“You have been married twice, my lady?” Aghast at my impudence, still I asked.

“I have. And at the same time!” She glanced up at me, intent on mischief. “What do you think of that?”

“That it is a sin!” I replied, unforgivably outspoken.

Her finely carved nostrils narrowed on an intake of breath. “Do you judge me, then?”

“No, my lady. How should I?”

“How indeed. You know nothing about it.” Her voice had become brittle. “But many do. And I’ll not tolerate their interference.…”

“My lady…” Marian admonished.

“I know, I know.” The Countess’s prettiness vanished beneath a grimace. “I should not speak of it. And I will not. Wash my hair for me, girl.”

I did, of course.

Wrapped in a chamber robe with her damp hair loose over her shoulders, Countess Joan delved into one of her coffers, removed a looking glass, and stepped to the light from the window to inspect her features. She smiled at what she saw. Why would she not? I simply stared at the object, with its silver frame and gleaming surface, until the Countess looked up, haughty, sensing my gaze.

“What is it? What are you looking at?”

I shook my head.

“I have no more need of you for now.” She cast the shining object onto the bed. “Come back after Compline.” But my fingers itched to touch it.…

“Your looking glass, my lady…”

“Well?”

“May I look?” I asked.

Her brows rose in perfect arcs. “If you wish.”

I took it from where it lay—and looked. A reflection that was more honest than anything I had seen in my water bowl looked back at me. Then without a word—for I could not find any to utter—I gently placed the glass facedown on the bed.

“Do you like your countenance?” Countess Joan inquired, enjoying my discomfort.

“No!” I managed through dry lips. My image in the water was no less than truth, and here it was proved beyond doubt. The dark, depthless eyes, like night water under a moonless sky. Even darker brows, so well marked as if drawn in ink by a clumsy hand. The strong jaw. The dominant nose and wide mouth. All so…so forceful! It was a blessing that my hair was covered. I was a grub, a worm, nothing compared with this red-gold, pale-skinned beauty who smiled at her empty victory over me.

I was ugly.

“What did you expect?” the Countess asked.

“I don’t know,” I managed.

“You expected to see some semblance of attraction that might make a man turn his head, didn’t you? Of course you did. What woman doesn’t? Much can be forgiven a woman who is beautiful. But an ill-favored one? Such is not to be tolerated.”

How cruel an indictment, stated without passion, without any thought for my feelings. And in that precise moment, when she tilted her chin in evident satisfaction, I saw the truth in her face. She was of a mind to be deliberately cruel.

“What a malformed little creature you are! I wonder why I bother to indulge you?”

Thus was the Countess doubly spiteful, rubbing salt in my wounds with callous indifference. As my heart fell with the weight of the evidence against me, I knew beyond doubt why she had chosen me—chosen me before all others—to wait on her. I had had no part in the choosing. It had nothing to do with the antics of her perverse monkey, or my own foolish attempt to catch her attention, or my labors to be a good maidservant. She had chosen me because I was ugly, while in stark contrast, this educated, sophisticated, highly polished Court beauty would shine like a warning beacon lit for all to wonder at on a hilltop. I was the perfect foil: too unlovely, too gauche, too ignorant to pose any threat to the splendor that was Joan of Kent.

“Leave me!” she ordered in a sudden blast of ill humor. “I find you repellent!”

I might have fled in a burst of emotional tears, but I did not. At least she had noticed me!

What did I think of this woman who stepped so heedlessly into my life and left so lasting an impression? Sometimes I despised her, for her beautiful face masked a heart of stone. And yet I found myself admiring her ambition, her determination to get her own way. Sometimes she was in the mood to talk, not caring what she said.

“I’m here only to curry favor!” she announced, glaring through her window at the enclosing walls of the Abbey, half-shrouded in a relentless downpour of rain.

“Whose favor do you need, my lady?” I asked, because it was expected of me.

“The King. The Queen,” she snapped. “They don’t want it—they’ll put obstacles in my way—but I’ll have him yet! The Prince, dolt!” She flung up her hands in exasperation, causing the monkey to cower. “It’s time he was wed and got himself an heir. Am I not fertile? Do you know how many children I have carried? Of course you don’t. Five. Three sons, two daughters. I can give the Prince heirs. The King wants his precious son to marry a rich heiress from the Low Countries. The Queen doesn’t approve of me. We’ll need a papal dispensation, since we are second cousins—but that 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 had returned, 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. “I suppose 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 it was the best I could do.

She stopped, turned slowly, laughing softly, but her face was writ with a mockery so vivid that I flushed at my temerity.

“Alice. It is Alice, isn’t it?” she asked. It was the first time she had addressed me by my name. “Power? What would a creature such as you know of true power? What would you do with it, even if it came to you?” The disdain for my naïveté was cruel in its sleek elegance.

“I mean…the power to determine my own path in life.”

“So! Is that what you seek?” She allowed me a complacent little smile. And I saw that beneath her carelessness ran a far deeper emotion. She actually despised me, as perhaps she despised all creatures of low birth. “You’ll not get power, my dear. That is, if you mean rank. Unless you can rise above your station and become Abbess of this place.” Her voice purred in derision. “You’ll not do it.”