The King's Mistress (50 page)

She lowered her head and looked up at me with a frown as Janyn had when I did not respond as he’d hoped. “Is it so difficult to believe of me?” she asked.

I wished I was not so large and clumsy with child and could have gathered her up in my arms. “No, Bella, that is not why I ask. I merely—” I stopped myself. I did not want to speak my fear, that my
unholy alliance with the king had frightened or shamed her. “I shall honor your wish, if that is truly your desire.”

W
ITHIN DAYS
of Bella’s birthday I gave birth to another daughter, Joan. A daughter. It was no surprise to me that Edward took a week to come and see his child this time. What need had he of an illegitimate daughter? He came for the day and then departed, leaving gifts of precious gems, silver, and gold for Joan and pearls for me. Beautiful things, of course, but I wanted him. I wanted him to hold me, to hold his infant daughter. Affairs of state called him away, he said. I was uneasy that my silence during the months at Fair Meadow had cooled his ardor. My time away from court had been peaceful and had allowed me the opportunity to become reacquainted with myself. In truth, as our separation lengthened—unlike my last lying in, Edward had neither sent for me nor visited, though he had written to me—I had felt more and more at ease in a respite I’d not enjoyed in the twelve years that the court had been my home. The peace of Fair Meadow had suggested another sort of life, one I found appealing. But I had not intended to push Edward away. I fought back my hurt at his lack of interest in Joan and rejoiced at her birth. She was mine, all mine. There was no danger of her being fostered. I reassured myself I had misread Edward.

My infant daughter was flaxen haired and blue eyed like her father, and I adored her. She also reminded me of her first godmother, Princess Joan. With John’s birth, Joan had decided I was not one to take her advice on preventing conception and had embraced the inevitable, demanding to be godmother to our first daughter. Of all the Plantagenet family, she was the most accepting of me, embracing me as a woman who completed her father-in-law’s life in a way that was good and necessary for the realm, and as a friend whose company she enjoyed. Her friendship meant more to me than I could ever express, and she was always in my prayers.

The infant Joan became the center of our little world at Fair Meadow. Bella enjoyed helping Betys, me, and the wet nurse, Ann. On the warm afternoons all the women would sit out in the garden and share in caring for the baby. Robert teased us that she would grow up believing she had many mothers.

He regarded her with such tenderness, I wondered whether he yearned to remarry. The thought saddened me, remembering a
moment a few nights earlier. I’d stepped out into the cool night air and found him gazing up at the stars.

“God’s majesty,” I whispered, joining him.

He’d slipped an arm round my waist, and I’d leaned my head against his shoulder, at once at ease, content. We stood so for a long while, watching the heavens in silence. It seemed a moment most intimate.

And then, abruptly, the interlude was over. Edward summoned me to Sheen a week before John was to depart for his fosterage. Bella and Joan were to bide in a house near the palace, and John would be with us for a few days before his departure. I felt an immense relief that Edward still wanted me, and yet I found it difficult to leave Fair Meadow. I had for the first time been able to imagine without terror a life away from Edward.

This quiet time at my manor had inspired a yearning in me for a more ordered existence. Even for a husband. Knowing that could never be Edward, I had fallen to fantasizing about life with someone like Robert, a man of the land with no ties to court, imagining his smiling face greeting me each morning or looking down at me as I nursed our child. I did wonder whether, with a more ordinary family and life Bella might still have felt called to the Church or not.

Nevertheless, I had been summoned, and as Gwen and I sorted through my gowns and began to redo them, I gradually set aside my daydreams. I was not yet ready for that life, not so long as Edward wanted me. But still I felt an unfamiliar lethargy as we worked on the silk, velvet, and escarlatte gowns. Once I had seen my time with Edward as an enchantment, all passion and beauty, but now it was often frightening, and of late he had ceased to anchor me.

I was not comfortable traveling on horseback a little over three weeks after giving birth, but fortunately most of the journey to Sheen was by river barge. I worked with the grooms to assemble a sturdy sidesaddle platform with enough cushions to ease my ride to the waiting barge, and we traveled at a slow pace through the countryside. Still confused by Edward’s inconsistent behavior toward me, I did not wish to appear weak by traveling by litter on any part of the journey.

Bidding adieu to my son was far more debilitating than the travel. I felt part of myself being torn away as I lost sight of him, riding off with Lord Henry’s party.

• • •

B
UT I
had little time to despair. On my arrival at Sheen I discovered a crisis blooming. The situation in the Aquitaine had deteriorated as Edward had predicted, and Prince Edward and his family were to return to England in the autumn. My Edward was moving forward with a plan to lead a military expedition into France, formulating his request to parliament for more taxes to finance the effort. The barons and archbishops warned of resistance. Landowners had not yet recovered from the devastation of the recurring pestilence, and the Crown’s repeated demands for more funds for war were deeply resented. Edward needed a splendid victory to inspire confidence that the money would be well spent, yet he first needed money in order to gather the troops to pursue such a victory. I understood the financial conundrum, but my main concern was for Edward himself.

I did not know how many were aware that the king had suffered from vague maladies all winter and spring, rallying for Easter and the Feast of St. George then collapsing for weeks afterward. Parliament would surely be even more reluctant to grant his request for fresh taxation if they knew of his fluctuating health. I had certainly not known the extent of it, had not understood what strength of will it had required for him to journey to Fair Meadow after Joan’s birth. I was thankful that I had not confronted him with my simmering resentments and doubts then. He did, in truth, need me. And he was not in any condition to lead an army into battle.

Loving him as I did, I devoted myself to him. I took it as my role to see that he ate well and drank more moderately than was his wont, and drew him out for walks, rides, and hawking as often as possible. Although he chafed at the extent to which I watered his wine, in general he seemed comforted and restored by my ministrations and encouragement. In fact, those close to him expressed relief at the improvement in his health and manner; some even had the grace to thank me for my part in the transformation.

Geoffrey congratulated me on staying so long away from court that the gossips had forgotten me. “Though they are abuzz with your son’s being a bridge between the Percy family and the king, they do not mention you by name, merely that the king’s bastard, John de Southery, is to be fostered by Henry, Lord Percy. The king has succeeded in impressing all with his ability still to sire sons. One would think that he had managed not only to supply the seed but also given birth to the boy! You are absolved from all connection.” When
I said nothing, he noticed my distress. “Are you not relieved to be forgotten?”

“By the crowd, not by my son.”

“Surely you do not believe that will ever happen?”

I did.

On days when my patience wore thin, I would chafe at the way Edward took all credit for our son and remained indifferent to Joan and Bella. We argued about my misgivings concerning Bella’s vocation. Edward impatiently ordered me to cease my fretting and settle on a nunnery suitable for her. But in truth even John, had he not been safely far away, would have felt Edward’s indifference, for he was impatient with anything that robbed him of my full attention. My life away from his presence concerned him not a whit.

Or perhaps not entirely. He had saddled me with a troublesome wardship that he hoped would eventually provide security for our son. Edward had encouraged the underchamberlain of his household to sign over to me the wardship of the late Joan de Orby’s daughter Mary and her estate; Joan had been the stepmother of Henry, Lord Percy. By tradition and law wardships were sources of revenue for the king, for while the heir was in his or her minority, the income from the lands came to the king as well as the fees for eventual permission to marry and any other financial dealings regarding a match, save for the dowry. It was a desirable wardship, and Edward believed that the heiress, young Mary Percy, might be a match for our son John.

I was uneasy, wishing to confer with Robert about the feasibility of adding such a large estate to his responsibilities. I also worried how the court—and even the public—would interpret this boon. And though I called it a boon, it was in fact a business transaction that would cost me a considerable amount if the land had been as indifferently managed as I’d heard. But Edward grew impatient with what he called my dithering and insisted that I accept it without caveats. How easily he spent my money! When I told Robert about it, he assured me that we were quite capable of taking on such a challenge and managed to calm me.

Perhaps sensing that he had pushed too hard, shortly after I arrived at Sheen Edward sweetened the burden with a gift of the dower estates and some other de Orby holdings. “In honor of the birth of our daughter, Joan.”

For her sake I was moved by this gesture, but this huge addition to my holdings would be expensive to set right.

Our relationship was becoming confusing, my role in it more and more complex. Until I returned to Edward after Joan’s birth, we had been lovers and companions in activities we both enjoyed—riding, hawking, hunting, lovemaking, dancing, music, chess. Our time together had been a refuge for both of us. Now Edward clung to me in the privacy of his chambers, and in public I was increasingly placed in the role of gatekeeper. Before events Edward would instruct me to keep this bishop or that lady from him.

“But how, my love?”

“Catch my elbow just so and pull me away, or whisper in my ear.”

“But they are my betters, Edward. I cannot do so on my honor!”

“I ask you to do nothing that Philippa would not do.”

“But she was the queen, Edward. I am not.”

“You will do this, Alice.”

He would accept nothing but my cooperation.

I had no right to assume the roles the queen had played. Nor should I have accompanied him to meetings in which I overheard much to which I should not have been privy. I shrank under the disapproving, indeed disbelieving, stares of others, often the only woman in the chamber.

Playing nurse and protector to Edward made me feel more his concubine than ever before. My presence was too public now. It felt far more presumptuous, and I was certain it put me in much greater jeopardy. Geoffrey had congratulated me on having been forgotten; it did not last long.

I
N LATE
summer, only a month after I had returned to Edward, we were once again in mourning. Young Edward, the eldest son and heir of Prince Edward and Princess Joan, had died in Gascony. I grieved for Joan; with the prince’s ill health, I doubted she would have more children. Their younger son Richard, a child of four, was now second in line to the throne after his father. It seemed cruel that this should happen just as they were preparing to return to England.

In the twelve years that I had been in the royal household Edward had lost so many loved ones—family, friends of his youth, his most trusted commanders—but the death of his grandson, the shining boy previously second in line to the throne, was the weight that sank his confidence in what the future might hold for his kingdom. Prince Edward’s long illness and erratic behavior as Lord of the Aquitaine had,
I was certain, contributed to my love’s anguish. Of course Edward realized that Joan and Edward were unlikely to produce another heir. Young Richard must duly return to the safety of the royal court.

I sent a messenger to William Wykeham, asking if he might set aside his duties to come to Edward. He was most often at court as the king’s chancellor and close adviser, but he was also Bishop of Winchester, a pious and inspiring cleric, and in this time of grieving it was his spiritual gifts I prayed would lift the weight of worry from Edward’s shoulders and give him succor. Wykeham hastened to King’s Langley and stayed for a fortnight, sitting with Edward long into the night, listening, praying, consoling.

I took the opportunity to confess to Wykeham my own unease about my increasingly public role in Edward’s life.

“What matters is that, through you, His Grace finds comfort and ease, which affords him the strength to rule his realm,” Wykeham counseled me. “I know that it is not easy for you, but God will reward you for your devotion to the king. I cannot believe He would forsake you.”

“You once advised me to remember the uncertainty of my position, how all at court walk on shifting sand.”

“That has not changed. But I need not remind you of it. Indeed, I commend you on your diligence in seeing to your future financial security and that of your daughters.” There was something in his eyes and in the tension with which he held himself that told me he was not saying all he thought.

“Is there anything else on which you might counsel me, my lord?”

“No. Be at peace.”

His counsel did ease me. No matter what my doubts, my duty was clear. Edward, too, seemed restored by Wykeham’s visit.

All my children, including John, gathered round me at the Christmas court. Edward showered them with gifts and attention, and I felt truly blessed. It comforted me to see that John was thriving with the Percys, though I was also pleased that he still enjoyed my fussing over him. I treasured that yuletide.

W
HILE PARLIAMENT
sat that winter, I insisted that I stay in my London home rather than with Edward at Westminster. To finance his battle over the Aquitaine he needed the support of the commons, the very folk most likely to stand in judgment over our liaison. It was better we should remain apart while living in their midst, that
they should see me going about my business in London, worshipping in my parish church.