The King's Concubine

Chapter One

Where do I start? It’s difficult to know. My beginnings as I recall them were not moments marked by joy or happiness. So I will start with what I do recall. My very first memory.

I was a child, still far too young to have much understanding of who or what I was, kneeling with the sisters in the great Abbey church of St. Mary’s. It was the eighth day of December and the air so cold it hurt my lungs as I breathed it in. The stone paving was rough beneath my knees, but even then I knew better than to shuffle. The statue on its plinth in the Lady Chapel was clothed in a new blue gown, her veil and wimple made from costly silk, startlingly white in the dark shadows. The nuns sang the office of Compline, and ’round the feet of the statue a pool of candles had been lit. The light flickered over the deep blue folds so that the figure appeared to move, to breathe.

“Who is she?” I asked, voice too loud. I was still very ignorant.

Sister Goda, novice mistress when there were novices to teach, hushed me. “The Blessed Virgin.”

“What is she called?”

“She is the Blessed Virgin Mary.”

“Is this a special day?”

“It is the feast of the Immaculate Conception. Now, hush!”

It meant nothing to me then, but I fell in love with her. The Blessed Mary’s face was fair, her eyes downcast; there was a little smile on her painted lips, and her hands were raised as if to beckon me forward. But what took my eye was the crown of stars that had been placed for the occasion on her brow. The gold gleamed in the candlelight; the jewels reflected the flames in their depths. And I was dazzled. After the service, when the nuns had filed out, I stood before her, my feet small in the shimmer of candles.

“Come away, Alice.” Sister Goda took my arm, not gently.

I was stubborn and planted my feet.

“Come on!”

“Why does she wear a crown of stars?” I asked.

“Because she is the Queen of Heaven. Now will you…”

The sharp slap on my arm made me obey; yet still I reached up, although I was too small to touch it, and smiled.

“I would like a crown like that.”

My second memory followed fast on my first. Despite the late hour, Sister Goda, small and frail but with a strong right arm, struck my hand with a leather strap until my skin was red and blistered. Punishment for the sin of vanity and covetousness, she hissed. Who was I to look at a crown and desire it for myself? Who was I to approach the Blessed Virgin, the Queen of Heaven? I was of less importance than the pigeons that found their way into the high reaches of the chancel. I would not eat for the whole of the next day. I would rise and go to bed with an empty belly. I would learn humility. And as my belly growled and my hand hurt, I learned, and not for the last time, that it was not in the nature of women to get what they desired.

“You are a bad child!” Sister Goda stated unequivocally.

I lay awake until the Abbey bell summoned us at two of the clock for Matins. I did not weep. I think I must have accepted her judgment on me. Or I was too young to understand its implications.

And my third memory?

Ah! Vanity! Sister Goda failed to beat it out of me. She eyed me dispassionately over some misdemeanor that I cannot now recall.

“What a trial you are to me, girl! And most probably a bastard, born out of holy wedlock. An ugly one at that. I see no redeeming features in you, even though you are undoubtedly a creature of God’s creation.”

So I was ugly and a bastard. At twelve years old, I wasn’t sure which was the worse of the two. Was I ugly? Forbidden as we were the ownership of a looking glass in the Abbey—such an item was far too venal and precious to be owned by a nun—which of the sisters had never peered into a bowl of still water to catch an image? Or sought a distorted reflection in one of the polished silver ewers used in the Abbey church? I did the same and saw what Sister Goda saw.

That night I looked into my basin of icy water before my candle was doused. The reflection shimmered, but it was enough. My hair, close-cut against my skull, to deter lice as much as vanity, was dark and coarse and straight. My eyes were as dark as sloes, like empty holes eaten in cloth by the moth. As for the rest: My cheeks were hollow, my nose prominent, my mouth large. Even accepting the rippling flaws in the reflection, I was no beauty. I was old enough and female enough to understand, and be hurt by the knowledge. Horrified by my heavy brows, black as smudges of charcoal, I dropped my candle in the water, obliterating the image.

Lonely in the dark of my cold, narrow cell, the walls pressing in on me in my solitary existence, I wept. The dark, and being alone, frightened me.

As for the rest of my young days, all merged into a gray lumpen pottage of misery and resentment, stirred and salted by Sister Goda’s admonitions.

“You were late again for Matins, Alice. Don’t think I didn’t see you slinking into the church like the sly child you are!” Yes, I was late.

“Alice, your veil is a disgrace in the sight of God. Have you dragged it across the floor?” No, I had not, but against every good intention my veil collected burrs and fingerprints and ash from the hearth.

“Why can you not remember the simplest of texts, Alice? Your mind is as empty as a beggar’s purse.” No, not empty, but engaged with something of more moment. Perhaps the soft fur of the Abbey cat as it curled against my feet in a patch of sunlight.

“Alice, you must walk with more elegance. Why do you persist in this ungodly slouch?” My growing limbs were ignorant of elegance.

“A vocation is given to us by God as a blessing,” Mother Sybil, our Abbess, admonished the sinners in her care from her seat of authority every morning in the Chapter House. “A vocation is a blessing that allows us to worship God through prayer, and through good works to the poor in our midst. We must honor our vocation and submit to the Rules of Saint Benedict, our most revered founder.”

Mother Abbess was quick with a scourge against those who did not submit. I remember its bite well. And that of her tongue. I felt the lash of both when, determined to be on my knees at Sister Goda’s side before the bell for Compline was silenced, I failed to shut away the Abbey’s red chickens against the predations of the fox. The result next morning for the hens was obvious and bloody. So was the skin on my back, in righteous punishment, Mother Abbess informed me as she wielded the scourge in the name of Saint Benedict. It did not seem to me to be fair that by observing one rule I had broken another. Unwise as I was in my youth, before I had learned the wisdom of concealing my thoughts, I said so. Mother Sybil’s arm rose and fell with even more weight.

I was set to collect up the poor ravaged bodies. Not that the flesh went to waste. The nuns ate chicken with their bread at noon the following day as they listened to the reading of the parable of the Good Samaritan. My plate saw nothing but bread, and that a day old. Why should I benefit from my sins?

A vocation? God most assuredly had not given me a vocation, if that meant to accept, obey, and be grateful for my lot in life. And yet I knew no other life; nor would I. When I reached my fifteenth year, so I was informed by Sister Goda, I would take my vows and, no longer a novice, be clothed as a nun, thus a seamless transition from one form of servitude to another. I would be a nun forever, until God called me to the heavenly comfort of His bosom—or to answer for my sins. Beginning in my fifteenth year I would not be permitted to speak, except for an hour after the noon meal, when I would be allowed to converse on serious matters. It seemed to me little better than perpetual silence.

Silent for the rest of my life, except for the singing of the offices.

Holy Mother save me! Was this all I could hope for? It was not my choice to take the veil. How could I bear it? It was beyond my understanding that any woman would choose this life enclosed behind walls, the windows shuttered, the doors locked. Why would any woman choose this degree of imprisonment rather than taste the freedom of life outside?

To my mind there was only one door that might open and offer me an escape.

“Who is my father?” I asked Sister Goda. If I had a father, surely he would not be deaf to my entreaties.

“God is your Father.” Sister Goda’s flat response discouraged me from pursuing the matter as she turned the page of a psalter. “Now if you will pay attention, my child, we have here a passage to study.…”

“But who is my father here—out there!” I gestured toward the window that allowed the noise of the town to encroach, its inhabitants gathering vociferously for market.

The novice mistress looked at me, faintly puzzled. “I don’t know, Alice, and that’s the truth.” She clicked her tongue against her teeth as she always did when short of an explanation. “They said that when you were brought here, there was a purse of gold coins.” She shook her head, her veil hanging as limp as a shroud around her seamed face. “But it’s not important. Now if we can…” She shuffled across the room to search in the depths of a coffer for some dusty manuscript.

But it was important! A purse of gold? Suddenly it was very important. I knew nothing other than that I was Alice. Alice—with no family, no dowry. Unlike more fortunate sisters, no one came to visit me at Easter or Christmas. No one brought me gifts. When I took the veil, there would be no one to hold a celebration for me to mark my elevation. Even my habit would be passed down to me from some dead nun who, if fate smiled on me, resembled me in height and girth; if not, my new garment would enclose me in a vast pavilion of cloth, or exhibit my ankles to the world.

Resentment bloomed in me at the enormity of it. Why? The question beat against my mind. Who is my father? What have I done to deserve to be so thoroughly abandoned? It hurt my heart.

“Who brought me here, Sister Goda?” I persisted.

“I don’t recall. How would I?” She was brusque. “You were left in the Abbey porch, I believe. Sister Agnes brought you in—but she’s been dead these last five years. As far as I know, there is no trace of your parentage. At that time it was not uncommon for unwanted infants to be abandoned at a church door, what with the plague.…Although it was always said that…”

“What was said?”

Sister Goda looked down at the old parchment. “Sister Agnes always said it was not what it seemed.…”

“What wasn’t?”

Sister Goda clapped her hands sharply, her gaze once more narrowing on my face. “Mother Abbess said that Sister Agnes was mistaken. She was very old and not always clear in her head. Mother Abbess says you’re most likely the child of some laborer—a maker of tiles—got on a whore of a tavern slut without the blessing of marriage. Now—enough of this! Set your mind on higher things. Let us repeat the paternoster in the very best Latin. No slurring of your consonants.”

So I was a bastard.

As I duly mouthed the words of the paternoster, my mind remained fixed on my parentage or lack of it, and what Sister Agnes might or might not have said about it. I was just one of many unwanted infants and should be grateful that I had not been left to die. But it did not quite ring true, did it? If I was the child of a tavern whore, my parents from the lowest of the common stock, why had I been taken in and given any teaching? Why was I not set to work as one of the conversa, the lay sisters, employed to undertake the heavy toil on the Abbey’s lands or in the kitchens and bake house? True, I was clothed in the most worn garments passed down from the sick and the dead. I was treated with no care or affection; yet I was taught to read and even to write, however poorly I attended to the lessons.

It was meant that I would become a nun. Not a lay sister.

“Sister Goda…” I tried again.

“I have nothing to tell you,” she snapped. “There is nothing to tell! You will learn this Latin text!” Sister Goda, crippled with painful limbs, used her cane across my knuckles but without any real force. Perhaps she had already decided I was a lost cause. “You will stay here until you do! Why do you resist? What else is there for you? Thank God on your knees every day that you are not forced to find your bread in the gutters of London. And by what means I can only guess!” There was no disguising the revulsion that filled her spare frame as she considered the lot of such women. Her voice fell to a harsh whisper. “Do you want to be a whore? A fallen woman?”

I lifted a shoulder in what was undoubtedly vulgar insolence. “I am not made to be a nun,” I stated with misguided courage.

“What choice do you have? Where would you go? Who would take you in?”

I had no answer. But as Sister Goda’s cane thwacked like a thunderclap on the wooden desk, indignation burned hot in my mind, firing the only thought that remained to me: If you do not help yourself, Alice, for certain no one else will.

Even then I had a sharp precocity. Product, no doubt, of a wily laborer who tumbled a sluttish tavern whore after a surfeit of sour ale.

An Event. An Occasion. A disturbance to ruffle the surface of our rigid, rule-bound days. A visitor—a high-blooded lady—came to stay at the Abbey. This was not out of the way, of course. We had frequent visitors to stay for one night or more, ladies of means who came to ease their souls through prayer, or to restore their peace of mind, retiring for a little while from the world. Or a flighty woman placed with us, so it was said, by a husband who was departing overseas and might not trust his wife to live discreetly, and alone, in his absence. Their sojourn with us was usually brief, making little impact on the ordering of our days other than to give us another mouth to feed and another bundle of laundry to wash.

Ah, but this visitor was different. We knew it the moment that her entourage—there could be no other word for it—rattled in fine style into the courtyard of Mother Abbess’s private accommodations. She was also expected. Was not the whole company of sisters marshaled to welcome her, Mother Abbess to the fore? And what a spectacle. A magnificent traveling litter swayed to a halt, marvelous with swags and gilded leather curtains and the softest of soft cushions, the whole pulled by a team of six gleaming horses. Minions and outriders filled the space. And so much luggage in an accompanying wagon to be unloaded. I had never seen such wealth in one place. A heraldic device stamped the curtains of the litter, but I did not then have the knowledge to recognize it. A frisson of excitement moved through our ranks, of overt curiosity, causing the edges of veils to flutter as if in a breeze. Eyes were no longer demurely downcast.

Jeweled fingers emerged; the curtains were twitched back in a grand gesture.

Well! Blessed Virgin!

The sight stopped my breath as a lady, aided by her tire-woman, stepped from her palanquin. There she stood, shaking out her silk damask skirts—a hint of deep patterned blue, of silver thread and luxuriant fur—and smoothing the folds of her mantle, the jewels on her fingers afire with a rainbow of light. She was not a young woman, but nor was she old, and she was breathtakingly beautiful. I could see nothing of her figure, shrouded as she was in the heavy cloak despite the warmth of the summer day, nor of her hair that was hidden beneath a crispinette and black veil, but I could see her face. It was a perfect oval of fair skin and striking features, and she was lovely. Her eyes, framed by the fine linen and undulating silk, were large and lustrous, the color of new beech leaves.

“My lady.” Mother Abbess glided forward, smooth as a skater over ice. “We are honored.”

We curtsied, a rustle of starched linen and woolen cloth, like a flock of dusty-feathered rooks. The lady nodded sharply, looking around her, and at us, without expression. Since her lips were pressed together into a line as thin as the ale we drank, I did not think she was pleased to be here. Her eyes might glow, but like the stars they held no warmth.

Mother Abbess folded her hands at her waist. “Will your stay with us be of long duration?”

“It is undecided.” The lady’s reply was short but uttered in the most melodious of voices. “I trust you have more than a cell to offer me in this place?”

Which proved my suspicions. She was not a willing guest. I watched in appreciation as the lady withdrew her attention from Mother Abbess—whose nose thinned and bosom swelled—and gave it all to the unpacking of her property. From one of the wagons bounded a trio of little dogs that yapped and capered around her skirts. A hawk on a traveling perch eyed us balefully. And an animal such as I had never seen, all bright eyes and poking fingers, the color of a horse chestnut, with a ruff around its face and a long tail, bounded from the litter. Complete with a gold collar and chain, it leapt and clung to the bodice of the lady’s servant, who submitted with resignation.

I could not look away. I was transfixed, entirely seduced by worldly glory, whilst the creature both charmed and repelled me in equal measure.

“I have rooms for you in my own accommodations,” Mother Abbess was explaining as the dogs sniffed around her skirts. “Anything we can do to make your stay one of solace and comfort at this sad time, my lady…”

Was she then a widow, with her dark veil and cloak? Had she perhaps come to us to spend some quiet time in prayer and contemplation to honor her dead husband? But here being unpacked were a lute and coffers that could only contain clothes. The lady clicked her fingers to hurry her servants along. She did not show evidence of mourning other than her outer garments; nor did she seem aware of the honor of being given rooms within the Abbess’s private lodging, out of bounds to all nuns except for Sister Matilda, Mother Abbess’s Chaplain. Who was this woman who traveled with such authority and self-consequence? Who had dared to show Mother Abbess so little respect?

Mother Abbess’s face continued to preserve a formidably glittering smile. “I will send refreshment to you, my lady.”

“Immediately, if you will.”

“We eat dinner at midday.…”

“I will eat in the privacy of my rooms.”

“Of course, my lady. And if you require anything…”

“Yes. I need a maidservant, a woman to undertake basic tasks for me. I need someone young and capable.” She fixed Mother Abbess with a stare that brooked no dissent.

“Indeed, my lady. I will send one of our conversa to you.…”

Without warning the exotic creature, held inexpertly by the tire-woman, squirmed and bit and escaped to dart through the nuns with harsh cries, snatching at skirts. The nuns flinched as one, their cries in counterpoint. The lapdogs barked and gave chase. And as the animal scurried past me, I knew!

Do it!

An opportunity. A twist of fate.

Do it!

Stooping smartly as the tormented creature skittered past, I snatched at the trailing end of its chain so that the animal came to a screaming, chattering halt at my feet, its sharp teeth very visible. I gave them no thought. Before it could struggle for release, I had lifted it into my arms. Light, fragile boned, its fur incredibly soft, it curled its fingers into my veil and held on.

I felt my face flush as a taut silence fell and all eyes turned on me. Should I have regretted my boldness? I did not. Not even when I discovered that the lady was perusing me as if I were a fat carp in the market. I tried a curtsy, unfortunately graceless, my arms full of shrieking fury.

“Well!” the lady remarked, her lips at last curved into the semblance of a smile, although her eyes remained sharply cool. “How enterprising of you.” And the smile widened into one of blinding charm, sparkling like ice on a puddle on a winter’s morn. “This girl…She’ll do.”

“My lady…!” remonstrated Mother Abbess, frowning at me. “One of our conversa would be far more…”

“I think not.” And, raising her hand in an imperious gesture as if the matter were decided, she said, “Come with me, girl. Keep hold of the Barbary.…”

And so I followed her, my mouth dry, belly churning with a strange mix of shock and excitement. I was to become a maidservant. To fetch and carry and perform menial tasks for a woman who had chosen me. For only a short time, it was true, but I had recognized a chance to be noticed. To be different. And I had seized it by the scruff of its gilded neck. But not for long. As soon as I had stepped into the rooms set aside for our guest, the creature squirmed from my hold and scampered up the embroidered hangings of the great bed, to worry at the damask with sharp teeth. I remained where I was, ignorant of my tasks for this ostentatious person who began to divest herself of her cloak and veil.

“Take these!” she ordered.

Holding out a pair of embroidered gauntlets, she dropped them to the floor, anticipating that I would retrieve them. Her veil and wimple followed in similar fashion, carelessly discarded with no thought for the expensive cloth. I scurried to obey. Thus I had my first lesson as a lady’s waiting woman.

I could not take my eyes from her.

At close quarters, her beauty was even more remarkable. Without the veil, her hair, neatly plaited and pinned over her ears, glowed a soft red-gold in the dim room, the same rich color of the pelt of the fox cub I had seen cast on the midden in the town. As for her skin, pale and translucent, it had a pearl-like hue, soft as the pearls on Mother Abbess’s rosary. Her features could not have been more perfect if she had been a revered statue of Our Lady. I simply stood in silence and admired. Ungainly, inept, unattractive as I knew myself to be, I was in awe of this beauty.

The lady let the cloak fall into my arms, and I stood holding the weight of sumptuous cloth, not knowing what else to do. She gave me no direction, and the sheer arrogance of her demeanor forbade me to ask.

“God’s Bones!” she remarked with casual blasphemy that impressed me. “Do I have to tolerate these drab accommodations? I wager it’s worse than a dungeon in the Tower.” She pointed to me to place the cloak on the bed. “It’s mean enough to make me repent!” Picking up a jewel casket, she opened it and trilled a laugh that was not entirely pleasant. “I suppose to you, girl, this is beyond luxury. I suppose you have never slept in a bed such as this—nor ever will.…”

“Yes, madam. No, madam. If it pleases you—how should I address you?”

The lady crowed and addressed her tire-woman, who smirked knowingly.

“She does not know who I am! But then, why should a novice in this backwater of a nunnery know me? But by God! She will within a twelvemonth; I swear it! The whole country will know of me!” The viciousness of the tone was incongruous, stridently at odds with her beauty. “You will call me ‘my lady,’” she said as she tossed the box onto the bed and approached me to finger my veil with obvious distaste, pulling its folds into some sort of order. “I am Joan, Countess of Kent. For now, at least. Soon I will be wife to Prince Edward. The future King of England.”

I knew nothing of her. What I did know was that I had been chosen. She had chosen me to serve her. I think pride touched my heart.

Mistakenly, as it turned out.

I became a willing slave to Countess Joan. The Fair Maid of Kent whose grace and beauty were, she informed me, a matter for renown throughout the land. When she needed me, she rang a little silver bell that had a remarkable carrying quality. It rang with great frequency. The Countess’s tire-woman, Lady Marian, a distant and impecunious cousin of Fair Joan, seemed to find every excuse to be absent when the need arose.

“Take this gown and brush the hem—so much dust. And treat it with care.”

I brushed. I was very careful.

“Fetch lavender—you do have lavender in your herb garden, I presume? Find some for my furs. I’ll not wear them again for some months.…”

I ravaged Sister Margery’s herb patch for lavender, risking the sharp edge of the Infirmarian’s tongue.

“Take that infernal monkey”—for so I learned it to be—“outside. Its chatter makes my head ache. And water. I need a basin of water. Hot water—not cold like last time. And when you’ve done that, bring me ink. And a pen.”

My reply to everything: “Yes, my lady.”

Countess Joan was an exacting mistress. If she was in mourning for her dead husband—he had been dead a mere few weeks, she informed me—I saw no evidence of it: Her attendance at the offices of the day was shockingly infrequent. But I never minded the summons of her bell. A window into the exhilarating world of the royal Court had been unlatched and flung wide for me to see and wonder at. How would I not enjoy the attention she gave me, even though she never addressed me except to issue orders? She called me “girl” when she called me anything at all, but I was not dismayed. If I made myself indispensible to her, what further doors might she not unlock…?

“Comb out my hair,” she ordered me.

So I did, loosening the plaited ropes of red-gold to free them of tangles with an ivory comb that I wished were mine.

“Careful, girl!” She struck out, catching my hand with her nails, hard enough to draw blood. “My head aches even without your clumsy efforts!”

Countess Joan’s head frequently ached. I learned to move smartly out of range, but as often as she repelled me she lured me back with one astonishing revelation after another. And the most awe-inspiring to my naive gaze?

The Countess Joan bathed!

It was a ceremony. Lady Marian folded a freshly laundered chemise over her arm; I held a towel of coarse linen. And Countess Joan? She stripped off all her clothes without modesty. For a moment, embarrassed shock crept over my skin, as if I too were unclothed. I had had no exposure to nakedness. No nun removed her undershift—it was one of the first lessons taught to me. A nun slept in her chemise, washed beneath it with a cloth and a bowl of water, would die in it. Nakedness was a sin in the eyes of God. Countess Joan had no such inhibitions. Gloriously naked, she stepped into her tub of scented water, while I simply gaped as I waited to hand her the linen when her washing was complete.

“Now what’s wrong, girl?” she asked with obvious amusement at my expense. “Have you never seen a woman in the flesh before? No, I don’t suppose you have, living with these old crones.” She laughed aloud, an appealing sound that made me want to smile, until I read the lines of malice in her face. “You’ll not have seen a man either, I wager.” She yawned prettily in the heat, stretching her arms so that her breasts rose above the surface of the scented water. “Both my husbands were good to look at in the flesh, were they not, Marian?”

“You have been married twice, my lady?” Aghast at my impudence, still I asked.

“I have. And at the same time!” She glanced up at me, intent on mischief. “What do you think of that?”

“That it is a sin!” I replied, unforgivably outspoken.

Her finely carved nostrils narrowed on an intake of breath. “Do you judge me, then?”

“No, my lady. How should I?”

“How indeed. You know nothing about it.” Her voice had become brittle. “But many do. And I’ll not tolerate their interference.…”

“My lady…” Marian admonished.

“I know, I know.” The Countess’s prettiness vanished beneath a grimace. “I should not speak of it. And I will not. Wash my hair for me, girl.”

I did, of course.

Wrapped in a chamber robe with her damp hair loose over her shoulders, Countess Joan delved into one of her coffers, removed a looking glass, and stepped to the light from the window to inspect her features. She smiled at what she saw. Why would she not? I simply stared at the object, with its silver frame and gleaming surface, until the Countess looked up, haughty, sensing my gaze.

“What is it? What are you looking at?”

I shook my head.

“I have no more need of you for now.” She cast the shining object onto the bed. “Come back after Compline.” But my fingers itched to touch it.…

“Your looking glass, my lady…”

“Well?”

“May I look?” I asked.

Her brows rose in perfect arcs. “If you wish.”

I took it from where it lay—and looked. A reflection that was more honest than anything I had seen in my water bowl looked back at me. Then without a word—for I could not find any to utter—I gently placed the glass facedown on the bed.

“Do you like your countenance?” Countess Joan inquired, enjoying my discomfort.

“No!” I managed through dry lips. My image in the water was no less than truth, and here it was proved beyond doubt. The dark, depthless eyes, like night water under a moonless sky. Even darker brows, so well marked as if drawn in ink by a clumsy hand. The strong jaw. The dominant nose and wide mouth. All so…so forceful! It was a blessing that my hair was covered. I was a grub, a worm, nothing compared with this red-gold, pale-skinned beauty who smiled at her empty victory over me.

I was ugly.

“What did you expect?” the Countess asked.

“I don’t know,” I managed.

“You expected to see some semblance of attraction that might make a man turn his head, didn’t you? Of course you did. What woman doesn’t? Much can be forgiven a woman who is beautiful. But an ill-favored one? Such is not to be tolerated.”

How cruel an indictment, stated without passion, without any thought for my feelings. And in that precise moment, when she tilted her chin in evident satisfaction, I saw the truth in her face. She was of a mind to be deliberately cruel.

“What a malformed little creature you are! I wonder why I bother to indulge you?”

Thus was the Countess doubly spiteful, rubbing salt in my wounds with callous indifference. As my heart fell with the weight of the evidence against me, I knew beyond doubt why she had chosen me—chosen me before all others—to wait on her. I had had no part in the choosing. It had nothing to do with the antics of her perverse monkey, or my own foolish attempt to catch her attention, or my labors to be a good maidservant. She had chosen me because I was ugly, while in stark contrast, this educated, sophisticated, highly polished Court beauty would shine like a warning beacon lit for all to wonder at on a hilltop. I was the perfect foil: too unlovely, too gauche, too ignorant to pose any threat to the splendor that was Joan of Kent.

“Leave me!” she ordered in a sudden blast of ill humor. “I find you repellent!”

I might have fled in a burst of emotional tears, but I did not. At least she had noticed me!

What did I think of this woman who stepped so heedlessly into my life and left so lasting an impression? Sometimes I despised her, for her beautiful face masked a heart of stone. And yet I found myself admiring her ambition, her determination to get her own way. Sometimes she was in the mood to talk, not caring what she said.

“I’m here only to curry favor!” she announced, glaring through her window at the enclosing walls of the Abbey, half-shrouded in a relentless downpour of rain.

“Whose favor do you need, my lady?” I asked, because it was expected of me.

“The King. The Queen,” she snapped. “They don’t want it—they’ll put obstacles in my way—but I’ll have him yet! The Prince, dolt!” She flung up her hands in exasperation, causing the monkey to cower. “It’s time he was wed and got himself an heir. Am I not fertile? Do you know how many children I have carried? Of course you don’t. Five. Three sons, two daughters. I can give the Prince heirs. The King wants his precious son to marry a rich heiress from the Low Countries. The Queen doesn’t approve of me. We’ll need a papal dispensation, since we are second cousins—but that should not be impossible if enough gold exchanges hands.”

“Why would the Queen disapprove?” I asked. I had no finesse in those days. “Is not your husband dead, my lady?”

Her mouth shut like a trap and she would say no more except: “I’ll get my own way; you’ll see. I’ll be a princess yet.”

How could I not be fascinated? And yes, I coveted her possessions. A package was delivered to her from London.

“Open it,” she ordered.

I unrolled the leather to find a set of jeweled buttons clustered in the palms of my hands. A fire in each heart: sapphires set in gold.

“Don’t touch them.” Impossibly wayward, she snatched them from me. “Do you know what they cost me? More than two hundred pounds. They’re not for such as you!”

I think, weighing the good against the bad, I truly detested her.

“I am leaving,” the Countess announced after three weeks. The most exciting, the most exhilarating three weeks of my life.

“Yes, my lady.” I had already seen the preparations—the litter had returned, the escort at this very moment cluttering up the courtyard—and I was sorry.

“God’s Wounds! I’ll be glad to rid myself of these stultifying walls. I could die here and no one would be any the wiser!”

I knew that too.

“You have been useful to me.” The Countess sat in the high-backed chair in her bedchamber, her feet neatly together in gilded leather shoes on a little stool, while the business of repacking her accoutrements went on around her.

“Yes, my lady.”

“I daresay you’ve learned something, other than your usual diet of prayer and confession.”

“Yes, my lady,” I replied quite seriously. “I have learned to curtsy.” She insisted on it every time I entered the room. “And to mend your pens.”

She took me by surprise, and I was not fast enough. Leaning forward, Countess Joan suddenly struck out with careless, casual violence, for no reason that I could see other than savage temper, bringing her hand to my cheek with an echoing slap. I staggered, catching my breath and my balance.

“Don’t be impertinent, girl!”

“But I was not.…”

Nor was I. Countess Joan spent an inordinate length of time in correspondence, and I had learned to mend a quill with great skill. The communication intrigued me—letters sent off every week to names I did not know. To courtiers, for the most part. Once to King Edward himself. More than one to Queen Philippa. And to the Prince—enough letters to keep the Abbey courier in work traveling back and forth to Westminster, and Sister Matilda’s tongue clicking at the expense. I could do little more than write a series of crabbed marks, but Joan’s hand moved over the parchment with speed and accuracy. She had a talent for it and saw a need to keep in touch with the world she had withdrawn from, weaving a web of intricate connections to tie those she knew to her will. Now, that I did admire, both her unexpected skill and the use she made of it.

As if she had not struck me, the Countess rose to her feet. “I suppose I should reward you. Take this. You’ll find more use for it than I.”

I accepted the illuminated Book of Hours, astounded at the generosity, except that it was given with no spirit of gratitude. The giving of the gift meant nothing to her. She did not want it, she had done with this place, and she would forget us as soon as her palanquin passed between the stone posts of the Abbey gatehouse.

“Take this box and carry the Barbary.” The animal was pushed into my arms. “I’ll be at Windsor tomorrow and then we’ll see.…”

So this was to be the end of it—but there was one piece of knowledge I wanted from her. I had thought of this long and hard. If I did not ask now…

“My lady…”

“I haven’t time.” She was already walking through the doorway.

“What gives a woman…” I thought about the word I wanted. “What gives a woman power?” The word did not express exactly what I wanted to know—but it was the best I could do.

She stopped, turned slowly, laughing softly, but her face was writ with a mockery so vivid that I flushed at my temerity.

“Alice. It is Alice, isn’t it?” she asked. It was the first time she had addressed me by my name. “Power? What would a creature such as you know of true power? What would you do with it, even if it came to you?” The disdain for my naïveté was cruel in its sleek elegance.

“I mean…the power to determine my own path in life.”

“So! Is that what you seek?” She allowed me a complacent little smile. And I saw that beneath her carelessness ran a far deeper emotion. She actually despised me, as perhaps she despised all creatures of low birth. “You’ll not get power, my dear. That is, if you mean rank. Unless you can rise above your station and become Abbess of this place.” Her voice purred in derision. “You’ll not do it.”

Resentment flared in me at the ridicule, but I hid it well. “Still, I would know.”

“Then I’ll give you an answer. Since you have no breeding—beauty, then. But your looks will get you nowhere. There is only one way.” Her smile vanished and I thought she gave my question some weight of consideration. “Knowledge.”

“How can knowledge be power?”

“It can. It can if what you know is of importance to someone else.”

“But what would I learn in a convent that is of value to anyone?”

“I’ve no idea. How would I?” Her arch stare was pitying. “But beggars, my dear, cannot choose.”

And in her eyes I was most assuredly a beggar. What could I learn at the Abbey? The thin cloth of my learning was spread before me, meager in its extent and depth. To read. To dig roots in the garden. To make simples in the Infirmary. To polish the silver vessels in the Abbey church.

“What would I do with such knowledge?” I asked in despair, as if I had listed my meager accomplishments aloud. How I loathed her in that moment of self-knowledge.

“How would I know that? But I would say this: It is important for a woman to have the duplicity to make good use of whatever gifts she might have, however valueless they might seem. Do you have that?”

Duplicity? Did I possess it? I had no idea. I shook my head.

“Guile! Cunning! Scheming!” she snapped, as if my ignorance were an affront. “Do you understand?” The Countess retraced her steps to murmur in my ear as if it were a kindness. “You have to have the inner strength to pursue your goal, and not care how many enemies you make along the road. It is not easy. I have made enemies all my life, but on the day I wed the Prince they will be as chaff before the wind. I will laugh in their faces and care not what they say of me. Would you be willing to do that? I doubt it.” The mockery of concern came swiftly to an end. “Set your mind to it, girl. All you have before you is your life in this cold tomb, until the day they clothe you in your death habit and sew you into your shroud.”

“No!” The terrible image drove me to cry out as if I had been pricked on the arm with one of Countess Joan’s well-sharpened pens. “Take me with you!” I pleaded. “I have served you well. I would serve you again, at Court.” I almost snatched at her gold-embroidered sleeve.

“I think not.” She did not even bother to look at me.

“But I would escape from here.” I had never said it aloud before, never put it into words. How despairing it sounded. How hopeless, but in that moment I was overwhelmed by the enormity of all that I lacked, and all that I might become if I could only encompass it.

“Escape? And how would you live?” An echo of Sister Goda’s words that were like a knife against my heart. “Without resources you would need a husband. Unless you would be a whore. A chancy life, short and brutish. Not one I would recommend. Better to be a nun.” She strode from the room, out into the courtyard, where she settled herself in her litter, and as I reached to deposit the monkey on the cushions and close the curtains, my services for her complete, I heard her final condemnation. “You’ll never be anything of value in life. So turn your mind from it.” Then with a glinting smile she clicked her fingers at her tire-woman. “Give her the Barbary, Marian. I expect it will give her some distraction—and I begin to find it a nuisance.…”

And the creature was thrust out of the litter, back into my arms.

Indignation rose hot and slick in my throat. I considered mimicking the gesture I had seen the louts in the town employ when challenged by their elders and betters, graphic and disgracefully expressive in its lewdness, and would have done so if Sister Goda’s eye had not fallen on me. As it was, I curtsied in a fine parody of deference, clutching the monkey—that scrabbled and fussed with no notion of its abandonment—to my flat chest.

Thus in a cloud of dust Countess Joan was gone with her dogs and hawk and all her unsettling influences. It was as if she had never set her pretty feet on the cold convent paving for even an hour, much less three weeks. It was like the end of a dream with the coming of day, when the light shatters the bright pictures. Fair Joan was gone to snare her prince at Westminster and I would never meet her again.

I would soon forget her. She meant as little to me as I to her.

But I did not forget! Countess Joan had applied a flame to my imagination. When it burned so fiercely that it was almost a physical hurt, I wished with all my heart I could quench it, but the fire never left me, and still it smolders, even today, when I have achieved more than I could ever have dreamed of. The venal hand of ambition had fallen on me, grasping my shoulder with a death grip of lethal strength, and refused to release me.

I am worth more than this, I determined as I knelt with the sisters at Compline. I will be of value! I will make something of my life!

I lost the Book of Hours, of course. Its value was far too great for such a creature as I was. It was taken from me. As for the monkey, Mother Abbess ordered it to be taken to the Infirmary and locked in a cellar. I never saw it again.

Considering its propensity to bite, I was not sorry.