The People’s Queen

‘We need to do something to take their minds off the war,’ Edward said, back at New Year. He looked at her with his eyes dancing the way they always used to, with his lips and eyebrows slightly raised in a near-smile of expectation, with all his old confidence that the fire in him would communicate itself to her, and that she’d come up with some exuberant, extrovert, extraordinary idea, worthy of the King he was and the life they lived together. ‘We need to stop them raging against John.’

She knew exactly how to answer. ‘A pageant…a joust!’ she murmured excitedly back, without a pause, with the golden delight that being with Edward has always brought her, with the sense that, when she’s with him, she’s breathing in air that tingles with stardust (or devilment – he’d probably prefer her to think of his magic as a bit satanic). ‘We’ll have a joust – we’ll remind them of the glory of England in arms. They’ll forget their gripes with my lord of Lancaster in no time, once they’re drunk as drowned mice on free wine, watching the knights fight. It’ll be all songs and glory talk instead.’ He laughed at that. How handsome Edward is, still, when he throws his head back like that and laughs.

‘It can’t be too obvious,’ she warned him. Edward’s prone to getting carried away. Sometimes she has to remind him to be more subtle. ‘It can’t be too much about my lord. With the mood the people of London are in right now, they might not even come if they thought they were just going to have to applaud him for days at a stretch. So…we’ll give it a theme, not about him at all. Something innocent…to do with love, maybe…and we’ll give them free wine…And, on the second or third day of tourneying, he’ll win his bout, once they’re all in a mood to remember the might of England. And that’s when everything will calm down.’

Edward accepted that, of course. It’s Alice who, soon afterwards, thought of the spring sun-worshipping theme, and the title of Lady of the Sun, and accepted the role for herself, graciously, when Edward offered it; of course she did. She doesn’t care, especially, about the title. Titles, in her view, are an encumbrance; they make you too visible; every jealous nobody can take a pot-shot at you. Alice runs the royal households everywhere from Windsor to Sheen to Havering-atte-Bower, controlling the lives and purses of hundreds of servants. She’s so important that the Pope himself petitions her for diplomatic favours. Yet in the entire five years since Philippa died, she’s never had any official court status beyond the shadowy calling of demoiselle to a long-dead queen. She doesn’t altogether mind that, to this day, no one knows whether to call her ‘my lady,’ or just ‘Mistress Perrers’. But this title is a piece of glorious frivolity. She’ll enjoy it while it lasts, just as she’ll enjoy the wonderful robe and cloak and cap she gets, worth a king’s ransom. It never hurts to take a gift, she thinks. And it never hurts to ask for a bit more afterwards either.

It will be fun. It will all be beautifully organised (because it’s been organised by her). But the important thing in her mind is that, by the end of this week, Alice is determined she will have made the difficult Duke feel gratitude to her; she’ll have made John of Gaunt her friend.

Watching the heads, Alice’s eyes light on Philippa Chaucer, somehow managing to bring grace even to the saltarello. When her heart does its usual nervous little leap at the sight of that lovely, and too familiar, back, it reminds her that she hasn’t always been so phlegmatic about her position at court.

Alice smoothes the red folds of her robe over her knees, remembering. She touches Edward’s arm with a hand; she leaves it trailing there, against his sleeve, so he can see her fingers. They aren’t particularly beautiful hands, hers – too square and strong for a lady. How mortified she was, back at the beginning (sitting very obediently at Queen Philippa’s feet, sewing her tiniest stitches, carefully watching every courtly female in the room from under her lashes for fear of making a mistake), to realise that the two goddess-like demoiselles sitting on cushions beside her were whispering about her hands. ‘Meat cleavers,’ she made out, puzzling over the foreign words before she understood the sharp looks her way and sly hints of smiles. ‘Wherryman’s oars. Bear’s paws. Don’t you think?’ Then, with dawning shame, ‘Thick ankles, too…’ She remembered her eyes widening as her insides turned over. One of them saw she was eavesdropping, and nudged the other, and they both quickly bent over their embroidery. Alice hadn’t been there long enough at that stage to be sure which of the sisters was which. They were both blonde and long-limbed and apricot-skinned in that un-English Hainaulter way (Queen Philippa liked to surround herself with other people from the Low Countries). They were both self-assured with it, and so alike they might have been twins. Her first thought was to stick out her chin and make a fight of it with the pair of them. But she wasn’t such a fool as that. She knew she didn’t know how to fight here, yet. So she just sat on beside them, numb and prickling, fighting alternating desires to hide her shameful hands and to use them to give the smug, beautiful sisters a good slap round the face. She was burning with the slight. But she could feel herself absorbing it too. She thought: I’ll bide my time, for now (though I’ll get my own back later).

She was wrong to want to hide her hands, at least. She’s learned that since. Her hands might not be as white and slender and long-fingered as Katherine or Philippa de Roët’s, but they’re young. Firm. Fresh-skinned. That’s what Edward likes about them. He often holds her hands, even nowadays. He doesn’t just hold them. He holds them up, and looks at them with eyes whose pale, pale blue is beginning to go cloudy, and strokes the skin. Alice’s hands make him nostalgic.

But that isn’t why she wants him to notice her hands tonight; why, next to him, she’s fiddling and pleating so insistently at her robe or his sleeve. Or at least it’s not the only reason. Perhaps the sight of Philippa de Roët’s effortless beauty has made Alice feel insecure, and reminded her of the other small matter on her mind.

Even though Alice’s robe is the most splendid in this hall, and has no doubt cost dozens of seamstresses the best of their eyesight to be finished in time, her fingers and wrists are bare.

She should have jewels all over her hands to match the thousands of seed pearls sewn in cloudy swirls all over the silk.

There’s nothing glittering at her neck, either. And no jewels dressing her hair, just a thin glitter of gold thread from the caul net holding the dark waves in place under her cap.

It looks shocking to have nothing. Naked. Almost improper.

When Edward doesn’t immediately look down at her bare hand, she moves it to cover his. Blue veins; knobbles; big brown freckles. But the face above them, still fine-boned and lean, is so handsome, so noble. He’s still a god among men. Her King Arthur.

She’s aware of the quizzical look on Edward’s face. She thinks: He knows what I’m going to say.

He almost certainly does know what she’s up to, and the favour she’s going to ask. He’s no fool, Edward. They play games about gifts: she begs, or he begs; she holds out, or he holds out. They both like bargaining. They’re both fascinated by money. It’s one of the things she likes about him.

‘Do I look enough the Queen of the Sun in this, do you think?’ she asks, raising the hand to his shoulder and running it down his arm with the beginning of sensuality. Edward smiles and shivers pleasurably, like an old cat lying in the sun having its tummy tickled. He’s always ready to take pleasure where he finds it. From the floor, she’s aware of the Duke of Lancaster’s eyes boring into her too. She ignores him. Let him wait his turn. She says, ‘My lord…truthfully now?’

Edward half smiles, with half-hooded eyes, and inclines his head forward. But he doesn’t look at her hands, or her bare throat. ‘You are a paragon of loveliness, mon amour,’ he says, but she’s aware of the distance creeping into his playfulness. ‘More every day. Today especially. You’ll astonish the world.’

‘Even’, she says delicately, ‘without jewels?’

Edward doesn’t sigh, quite. But he doesn’t meet her eye, either. Less gently, he says, ‘Dear girl, you have jewels. Your own jewels. A great many of them too.’

She says, ‘But with this robe, Queen Philippa’s rubies would be…’

Smiling over her head, and bowing to her without hearing her out, Edward rises to his feet. The Duke of Lancaster is on the dais and approaching the table.

‘A fine performance, my boy,’ Alice hears Edward boom at his son from over her head. He sounds relieved to have a way of ending this conversation with Alice. Yet the dead Queen’s jewels aren’t official royal gems, not part of the treasury, just Queen Philippa’s private collection of trinkets. There’s no real reason of state why Edward shouldn’t let Alice, or any other commoner, mistress, favourite, or friend, use them. Alice used to have to clean them. It was part of her job as demoiselle, back in the day. She held them up to the light, dreaming. She tried them on. She knows them all. So she keeps nagging him about them, even on the days, like today, when it clearly irritates him. One day, she thinks, without particular rancour, he just might give in – because, after all, why shouldn’t she wear them? She’s doing the work of a queen, so why shouldn’t she have the reward? What good are they doing anyone in their boxes?

She knows, really, why he’s reluctant. Edward wants to keep a part of himself, and his memories, separate from her; he wants a place he can remember the big silvery-blonde Queen he loved for so long. He doesn’t want another woman wearing Philippa’s trinkets. She respects that; she really does. But she can’t help herself. It’s not in her nature not to ask for more.

‘…the rubies would be so perfect…’ Alice finishes, disconsolately. Her voice trails away. There’s no point. Neither of the men is listening.

‘You’re taking a chance, aren’t you?’ Duke John says with slightly rough familiarity, as they step close in the column of couples. Alice doesn’t mind dancing, if it’s the stately, dignified basse dance, and if it’s with him. They’ve talked privately before; she’s spent many a Christmas with Edward and his family. Her estate at Wendover, north of London, is close to part of the Duke’s Lancastrian territory; so they’re neighbours. But he’s never made a public point like this of acknowledging her before. With him at her side, she doesn’t even mind entering the crowd of courtiers who are just a little too impressed by their own noble lineage to enjoy meeting her eye, even though she can see the de Roët women in the line of dancers, and they’re both still as terrifyingly lovely as ever. Ah, who cares? she tells herself, suddenly gay. I’m having a better life than either of them. Katherine’s now the widow Swynford, with a little estate somewhere up in Lincolnshire and several children running wild. And Philippa’s married to one of Edward’s esquires, that clever little elf Chaucer, though no one thinks they’re happy; she scuttled straight back to work with the Duchess of Lancaster, mean Castilian ladies-in-waiting and all, after both her babies, as if nothing would persuade her to stay home with her husband. They’d probably both rather be in my shoes, Alice thinks.

‘My lord?’ Alice replies, too innocently. ‘What do you mean, taking a chance?’

The Duke of Lancaster steps back in time with the lilting twelve-quaver beat, but with an interested look that suggests the conversation isn’t over. A second later, as they lean together again, he goes on, glancing down at her finery: ‘Your robe is almost exactly the same as the Princess of England’s at Christmas…as I’m sure you realise,’ and gives her a challenging smile with one eyebrow raised.

Of course I realise, she thinks patiently. I had Princess Joan’s dress copied, didn’t I? And I did it so you’d notice, didn’t I? The Princess never showed herself at a public court dinner at Christmas; she only attended family occasions. So no one outside the royal family will have seen it. And Edward’s eyes are failing; he never notices the colour of robes any more. It’s a joke for the two of us to share. We’re supposed to draw closer, and wink, and enjoy ourselves watching each other enjoying ourselves poking a bit of fun at the Princess, and then you’re supposed to think: Why, Alice Perrers, you and I, we’re kindred spirits. Two peas in a pod.

But that’s not what she says. She just flirts. She lifts her eyebrows and flashes him a smile that’s all teeth and daring. Demurely, she says, ‘No one else has mentioned a resemblance.’ Then she turns the corners of her lips up again.

She’s rewarded by a deep snort of scandalised laughter. She’s got his attention, all right. He’s shaking his head as he goes through the dance step, looking half-disapproving, but half-amused too.

‘What will you do if she turns up?’ he says. He sounds serious, but she can see that the corners of his lips, like the corners of hers, can’t quite stay down.

Alice knows John of Gaunt is said to love his much older sister-in-law and brother, and be sad that, in the past few years, since the Prince’s illness, they’ve gone cold on him. It’s obvious to everyone they’re scared he’s going to wait till his brother’s dead, then try and steal the throne from the little boy; but perhaps it isn’t obvious to him. People say he misses them. Probably, knowing what a stickler he is for the old ways, the old respect, no one’s ever tried lightening his feelings about losing his brother’s family’s affection by sending that old trout of a Princess Joan up, just a bit.

Alice thinks: I won’t let myself be rattled by the idea of Princess Joan coming here. Serenely, she replies, ‘Why would she?’

It’s unanswerable. They both know Joan of Kent will stay home on her side of the river, in Kennington, with her dropsy-ridden hulk of a husband and her mewling, puking seven-year-old. She was once a beauty, Joan of Kent. They even say she was Edward’s mistress, long ago, before she married his son, though Edward’s never breathed a word of any such thing to Alice. But Joan certainly isn’t the most beautiful woman in England any more, hasn’t been for years – certainly not since Alice first clapped eyes on her. She wasn’t a beauty any more even in her thirties, when she scandalised Christendom by taking for her third husband her royal cousin – a childhood playmate – in the obvious hope of getting a crown when he became king. And she’s fat and forty-five now, and the violet eyes poets wrote about long ago are puffy and mean. She’s hardly ever at court.

Alice thinks: She calls me a gold-digger, but what’s she? She might be a king’s granddaughter, but when it comes down to it, really, she’s nothing better than an old, failed gold-digger herself. Fortune has swung Joan up on her wheel, all right, to the dizzying heights of power, but she’s swung it down again too, and it’s all but destroyed her, poor old thing.

Whereas Alice…Alice sometimes feels the wind rushing through her head as she flies upwards through the golden clouds. And the last thing Alice thinks Joan will want to see is a younger woman lording it there in her place – succeeding where Joan failed – especially a younger woman she’s made a point of snubbing for so many years.

John of Gaunt’s eyes are fixed on Alice. She’s intrigued him beyond measure with this little display of insouciance, she sees. She knows it’s often the men who talk loudest about respect for the old ways who are most nervous of anything new. But she hasn’t expected, until now, to feel timidity behind this man’s arrogance. Hearing the music about to reach its final chord, she adds, quickly, almost comfortingly, ‘…so don’t worry.’

It would be a mistake to linger after that. But she enjoys the flash of discomfiture in his eyes as she bows and retreats to the dais. She doesn’t think her impudence has put him off. She can feel, from the way his eyes are following her across the floor, that he’ll be back for more.

By the time it’s fully dark, Alice has completely forgotten she wasn’t planning to dance. With fresh breezes coming in from the river, and Edward smiling dreamily down at her to the thin skirl of lute and dulcimer, and the stout guardsmen in a living ring of fire around the edge of the hall, each man’s feet planted a yard apart on the stone floor, each strong pair of arms holding a torch, a kind of careless magic enters the air.

She’s laughing and as pink as the rest of them, skipping in and out of the great wavering round of the carole, even clapping whole-heartedly as that born dancer Katherine Swynford does an especially complicated response to the Duke of Lancaster’s advance without losing her poise for a second, and the throng pauses and catches breath so everyone can admire the lovely young widow’s skill.

Alice’s vis-à-vis at that moment is Philippa de Roët’s merry-eyed little husband. She’s always rather liked him. He’s not from the nobility originally either. His father was a City magnate, a vintner, and she senses, in his slightly mocking smile, that sometimes he might find the endless tempers and savage pride of the courtiers as limiting as she does. He’s mopping his brow now and saying hazy but appreciative things of his sister-in-law: ‘Terpsichore…wouldn’t you say? The Muse of the dance…it’s a divine gift, to dance that well…as my own dear wife does too, and’ – hastily he twinkles at her, and bows – ‘your good self, of course, madame.’ Alice bows back. Master Chaucer tails off, in amusing mock-wistfulness: ‘Alas…if only I had the same gift…’

It doesn’t for a moment occur to Alice to wonder what the muffled tramp of feet outside, the horns and flutes, might signify.

It’s only when the already relaxed line of dancers wavers and breaks up, and, unaccountably, the crowd falls silent, like a group of animals at the approach of a predator, that Alice feels danger.

By then it’s too late.

With prickles at her spine, she turns.

Behind her, on the dais, Edward is on his feet, his grey beard streaming down his front, his mouth open. He looks old and dazed. His eyes are fixed on the door.

Through it, walking away from the little troop of musicians and soldiers and rowers she’s arrived with, and down the step straight towards Alice, in the middle of the crowded hall, the Princess of England is stumping.

Joan of Kent is carrying a jewelled goblet of wine that a servant must have hastily pressed into her hand. She isn’t taking any notice of it.

She’s wearing her own red taffeta Christmas robe – just like Alice’s, down to the pattern of the seed pearls.