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

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 hadreturned, 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. “Isuppose 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