Kitabı oku: «The King's Concubine», sayfa 8

Chapter Six

IT WAS Edward’s private chamber, redolent of masculine luxury. Wood panelling hung with tapestry, a fireplace with burning logs and a favourite hound curled there. A prie dieu and a crucifix. A coffer, a standing table, a high-polished chair with carved arms and back—opulent, I decided as I took it all in at a glance, used as I now was to such magnificence. Edward may have spent most of his life engaged in the hardship of campaigning in France, but at Havering he enjoyed all that his consequence could bring him.

There were signs of recent habitation. A pole with a falcon that appeared to be asleep. A sumptuous damask and fur chamber robe in deep glowing red cast negligently over the coffer. A flagon for wine and cups and a platter of what remained of a meal. Books, one open, and a rosary cast on the bed; a bowl and ewer flanked by a candlestand, the fine quality of the candles casting a soft glow.

And a superlative bed.

My eye slid quickly away from its silk covers, its red and gold curtains. After the emotion of the past half-hour my control was compromised. I stood hesitantly with my back to the door, an animal, waiting for the predator to pounce. For surely the King of England was as much a predator as his hawk.

The hawk rustled its feathers and sank further into somnolence. The hound twitched and whined in the throes of a hunting dream.

And Edward walked towards me from where he had been sitting, perusing the pages of a book, hand outstretched in greeting. How beautiful he was. How carelessly he wore that beauty, how unselfconsciously, how unaware of the impression his fine-carved features and magnificent stature would make on the beholder. Would make on me.

‘Alice.’ His stern features softened into a vestige of a smile. ‘You look as if you’re considering that I might pounce and dismember you.’

‘I think I am,’ I replied.

Edward’s laugh rumbled. ‘I’ll not do that.’ His hand closed over mine. ‘You’re freezing—or frozen with fear. Come to the fire …’ Pulling me gently forward, he placed me in his own chair, speaking all the time as if I were some flighty unbroken filly needing reassurance. Leaving me to look around, he poured two cups of ruby liquid. ‘Here. It’s from Gascony. The best wine we have.’ He pushed the cup into my hand and sat on a low stool at my feet, lifting his own cup to his lips.

‘Drink, Alice.’ He nudged my forearm. I realised I had been staring at him, my thoughts paralysed with uncertainty. I still could not look at the bed. For sure the King had not invited me here to have me copy the nation’s accounts into a ledger.

Edward drank, his eyes never leaving my face. Under that intense gaze my nerves faltered and I looked down at the chasing on the fine silver cup, inconsequentially following the outline of a tined stag with my finger.

‘Would it please you to be my mistress?’ he asked, as if enquiring about my health.

‘I don’t know.’

‘That’s honest, by God!’

‘It has to be, Sire. I don’t know how to answer you otherwise.’

I took a careless gulp of wine and coughed. One of the logs collapsed with a sigh. The hawk shuffled with scaly feet.

‘You are a widow.’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you should not fear this.’ His hand gestured toward the bed.

I swallowed. ‘I am a virgin. My marriage was never consummated.’ I had begun to tremble, now that the moment had come upon me. I glanced up to see that Edward was frowning at me. That was not the answer he had wanted. He had wanted a mistress with some knowledge and experience. All Philippa’s planning was for nought. ‘I can go, Sire, if you don’t want me here.’

‘I’ll tell you when I don’t.’ A flash of eye, a brush of temper that surprised me, and then it ebbed as fast as it had flared between us. His voice was very gentle. ‘Forgive me. This has to be a very private transaction between us.’

‘And you don’t trust me to keep my own counsel?’

‘That’s not what I meant.’ His eyes were on mine, fierce and searching again, and I could not look away.

‘I know what you meant. I know you don’t want to hurt Her Majesty.’

‘You think it won’t hurt her to know?’ Surging to his feet, he was suddenly as far from me as he could get, at the other side of the room. I watched him cautiously. ‘Sins of the flesh,’ he murmured. ‘They will return to haunt us.’

‘I am no gossip, Sire,’ I replied.

‘How old are you?’ he asked harshly.

‘Seventeen years, my lord, perhaps eighteen.’

‘So many years between us, so much experience that I have and you do not. Do you know, Alice? I’ve never been unfaithful to her. Not in all the thirty years of marriage. No matter the rumours that I have taken lovers—from the day I wed her I have not broken my oath. But now …’

But now she has told you to take a lover!

How to keep all the secrets. Like a weaver, melding all the colours into one seemly whole. Was I capable of such discretion? Such skill? Countess Joan’s words returned to my mind. It is important for a woman to have the duplicity to make good use of her talents. And there she was with her cruel smile. Until I banished her. There was no place for Fair Joan’s cynicism in this manoeuvring between Edward and myself. I waited, the nerves in my belly fluttering like a cage of finches.

‘When I touch her she has to sink her teeth into her lips, not to groan with the agony.’ Edward turned away from me to brace his hands against the edge of the coffer, head bent, shoulders rigid as he made his confession. ‘I love my wife. But I desire you, Alice. Is that very bad?’

‘Wykeham would say so, my lord.’ I was still chafing at the priest’s reproof.

‘What would you say?’

The only thing I could. ‘That you are my King and can demand my obedience, my lord.’

His mouth twisted. ‘A simplistic answer to smooth over any complication.’ Silence fell. Heavy. Full of decision and indecision. And then: ‘If you are to share my bed, you must call me by my name.’

‘Edward.’ I tried it, as I had written it of late. I smiled. And the King must have heard the smile in my voice and he looked back at me over his shoulder.

‘What is it?’

‘It sounds strange.’

‘Do you know how few people call me by my name, Alice?’

‘No, Sire.’

‘I could count them on the fingers of one hand. All the friends of my youth—dead within the last two years. Northampton—the bravest of my generals. Sir John Beauchamp who carried my standard at Crécy. Lancaster—the most trusted of all my friends. The years are cruel, Alice. You’re too young to see it yet. They rob us of our health and our friends and our hopes, and give nothing back.’ His sight was turned inward, his expression melancholy. Another log fell into ash, dislodging others, and as if the sound prompted him to what he was and what he must be, Edward slowly raised his head. His spine straightened visibly, and the lines of his face firmed as his lips compressed. ‘I am not allowed to grow old. I am King.’

I stood, my own anxieties obliterated by compassion, not that I would ever have dared reveal it. Here was a proud warrior, who had lived and fought for a lifetime, yet there was no comfort for him. Neither would he ask it—he would bear the burden of kingship to the grave, whatever the depth of loneliness it demanded from him. I walked slowly toward him, presenting him with my own cup since his own was forgotten on the coffer.

‘You will not grow old. You will live for ever. And I will call you Edward, if that is what you wish.’

I touched his hand as he took the cup from me, marvelling that I could so easily transgress the honour due to the King, but all my fears seemed to have fallen away. I let my fingers rest lightly on his as his eyes captured mine.

‘It’s the softness of your mouth that comes to me in my dreams. When you smile, your face is illuminated as if a candle is lit behind your eyes,’ he said. ‘It lights you from within.’

‘You flatter me.’

‘Then we will flatter each other.’

Edward kissed me. His lips were firm and warm against mine. An intimate kiss but with no heat of passion. He was not aroused. Perhaps it was the desire of courtly love he wanted to give me rather than the fulfilment of the flesh.

‘God will damn me for this but …’

He let his hands drop from my shoulders, for there was harsh conscience again. I thought that in his youth there would have been no hesitation in Edward taking what he wanted, but he was not at ease with either his conscience or with me. His authority, within the bedchamber or without, was supreme, but his memories had roused the spectre of death and decay.

So what was my role? I wanted nothing more than to give him some level of contentment. To make him smile again. But how to distract him from these morbid thoughts that gave him no pleasure? What skill did I have to achieve that? The arts of bedchamber seduction were unknown to me. What might he want most from me that I was capable of giving? What could I do? I could argue and hold an opinion …

My eyes were caught by the documents strewn across the table. Affairs of business and policy. I walked to stand before them.

‘Tell me what you are doing here, Edward.’

‘Interested in royal policy, are you?’ Intrigued, he watched me go.

‘Yes.’ I looked back at him, a deliberate challenge, which he was free to accept or reject. ‘I am capable of far more than deciding the colour of the gown I wear or how my hair should be dressed.’

‘Are you, now?’ Accepting the challenge, Edward directed me to sit on a stool, reaching to select one of the documents, handing it to me. ‘Family affairs,’ he said, resting his weight against the table.

‘You are fortunate. I have no family,’ I said.

‘I have sons. Magnificent sons. And they bring me power.’ And there was the King again rather than the man, his hand wound tight in the reins to keep ultimate control of the kingdom. ‘What do you see on that document?’

He tapped the one I held. The Latin was close-written in the crabbed script of a clerk, but I could read enough. ‘Ireland,’ I said.

‘Good. This is Lionel. He’s in Ireland. A difficult province. Once I’d have gone myself but I’ve sent Lionel as King’s Lieutenant. He’ll have to tread a path between all the damned interests. God knows, it’s a morass of bad blood.’

He took the document from me and gave me another. I felt like a novice again, under instruction, or a clerk under Janyn’s scrutiny, but my fascination with the documents was keen. ‘And this?’ he asked.

This one was more difficult but the names were clear. ‘This is Aquitaine.’

‘Edward, my heir.’ The pride in his voice was unmistakeable. ‘He’ll rule Aquitaine well as long as he curbs his tendency to stamp on the interests of those he rules. Gascony’s restive—he must learn to be patient at the same time as he learns to be King. He is a good commander, a man after my own heart. Now this …’

He was enjoying himself. A man confident and assured as he spread out before me the heirs to his power who would carry the Plantagenet blood and name into history. I took the new document.

‘This is John. John of Gaunt. The Duchy of Lancaster is now his. And Edmund? I was planning on the Flanders heiress for him …’ he tapped the document with a heavy red seal that had cracked on its journeys ‘… but the French want her and they have the ear of the new Pope. I’ll have to look elsewhere for him. And then there’s Thomas …’

‘WhO’s only seven and hunting mad like his father.’

‘Yes.’ The success of my simple ploy glowed in my heart. Edward was at ease. ‘Isabella is the other problem.’ He took my cup again and drank as he considered the problem. ‘She’ll marry as she sees fit. If I took a whip to her sides, it would do no good.’

‘I think she will not be averse to any husband of your choice.’ I had seen the raging dissatisfaction in Isabella.

‘She was more than averse once.’

‘But now, with the years passing … She’ll accept any man you choose for her, as long as he is young and good to look at and powerful.’

‘I’ll remember that. You see more than I in the domain of the solar. My fear is that she’ll make her own choice—and select someone outrageously inappropriate.’

‘Then let her do it.’

‘I need her to make an alliance for the good of England—not to choose some landless knight with a pretty face and formidable muscles to entice her into bed.’

He stopped abruptly. I looked up from the vellum to his face, unsure what had silenced him. He was looking at me.

‘What have you done?’ he demanded.

‘Nothing, my lord.’

‘You are a cunning woman, Alice Perrers!’

And Edward cast the curling documents onto the table and laughed, enough to reverberate from the walls and wake the hound. With smooth flex of muscle and sinew he pushed himself from the table, stooped with a hand below each of my elbows and lifted me from the stool to place me firmly on my feet. He held me there before him.

‘Did I bring you here to discuss matters of policy?’ His eyes were now a clear blue, all shadows obliterated, full of humour. And desire. ‘Not only cunning, I think. You are a clever woman.’

‘Do you think so, Edward?’ I tilted my chin, deliberately sombre, exquisitively provocative.

‘You’ve made an excellent attempt at distracting me.’

‘Yes,’ I admitted.

‘And very successfully. I can only apologise for my ill humour.’

‘There is no need.’ And because I was so close, I touched the King’s lips with the tips of my fingers. ‘I am pleased to give you pleasure.’

It was a blatant invitation—and it was meant to be.

Edward needed no invitation. With grave courtesy he helped me remove my gown—how did a man of war deal so knowledgeably with female ties and laces?—allowing me to keep my shift for modesty’s sake. His patience lulled all my virginal fears. Turning back the bed covers, he helped me to sit against the pillows then doused the candles except for one, far enough away to give me the benefit of shrouding shadows. Without any modesty on his own part, he stripped off hose and tunic, and stood beside the bed.

‘I’ll make this as good as I can, Alice.’

‘I am not afraid.’ Neither was I. Now that the moment had come I knew that Edward Plantagenet would not hurt me.

Curious, I allowed my gaze to travel over what I could see of his body in the single flickering flame. I expect the soft light flattered him. Half a century he had lived, but his flesh was still firm and smooth on flanks and chest, neither could the scars and abrasions from a lifetime of battle and tourneys detract from his splendid physique, despite there being more silver in his fair hair than he might wish for.

The evidence of his desire for me was formidable.

‘Do you like what you see, Mistress Alice?’ he asked.

I flushed brightly, realising that I had been staring with open admiration.

‘I like it very well,’ I replied as calmly as I could. ‘I can only pray that you will find me as pleasing to the eye and the senses.’

‘For now, my pleasure in your company is obvious to us both.’

So I lost my virginity to Edward Plantagenet, King of England. It was not an unpleasant experience, and my trembling was from neither fear nor pain. I followed his lead and was brave enough to return his caresses with my own. Sometimes I allowed my own needs, when I recognised them, to prompt a kiss or a caress. Sometimes I made him hold his breath.

And how did I feel? Edward made me feel desired. For the first time in my seventeen years he made me feel valued, beautiful, even when I knew I was neither. I clung to him, drowning in his embrace.

‘How did our lives cross, Alice?’ he asked when passion had ebbed.

Your loving wife had something to do with it.

I shook my head.

‘We keep this between us,’ he murmured, ‘and Wykeham, whO’s to be trusted.’

‘Yes.’

But Wykeham will damn me rather than you!

And so it was begun: this strange ménage à trois, with the Queen a silent partner who neither needed nor wanted to know more than she did, and Edward unaware of his wife’s complicity. I would keep the secrets of both. And when his hands explored and his body possessed, we tacitly agreed to keep the Queen distant from the room and the bed. We did not speak of her. Enough time tomorrow to allow guilt to creep in. For now the fluid strength of his body, the slide of heated skin against heated skin occupied all my thoughts.

At the end Edward fell asleep, the fingers of one hand interlaced with mine, but I lay awake, considering the responses of my body. What was love? Love, I suspected, was whatever Edward felt towards Philippa. But did I love Edward? Perhaps I fell in love with him a little, if admiration and respect and loyalty amounted to love. My belly clenched with longing when he kissed me, when his hands stroked down my breast to the dip of my waist. I was overwhelmed by his glamour, that this was the King of England who wanted me enough to throw caution to the winds and own me.

Perhaps that was love after all. I smiled to myself in the darkly shadowed room. I might be uncertain of the meaning of love, but that night I learnt full well the force of ambition.

Later—how many hours later I didn’t know, for time had no meaning—Wykeham escorted me back to the antechamber in the Queen’s rooms. The same journey but even more spiked with his loathing of what had been done. He was beyond censure. He bowed and left me at the door, not even opening it for me, the bow an empty gesture that denied any courtesy.

I had forfeited his approval. I suspected he thought I had forfeited my soul.

A page returned me to my room where the damsels slept on in ignorance.

* * *

A new day and early sunshine filtered into the room as if it were any ordinary day. I washed my hands and face from the ewer of cold water, flinching from the chill. A day like any other day, and yet not so. I dressed hurriedly before my two companions were astir, with the ready excuse that the Queen might need me if she was still in pain, to give her the strength to attend Mass in her chapel.

What would I say to her? I knew only that I must see her, to learn what she might find to say to me in the cold light of day. Last night had been a time of tension and drama when we had both allowed emotion to rule. Today might be a time for regret. The Queen might consider my dismissal a just punishment for what I had done, and, in truth, I could not blame her. I must know. I hurried to her rooms, only to be informed by her tirewoman that she had risen even earlier than I—was that a bad sign or good?—and was already at prayer. I slipped into the chapel. No priest was there, but the Queen knelt before the altar, clasping the altar rail to steady herself. I sank to my knees just within the entrance. I would wait. It seemed to me that the fair face of the statue of the Holy Virgin was particularly austere.

‘Alice …’

The Queen’s private devotions were complete. I stood, moving quickly toward the altar to help her to her feet.

‘Well?’ Her eyes were bright and aware. The pain was less this morning.

‘It is done, Majesty.’

‘It was … satisfactory?’

‘Yes.’

So few words, so inconsequential in themselves, to encompass so momentous an act.

‘He will send for you again?’

‘Yes, my lady.’

‘Good. We will not speak of this again.’

A strange relief trickled through my blood, that this three-stranded inter-weaving might not be impossible, if I had the skill to keep the secrets of both and remain true to each. Perhaps I could be loyal to both Philippa and Edward, betraying neither, harming neither. But still the claws of treachery fastened in my flesh. I felt the rip of them as the Queen turned her gaze away from her husband’s whore.

When the door opened, disturbing the air so that the candles wavered wildly, we both looked round, expecting a priest. And in a heartbeat the serene, ageless atmosphere of the chapel became heated with fury. It was written on her face, in every gesture. She barely waited to approach us before her voice rang out. Isabella.

‘God’s Wounds! How could you?’

She covered the distance with long strides, kicking aside her skirts. I thought her attack was for me, but Isabella swept past me as if I were detritus beneath her feet and pounced on her mother.

‘Why are you here with her? Do you know what she’s done? Wykeham will not talk—at least he’s loyal and will keep his mouth shut about this family’s affairs—but he was seen last night—with her! And do you know where he took her?’ She all but spat the words, her beautiful face contorted. ‘She has betrayed you. Your little gutter sweepings, rescued from squalor, spent last night in the King’s rooms! In his bed, I presume! And here you are, all but holding her hands!’

‘Isabella …!’ the Queen remonstrated, to no avail.

‘You didn’t even know, did you? Don’t touch her! She is a vile serpent!’ And Isabella struck out at me, making contact with her hand against my shoulder with a forceful blow, so surprising that I lost my balance and fell against the altar rail. ‘You will dismiss her. Do you hear me? And if you will not, I’ll arrange it myself!’

‘I hear you, Isabella.’ The Queen sighed.

‘Look at her!’ Isabella turned on me as I dragged myself upright. Prudently I stepped away as the Princess’s fingers curled into claws. ‘You have dressed her and polished her until she’s halfway presentable. And what has she done? Warmed your husband’s bed. As for the King … Is no man honourable? After all you have given him—the respect, the children. I despise him! But I despise you more, little Alice-from-the-gutter!’

‘Isabella! You will be silent.’ If I had thought Philippa’s dignity a thing of amazement last night, today she was glorious in facing her furious daughter. ‘I know exactly—’

‘She has cheated you! She has turned the gold of your generosity into dross! She should be flogged!’ Isabella advanced.

‘I have not cheated.’ I would not retreat again, even at the risk of Isabella’s ire, but my fear was lively.

The Queen in timely manner grasped her daughter’s sleeve. ‘Isabella!’

‘You’re not going to make excuses for her, are you?’

‘No. I am going to make them for myself.’

‘I don’t understand you.’

‘Then curb your passions, and listen. I know exactly what passed between my husband and Alice. Listen to me, my daughter. Forget your sense of ill-usage and injustice. This is the reality.’ The Queen waited until Isabella had at least a semblance of calm. ‘What do you think? Am I capable of fulfilling my duty to your father?’

‘Your duty?’ Isabella looked as if she would rather not discuss it. ‘I don’t see …’

‘Yes, you do see it. Every day you see it. I am incapable of turning back the sheets on my bed for your father. That is the brutal truth.’

‘That’s not—’

‘If you were going to say something so foolish as that’s not important, you’re no daughter of mine. It is always important. Your father is the man he ever was. Do I condemn him to a lifetime of abstinence because I cannot …?’ She brushed aside the words she could not speak. ‘Do you understand me, Isabella?’

Isabella’s fair skin was flushed.

‘And if I cannot give him what he needs …’

‘You would procure a mistress for your own husband?’ Isabella’s disbelief was as strong as mine had been. That gentle, loving Philippa should give her blessing to her husband’s lover. ‘Why not let him take a palace whore? There are enough of them willing to lift their skirts.’

‘No. Before God, Isabella! You try my patience. If it has to be, I would rather it be someone I know and trust.’

How I detested this! There was nothing new to learn here in this confrontation between Queen and Princess of the Queen’s motives. Had she not bared her soul to me, in all its agony, the previous night? Yet it made my blood chill. In spite of my loyalty to the Queen I was forced to acknowledge that I was being used. Snarled over like a bone between two royal curs. Better for the King to sleep with an unimportant domicella than a highborn titled lady who would use her position to sneer at the Queen’s failure as she crowed over her success in bedding the King.

Degradation lapped over me, bitter as the leaves of hyssop. I might have sympathy with the Queen’s motives, but the role that had been created for me was a wretched one. I was a creature, a pawn, to be moved around the chessboard at the whim of the player. And what a skilled player the Queen was. How long, before her eye had fallen on me, had she been plotting this deep scenario to preserve the Plantagenets from dangerous scandal?

‘Could you not find a more acceptable bed mate than this?’ Isabella continued to rage, stabbing her finger at me.

Neither, I realised, my blood now humming with my own anger, did I appreciate this exchange of opinion that stormed over me as if I were invisible. I was not the same powerless woman that I had been yesterday.

You are the King’s mistress. You are no longer invisible. Neither are you voiceless. You have his ear. He wants you to come to him again. You do not have to tolerate this. You have power of your own.

The words revolved and repeated like the cogs of Edward’s precious clock.

‘You will pretend you know nothing, Isabella. You will treat Alice with the respect she deserves for her obedience to me. Do you understand me?’ The Queen was laying down her directives with the precision of an army commander.