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We were not alone. The King had his audience with or without my presence, the Italian and his assistant as well as a cluster of servants and a handful of men at arms to give the necessary strength. And there was Thomas, who could not be kept away from such a spectacle.
‘We need to lift this into position, Sire.’ The Italian gestured, arms flung wide. ‘And then attach the weights and the ropes for the bell.’
The ropes were apportioned to the men at arms, the instructions issued to hoist the weights for the winding mechanism. Thomas was given the task of watching for the moment all was in place. I was waved ignominiously to one side.
‘Pull!’ the Italian bellowed. And they did. ‘Pull!’
With each repetition, the pieces of the clock rose into position.
‘Almost there!’ Thomas capered in excitement.
‘Pull!’ ordered the Italian.
They pulled, and with a creak and a snap one of the ropes broke. The weight to which it was attached crashed down to the floor, sending up a shower of dust and stone chippings. Before I could react, the loose remnants of the rope flew in an arc, like a whiplash, snaking out across the stone paving, to strike my ankles with such force that my feet were taken out from under me.
I fell in an inelegant heap of skirts and frayed rope and dust.
‘Signorina!’ The Italian leapt to my side with horror.
‘Alice!’ The King was there too.
I sat up slowly, breathless from shock and surprise, my ankles sore, as the Italian proceeded to wipe dust from my face, before discreetly arranging my disordered skirts.
‘Signorina! A thousand pardons!’
It all seemed to be happening at a distance: the cloud of dust settling; the soldiers lowering the still unfixed pieces of the clock, now forgotten in the chaos. Thomas staring at me with a mixture of horror and fascination.
My eyes fixed on the King’s anxious face. ‘Edward …’ I said.
‘You are quite safe now.’ He enclosed my hands within his and lifted them to his lips.
And my senses returned.
‘I am not hurt,’ I stated.
Ignoring this, Edward sent Thomas at a run. ‘Fetch my physician!’
‘I am not hurt,’ I repeated.
‘I’ll decide whether you are hurt or not,’ Edward snapped back, and then to his Master of Clocks, who still fussed and wrung his hands, ‘See to the mechanism. It’s not your fault, man! I’ll deal with Mistress Alice.’
Never had I been so aware of his presence, the proud flare of nostrils that gave him a hawkish air even when rank fear was imprinted in his face.
‘Can you stand?’ he asked abruptly.
‘Yes.’
Gently, he lifted me and stood me on my feet. To my surprise I staggered and was forced to clutch at his arm—no artifice on my part but a momentary dizziness. Without a second thought Edward swept me up into his arms and carried me away from the dust and debris.
For the first time in my short existence I was enclosed in the arms of a man. All the feelings I had imagined but never experienced flooded through me. The heat of his body against mine, the steady beat of his heart. The fine grain of his skin, the firmness of his hands holding me close. The pungency of sweat and dust. My throat was dry with an inexplicable need, my palms slick with it. Every inch of my skin seemed to be alive, shimmering in the bars of sunlight through the glazed and painted windows. I was alight, on fire, my heart thundering against the lacing of my gown …
Until I was brought back to reality.
‘Put me down, Sire!’ I ordered. ‘You must not worry the Queen with this. She is ill today. Where are you taking me?’
He came to a sudden halt. ‘I don’t know.’ He looked down at me, as jolted as I. How close his eyes were to mine, his breath warm against my temple. ‘In faith, Alice, you frightened me beyond reason. Are you in pain?’
‘No.’ I was too aware, far too aware. ‘Please put me down. Why are you carrying me when I can walk very well on my own?’
The lines that bracketed his mouth began to ease at last. ‘Allow me to be gallant, if you will, and carry you to safety.’
I could hear the Italian tending lovingly to his mechanism and the voices of the soldiers. The proximity of the servants. ‘Put me down, Sire,’ I repeated. ‘We shall be seen.’
‘Why would that matter?’ His brows winged upwards as if he had not considered it.
But I knew it would matter. All the Court would know of this within the hour. ‘Put me down!’ I abandoned any good manners.
Edward turned abruptly into the chancel, marched along its length and set me down in one of the choir stalls, allowing me some degree of privacy.
‘Since you insist …’
And kneeling beside me, he kissed me. Not a gracious salute to my fingers. Not a brotherly caress to my cheek, as I imagined such a one to be. Not a chaste husbandly peck on the lips such as Janyn Perrers would have employed if he had ever come so close to me. Edward gripped my arms, hauled me against him, and his mouth descended on mine in a firm possession that lasted as long as a heartbeat, and more.
He lifted his head and I looked at him, stunned. My blood hummed, my thoughts scattered. ‘You should not have done that,’ I managed in a whisper.
‘Would you lecture the King on his behaviour, Mistress Alice?’
He smiled ruefully, before he kissed me again. Just as forcefully. Just as recklessly. And when it was ended, ‘You should not have looked at me so trustingly,’ he said.
‘So it was my fault?’ My voice, I regret, was almost a squeak. ‘That you kissed your wife’s damsel?’
For a moment, Philippa’s presence hovered. We felt her with us. I saw the recognition in Edward’s eyes, as I was sure it was in mine. And I saw regret there as his voice and features chilled.
‘No, Alice. It was not your fault. It was mine. You could have been injured and I should have been more careful with you.’ It was difficult to keep my breathing even, and when I shivered with a sudden onset of nerves, Edward stood. ‘You’re cold.’ He shrugged out of the sleeveless over-tunic he had worn in the church for warmth, and draped it around my shoulders. And when his hands rested there, heat built in me again, so that my temples throbbed with it.
‘Sire …’ I warned as footsteps approached. Edward stepped back, struggling to be tolerant of his physician’s meaningless questions and orders for me to rest to allow my humours to settle.
‘I’ll return you to the Queen,’ Edward said when the physician was done.
Yes, I thought. That would be best. To be away from this man who was all too compelling. And then a thought. ‘How is the clock after the accident, Sire? The Queen will want to know.’
And he rounded on me, with a blaze of anger. ‘To hell with the clock. I don’t regret kissing you. I find you alluring, intoxicating …’ He glared at me as if it was indeed my fault. ‘Why is that?’
‘A moment’s fear, Sire. I doubt you will remember this interlude tomorrow when the danger is over and the clock restored.’
‘This is not a sudden impulse. Do you feel nothing?’ he demanded, the hawkishness very pronounced.
I dissembled. ‘I don’t know.’
‘I think you do.’
‘Would it matter whether I did or not? I am the Queen’s damsel.’
‘As I very well know, God save me.’ His temper still simmering. ‘Tell me your thoughts on this debacle, Alice.’
‘Then I will. For it is a debacle. Yet I think you are the most amazing man I have ever met.’ For was that not true?
‘Is that all? I want more from you.’ He was all authority, his hand strong on mine, his whole body as taut as a bow string. ‘I want to see you again before tomorrow. I will arrange it. Come to me tonight, Alice.’
No permission. No soft promises. A Plantagenet order. I had no misconceptions of what would await me. I think for the first time in my life I had nothing to say, not even in my head.
I told the Queen that the clock was experiencing difficulties but that the King had it all in hand.
* * *
Did I know what I was doing? Had I seen it developing, unfurling, from the very beginning? Oh, I knew. I was never a fool. I saw what I had done. I saw when his attention was caught. I noted the first scratch of my pen in my puerile writings when I had called him Edward rather than the King, when he gave me the little mare, when I began to think of him as Edward, the man.
Did I enchant and entrap him, as the malicious tongues were to accuse many years later? Was I complicit in this seduction?
Complicit, yes. But when did any woman entrap a Plantagenet? Edward had his own mind and pursued his own path.
Was I malicious?
Not that either. I was too loyal to the Queen. Guilt was not unknown to me, whatever slanders held otherwise. Philippa had given me everything I had, and I was betraying her. Regret had teeth as sharp as those of Joan’s ill-fated monkey.
Ambitious, then?
Without a doubt. For here was a certain remedy for obscure poverty. When a woman spent her young years with nothing of her own, why should she not seize the opportunity to remedy her lack, should the opportunity fall into her lap?
Ah! But could I have stopped the whole train of events before I became the royal whore? WhO’s to say? With Edward I could be myself, not a silly damsel without a thought in my head but gossip and chatter. Edward listened to me as if my opinions mattered. I found his authority, his dominance, his sheer maleness intoxicating, as would any woman. When his eyes turned to mine, it was as if I had just drunk a cup of finest Gascon wine. He was the King and I his subject. I was under his dominion as much as he was under mine.
Could I have prevented it? No, I could not. For at the eleventh hour it was taken out of my hands.
That night I waited, apprehension churning in my belly until nausea threatened to send me running to the garderobe. Taking a sip of ale, I sat on the side of my bed, feigning interest in the gossip of two damsels as they plaited each other’s hair for the night. I pretended to be unravelling a stubborn knot from a length of ribbon, except that I made it worse. Abandoning it, I took off my veil and folded it. Refolded it. Anything to keep my hands busy. I could not sit. I stood abruptly to prowl the room.
What division of loyalties was here in my mind, my heart. Commanded by the King, recipient of his kisses. Servant of the Queen, who honoured me with her confidences. This was a betrayal. A terrible riding roughshod over the Queen’s trust, stealing from her what was rightfully hers. It was impossible to argue around it.
I looked around the room, at the damsels quietly occupied. What to do now? Was it all a mistake? Had I misunderstood? There would be no royal summons after all and my guilt could be laid aside.
A knock on the door. I jumped like a stag, and my hands were not steady as I opened the door to a page in royal insignia.
‘It is the Queen, mistress. She cannot sleep. She has sent for you. Will you come?’
‘I will come,’ I replied quietly.
So this was how it was to be arranged. A royal stratagem. A clever, supremely realistic ploy to remove me from my room without rousing suspicion. Would I be waylaid in some dark corridor to be led to the King’s apartments instead of the Queen’s? I detested the thought 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.
‘I would never harm you, lady …’
