The King's Concubine. Anne O'Brien

in music for the Queen’s pleasure. Any attempt to teach me to sing was abandoned after the first tuneless warble. Neither 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, who deigned to speak with me when he returned to Court, even noting my change of fortune—’Well, here’s an improvement, Mistress Perrers! Have you learnt to ride yet?’—but his fixation with building arches was the subject of laughter. Master Wykeham clearly did not flirt.

      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, 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 set my feet in the Queen’s solar. 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 manoeuvring the pieces to make the geese corner the fox before that wily creature could prey on 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.’

      ‘So it is!’ Isabella laughed, more out of surprise than amusement, but she resisted a cutting rejoinder.

      To please the damsels I made silly, harmless love charms and potions, gleaned from my memory of Sister Margery’s manuscripts in the Abbey’s Infirmary. A pinch of catnip, a handful of yarrow, a stem of vervain, all wrapped in a scrap of green silk and tied with a red cord. If they believed they were effective, I would not deny it, although Isabella swore I was more like to add the deadly hemlock in any sachet I made for her. I read to them endlessly when they wanted tales of courtly love, between a handsome knight and the object of his desire, to sigh over.

      Not bad at all for a nameless, ill-bred girl from a convent. I would never be nameless and overlooked again. Pride might be a sin, but it filled my breast with gratification. Why should I not be proud of my advancement? I would be somebody worthy of a position at the royal court. I was Alice, Queen’s damsel.

      And Isabella was wrong. I would never use hemlock. I knew enough from Sister Margery’s caustic warnings to be wary of such satanic works.

      But what service could I offer Queen Philippa when the whole household was centred on fulfilling her wishes even before she expressed them? That was easy enough. I made draughts of white willow bark.

      ‘You are a blessing to me, Alice.’ The pain had been intense that day, but now, propped against her pillows, the willow tincture making her drowsy, she sighed heavily with relief. ‘I am a burden to you.’

      ‘It is not a burden to me to give you ease, my lady.’

      I saw the lines beside her eyes begin to smooth out. She would sleep soon. The days of pain were increasing in number and her strength to withstand it was ebbing, but tonight she would have some measure of peace.

      ‘You are a good girl.’

      ‘I wasn’t a good novice!’ I responded smartly.

      ‘Sit here. Tell me about those days when you were a bad novice.’ Her eyelids drooped but she fought the strength of the drug.

      So I did, because it pleased me to distract her. I told her of Mother Abbess and her penchant for red stockings. I told her of Sister Goda and her heavy hand, of the chickens that fell foul of the fox because of my carelessness and how I was punished. I knew enough by now not to speak of Countess Joan. Joan, the duplicitous daughter-in-law, far away in Aquitaine with her husband the Prince—she had entrapped him after all—was not a subject to give the Queen a restful night.

      ‘It was good that I found you,’ she murmured.

      ‘Yes, my lady.’ I smoothed a piercingly sweet unguent into the tight skin of her wrist and hand. ‘You have changed my life.’

      A little silence fell but the Queen was not asleep. She was contemplating something beyond my sight that did not seem entirely to please her, gouging a deep cleft between her brows. Then she blinked and fixed me with an uncomfortable gaze. ‘Yes, Alice. I am sure it was good that you fell into my path.’

      I was certain it was not merely to smear her suffering flesh with ointments. A shiver of awareness assailed me in the overheated room, for her declamation suggested some deep uncertainty. Had I done something to lose her regard so soon? I cast my mind over what I might have said or done to cast her into doubt. Nothing came to mind. So I asked.

      ‘Why did you choose me, my lady?’

      When the Queen looked at me, her eyes were hooded. She closed her free hand tightly around the jewelled cross on her breast, and her reply held none of her essential compassion. Indeed, her voice was curt and bleak, and she drew her hand from my ministrations as if she could not bear my touch.

      ‘I chose you because I have a role for you, Alice. A difficult one perhaps. And not too far distant. But not yet. Not quite yet …’ She closed her eyes at last, as if she would shut me from her sight. ‘I’m weary now. Send for my priest, if you will. I’ll pray with him before I sleep.’

      I left her, more perplexed than ever. Her words resurfaced as I lit my own candle and took myself to bed in the room I shared with two of the damsels. Sleep would not come.

       I have a role for you. A difficult one perhaps. And not too far distant …