It took a sennight.

I was combing my hair in preparation to sleep alone when a soft knock sounded on the door. Wykeham, I thought. Carrying a message from the King to attend his pleasure. I opened the door, the refusal leaping to my lips.

“I will not.…” The words dried.

Edward. He had come himself. And over his arm lay the glossy pelts of my mantle.

“My lord!”

I curtsied low on the threshold, hiding my face. The King had come to my room. Was this to be the dismissal I had feared, the sables a final gift to mark my ignominious departure? If I looked at him, what would I see? I raised my eyes to his—better to know immediately—but Edward, master of negotiation, was giving nothing away. If it was dismissal, it would be done in cold blood, not in the heat of passion at my lack of respect.

“Well, will you let me come in?” His voice was rough. “I don’t think the King should be expected more than once in his lifetime to conduct an intimate argument in a public space for all his subjects to see and hear.”

I stood back, pushing the door wide, but still for all his impatience, he did not step across the threshold. Instead he held out the mantle.

“This is yours, Mistress Perrers.”

I took it from him, tossing it over a coffer beside me as if I did not care.

“I was wrong, mistress. I treated you with unforgivable discourtesy.”

He was excruciatingly formal. As long as I did not waver…I remained mute.

“I’m here to ask your forgiveness.” It was still more of an order than a plea.

“It is easy for the King to be uncivil and demand to be forgiven,” I said.

“I don’t demand.”

“No?” I folded my arms in an uncompromising manner.

“Mistress Perrers…” Now he stepped in and thrust the door closed at his back. “You will doubtless accuse me of overbearing pride, but I really don’t want an audience for this!” And he sank elegantly to one knee. “I ask your compassion for my lack of chivalry. No true knight would have been as…boorish…as I was. Will you forgive me?”

I angled my chin, considering. He looked magnificent, like a knight from one of the illustrated books, kneeling in a blaze of blue and red and gold at the feet of his lady. He’d dressed deliberately, regally, to impress me. Here was the King of England kneeling at my feet. What was more, he possessed himself of my hand and kissed it.

“No subject has ever challenged me before.”

“I know.”

“Well? Will you keep your King in suspense?” His expression was not that of a lover. The lines of irritation sharpened. “I have missed you more than I should. You’re only a slip of a girl! How could I miss you so much? And all you could do was scowl at me from the ranks of my wife’s damned women, or behave as if I did not exist.”

“Until you dismissed me from the room.”

“Well—I should not have done that.”

“No. And I am not a slip of a girl. I am the mother of your son.”

“I know. Alice…” The formality was waning.

“Nor am I merely your whore. I give you more than the pleasures of the flesh. I thought you cared more for me than that, Sire.”

“I do. God’s Blood, Alice. Have mercy! I was in the wrong.”

“We both agree on that.”

He released my hand and, still kneeling, spread his arms wide. “I have learned this for you, as any foolish troubadour would to woo his lady. How’s that for love…”

And he pressed his hands over his heart like a lovelorn troubadour and spoke the verse. The words were ridiculous, foolish, but there was no mockery in his voice or his face. The sentiment came from his heart, and with it a sadness, a poignancy for things past. Like youth that was gone forever.

Fortune used to smile on me:

I didn’t have to try:

Good looks and charming manners

Were mine in full supply:

She crowned my head with laurels,

And set me up on high.…

But now my youth has faded;

I’ve seen the petals fall.…

He stopped. “To hell with verses! My looks are fading and my manners have been less than charming. I have no excuse for either, but I beg your understanding.”

“A Plantagenet, begging?”

“There’s a first time for everything!” The poignancy was gone. Back was the pride, the authority, even though he still knelt. I swallowed my sudden tears. I was indeed charmed. “Don’t leave me in suspense, Mistress Perrers.”

“I would not dare! I have made my decision, Sire.” What mischief prompted me to keep him in suspense for one more moment? I touched his shoulder, with all the grace of the lady in receipt of her knight’s love, to urge him to his feet.

“Well?”

“I forgive you. It is impossible to reject so fine a wooing.”

“Thank God!”

He drew me into his arms, carefully, as if I were some precious object made of glass. Or as if I might still reject him. His lips were cool against mine until I melted against him, and then his embrace became a brand of fire. I had missed him too.

“It’s in my mind to give you a gift…perhaps a jewel.…You have given me a son, a gift beyond price. I should show my gratitude.…” His chin rested on the crown of my head, my hair heavy on his shoulder.

“No…not a jewel.”

“What, then?”

The thought had come immediately into my head. I knew what I wanted. “Give me land and a house, Sire.” My insecurities never left me, and Greseley had trained me well.

“You want land?” His chin lifted and I heard the surprise in his voice.

“Yes. It is in your power to give it.”

“You would be a woman of property. Then it’s yours. For Mistress Alice, who shines a light into the dark corners of my soul.”

It took my breath away. “Thank you, Sire.”

“On one condition…”

I was suddenly wary. It never did to underestimate a Plantagenet.

“That you call me Edward again. I’ve missed that.”

The rock beneath my heart, which had been there since the day I dropped my sables at his feet, melted away. “Thank you, Edward.”

There was love and gratitude in the giving of the gift, and in my receiving it. I offered my lips, my hands, my body. All my loyalty. My absence had stirred Edward’s passions, and he had no thought of celibacy. He made love to me on my less-than-sumptuous bed that could barely contain his long limbs, and wrapped me again in my sable mantle. I was no longer just his whore. We both knew it. My challenge had awakened the King to the truth of our relationship. Here was a permanence.

“I will never dismiss you,” he murmured against my throat in the dying of passion and with touching insight. “You are my love. Until death separates us.”

“And I will never willingly leave you,” I replied. I meant every word of it. My respect and admiration for him had reached new heights.

He gave me the little manor of Ardington for my own.

I carried a second child for Edward. Another son, Nicholas. A happy event. I was free to travel now as I wished to the manor, where John grew and played and shouted in his games of knightly conquest. I had no fears that I would not be free to return to Court as it pleased me. My position might still be unacknowledged, but it possessed a strange viability of its own.

“And what will become of you?” I asked the mewling infant who resembled Edward far more strongly than did his brother, John. “What will be your path to wealth and power?” I thought of Wykeham, an excellent example for any boy.

“When you are older, I will introduce you to a man who I can sometimes claim as a good friend.”

“What do I give you in recognition of this new gift?” Edward asked later, holding his son in his arms. “Don’t tell me.…”

Nor did I have to.

He gave me the wardship of the lands of Robert de Tilliol and the gift of the marriage of his heir. It was extensive, four manors and a castle far to the north of England, with the promise of gold for my coffers.

As gifts from the King to a queen’s damsel, these were out of the ordinary. They began to draw attention, but I could withstand the sidelong glances. I simply informed Greseley that his management on my behalf would take more of his valuable time.

I trust you will pay me well for my time, Mistress Perrers, he wrote back in habitual complaint.

I will pay you when I see the results, I replied, then added, I will be astonished if you too do not benefit from these investments.

To receive back very promptly: As do you, Mistress Perrers. Your acquisitions are bringing you—and me—an excellent return.

I smiled at his final response. What an exceptional man of business Greseley was.



Chapter Eight



A sense of unease touched my spine, like the light scratch of a lover’s fingernail on delicate skin. I shivered, every sense alert. Then, since there was no repetition, I concentrated once more on the explosion of ill temper unfolding before me.

This was a high-powered, formal reception, deliberately staged: King and Queen seated in carved chairs on the dais in the largest of the audience chambers at Westminster. Before them swaggered a young man, just entering his third decade, boldly clad with all the éclat of indulged youth. Despite his shining arrogance he bowed deeply, his entourage following suit. And what an impressive escort it was, weapons as visible as the jewels and embellished tunics. Philippa beamed, but the King was not in a mood to admire.

“Why are you here?” he demanded.

“I can do no more in that godforsaken, bog-ridden province.” The young man was not rebuffed by the King’s displeasure. Undeniably handsome, he had a hardness, a carefully shuttered expression, and a shocking lack of reverence. “I wash my hands of Ireland and all to do with the bloody Irish.”