The King’s Concubine: A Novel of Alice Perrers (44 page)

He took it, his eye traveling down, then up, his face illuminated with this victory, and I knew that I had done the right thing.

“Ireland!” he said.

“Yes. Ireland.”

“King’s Lieutenant.”

“A valuable office.”

“So you will be rid of me sooner than we thought.”

“Yes.”

He folded the document carefully, his mind suddenly arrested, as I knew it must be. “Is this your doing?”

“No.” I perjured myself without regret.

His glance was sharp. “What made him change his mind?”

“Who’s to say?”

So great was my sense of impending loss that I actually turned to leave him to enjoy his achievement alone.

“Is this difficult for you?” His question stopped me.

To persuade Edward, or to let you go?

And I knew he suspected my hand in it, despite my denial. Our knowledge of each other had grown apace.

“No.” My voice was steady. “Edward needs a man of ability, not a young man barely out of adolescence—and as you so frequently say, who is there but you?”

“You knew it would be like this, Alice.”

“Yes.”

Still, the space yawned between us. He was the one to close it, to kiss me with a familiar echo of the passion I had come to desire.

“It’s what I want, Alice.” Did he think I did not know it? For a brief moment it grieved me that he should desire that distant office more than he desired me, but with his words, the sorrow passed. “I’ll miss you more than I ever thought I could miss a woman.” The wound healed a little, and I pressed my forehead against his shoulder. Until he lifted my chin so he could look at my face. “I’d ask if you’ll miss me…but you’ll never admit to that, will you?”

“No. How can I?” I frowned, caught in the toils of the dilemma I had helped create. He rubbed at the groove between my brows with his fingers.

“What’s this? Guilt?”

“A little,” I admitted. “Perhaps the King’s Concubine is not free to miss you. Perhaps she is not free to have her emotions engaged.”

“Does the King engage them?”

“With friendship. Compassion. Respect. All of those. I will not leave him, Will. I am not free to do so until his death.”

At last the document that would take him from me was cast aside. Windsor’s voice was tender. “Then I would say that the King could have no more loyal subject. And still I say you are free to miss me.”

“Then I will.” I would give him that, at least, and I thrust my guilt away.

His lips were soft on my brow. “Write to me.”

“And risk interception?”

“You don’t have to admit your undying love. Not that you would anyway!”

I laughed softly. We understood each other. “I’ll write.”

We made use of that one snatched opportunity to be together, in
Windsor’s sparely furnished room. Our coming together was unsatisfactory, all in all, both of us with our senses stretched against possible discovery, struggling to make the best use of the narrow pallet. Little clothing removed, a hasty coupling—it was a reaffirmation of our commitment to each other rather than an outpouring of passion. And yet I would not have him leave me without experiencing that intimacy once more. How many months would it be before I saw him again?

We exchanged few words. What was there to say?

“Keep safe,” he whispered.

“And you.”

“I’ll keep you in my thoughts, Alice.”

“And you in mine, Will.”

He was gone within the week. I could not put my loss into words; it was too great. He had said he would think of me, which was as much as I could hope for. For the first time in my life I knew what it was to have a broken heart.

How can it be broken!
I upbraided my foolishness.
It cannot be broken unless you love him. And, of course, you do not!
And William de Windsor? I received an unexpected communication from my absent husband within the month. After a brief summary of events in Dublin, he added:

I said that I would miss you, Alice, did I not? I do. You belong to me, and it seems that I belong to you. Keep in good health. I need to know that you are safe for my return, whenever that might be.

It was the closest to poetry that I would ever get from him. It was a precious thing. And yes, I wept.

Chapter Thirteen

H
ow could I have been so disastrously shortsighted? I was terrifyingly, inexcusably complacent, unforgivably blinkered, and with no excuse to offer except that the normality of affairs lulled me into believing no change was imminent. Why worry? There was nothing to suggest that the long, warm days in the summer of 1375 held any danger. Edward was strong enough to host a tournament, and the spectacular Smithfield festivities in which I played a role left a sweet taste on the palate. So did Windsor’s assertion that he would miss me.

There was no obvious cause for concern.

Why is it that we never see disaster approaching until it overwhelms us, like failing to foresee a winter storm lashing onto a lee shore, crashing down with terrible destruction and heartbreak? I never saw it, but it broke over our heads with disastrous force.

Looking back I realize that I could not have foreseen what happened. The yearlong truce with France was drawing to its close with the prospect of new hostilities, but not for a while. Perhaps another truce could be cobbled together. Certainly neither side was urging the other to a further bout of bloodlust.

Edward’s health tottered on a knife’s edge but did not fall. Some days were good, and on others he drowned in melancholy that I could
not lift from him, but death did not approach. To tell the truth, the Prince was far beyond help. He would be ordering his shroud within the year, if I knew the signs. Joan, her eye to her son’s future, was wound as tight as wool on a beginner’s distaff. Her temper, ever unpredictable, was dangerously short. But the King held on to life, and he had his heir in young Richard.

Windsor was in Ireland, and although our communication remained erratic, I knew that one day he would return to me. I refused to admit my longing to see him again.

In the early months of the new year, a Parliament was summoned. The upkeep of an army being paramount, taxation was essential to raise the revenue: The royal Treasury needed a substantial input of gold. All in all, it was nothing out of the way. Even the Prince rallied to be present beside Gaunt and the King at the ceremonial opening, an impressive trio of royal blood adorned in their ceremonial robes of scarlet and ermine hiding the frailty of life beneath.

Joan stayed away from Court. No one mentioned witchcraft.

And so the days passed inexorably into the summer of 1376. Who could have foreseen the outcome of Edward’s calling that thrice-damned Parliament? There was no intimation of danger as magnates, clergy, and commons came together in the Painted Chamber at Westminster with formal greetings and dutiful smiles on all sides. There was no undue restlessness in the ranks. Why would there be any barrier to fulfilling the royal demands? Parliament would act as it had always acted, to give its consent to raise revenue. The Commons retired, as they would, to the Abbey chapter house to elect their leader and consider the proposals to raise coin for the royal coffers. The debate would be brief and productive.

God’s Blood! It was neither. And I learned of it soon enough.

Gaunt, driven by pent-up anger, divested himself of gloves and hat and thrust open the door of Edward’s private parlor, where I sat. Shouldering Latimer aside, he slammed the door before striding across the room, where he halted in front of me.

“Where is he?”

Gaunt rarely lost control. Stark fear entered the room with him. Sweeping together the papers I was studying into a rough pile, then tucking them under the edge of a chest that held my pens and ink, I stood, my heart beating with sudden apprehension.

“The King is resting.” I stepped before the door to the bedchamber. Edward was prostrate with exhaustion.

Gaunt took a turn about the room, unable to remain still. “The Commons! They’ve elected Peter de la Mare as their Speaker.”

“Ah…!”

“De la Mare, by God!” Gaunt’s teeth were bared in a snarl. “That name means something to
you
, of course.”

I allowed my raised brows to make my answer. Every man and woman at Court knew of my recent confrontation with a member of the de la Mare family. It had been a regrettable little incident. Wisdom said that I should not have stepped into the argument, but when does wisdom count against a denial of justice toward an innocent man? I had become involved in a dispute that was not mine, and truth to tell, the outcome, mercifully to my advantage, had given me much pleasure.

“Our new Speaker is no friend to either of us,” Gaunt remarked, twitching a curtain into shape, then punching it so that it billowed again into disarray. “I’m not sure which of us he despises most.”

“I could hazard a guess.”

Considering that Edward’s privacy was relatively safe from invasion, I abandoned my stance and sat so that I could keep Gaunt in view as he continued to prowl. My recent adversary was a cousin of this Peter, now Speaker of the Commons: Thomas de la Mare, Abbot of St. Albans, a man with a famous reputation for erudition but none at all for charity or compassion. And not a man open to compromise.

Our clash of wills was all to do with the ownership of the insignificant little manor of Oxhay. Fitzjohn, a knight living there, was ejected from his property by the Abbot, who claimed ownership. So what did Fitzjohn do? Before marching once more into the manor to take hold of it, with worthy cunning he enfeoffed the property to me. And the Abbot, all prepared to summon the local mob to seize the manor in Saint Albans’s name and force Fitzjohn out, decided at the last moment that Alice Perrers was not one to tangle with.

The consequence? I kept the property with Fitzjohn as my tenant for life, and the Abbot called down curses on my soul. Unfortunate, all in all, given the choice of the new Speaker, cousin to the Abbot.

“So where does that put us?” I asked, surveying my loosely linked fingers. Still, I did not see the true danger. Could Gaunt not use his influence against an upstart leader of the Commons?

“Under threat,” Gaunt ground out through clenched teeth.

I frowned. “What possible mischief can he and the Abbot make, even if they combine forces?”

“Think about it.” Gaunt swept across the room and gripped the arms of Edward’s chair in which I sat, trapping me. His eyes were a bare handsbreadth from mine. I refused to allow myself to blink as I saw myself reflected there. “Who is Peter de la Mare’s noble employer?”

“The Earl of March…”

“So, do I have to spell it out?”

Gaunt reared back and stalked to the window to look out, although I swear he did not see the scudding clouds. No, he did not have to spell it out. Finally I saw the connection. Peter de la Mare was also steward to Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, the husband of Edward’s granddaughter Philippa. A man who was not lacking in influence as Marshal of England, he would be more than happy to see his infant son become the next ruler of England.

“And March is involved…?”

“I’m sure he is!”

“Because of the succession…”

“Exactly! The whole lot of them are shackled together with my own princely brother in a plot against me.”

My fingers tightened together, white-knuckled. Had I not always wondered how loyal Gaunt would be to the true succession to the English crown?

Gaunt turned his head to stare fiercely at me over his shoulder. “It’s a conspiracy against me and those who stand as my friends. A neat little plot concocted by the Abbot of St. Albans and the Prince. Did you know they had long conversations together when the Prince stopped on his way from Berkhamsted to Canterbury earlier this year?”

No, I had not known.

“The Prince was not too ill to spend time putting weasel words into the ear of the Abbot. So there it is. March, the de la Mare cousins, and the Prince, all tied into a stratagem to keep me and my heirs from the throne.”

Never had Gaunt spelled out his ambitions so clearly. Not to me. Not, I surmised, to anyone. For it was dangerous talk. Treasonous, in fact, for it all came back to the problem of the future succession. If the Prince’s son Richard died without issue, the son of March and Philippa would rule England through order of descent, for Philippa had carried a son, a lad of three years old now. Not Gaunt. Not Gaunt’s boy, Henry Bolingbroke. Would Gaunt be vicious enough, ambitious enough, to destroy the claim of his nephew Richard, or that of the infant son of March? Watching his fist clench hard against the window ledge, I thought he might. But thought was not proof.…

Whatever the truth of it, rumor said that the Prince lived in fear that his son might never rule if Gaunt had his way. And the Prince from his sickbed was using the allies he had: the de la Mare cousins and now March, who had apparently discovered he had much to gain in opposing Gaunt.

I forced my mind to untie the knots. I still couldn’t quite see where this was leading. Unless the new de la Mare Speaker of the Commons intended to use the one weapon he had to get what he and his coconspirators wanted. My mind began to clear. The one weapon that would give him much power…

“Do you think that the Commons will grant finance for the war…?” I queried.

“At a price. And I wager de la Mare has it all planned to a miracle of exactness. He knows just what he will ask for, by God!”

“What?”

“I scent danger on the wind. They’re planning an attack. On me, on my associates in government. Latimer and Neville. Lyons. The whole ministerial crew, because I helped them into office. De la Mare and March will plot and intrigue to rid Edward of any man who has a connection with me. Gaunt will be isolated; that’s the plan. Brother warring against brother.” Gaunt’s smile was feral, humorless, as his eyes blazed. “And they will declare war on you too, Mistress Perrers,
unless I’m way off in my reading of de la Mare’s crafty mind. Any chance that I might step into my brother’s shoes will be buried beneath the crucified reputations of royal ministers and paramour alike.” He folded his arms, leaning back against the stonework. “I did not think March had such ambitions. I was wrong. Being sire to the heir to the throne obviously appeals to him.”