The People’s Queen

She stays still. What can he mean? They’ve solved every problem already, haven’t they?

But there’s always further to go. There’s always a refinement. She’s always known that. So Alice raises her eyebrows just a self-possessed fraction. It won’t do to look naive.

‘You mean…’ she says. Not quite a question. She folds her hands and waits.

The candle flickers on the table between them. Latimer looks around without moving his head, just a flicker of eyes – he has an old soldier’s stillness about him – but there are no open doors or windows in this room bare of hangings. He puts his elbows on the table. He leans forward until his eyes are burning so close to Alice that they seem to separate and float, four golden-green circles over very white teeth, bared. He breathes, ‘The debt he’ll be buying. Lyons. The discounted debt…’

Alice waits. His excitement is catching. She’s no longer as composed as she would have liked to be. She can feel her body leaning forward, closer and closer, until her face is nearly touching his – as if they’re lovers, about to kiss. Her heart beats faster.

‘…fifty marks for every hundred borrowed from the Crown.’

Alice says, in a monotone, ‘Yes.’

‘Imagine if you were to buy those debt papers on from Lyons. Pay a bit more. Sixty marks, say. He’d be glad of the profit…’

‘Yes…’ Be patient, Alice tells herself. It doesn’t do to sound mystified.

‘Then, once they were your bonds, you’d cash them in at the King’s treasury…’

‘Yes,’ Alice says, nostrils flaring, already scenting the beginning of the answer.

‘…at face value.’

Alice stops breathing. It seems a long time before she realises her body has stopped obeying her, and tells her chest to expand and take in air, and let it out.

She says, and she no longer cares that her voice is trembling, ‘You mean – I’d buy something for sixty marks, and exchange it for a hundred marks straight from the treasury?’

Doubling my money, or just about. Though Latimer would want a cut.

He nods. ‘We’d split the profit.’

The candle flickers, but neither of them notices any more. All Alice can see is those golden orbs, dancing before her eyes.

After a long silence, she says, flat-voiced again, ‘How?’

But she knows. The three hundred people of the royal household are divided into two layers, the upper one of which, the domus magnificencie, numbers more than a hundred people, and centres on the King’s chamber. It’s run by Latimer. It’s Latimer who formally controls access to the royal presence. It’s Latimer who chooses the chamber staff of knights and esquires of the body, the King’s closest attendants (apart from Alice). He’s also in charge of the steward who’s in charge of the domus providencie, the lower part of the household, that teeming mass of people inhabiting kitchens and butteries and pantries and spiceries and stables, and of the money kept and doled out to the traders and farmers who supply the court, as well as to the King’s creditors, by the lower royal purse: the cofferer, the comptroller, and the man in charge of royal finance, the treasurer. Sir Richard Scrope: unruly hair, big bony knees and elbows, flaking skin on a brow furrowed from the counting of coin, a man with anxious, short-sighted eyes.

Somewhere very close to Alice, the white teeth flash again.

‘I’m the chamberlain,’ Latimer says through his grin. ‘I can make it all right with Scrope. He’s not a man for trouble.’

‘Him…yes…anything for a quiet life,’ Alice agrees, for the sake of saying something pleasant – but almost absentmindedly. She has blood drumming through her head, a great fast tattoo of it. She’s thinking.

They’ll…They’d make fortunes doing this. If they did it. She and Latimer would be rich beyond their wildest dreams.

But…it would also undo so much of the good that the deal she’s dreamed up between King and merchants is supposed to bring to Edward, and the merchants, and the Duke of Lancaster, and the whole realm of England. She and Latimer (and probably Lyons, because, realistically, he’d find out, soon enough, and they’d have to cut him in too, wouldn’t they?) would be taking at least some of the money meant for the war.

She’d be stealing from Edward, who loves her.

She’d be breaking faith with her new ally, his son, whose protection she wants.

But, then again, they almost certainly wouldn’t ever find out. No one ever does, unless you’re very unlucky.

And how rich she’d be.

As she ponders, a picture forms behind her eyes. Edward, lying back against his cushions, his beard damp and combed into wet grey seaweed strands, blissfully unaware of her quiet disgust at the sore on his ankle, just enjoying the smell of the lavender oil she’s massaging into it, snorting and grunting like an old animal, and not even bothering to listen as she explains how he could save his finances.

The ingratitude of him, she thinks.

And another picture. Edward, exhausted, eyes closing despite himself, and the trusting way he leans his weight on her as she shuffles him to the bed. He doesn’t realise that he’s so heavy, even now, in his touching helplessness, that she never quite knows if she’ll be able to find the strength to heave him forward.

Or perhaps he just doesn’t care.

For a moment, she’s overwhelmed by the vision of the selfishness of old age that comes to her. Perhaps he’d be just as carelessly grateful to anyone young and willing, anyone who’d make him feel, for a moment here and a moment there, that he could push back the darkness and grab an extra hour or two of life.

It doesn’t matter to him that she’s the one beside him, she thinks, with a spike of silent rage. Letting him borrow her vigour and energy. Anyone would do.

‘What do you think?’ she hears.

She’s been so lost in her thoughts – the will-I, won’t-I whirligig – that she hasn’t realised she’s dropped her eyes till, recognising the suppressed impatience in Latimer’s voice, she darts them quickly back up to his. A guilty thing surprised.

She shakes her head.

For once, she doesn’t care if there’s indecision on her face or in her voice. There’s indecision in her heart too.

‘I don’t know,’ she says.

Latimer’s no fool. She can see, from the velvet look he gives her, that he’s following her thoughts.

He purrs, ‘My dear. You must think of yourself a little, you know.’

There’s a longer silence. She wanted to be told that. She wanted to be cajoled. Still, Alice feels her face grow thoughtful – sullen, almost.

She looks down again. But she hears every word he says next.

‘You have to think of your own future. This’ – he pauses, giving them both time to hear the unspoken word, he – ‘isn’t going to last for ever, you know.’

She mutters, ‘But the war…that money was going to help with the war…’

But Latimer must hear doubt, or insincerity, in that. He caps her: ‘…which will never be won if Duke John is leading it. There’s no point in more war, with him.’

She looks straight at him now. She’s beginning to lose the numbness she’s felt for all these long moments with Latimer’s eyes on her, a paralysis brought on by even contemplating this giant stride towards fully fledged dishonesty. She keeps thinking, instead, about how rich she’ll be if she says yes. It’s strange what a warming thought that is; how damp her skin, how fast her pulse. He nods encouragingly. His eyes are dancing, inviting her to laugh with him.

‘A good peace is better for England than a bad war, isn’t it?’ he adds, scenting victory, suddenly almost jocular with relief. ‘Honestly? And far cheaper, too.’

She’ll be rich.

The silence yawns on. His hazel-gold eyes are on hers.