The King's Concubine. Anne O'Brien

of such secrecy, such underhand deceit. I did not want this—but I was trapped in a web that was partly of my own making.

      While the page waited I wrapped a mantle around me and made to follow.

      ‘I may not return before dawn,’ I said, my hand on the latch, impressed that my voice was steady. ‘If the Queen is ill and restless, I’ll sleep on a pallet in the antechamber.’

      They nodded, lost in their own concerns. It was so easy.

      The King wants you in his bed.

      I shivered.

      I was not to be waylaid after all. Instead I was shown by the incurious page into the smallest of the antechambers with a second door leading into the Queen’s accommodations. It was a room I knew well, often used for intimate conversation or to withdraw into if one felt the need for solitary contemplation. Had I not used it myself in the hour after the King had made his intentions plain? Built into one of the towers, the chamber had circular walls, the cold stone covered with tapestries, all flamboyant with birds and animals of the forest. As I stood uncertainly in the centre, deer stared out at me with carefully stitched eyes. Wherever I turned I seemed to be under observation. An owl fixed me unblinkingly with golden orbs, a hunting dog watched me. I turned my back on it to sit on one of the benches against the wall. I started at every sound. And strained in the silence when there was no sound.

      What now? I could do nothing but wait. Whatever was to transpire within the next hour was not within my governance. What would I say? What would I do? The palms of my hands were clammy with sweat as my thoughts flew ahead. What if I displeased Edward? My knowledge of what passed between a man and a woman within the privacy of the bed curtains was so limited as to be laughable. My education with the nuns had not fitted me for the role of mistress, royal or otherwise. As for Janyn … I gripped the edge of the bench on either side of me until it hurt.

       Holy Virgin, don’t abandon me!

      But how was I fit to call on the Queen of Heaven?

      The door opened. I leapt to my feet.

      In my anxiety I had not noticed that it was the door from the Queen’s rooms, not the one from the corridor. I faced it, expecting another page to take me further along this treacherous journey.

       Ah, no!

      My blood froze. My feet became rooted to the spot. Fear was a stone in my belly.

      The Queen stood there on the threshold.

      She stepped slowly forward, as regal as if entering a state chamber, and closed the door behind her with the softest of clicks. She might be clad in a night shift beneath her loose robe, her hair might be plaited on her shoulder, but she was every inch a queen. Her face might be lined and pinched with long-suffered pain, but her innate dignity was superb. For a long moment we stood, alone in that little room except for the static gaze of hundreds of embroidered eyes, and regarded each other.

      Philippa held herself stiffly, the elbow of her damaged arm supported by her opposite hand, yet still she had come here to see me, to remonstrate, to curse me for my presumption. It was as if she cried out to me in her agony.

      And because I could not speak, I sank into a deep obeisance, hiding my face from her. Was I not stripping from her the duty and honour of her husband’s body and name? Was I not about to create a scandal that would cloak her in humiliation? What I was about to do could destroy her.

      At that moment I knew in my heart. I could not do this thing.

      ‘Alice …’ My name was little more than a sigh on her lips.

      ‘My lady. Forgive me.’

      ‘I knew you would be here.’

      She knew. How would she not? Such an emotional tie as I had seen between them. Sometimes it seemed to me that Philippa knew Edward was present even before he entered the room. She must also know, through that same inner sense, that her husband, the one love of her life, intended to betray her.

      I could not do this to her.

      I fell to my knees before her. ‘Forgive me. Forgive me, my lady.’

      Without words she touched my hair and I looked up. Her face was wet with tears, so many that they dripped to leave dark spots on the damask of her robe. And so much sorrow, it struck at my heart. I lifted my hands to cover my face so that I could not witness such depths of grief. There were tears in my own eyes.