“Nevertheless, it was well-done.” The Queen beckoned and I came to kneel before her. “A conversa, I see. Tell me your name.”

“Alice.”

“You have no desire to become a nun?” Putting a hand beneath my chin, she lifted it and studied my face. “You have no calling?”

No one had ever asked me that before, or even addressed me in so gentle a manner. There was a world of understanding in her eyes. Unexpectedly, unsettlingly, tears stung beneath my eyelids.

“No, Majesty.” Since she seemed interested, I told her. “Once, I was a novice. And then a servant—who became a wife. Now I am a widow. And returned here as a lay sister.”

“And is that your ambition? To remain here?”

Well, I would not lie. “No, Majesty. I will not stay longer than I must.”

“So you have plans.…How old are you?”

“Almost seventeen years, I think. I am not a child, Majesty,” I felt compelled to add.

“You are to me!” Her smile deepened momentarily. “Do you know how old I am?”

It seemed entirely presumptuous of me to even reply. “No, Majesty.”

“Forty-eight years. I expect that seems ancient to you.” Well, it did. It seemed to me a vast age, and suffering had added a dozen more years to the Queen’s face. “I was younger than you when I came to England as a bride. It seems no time to me. Life flies past.…”

“Take another drink, Maman.” Isabella replaced the cup in the Queen’s hand, folding the swollen fingers gently around it. “I think you should rest.”

I expected to be dismissed, but the Queen was not to be bullied.

“Soon, Isabella. Soon. But you, Alice…Have you no family?”

“No, Majesty.”

“And your father?”

“I don’t know. A laborer in the town. A tiler, I think.”

“I understand.” And I felt that she did, despite the distance between us in years and rank. “How sad. You remind me of my own daughters.”

Isabella sighed heavily—“Maman…!”—whilst I shook my head. How could I remind anyone of a Princess of the Blood?

“Why should I not speak of them?” the Queen replied sharply. “If I don’t speak of them, they will be forgotten. We exist on this earth only as long as the memories of us are shared. My two beautiful daughters. Mary and Margaret. Who will remember them when I am dead? You are of a similar age,” she explained, as if I had spoken my doubt. “Such beautiful girls, full of promise. Both dead last September. Plague has a cruel bite.”

Thus her grief.

“I miss them. That is why we are here, you see. To pray for them. I believe it is God’s will that I make an endowment in their names. We buried them at Abingdon together, didn’t we, Isabella? A sad day. It’s too far for me to travel there now. All my girls gone…” Tears welled in her eyes.

“You have one daughter still at home, Maman!” Isabella handed her mother a square of linen.

“Yes! A daughter I wish were married and gone!” the Queen responded with a remarkable surge of spirit.

Isabella gave what I might have considered a grin, if she had not been a royal princess. “And I might be, if you provided me with the right suitor.”

“We gave you the right suitor! More than ten years ago…”

“Who would have driven me to madness within a month!”

This weighty exchange that flowed above my head from mother to daughter intrigued me with its depth of affectionate tolerance. I imagined it to be a much-aired conversation. I was invisible between them.

“You should wed for suitability and power, Isabella, not for some ephemeral emotion such as love.”

“You found love, Maman.”

“My marriage to your father was arranged whether I found love or not. It was simply an added blessing that we discovered such pleasure together. You’ll be an old unmarried woman, Isabella, with nothing but lapdogs, stitchery, and prayer to sustain you; you mark my words. But of course you don’t!” The Queen turned her attention back to me. “You are young to be a widow. Would you seek to wed again?”

“No, Majesty!”

“Is it not what every young woman would seek?”

“They say I am too ugly to attract a man.” For certain, Janyn had been guided by practical self-interest. “No man would look at what I could offer.”

“What can you offer?”

I considered the sum of my talents. “I can read and write and figure, Majesty.” Since someone actually showed an interest, there was no stopping me. “I can read French and Latin. I can write—and more than my name. I can keep accounts.” Ingenuously, I was carried away with my achievements.

“So much…” I had made her smile again. And how did you learn to keep accounts?”

“My husband, Janyn Perrers. A moneylender. He taught me.”

“And did you enjoy it? So tedious a task?”

“Yes. I understand what I saw.”

“You have a keen mind, Alice of the Accounts,” was all she said. Perhaps I amused her, and I wished I had not boasted of my hard-won skills. She took hold of one of my hands, running her fingers over the evidence of hard digging in the heavy soil. My nails were cracked, the skin broken, and the aroma of onions was keen. “Blisters and blemishes. You look as if you have been digging.”

“I have, Your Majesty. It is the time for sowing crops to feed us through next winter.”

“I suppose it is. Do you like that work too?”

I shook my head.

“Nor would I.”

And I laughed at the absurdity of such an admission from the Queen of England. The sound of my own laughter momentarily shocked me. I could not recall when I had last smiled or laughed aloud. I did not think I had much to smile about.

“You have a pretty laugh. And you should smile more. It brings a lightness to your face. If you could choose your future path, Alice, what would it be?”

I replied without hesitation, thinking of Greseley, of the hopes that kept me from despair in the dark hours of the night. “I would have my own house. I would buy land and property. I would be dependent on no one.…”

“An unlikely ambition!” Isabella’s remark interrupted us, redolent of ridicule.

“But a commendable one for all that…” The Queen’s voice trembled. Isabella was instantly beside her. “Yes. I will rest now. Today is not a good day.” She allowed her daughter to help her to her feet and moved slowly toward the bedchamber. Then she stopped and, despite the discomfort, looked back to me.

“Alice…keep the rosary. It was a gift to me from the King when I gave birth to Edward, our first son.” She must have read astonishment on my face. “It is not very valuable. He had little money to spend on fripperies in those days. I would like you to keep it as a memento of the day when you rescued the Queen from falling on her face in public.”

The rosary. I still gripped it in one hand, the gold enameled beads of the Aves clutched so tight that they left impressions in my palm. The pearls that marked the paternosters and glorias were warm and so smooth. The Queen would give this to me? A gift from her husband? I coveted it—who would not? I wanted it for my own.

“No…” I said. I could not. I was not courteous, but I knew what would happen if I kept the gift. “We are not allowed possessions. We take a vow of poverty.” I tried to explain my refusal, knowing how crude it must seem.

“Not even a gift from a grateful Queen?”

“It would not be thought suitable.…”

“…and you would not be allowed to keep it.”

“No, Majesty.”

“No. I was thoughtless to offer it.…” The tormenting pain gripped her again and I was forgotten. “By the Virgin, I am tired beyond endurance today—take me to my bed, Isabella.”

Isabella maneuvered the Queen through the doorway into the bedchamber, and I was left alone. Before I could change my mind, I placed the rosary on the prie-dieu and backed out of the room until I was standing outside the door. Quietly I closed it, leaning against it. I had refused a gift from a Queen. But what would be the good in my accepting what I would not be allowed to keep? I had learned from hard experience. If I kept it, the rosary would fall into the hands of Mother Abbess. In my mind’s eye, I could see it attached to her silver-decorated girdle, as she carried Countess Joan’s Book of Hours into the church when she sang the offices. As I could imagine my mantle gracing the shoulders of Signora Damiata.

If ever I accepted anything of value in my life, I must be certain it remained mine.

Queen Philippa and her sharp-tongued daughter did not stay beyond the one night. As soon as the service of Prime was sung the next morning, they made ready to depart. The Queen was helped into her well-cushioned traveling litter by Sister Margery, who had made up a draft of tender ash leaves distilled in wine to lessen the agony of a bone-shaking journey. I knew what was in it. Had I not helped to make the infusion?

“Her Majesty suffers from dropsy,” Sister Margery had pronounced with certainty. “I have seen it before. It is a terrible affliction. She will feel the effect of every rut and stumble.”

Sister Margery instructed Lady Isabella: Too much of the draft would cripple the digestion; too little and the pain would remain intense. And here was a little pot of mutton fat pounded with vervain root. Smoothed on the swollen flesh of hands and feet, it would bring relief. I had done the work but it was not I who held the flask and offered the little pot. It was not I who received the Queen’s thanks. I was not even there. I heard the departure from the cellar where I was engaged in counting hams and barrels of ale.

Take me with you. Let me serve you.

A silent plea that the Queen did not hear.

Why would she remember me? Because it was an occasion of moment in my life had no bearing on what a queen might remember. She would have forgotten about me within the quarter hour of my returning the rosary. But I did not forget Queen Philippa. She had the loving kindness in her homely face of the mother that I had never known.