The King's Mistress (47 page)

But nothing happened, and after a few months I began to breathe more freely. Edward and I grew ever closer, despite the waning of our lovemaking. At last he appeared to understand that I loved being with him, no matter what we were doing.

On fair days I would wake him at dawn for hawking or riding—hot spiced wine or a thick ale at the ready, to tempt him from bed. In his fur-lined robe, fur-lined boots, and hat, he would soon warm with the walk to the stables or mews. Our horses and birds were our most trusted friends. We both felt free when riding, our laughter ringing out as we shouted challenges to each other. With our falcons on our arms we enjoyed companionable silences, heads moving in unison to watch our soaring birds, the bells on their jesses a comfortably familiar music. Afterward we often slept awhile or lingered over a light meal, reminiscing about past adventures. These were our happiest times.

Edward often asked to hear of my day-to-day activities when away from him, imagining another life through hearing of my property management, the children, the comings and goings of London
merchants—a life free from the cares of ruling a realm. I understood that he cherished me in part because I brought him news from elsewhere, a life he could never experience.

We slept together more regularly than when our love had been more passionate. Even on the nights when he did not wish to make love to me, he insisted that I lie with him, naked and perfumed.

“I need you more than ever, my love. I need to wake to your scent, to feel your warmth beside me.”

His need both reassured and worried me. And as trouble darkened his mood, I had the old sense of silken bonds tightening about me.

T
HE ENSUING
few years proved to be a most difficult time for the king, a period of great loss and of grieving. My role was to be his shelter from the storm.

The first family disaster involved Prince Edward, who made an ill-advised promise to support Pedro of Castile in his battle against his half brother Enrique of Trastámara for the crown of Castile. Although Prince Edward won the battle of Najera, the men of Aquitaine who had fought for him could not be paid, for it turned out that Pedro could not hope to raise the sum he owed. Worse, illness swept through the camp, and many died; Prince Edward contracted the illness, and while still very ill was carried by litter in the company of his surviving troops back over the Pyrenees.

The effect that this had on my Edward frightened me. He was furious with the prince, but also in anguish over reports of his heir’s weakened condition and the growing alienation of the Gascon lords. Queen Philippa’s usual calming influence did little to soothe him.

I tried to understand the significance. “How does this increase the threat from France?” I asked one evening, when instead of eating his supper he was pacing the chamber bemoaning the situation.

“The prince has bled his subjects in the Aquitaine to pay for this war, but the expected replenishment from Pedro is not forthcoming. Now King Charles can bribe them to his service, leaving my ailing son, Joan, and their young sons betrayed and defenseless. I cannot leave them there … and yet to call them home will be to give up the Aquitaine, and thus my foothold in France. My son has ruined me! He chose to play the hero when as a ruler he should have been prudent and wise.”

Duke John returned with descriptions of his brother’s frailty that
sent me to the chapel to pray for Prince Edward, Joan, and their sons, Edward and Richard.

My elderly, ailing love began to talk of leading an army into France to reclaim the Aquitaine. I prayed that something might happen to distract him. I listened, I comforted, I prayed. Perhaps I was too successful as his confidante and shield, for Edward insisted on my presence more than seemed wise to me, demanding that I be present at official meetings with his barons or when he presided in the courts. I felt I did not belong in such places. Indeed, Geoffrey reported that I was ever more on the gossips’ tongues, not only at court but elsewhere.

For a little while Edward’s spirits were revived by the prospect of the coming marriage of his son Lionel, Duke of Clarence, to Violante Visconti, the fabulously wealthy and reportedly beautiful daughter of Galeazzo Visconti, Lord of Pavia. They were to be wed in Milan.

But within a year Edward was in mourning for both Blanche of Lancaster, his beloved daughter-in-law, and his son Lionel, both of them succumbing to illnesses in their prime.

“Are we cursed?” Edward would often rise with that question on his lips in the middle of the night. I would comfort him, pouring him wine, rubbing his temples. Sometimes we made love. Sometimes he found comfort in just holding me.

Once, in one of his darkest moments, he asked me how William Wyndsor made love to me. Asked it bitterly, as if he had been suffering while imagining it.

“He has never made love to me, Edward. I would not have him.”

“Not that day in the storm?”

My breath caught in my throat. “No. He had caressed me and expressed his desire, but I refused him. That is what happened.”

It was the only time Edward had mentioned that day more than a year past, and it chilled me. Not that he had heard of the incident, but that he had nursed the knowledge deep within where it had festered until it burst from him in a moment of great pain.

“Who told you about that day?” I asked. “Richard Stury? Or William’s lord, your son John?”

Edward would not say. He took me roughly that night, as if taking his vengeance by forcing his seed into me. It was not an act of love. I could not sleep afterward, sick with the bestiality of the act. When Edward woke from a slumber later in the night, he said, “John told me.
He warned me to keep William away from you. And I will, Alice, I will. He shall not have you.”

“You do not need to be rough to claim me, my lord.”

“My love, forgive me.” He reached for me, but I moved away. “I love you beyond all reason, Alice,” he said. “I was jealous. Jealous and afraid that you yearned for a younger man. My love, let me make this up to you. I swear to you that I will never touch you in such wise again. Only lovingly. Only lovingly.”

I curled up in his arms and wept bounteous tears—for my shame, for my fear, for the twilight days of our love, for the sad truths revealed in his apology.

A few months later I knew I was again with child. I prayed for a daughter. John was now three, and Edward often talked of placing him in one of the Percy households. I prayed for a daughter, who might not be taken away from me.

But even with the joy of being with child, I was frightened. As his sorrows pulled Edward down into grief he grew less decisive, more open to the influence of others. Many openly resented me. Geoffrey told me of rumors that I influenced the king in judgments about my friends, that I dipped into his coffers to buy and lease my property. Until now I had been confident that if Edward tired of me, I could retreat with my children to my properties without much ado. But now I saw how vulnerable I was, realizing that my enemies might hate me enough to wish to ruin me rather than allow me simply to disappear. I had no power, not even a man to stand behind me if Edward should send me away, or, even worse, when he died. And my fear of John of Gaunt grew—I could not fathom what game he played, pushing William Wyndsor at me, then telling Edward. Was he trying to undermine his father’s faith in me? I would fight him.

I loved Edward, wanted no one else, but I needed a champion. Yet having loved such men as Janyn and Edward, I could not imagine marrying someone simply for security, not after having tasted the exquisite joy of love.

William Wykeham continued to be one of my most trusted friends. He had risen from the post of Edward’s secretary to become Bishop of Winchester and Lord Chancellor of England. I believed he was the person Edward most trusted and so sought his advice in all matters regarding the king, barring those too intimate to discuss. He agreed
that I must protect my wealth in preparation for the day when either the king died or I lost favor.

“Never believe that you stand on solid ground at court, Alice. We are all at the edge of quicksand.”

Even he, exalted to the position of Lord Chancellor, knew that his fortune could change at any moment, upon the king’s whim. He believed that it was in my son John’s best interest that he be fostered by the Percys. They were the most powerful family in the north of England, crucial to Edward for their protection of the northern marches, particularly against the Scots. John would enjoy the added protection of a bond with such a powerful clan.

“And for your daughter Isabella, a minor knight for a husband or a respectable nunnery. Either should be possible.”

But what of a bastard daughter of the king or a second son? I did not tell Wykeham of the life quickening within me as we spoke.

Fear became my constant companion as I suffered a difficult pregnancy. Queen Philippa lay ill at Windsor and I prayed night and day that she would recover. I yearned to go to her, to cheer her with pretty baubles and shimmering cloth, to coax her back to health. But I was in my seventh month and would not flaunt my swelling womb in front of her—nor could I comfortably or safely travel. Edward did not ease my mind, threatening to take ship to Bordeaux and personally lead an army against King Charles of France.

I could not sleep for worry that the aging couple who held my life in their hands were slipping away from me. I obsessed over my fate if Edward should die in Gascony, or if Philippa should die and Edward remarry. Now it was I being comforted by the king, who knew only that I was beset by nightmares.

And then, even with his loving concern, I lost the child. A little son, stillborn a month before his time. Edward and I were both diminished in spirit by the loss. He held me and comforted me. He sent for my sister and my children. In this he knew me well, for all three served to remind me that I had much for which to be grateful.

“We shall have other children, my love,” Edward whispered to me in the dark of the night.

He spoke no more of a French campaign in my presence.

O
NE WARM
but overcast day in July, Edward, Mary, and I were in the stables watching the antics of Bella and John with a litter of
puppies. Mary and Edward hoped that it would cheer me. But though I loved my children, I saw in the puppies the promise of new life that I had been denied. It is a most terrible pain, losing a child one has grown to cherish in the womb.

Shouts in the yard drew our attention. Edward groaned as a messenger in the queen’s livery approached, breathless and sweaty.

Despite his obvious exhaustion, the man dropped to one knee to deliver his message.

“Your Grace, you are summoned to Windsor with all haste.” Queen Philippa lay mortally ill, and the physicians believed she had little time remaining.

Edward had clutched my hand as he listened to the messenger. Richard Stury, who had come rushing out of the palace upon the messenger’s arrival, offered to assist him into the house and then make the preparations. Edward’s ashen face and hollow eyes frightened me almost as much as the viselike grip that locked me to his side. I had never seen him so. I saw in this terror of his wife’s imminent death that he loved her as deeply and completely as I had loved Janyn.

“My love, I shall come with you,” I proclaimed.

He shook his head. “No. You are still unwell, Alice. I would not have you risk a journey so soon. You will be everything to me when Philippa …” He let go my hand and took me into his arms. “I must know that you are here waiting for me, safe and well.”

It was true that I ailed in heart and body and soul, but I regretted that I could not be with the queen in her last days. I mourned for her almost as deeply as for my child. I had learned much about dignity and graciousness in her service. She had also instilled in me self-respect for my own talents. And I had loved her. As soon as Edward departed for Windsor, I withdrew to Fair Meadow and gave myself up to prayer for Philippa, that her passing might be peaceful and her eternal salvation be assured. She had been in pain for so many years, I imagined she was ready to die but for her concern for her husband and her children. Bella joined me in prayer.

As Edward later told me, when he arrived Philippa was anxious that he grant her three requests—that he pay all her debts, which were considerable; that he fulfill all her bequests and gifts to churches and all who had been in her service; and that he be buried beside her at Westminster, that he let no one coerce him into a burial elsewhere. He wept and promised her all that she asked.

He and his son Thomas of Woodstock were with her when she drew her last breath on the fifteenth of August, the Feast of the Assumption, in the forty-second year of Edward’s reign.

Requiescat in pace
, noble and beloved Queen.

T
HE QUEEN’S
death frightened me. She had given her blessing to my liaison with her husband. If the king were now urged to remarry, I could not hope for such a sanguine arrangement with a new bride.

I wept for Edward, I wept for the realm in losing such a gracious queen, I wept for myself and the uncertainty I now faced.
Deus juva me
.