The King's Mistress (17 page)

“Forgive me,” I said to her. “I am new to this.”

The falconer showed me how to loosen the jesses for the hunt. I had hardly completed the task when Dido took off after a bird. I remember it as a crane, but the prey does not matter. What mattered was the beauty of my merlin’s flight, her fierce attack and, the best part of all, her return to my glove when I tapped it as the falconer had shown me, dangling a gobbet of meat from my gloved fingers as a lure.

Both Janyn and Isabella nodded their approval. That, too, warmed my heart.

• • •

W
E SPENT
a quiet evening in the hall, everyone pleasantly tired, and withdrew early to bed. As it was warm, the glazed windows in the house stood open, and in the quiet hours I was awakened by voices in the garden below. I thought I recognized them as Isabella’s and Lady Jane’s. When I began to rise to attend them, Janyn held me back.

“Her women will see to her, Alice. She is often restless at night. Let her be.” His tone was stern though his voice was hoarse with sleep.

I lay back on the cushions, though I was now wide awake. “Do you think that she knew her lover had ordered her husband murdered? Do you think that is why she wakes in the night?”

“We do not speak of that, my love.”

I raised myself up on one arm and touched his shoulder. “But we are so bound to her. Is it not natural to want the truth about someone we serve?”

“She is generous with our family, Alice. Why should we question her?”

“Are you so worried about losing her custom?”

Janyn sat up, brushing his hair from his forehead and rubbing his eyes. “God’s blood, Alice, leave that to the past. She is the daughter, sister, widow, and mother of kings and we are common folk. Though we might wish to know the truth about what happened to our former king, and though we might rightly feel it is in the interest of our own safety to know more clearly the woman who so favors us, we must let it be. It is too dangerous to challenge the king’s family. There is far more at stake than the loss of some trade.” He tousled my hair. “I would have thought you would be happily dreaming of merlins and beautiful hunters.”

“I was.” I tried to calm myself, but it was no use. “Why does she so favor us, Janyn? Godmother to our child, the bird, the horse, her assistance in convincing my parents to allow us to wed. What are we giving her in return? It must be more than your services as a trader.”

To my surprise, he began to laugh. “I do not know how I thought to quiet you on this. For all the reasons I love you and value your counsel I should have expected your impatience with mystery.”

“You do know more than you’ve told me.”

He turned up the wick on the oil lamp, allowing more light. “Is there any wine left in the mazer beside you?”

I lifted it from the shelf beside me and passed it to him. He seemed intent on draining it.

“You’ll be too drowsy to talk,” I teased.

He lowered the mazer, but did not hand it back.

“The Lady Isabella led a successful revolt. She had gathered a formidable force, a huge force, and most of them were the king’s subjects. When her own son seized her lover, the commander of her troops, she feared for others among her supporters who might also be taken. Some of those men escaped to the Continent. A few important ones settled near my mother’s birthplace. Isabella writes to them, and they write to her. My mother’s family are her couriers.”

“You?”

He nodded. “At present I am the most active from here.”

I crossed myself. “But that was so long ago. Thirty years. How many are still alive? Why would they yet fear the king?”

“Many yet live. As to why they have not returned, I do not ask.” His voice had grown tense. “I am merely a courier. And the queen mother is very grateful for our service, and especially our discretion. Now, let us sleep.” He lay down with a weary sigh, his back to me.

“Thank you for confiding in me, my love,” I whispered as I snuggled against him.

But sleep would not come for me. If the soldiers stayed in Italy out of fear of the king’s wrath, or of others who had supported Isabella’s husband, Janyn took a terrible risk in playing courier between those men and Isabella. No wonder we were so favored, and so secretive. I shivered as I prayed that when she died we might be released from this burden and live peacefully.

I
SABELLA ROSE
early the following morning and asked to see her namesake once more. As she bent over my Bella, remarking on her beauty and gentle demeanor, I was a proud and happy mother. But as the dowager queen lingered, poised above my beloved baby, her gorgeous dark clothing glittering in the morning light, I had a passing unease, a moment in which I saw her as a figure of Death.

I was much relieved when her party rode out of the yard.

O
N OUR
return to London, Janyn informed me that he had acquired property in Oxford in my name “to provide you a comfortable income in rents should anything happen to my fortune.”

“Are you in danger, my love?” I could not think why else he would couch it in such words.

“Each day we wake to uncertainty, Alice. I can no more predict how long I shall live, or whether I shall remain in favor with the queen
mother and my guild, than I can predict when you shall bear another child and what sex it will be.”

An incident shortly suggested what Janyn had to fear. I noted it because suddenly a tutor appeared who was to improve my French and Latin speaking, reading, and writing.

“Have I displeased you?” I asked. Who would not?

Janyn assured me that he meant my education as a gift that would support me through life, the most precious gift he could think to give.

It was as I sat with the tutor one morning in the hall that Dame Tommasa hurried in, her beautiful eyes wide with alarm and fear. She took Janyn by the arm and drew him off to a quiet room. In a little while my mother-in-law departed, without having said a word to me. Never before had she ignored me. Janyn looked grave as we supped, but said nothing. Even in bed that night he would not say what had so upset his mother.

“It is worse for me not to know,” I said, kissing his neck and shoulders, “for my imagination conjures terrifying things when I worry.”

“Later, my love. I would rather not talk of it until I know what truly happened.”

I had wild dreams that night—floods, imprisonments, fires, my sweet Bella burning with fever, Janyn injured by a runaway cart in a narrow street.

My younger brother and sister came with Nan the following morning, and at midday my brother John joined us for a festive meal. Janyn had left early on business. Now I learned that two of our acquaintances among the Lombard traders claimed they had been attacked by a group of mercers the previous day, and that accusations were flying between the Society of Lucca and members of the mercers’ guild.

“Were they badly hurt?” I asked.

“Do you know them?” John asked, looking ill at ease.

“They have been guests in our home,” I said, “though I do not know them well.”

“Dangerous friends,” he said.

“Are they?” Nan asked. “I heard that the attack was unprovoked. Why would a group of mercers attack a group of merchants who had done nothing to them? The mercers broke the king’s peace—does he not hold the Lombards in his protection?”

“The king’s protection makes the Lombards bold. Many of them are smugglers on such a scale as a London merchant would never attempt,” said John.

I could not argue with that, for it was true of some of them, and though I might correct John on the
many
, I chose not to, for I did not wish to silence him. I wondered whether the society was connected to Isabella’s men who hid in Italy.

“The two Lombards have made loans to the king,” I said. “They all have. That is why he protects them.”

“If they enjoy the king’s favor, what could the London mercers hope to gain by allowing these attacks? That is what I wonder,” said Nan. “Master Martin said that the guild has done nothing to punish the men accused.”

“They do not know who took part in the attack,” said John.

I could see by Nan’s expression that she had heard otherwise. This was nothing I wished to know, balancing as I was on the fence between the factions.

After my family departed I was overwhelmed with a sense of divided loyalties. Janyn and Bella and all I held so dear were threatened by an ugliness we could hardly escape. I went to church and confided in Dom Hanneye about my fear that Janyn’s sudden rush to educate me had something to do with the growing enmity between the London guilds and the Lombards, and that we might find ourselves alienated from the guilds. He tried to reassure me with the news that some mercers had gone to the mayor in support of the victims.

“It is not as simple as the Londoners against the Lombards,” he said. “I suggest that you set aside your worry and accept with love and gratitude your husband’s gifts of knowledge. Seize the opportunity he is giving you. Few women—indeed, few men—are granted such riches. I do not mean to deny the enmity between foreigners and London merchants, Dame Alice, but your family is respected in this community, and your husband and his father are Londoners by birth and guildsmen—they are not the enemy.”

I was grateful for his advice. That evening Janyn told me of the attack and I was able to respond with a calm maturity that I could see relieved him. He told me little that I did not already know, but it was significant that he told me as soon as he felt he had all the facts. I took it as his being forthright with me. I was not yet at ease, but immensely comforted by his candor.

• • •

A
FEW EVENINGS
later Janyn joined me in the hall while I was working on some embroidery in the fading light.

“You should rest,” he said, squeezing my shoulder. “You have much to do in the next few days.”

“Nothing out of the ordinary.”

He chuckled. “Indeed? Is it every day we are invited to a hunt at Hertford Castle, where the queen mother is in residence?”

I dropped my work. “We? Invited to the Lady Isabella’s palace? To hunt?” With each question my voice rose in excitement.

“Is that delight or dismay?”

I was to travel with my love. I rose to throw my arms around Janyn, kissing him on the neck, on each cheek, and then on the mouth, a much longer kiss.

“Ah, delight,” he said, his eyes merry. “You are so beautiful, my Alice. You bring me such joy.”

• 1357 •

E
VEN SO
long after the event I recall my excitement as we departed for Hertford Castle. We had been married for a year, one filled with many new experiences for me, but this would be my
first visit to a royal household. I was to meet the king! The previous night my excitement had been dampened with worry about how my sweet Bella would fare without me even for just short of a week. In truth, it was equally about how
I
might fare without
her
.

But once seated on Melisende in the brisk morning air, Janyn riding beside me so handsome and full of life, I asked God to help me shrug off the futile worry. He answered my prayers, for I was soon caught up in the bustle of the London streets, absorbing it with eyes, ears, and nose. And then, as we rode out of the city into the countryside, the sudden quiet soothed me. I enjoyed the journey until I beheld the grim outer walls of the castle.

Until that moment I had not wondered who else might be in residence, or visiting, in addition to the king. I was terrified enough to be meeting
him
, though of course I was equally thrilled. I wondered whether he would
look
like a king—more than a mere mortal man, wise, powerful. As we passed through the outer gate and rode into the bailey, I stared up at the elaborate façade of the keep, an elegant ashlar paint with soft red accents. Stationed at regular intervals outside were elegantly dressed guardsmen. I was overcome by a sense of my own insignificance, my common background. This was so obviously a royal residence, and I was but a merchant’s wife. In my excitement I had not really considered that.

As Janyn helped me from my horse I clung to him and whispered, “What in heaven’s name are we doing here? This is not our place. We are merchants, not courtiers.”

He kissed my cheek and gently stepped back from my clinging embrace.

“You are an invited guest, Alice. It may be a royal residence, but you are welcome here. Be at ease.” He lowered my traveling hood and kissed my forehead. “You are weary from the journey, that is whence comes your distress.”