. No soft promises. A Plantagenet order. I had no misconceptions of what would await me. I think for the first time in my life I had nothing to say, not even in my head.

I told the Queen that the clock was experiencing difficulties but that the King had it all in hand.

* * *

Did I know what I was doing? Had I seen it developing, unfurling, from the very beginning? Oh, I knew. I was never a fool. I saw what I had done. I saw when his attention was caught. I noted the first scratch of my pen in my puerile writings when I had called him Edward rather than the King, when he gave me the little mare, when I began to think of him as Edward, the man.

Did I enchant and entrap him, as the malicious tongues were to accuse many years later? Was I complicit in this seduction?

Complicit, yes. But when did any woman entrap a Plantagenet? Edward had his own mind and pursued his own path.

Was I malicious?

Not that either. I was too loyal to the Queen. Guilt was not unknown to me, whatever slanders held otherwise. Philippa had given me everything I had, and I was betraying her. Regret had teeth as sharp as those of Joan’s ill-fated monkey.

Ambitious, then?

Without a doubt. For here was a certain remedy for obscure poverty. When a woman spent her young years with nothing of her own, why should she not seize the opportunity to remedy her lack, should the opportunity fall into her lap?

Ah! But could I have stopped the whole train of events before I became the royal whore? WhO’s to say? With Edward I could be myself, not a silly damsel without a thought in my head but gossip and chatter. Edward listened to me as if my opinions mattered. I found his authority, his dominance, his sheer maleness intoxicating, as would any woman. When his eyes turned to mine, it was as if I had just drunk a cup of finest Gascon wine. He was the King and I his subject. I was under his dominion as much as he was under mine.

Could I have prevented it? No, I could not. For at the eleventh hour it was taken out of my hands.

That night I waited, apprehension churning in my belly until nausea threatened to send me running to the garderobe. Taking a sip of ale, I sat on the side of my bed, feigning interest in the gossip of two damsels as they plaited each other’s hair for the night. I pretended to be unravelling a stubborn knot from a length of ribbon, except that I made it worse. Abandoning it, I took off my veil and folded it. Refolded it. Anything to keep my hands busy. I could not sit. I stood abruptly to prowl the room.

What division of loyalties was here in my mind, my heart. Commanded by the King, recipient of his kisses. Servant of the Queen, who honoured me with her confidences. This was a betrayal. A terrible riding roughshod over the Queen’s trust, stealing from her what was rightfully hers. It was impossible to argue around it.

I looked around the room, at the damsels quietly occupied. What to do now? Was it all a mistake? Had I misunderstood? There would be no royal summons after all and my guilt could be laid aside.

A knock on the door. I jumped like a stag, and my hands were not steady as I opened the door to a page in royal insignia.

‘It is the Queen, mistress. She cannot sleep. She has sent for you. Will you come?’

‘I will come,’ I replied quietly.

So this was how it was to be arranged. A royal stratagem. A clever, supremely realistic ploy to remove me from my room without rousing suspicion. Would I be waylaid in some dark corridor to be led to the King’s apartments instead of the Queen’s? I detested the thought of such secrecy, such underhand deceit. I did not want this—but I was trapped in a web that was partly of my own making.

While the page waited I wrapped a mantle around me and made to follow.

‘I may not return before dawn,’ I said, my hand on the latch, impressed that my voice was steady. ‘If the Queen is ill and restless, I’ll sleep on a pallet in the antechamber.’

They nodded, lost in their own concerns. It was so easy.

The King wants you in his bed.

I shivered.

I was not to be waylaid after all. Instead I was shown by the incurious page into the smallest of the antechambers with a second door leading into the Queen’s accommodations. It was a room I knew well, often used for intimate conversation or to withdraw into if one felt the need for solitary contemplation. Had I not used it myself in the hour after the King had made his intentions plain? Built into one of the towers, the chamber had circular walls, the cold stone covered with tapestries, all flamboyant with birds and animals of the forest. As I stood uncertainly in the centre, deer stared out at me with carefully stitched eyes. Wherever I turned I seemed to be under observation. An owl fixed me unblinkingly with golden orbs, a hunting dog watched me. I turned my back on it to sit on one of the benches against the wall. I started at every sound. And strained in the silence when there was no sound.

What now? I could do nothing but wait. Whatever was to transpire within the next hour was not within my governance. What would I say? What would I do? The palms of my hands were clammy with sweat as my thoughts flew ahead. What if I displeased Edward? My knowledge of what passed between a man and a woman within the privacy of the bed curtains was so limited as to be laughable. My education with the nuns had not fitted me for the role of mistress, royal or otherwise. As for Janyn … I gripped the edge of the bench on either side of me until it hurt.

Holy Virgin, don’t abandon me!

But how was I fit to call on the Queen of Heaven?

The door opened. I leapt to my feet.

In my anxiety I had not noticed that it was the door from the Queen’s rooms, not the one from the corridor. I faced it, expecting another page to take me further along this treacherous journey.

Ah, no!

My blood froze. My feet became rooted to the spot. Fear was a stone in my belly.

The Queen stood there on the threshold.

She stepped slowly forward, as regal as if entering a state chamber, and closed the door behind her with the softest of clicks. She might be clad in a night shift beneath her loose robe, her hair might be plaited on her shoulder, but she was every inch a queen. Her face might be lined and pinched with long-suffered pain, but her innate dignity was superb. For a long moment we stood, alone in that little room except for the static gaze of hundreds of embroidered eyes, and regarded each other.

Philippa held herself stiffly, the elbow of her damaged arm supported by her opposite hand, yet still she had come here to see me, to remonstrate, to curse me for my presumption. It was as if she cried out to me in her agony.

And because I could not speak, I sank into a deep obeisance, hiding my face from her. Was I not stripping from her the duty and honour of her husband’s body and name? Was I not about to create a scandal that would cloak her in humiliation? What I was about to do could destroy her.

At that moment I knew in my heart. I could not do this thing.

‘Alice …’ My name was little more than a sigh on her lips.

‘My lady. Forgive me.’

‘I knew you would be here.’

She knew. How would she not? Such an emotional tie as I had seen between them. Sometimes it seemed to me that Philippa knew Edward was present even before he entered the room. She must also know, through that same inner sense, that her husband, the one love of her life, intended to betray her.

I could not do this to her.

I fell to my knees before her. ‘Forgive me. Forgive me, my lady.’

Without words she touched my hair and I looked up. Her face was wet with tears, so many that they dripped to leave dark spots on the damask of her robe. And so much sorrow, it struck at my heart. I lifted my hands to cover my face so that I could not witness such depths of grief. There were tears in my own eyes.

‘I would never harm you, lady …’