The King’s Concubine: A Novel of Alice Perrers Read Free Page B

will stay here until you do! Why do you resist? What else is there for you? Thank God on your knees every day that you are not forced to find your bread in the gutters of London. And by what means I can only guess!” There was no disguising the revulsion that filled her spare frame as she considered the lot of such women. Her voice fell to a harsh whisper. “Do you want to be a whore? A fallen woman?”
    I lifted a shoulder in what was undoubtedly vulgar insolence. “I am not made to be a nun,” I stated with misguided courage.
    “What choice do you have? Where would you go? Who would take you in?”
    I had no answer. But as Sister Goda’s cane thwacked like a thunderclap on the wooden desk, indignation burned hot in my mind, firing the only thought that remained to me: If you do not help yourself, Alice, for certain no one else will.
    Even then I had a sharp precocity. Product, no doubt, of a wily laborer who tumbled a sluttish tavern whore after a surfeit of sour ale.
    An Event. An Occasion. A disturbance to ruffle the surface of our rigid, rule-bound days. A visitor—a high-blooded lady—came to stay at the Abbey. This was not out of the way, of course. We had frequent visitors to stay for one night or more, ladies of means who came to ease their souls through prayer, or to restore their peace of mind, retiring for a little while from the world. Or a flighty woman placed with us, so it was said, by a husband who was departing overseas and might not trust his wife to live discreetly, and alone, in his absence. Their sojourn with us was usually brief, making little impact on the ordering of our days other than to give us another mouth to feed and another bundle of laundry to wash.
    Ah, but this visitor was different. We knew it the moment that her entourage—there could be no other word for it—rattled in fine style into the courtyard of Mother Abbess’s private accommodations. She was also expected. Was not the whole company of sisters marshaled to welcome her, Mother Abbess to the fore? And what a spectacle. A magnificent traveling litter swayed to a halt, marvelous with swags andgilded leather curtains and the softest of soft cushions, the whole pulled by a team of six gleaming horses. Minions and outriders filled the space. And so much luggage in an accompanying wagon to be unloaded. I had never seen such wealth in one place. A heraldic device stamped the curtains of the litter, but I did not then have the knowledge to recognize it. A frisson of excitement moved through our ranks, of overt curiosity, causing the edges of veils to flutter as if in a breeze. Eyes were no longer demurely downcast.
    Jeweled fingers emerged; the curtains were twitched back in a grand gesture.
    Well! Blessed Virgin!
    The sight stopped my breath as a lady, aided by her tire-woman, stepped from her palanquin. There she stood, shaking out her silk damask skirts—a hint of deep patterned blue, of silver thread and luxuriant fur—and smoothing the folds of her mantle, the jewels on her fingers afire with a rainbow of light. She was not a young woman, but nor was she old, and she was breathtakingly beautiful. I could see nothing of her figure, shrouded as she was in the heavy cloak despite the warmth of the summer day, nor of her hair that was hidden beneath a crispinette and black veil, but I could see her face. It was a perfect oval of fair skin and striking features, and she was lovely. Her eyes, framed by the fine linen and undulating silk, were large and lustrous, the color of new beech leaves.
    “My lady.” Mother Abbess glided forward, smooth as a skater over ice. “We are honored.”
    We curtsied, a rustle of starched linen and woolen cloth, like a flock of dusty-feathered rooks. The lady nodded sharply, looking around her, and at us, without expression. Since her lips were pressed together into a line as thin as the ale we drank, I did not think she was pleased to be here. Her eyes might glow, but like the stars they held no