The King's Mistress (26 page)

I had been but a child of seven or eight when the pestilence first raged across Christendom. Father later told me stories of the time, how we had fled to his sister’s home in Smithfield to distance ourselves from the river, rumored to be carrying the deadly miasma, only to discover that she and both her children had succumbed. In the queen’s sewing chamber we were all one in our fear, speaking in hushed voices of nightmares filled with the horror of pustules, stench, corpses piled in the streets. For once I was welcomed and included, as we faced a common enemy.

Several weeks after rumors of pestilence reached the palace, Queen Philippa sent for me after morning Mass. In the spacious room known as the queen’s hall Philippa sat alone by the fire, none of her ladies in attendance. Blanche of Lancaster sat apart from her near the high casements, petting a small dog and gazing out at a sudden snow shower. A few serving maids were tidying on the far side of the room. The queen nodded to me the moment I entered the hall, patting the space beside her on a wide cushioned bench. Our privacy and the indication that I was to sit so close warned me that she was about to tell me something she did not want others to hear.

I took a deep breath and pulled myself up as straight and tall as possible so that I did not seem so small and alone as I felt while crossing the echoing room and taking a seat beside she who held my life in her hands.

Her eyes were sad, her voice soft, and I prayed that she had not received bad news of my Bella, for it was said that children were particularly vulnerable to the pestilence in this visitation. I crossed myself and prayed for strength.

“We have received a message from Master Martin Perrers.” The queen placed a plump, beringed hand on my forearm and fixed me with such a solemn look that her sad eyes pierced my heart. “You must be strong, Alice.”

“I pray you, Your Grace, what ill has befallen Master Martin?” But I doubted it was sorrow for my father-in-law that had so softened her demeanor.

“Both his wife and son, your husband, have been felled by pestilence in Milan.”

“No,” I gasped. “No!”

Blanche of Lancaster rose and brought her stool closer. I guessed that their partnership had been rehearsed and this had been her cue to join us. Her silks rustled, and yet she thought it necessary to cough as if to warn us of her presence. I said something in that space, but my sense was that the heavens and the earth halted in all sound and movement for a long moment.

“Dame Alice, I too grieve,” said the lady Blanche. “I have lost my father.”

“But how can they both—” I said. “My husband and his dam were both healthy, grown—Children and the ill—” I stopped, hearing how I babbled. My beloved and his mother were dead. It was difficult for me to breathe. A darkness closed in on me from either side as the queen’s round face swirled about in the gathering gloom.

I
DREAMED
I woke in a large chamber densely inhabited by secrets. Up in the ceiling high above me secrets prowled in the corners, flickered in the shadows, fluttered just beyond my sight, and the subtle draft from the pulsing wings of the livelier ones stirred the tiny hairs on my forearm. I sensed secrets murmuring just beyond my hearing. The winged ones teased, as if half-hoping to be heard. The murmuring and shadowy ones were dark, heavy, frightening. Many of these, garbed in gorgeous widow’s weeds, were the former queen’s secrets. Many were those of the present king and queen, crowned and gloriously robed. Some were from the wider court, and even clerics kept drably robed secrets in this room. Secrets no one must admit to knowing. Inconvenient secrets. Dangerous secrets, delivering death to the overcurious. I tried to shrink into the bed, drop down between the feathers and slip out below and escape. I did not know how I had come to be in such a frightening room. I had no need for secrets, no desire for them
.

When I woke from the dream that night it killed sleep, seeming more real than my usual dreams. Nan once told me that dreams we remembered as we awoke as vividly as if they were memories of real events were significant, sent to warn us. I lay in the dark, thinking of church naves and chapels with gargoyles, carved heads, ornamental bosses, statues. I remembered the woman in the church who had dropped Janyn’s rosewood beads, and how I had wound them round the Blessed Mother’s arm. The dream had twisted these images. My belly felt weighted down with cold, cold stones, and I felt pinned to the mattress, unable to spread my ribs to breathe.

I would trade my soul for Janyn’s warm body beside me, for the gift of his presence. The nightmare of Isabella’s curse continued. I accepted that Janyn and Tommasa were dead, but not that they had died of the pestilence. They had gone into hiding, they had been in danger. This explanation was meant to silence me, to kill the need for further questions.

Gwen bent over me, my dear Gwen, offering me a sip of brandywine.

“Drink, mistress. Slowly. Slowly.”

I sipped.

“Queen Philippa and Duchess Blanche have sent messengers every hour to inquire after you. Countess Joan as well. I—Oh, Dame Alice, I am so sorry!” Gwen’s eyes were swollen and red from weeping.

Secrets. Master Martin had spoken of a tale that could mean Isabella’s Edward, the present king’s father, had survived his imprisonment in Berkeley Castle and escaped, been hidden in Lombardy. Lombardy. Milan. Tommasa’s family. Someone dear who was protected. Had Janyn and Tommasa known of this, it might not have been enough for them simply to disappear. Perhaps they had to die. Or at least the king and queen must believe them to be dead. My thoughts tumbled and turned on themselves until I wished for unconsciousness.

All my life I had obeyed those who cared not a whit for my welfare, for my happiness, who loved me not at all. Janyn as well? I had given him and our daughter everything I had to give, and had hoped only for more of my sweet, simple life, a few more children and a gradual aging with my beloved husband, nothing grander. Now I had nothing.

Except Bella. I would not abandon Bella. I had been abandoned by everyone I had loved, and I would never do that to my daughter. I knew that I must gather my strength. I took a good, long drink of the brandywine. And another.

Gradually over the next few days the frightening dreams abated, but my waking thoughts were still haunted. I almost regretted my bed having been moved to a corner of the bedchamber I shared with several women, screened off for privacy but near a wide window so that the fresh country air might cheer me, for the privilege isolated me with my darksome thoughts.

I felt adrift at court, as if the solid ground of my life had been pulled away and I hung suspended above a vast emptiness by strings held by the queen and king. Yet I depended on their protection more than ever.

As I grew stronger I remembered the solemn requiem for the old Duke of Lancaster and felt humbled. I was not alone in my suffering; it was Isabella’s legacy that set me apart. I must not succumb to despair. I lifted my chin to receive the gentle breeze from the unshuttered window. I wanted occupation, distraction.

To my immense relief visitors began to appear—first the queen and the duchess, then some of the ladies who had snubbed me but now found me a tragic figure, my husband and his dam victims of the pestilence, and so far away. They came bearing gifts—sugared almonds, dates, exotic fruits.

Most welcome was Geoffrey’s arrival. The others had been curious to see how I behaved, how my grief had changed me, and were intent on convincing me that my life lay ahead of me, bright as ever. In Geoffrey’s eyes I saw my sorrow mirrored. So far only he and Gwen seemed to comprehend the enormity of my loss, perhaps because they alone knew that my existence at court was far from what I had ever desired. He was by my side at the requiem Mass for Janyn and Tommasa. Queen Philippa had arranged it in the chapel, and she, Blanche, Joan, and many in the queen’s household attended. I might doubt the queen’s explanation of my loss, but I took comfort in her kind gesture.

“I pray that you will find joy again,” said Geoffrey a few days later. “And until then, that your love for Bella will sustain you. I do not want to lose you, my oldest and dearest friend.”

He was holding my hand, sitting close to the bed in which I reclined against a small mountain of pillows that Gwen had collected for my comfort.

“I miss him so, Geoffrey. I had held out hope.”

I could see on my friend’s expressive face how he struggled to find some reassurance for me, but he was not one to lie in order to
cheer up a friend. At last he raised his cup and toasted me—“To your courage”—and drank.

Courage. I wondered how far that would support me, whether it could suspend me above the void.

“To your rebirth as a lady of the court.”

I felt forlorn after he departed and regretted having wasted so much of his visit in tears. His friendship was precious to me. Bella was precious to me. And Gwen. And Dame Agnes and Master Edmund. My sister and my brothers. There were still many people holding me to this life. The realization heartened me.

I thought about Geoffrey’s second toast, “To your rebirth.…” Perhaps in passing through the agony of losing Janyn I
had
undergone a rebirth. I recalled sermons describing how sacred such an experience was, and that the reborn had been divinely blessed for a purpose. What, then, might be my purpose? I wondered. Perhaps that was my way forward, to accept that I had been reborn and must now discover the reason. Once the idea took root, I felt an unfamiliar calm.

In chapel I ceased praying that I might return to the past, to life as it had been, and instead prayed, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, I kneel before you humbled and ask for guidance. How may I best serve you?” I opened myself to divine grace. Gradually, over the days I was filled with a sense of peace and imagined the Blessed Virgin’s translucent hand resting on my head. I believed that I would be guided by grace.

When the queen commanded me to resume my duties, she made it clear that I was to set aside my widow’s weeds.

“I honor your mourning, Alice. My household attended a requiem Mass for your loved ones. I have permitted you a fortnight in which to grieve and pray. Now you must look to the future—to wear weeds would only prolong your clinging to the past. For a time you may wear your simplest gowns.”

I meekly agreed, praying that if Janyn looked down from Heaven he would understand.

Upon my return to the queen’s chambers her ladies expressed joy at my recovery, welcoming me back with seemingly sincere friendliness. I took this as God’s sign that I was on the path He meant for me.

Queen Philippa stood in the midst of benches draped with cloth, ribbon, and strings of buttons, impatiently poking at the various gorgeous piles with her cane and muttering imprecations. Her demeanor softened as she noticed me.

“Come, Alice, we must begin preparations for the move to Windsor for the Feast of St. George. The king wishes it to be a most splendid feast and tournament, to ease the hearts of the mourners and the fears of all about the pestilence. We have a theme to devise and costumes to design. Tell me if any of this is worth my bother.” She lightly patted my arm as I joined her. “In the morning we must begin.”

As we sorted through the samples, discarding some, putting others aside for further consideration, I relaxed and grew absorbed in the familiar process.

At last, fatigued, the queen sought her bed for a rest before we supped in the hall. “Praise God that you are returned,” she said, kissing me on the cheek as I handed her the cane.

W
INDSOR WAS
beautiful that April, and the festivities defiantly grand and celebratory against the undercurrent of fear the pestilence wrought. Those who were yet in mourning for the great knights who had died the past year wore gorgeous garments of scarlet and black, while the rest of the Garter knights wore the blue-and-gold of the Order.

The queen had much need of me, changing her exquisite attire many times each day. We worked with splendid silks and velvets, many with intricate patterns including garters and fleur-de-lis. I exhausted my diplomatic skills in guiding her choice of patterned cloth. Her plump and increasingly uneven figure required strategic use of draping, layers, and avoidance of many patterns that emphasized her shape, particularly in the more fitted gowns.

At all times six women were kept busy snipping pearls and jewels and exquisite buttons of gold, silver, pewter, some with pearls and precious gems, from one piece of clothing and sewing them onto others, and as ever some of the patterns we had envisioned looked wrong when executed, so work had to be unpicked and redone. We also discovered that the hems of several of the queen’s new gowns were quite long, pooling about her feet as she stood, which was the fashion, but in her condition I thought ill advised. I insisted that they be rehemmed, for the queen was too unsteady on her feet to be trusted not to trip. I enjoyed the responsibility of ensuring that our beloved Philippa looked every inch a queen.

When not engaged in dressing Her Grace, I did have opportunities to see Geoffrey, which did my heart good. Knowing me as well as he
did, he could tease me out of my deepest despair, though he swore he was losing sleep over his failure to coax a laugh from me. He was not the only man trying to cheer me.

Richard Lyons, one of the executors appointed by my husband, offered to secure Janyn’s home in London until such time as I might afford to buy the lease from him.

“I thought you might prefer to keep it, with the courtyard garden you designed. And Bella will like to see it.”

I was encountering a gentle side of him I had not witnessed before.

The one person who might most successfully have enticed me back to life, God help me, had notably kept his distance since the news of Janyn’s and Tommasa’s deaths—King Edward. The deaths of his own comrades-in-arms and the approaching pestilence were the queen’s explanations for his frequent absences from court and lack of sporting activity when present, but I saw him walking with an assortment of beautiful young noblewomen and suspected I had simply been discarded. I told myself I was relieved, that his flirtation had always been a misbegotten game, but my heart did not agree.