I sighed. “Don’t rub so hard!”

They ignored me. I was soaped and rinsed, dried with soft linen, and in the end I simply closed my eyes and allowed them the right to talk and gossip and put me in the clothes provided for me. And such garments. The sensual glide of them on my skin forced me to open my eyes. They were like nothing I had ever seen, except in the coffers of Countess Joan. An undershift of fine linen that did not catch when I moved. An overgown, close-fitting to my hips, in the blue of the Virgin’s cloak—a cotehardie, I was told, knowing no name for such fashionable niceties—with a sideless surcoat over all, was sumptuous to my eyes with gray fur bands and an enameled girdle. All made for someone else, of course, the fibers scuffed along hem and cuffs, but what did I care for that? They were a statement in feminine luxury I could never have dreamed of. And so shiny, so soft were the fabrics that slid through my fingers. Silk and damask and fine wool. For the first time in my life I was clothed in a color, glorious enough to assault my senses. I felt like a precious jewel polished to a glorious sparkle.

They exclaimed over my hair, of course.

“Too coarse. Too dark. Too short to braid. Too short for anything!”

“Better than when it was cropped for a novice nun!” I fired back.

They pushed it into the gilded mesh of a crispinette, covered the whole with a veil of some diaphanous material that floated quite beautifully, and added a plaited fillet to hold it firm, as if to hide all evidence of my past life. But no wimple. I vowed never to wear a wimple again.

“Put these on.…” I donned the fine stockings, the woven garters. Soft shoes were slid onto my feet.

I took stock, hardly daring to breathe in fear that the whole ensemble would fall off. The skirts were full and heavy against my legs, moving with a soft hush as I walked inexpertly across the room. The bodice was laced tight against my ribs, the neckline low across my unimpressive bosom. I did not feel like myself at all, but rather as if I were dressed for a mummer’s play I had once seen on Twelfth Night at the Abbey.

Did maidservants to the Queen really wear such splendor?

I was in the process of kicking the skirts behind me experimentally, enjoying the sensation of elegance even if I did not quite achieve it, when the door opened to admit Isabella. The two maids curtsied to the floor. I followed suit, with not a bad show of handling the damask folds, but not before I had seen her thin-lipped distaste.

She walked ’round me, taking her time. Isabella, the agent of my kitchen humiliations.

“Not bad,” she commented as I flushed. “Look for yourself.” And she handed me the tiny looking glass that had been suspended from the chatelaine at her waist.

Oh, no! Remembering my last brush with vanity, I put my hands behind my back as if I were a child caught out in wrongdoing. “No! I will not!”

Her smile was deeply sardonic. “Why not?”

“I think I’ll not like what I see,” I said, refusing to allow my gaze to fall before hers.

“Well, that’s true enough. There’s only so much that can be done. Perhaps you’re wise,” Isabella murmured, but her sympathy was tainted with scorn. Peremptorily she gestured, and so, in a silence stretched taut, I was led along the corridors to the solar, where Philippa sat with her women.

“Well, you’ve washed her and dressed her, Maman. For what it’s worth…”

“You are uncharitable, Isabella.” The Queen’s reply was unexpectedly sharp.

Isabella was not cowed. “What do we do with her now?”

“What I intended from the beginning, despite your meddling. She will be one of my damsels.”

Isabella’s brows climbed. I suspect mine did too. I was too shocked to consider how inappropriate my expression might be.

“You don’t need her,” Isabella cried in disbelief. “You have a dozen…”

“No?” A smile, a little sad to my mind, touched the Queen’s face. “Maybe I do need her.”

“Then choose a girl of birth. Before God, there are enough of them.…”

“I know what I need, Isabella.” The Queen waved her daughter away and handed the rosary back to me.

“My lady…”

What could I find to say? My fingers closed around the costly beads. In the length of a heartbeat, in one firm command and one gesture of dismissal of her daughter’s disapproval, the Queen had turned my life on its head.

“You’ll regret it! And don’t say I didn’t warn you.” So Isabella had the last word.

She did not care that I heard her.

Why? Why me? The one thought danced in my head when the ladies were gone about their customary affairs. A damsel—a lady-in-waiting to the Queen.

“Why me?” I asked aloud. “What have I to offer, Your Majesty?”

Philippa perused me as if searching for an answer, her features uncommonly stern.

“Your Majesty?”

“Forgive me. I was distracted.…” She closed her eyes. When she opened them there was a lingering vestige of sorrow, but her voice was kind enough. “One day I’ll tell you. But for now—let’s see what we can do with you.”

So there it was. Decided on some chance whim, with some underlying purpose that the Queen kept to herself, I became a domicella. A lady-in-waiting. Not a domina, one of the highborn, but a domicella, the youngest, least skilled, and least important of the Queen’s ladies. But I was a part of her household. I was an inhabitant of her solar.

I could not believe my good fortune. When sent on some trivial errand—I do not recall it now—through a deserted antechamber, I lifted my skirts above my ankles and danced a succession of haphazard steps to the lingering echoes of the lute from the solar. Not well, you understand, but more than I had ever achieved in my life. It astonished me what confidence a fine robe with fur edgings could bestow on a woman.

I think I smirked. What would clerk Greseley say if he could see me now? “Waste of good coin,” I suspected. What remark would Wykeham find to make, other than his ambitions to construct a royal bathhouse and garderobe? I laughed aloud. And the King? King Edward would notice me only if I had cogs and wheels that moved and slid and clicked against one another.

I tried a pirouette, awkward in the shoes that were too loose ’round the heel. One day, I vowed, I would wear shoes that were made for me and fitted perfectly.

As for what the Queen might want of me in return—well, it could not be so very serious, could it?

They tripped over their trailing skirts, the Queen’s damsels, to transform me into a lady worthy of my new position. I was a pet. A plaything. A creature to be cosseted and stroked, to relieve their boredom. It was not in my nature; nor was it a role I wished to play, but it was an exhilarating experience as they created the new Alice Perrers. And perhaps I was still very young, thrilled to be the center of their wayward attention. I was not above playing.

I absorbed it all: anointed and burnished, my hands smothered in perfumed lotions far headier than anything produced in Sister Margery’s stillroom, my too-heavy brows plucked into what might pass for elegant arches—if the observer squinted. Clothes, and even jewels, were handed over with casual kindness. A ring, a brooch to pin to my mantle, a chain of gilt and gleaming stones to loop across my breast. Nothing of great value, but enough that I might exhibit myself in public as no less worthy of respect than the ladies from high-blooded families. I spread my fingers, now smooth with pared nails, to admire the ring with its amethyst stone. It was as if I were wearing a new skin, like a snake sloughing off the old in spring. And I was woman enough to enjoy it. I wore the rosary fastened to a girdle enhanced with silver finials as fine as Mother Sybil’s.

“Better!” Isabella remarked after sour contemplation. “But I still don’t know why the Queen wanted you!”

It remained beyond my comprehension too.

The Queen’s damsels were feminine, pretty, beautiful. I was none of those. Their figures were flattered by the new fashion, with gowns close-fitting from breast to hip. The rich cloth hung on me like washing on a drying pole. They were artlessly gifted in music for the Queen’s pleasure. Any attempt to teach me to sing was abandoned after the first tuneless warble. Nor did my fingers ever master the lute strings, much less the elegant gittern. They could stitch a girdle with flowers and birds. I had no patience with it. They conversed charmingly in French, with endless gossip, with shared knowledge of people of the Court. I knew no one other than Wykeham. His fixation with building arches was the subject of laughter.

For the damsels, flirtation was an art in itself. I never learned it. I was too forthright for that, too critical of those I met. Too self-aware to pretend what I did not feel. And if that was a sin, then I was guilty. I could not pretend an interest or an affection where I had none.

Had I nothing to offer? What I had, I used to make myself useful, or noticed, or even indispensable. I had achieved a place in the Queen’s solar and I would not be cast off, as Princess Isabella cast off her old gowns. I worked hard.

I could play chess. The ordered rules of the little figures pleased me. I had no difficulty in remembering the measures of a knight against a bishop, the limitations of a queen against a castle. As for the foolish pastime of Fox and Geese, I found an unexpected fascination in maneuvering the pieces to make the geese corner the fox before that wily creature could kill the silly birds.

“I’ll not play with you, Alice Perrers!” Isabella declared, abandoning the game. “Your geese are too crafty by half.”

“Craftier than your fox, my lady.” Isabella’s fox was tightly penned into a corner by my little flock of birds. “Your fox is done for, my lady.”