Some signal passed between them.

Blanche understood a great deal in that moment, for the woman was that Alice of the Queen’s bedchamber whose insolence towards Philippa had been so thinly veiled.


* * *

When she was alone with John she could not stop herself from referring to what she had seen.

‘I know the woman of whom you speak,’ he said. ‘The whole court is talking of her. She has bewitched the King.’

‘It seems impossible!’ cried Blanche.

John took her hands and smiled at her tenderly.

‘It is difficult for you to understand, my dearest,’ he said. ‘The King will always be devoted to the Queen.’

‘Yet he allows this woman to insult her!’

‘I am sure he would not allow that. But you see, my dear, the Queen can no longer be a wife to the King …’

‘She is his wife. She has been his wife for many years …’

‘She can no longer share his bed. That dropsical complaint of hers has immobilised her to such an extent that she can no longer live a normal life. This woman … you would not understand but she flaunts her sex at him … She is one of those women who …’

He looked at her helplessly. ‘Dearest Blanche,’ he went on, ‘try not to think of this. It is unfortunate that the King should not have chosen a different mistress – if mistress he must have, and all worldly men and women would understand that, my love. It is unfortunate that this is the one who should appeal to him.’

‘So this bedchamber woman is his mistress.’

‘It would seem so.’

‘And for this reason she flaunts her position before the Queen. She was wearing a valuable ring.’

‘She is fond of fine things and the King delights to give them to her. I suppose he had to have a mistress but that it should be Alice Perrers …’

‘I could not bear it if I were the Queen.’

John put his arms about her and then releasing her held her face in his hands.’

‘I promise you,’ he said, ‘that you shall never find yourself in such a position. You and I will be faithful unto each other until death divides us.’

She clung to him. ‘Oh John, dearest husband, do not talk of death. You cannot know how I suffer when you go away to war.’

‘Never fear. It will not be easy for my enemies to rid themselves of me. I shall continue to live for you, my Blanche, and our children. How is that young lion Henry faring today? And you look a little tired.’ He touched her stomach gently. ‘You must take care of that little one. He will soon be with us.’

‘I shall pray for a boy,’ said Blanche, ‘and that he shall be exactly like his father.’

She felt a little better. The obvious devotion of her husband, so affectionately expressed, wiped away the unpleasantness which had been planted in her mind by Alice Perrers.


* * *

A few days later news came to Windsor which brought such sorrow to the King and the Queen that they were drawn very close together and it seemed that Alice Perrers would be like a meteor shooting across the sky – to startle everyone with its brilliance and then drop to oblivion. The King scarcely left the Queen’s side and the tragedy visibly aged them both.

It was so unexpected.

It was not so many years before when Lionel, their second son, had come back from Ireland – which he had inherited through his wife who had died some years before – declaring that he had enough of the place and would remain in England.

Philippa who loved to have her family around her was delighted that he should be back with them. Easy-going Lionel who asked nothing more than that life should flow comfortably around him was a good companion. He was so pleasant to be with. He never asked for grants and lands and privileges. He was rich enough through his widow, of course; but he was unlike the rest of the family inasmuch as he lacked that overwhelming ambition which Philippa sensed strongest of all in her son John.

He had but one daughter of his marriage with Elizabeth, Philippa; and it was natural that he should marry again.

It so happened that the Visconti of Milan was looking for a suitable bridegroom for his beautiful and only daughter Violante. Negotiations were set in progress and after some time Lionel went to Milan to marry Violante. First though he had settled the future of his daughter Philippa by marrying her to Edmund de Mortimer, the Earl of March.

Then with suitable pomp he had set out and in due course had been married in Milan Cathedral to the beautiful and rich daughter of Galeazzo Visconti of Milan.

Blanche knew that John had not been very pleased by the marriage. She could read his thoughts. He still hankered for the crown, even though he had an elder brother and that brother, the ever popular Black Prince, had two sons, another Edward and young Richard of Bordeaux. She wished that she could curb those ambitious thoughts of his. But she knew she never would. They were part of his nature.

Naturally when Lionel, that other brother who would rightfully claim the crown if some disaster removed the Black Prince and his family, married again he was depressed. A young and beautiful wife, the warm sun of Italy, the pleasure-loving Lionel who indulged himself on every occasion, surely it would not be long before he fathered a child who would be yet another to stand between John and his desire.

Violante and Lionel were married and so great was the rejoicing in Milan that the festivities went on for weeks. That, John had said, will suit Lionel very well. His father-in-law Galeazzo was delighted with him, it seemed. The alliance with the English royal family was something he had set his heart on, and all seemed to be going well in Milan.

And then had come the shattering news.

Lionel was dead.

In the midst of the feasting he had become sick and although at first no one had taken his indisposition very seriously it had rapidly grown worse and a few days after it had begun he was dead.

The Queen could not believe the news when it was brought to her.

Lionel – the tallest of them all, the one who liked so much to enjoy life – dead. It could not be.

She and the King spent hours together trying to console each other.

It was too cruel a blow. Lionel was the seventh of her children to die. Two little Williams and Blanche had died at birth and that was less heart-breaking than losing them when they were grown up. Joanna had died of the plague on her journey to marry Pedro of Castile and Mary and Margaret had died of some mysterious ailments in their teens. The Queen had never recovered from that. And now Lionel, hale and hearty Lionel, was cut off like that in the flower of his youth.

She was old and sick and she knew – although she tried to pretend she did not – that Edward, who through the many years of their marriage had always kept up the show of being a faithful husband, and she believed he had been almost entirely so, was now unable to hide his lascivious longing for an insolent bedchamber woman.

All that she had borne and now here was the most cruel blow of all. One of her beloved sons was struck down by a cruel fate.

Edward sat beside her. He held her hand. He was not thinking of Alice now. Desperately he sought some comfort for himself and Philippa.

When John brought the news of his brother’s death to Blanche she could see that in spite of his tragic expression a certain triumph gleamed in his eyes and she knew that he was thinking: Lionel dead. One obstacle to the throne removed.

Then Blanche shivered with apprehension and fear for the future.

She went to her nursery and picked up the little Henry who was some eighteen months old now – lusty, bright-eyed, beginning to take notice of everything around him.

John joined her there. He could not keep away from the nursery and although he loved his girls all his hopes were centred on this boy.

She watched him take the child in his arms.

‘And what have you been doing today, Henry of Bolingbroke?’ he asked playfully.

She saw the dreams there … dreams for the boy.

There was the usual outcry about poison and Lionel’s father-in-law was suspected of taking his life. But, as John pointed out, there was no reason why Galeazzo would do so for the death of Lionel was the end of his ambitions for his daughter and Milan.

No, Lionel had indulged himself too freely with the food of the country; he had been unaccustomed to its strangeness and to the heat of that country; he had succumbed to that dysentery which often attacked travellers abroad and in his case it had been fatal.

He was buried first at Pavia but he had asked in his will that his remains should lie in the convent of the Austin Friars at Clare in Suffolk so they were brought there and placed beside those of his first wife.

In the midst of this mourning Blanche gave birth to a son.

John was delighted with the boy and he was named after his father.

Alas, poor little John lived only for a few days.

Blanche was desolate. In spite of all her care the child was gone.

She was a great deal with the Queen and they tried to comfort each other.

‘We must be brave,’ said Philippa, ‘you have your daughters and your boy Henry. I have my dear Edward, my John, Edmund and Thomas left to me as well as my daughter Isabella. We must be thankful for what is left of us.’

It was clear however that the shock of her son’s death and the knowledge that Edward was drifting away from her had cast a heavy shadow over the Queen.