The King’s Concubine: A Novel of Alice Perrers Read Online Free PDF Page A

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 wellmarked 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 herbeautiful 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