The Unfaithful Queen: A Novel of Henry VIII's Fifth Wife Read Free Page B

before I could decide how to reply, or what to do, I saw that Alice was slipping down in a faint. To my surprise, Joan reached down and tried to pick her up.
    “Help me,” she said, and together we lifted Alice onto one of the small room’s two beds. She lay there, still and pale, her eyes closed. Frowning, Joan picked up a candle and held it close to Alice’s white face.
    “Has she been spewing?” she asked me.
    “I don’t know.”
    She set the candle back down and felt Alice’s stomach and belly, making her moan.
    I heard Joan swear under her breath.
    “By the bones of Christ, not another one!”
    I looked at Joan questioningly, our quarrel and clashing words for the moment forgotten.
    “These girls! These rich, protected girls, who know nothing of the world, who come here to this lustpit of a house, and get themselves with child, and then—”
    “She’s carrying a child? Are you sure?”
    Joan gave me a withering look, then slapped Alice’s cheek. “Wake up girl!”
    Alice protested, pushing Joan away feebly with one hand.
    “Don’t hurt her!” I objected.
    “Hurt her? I’m helping her! I’m going to help her get rid of this unwanted encumbrance! Before we all are whipped till our backs are raw!”
    What I was seeing and hearing confused me. This forceful, unsparing girl Joan, with her threats and her slaps and her insult to my mother’s memory, seemed to be saying that Alice’s disgrace reflected on us all. That we were living in what she called a pit of lust, not a noble household—my grandmother’s noble household. How could she say such a thing? And how could she be certain that Alice was carrying a child?
    As the night wore on, my confusion lessened. At Joan’s insistence (“Do you really want the wrath of the old duchess to come down on all our heads?” she demanded) I stayed on in the small room while Joan administered another drink to the drowsy Alice. This one took longer to make, and smelled so foul that I thought I would retch. The stench of it filled the room.
    Poor Alice admitted that she had not had her monthly flux for many weeks and that she had often been sick, that whatever she ate would not stay in her stomach.
    “Did no one ever tell you that if you let a man have his pleasure with you there would be a child? Did no one ever show you what to do to make sure no child would be born?”
    Alice shook her head.
    “Then I will tell you.” With a sigh Joan went to the wardrobe and brought out a lemon, which she cut in half.
    “Here,” she said, handing one of the halves to Alice. “Take this and put it inside you.”
    Alice, groggy from the drinks she had been given, stared at Joan, incomprehending.
    “Stupid girl!” Joan spat out. Then, taking the other half of the lemon, she lifted her skirts, spread her legs, and packed the dripping fruit up into her honeypot.
    So quickly did she do this that I hardly had time to be surprised. Alice, after fumbling a bit, managed to imitate her.
    “Do this whenever you are with a lover. If you have no lemons, use a bit of sponge. Dip it in vinegar first. Or if you have no vinegar, dip it in sour milk.”
    “How do you know this? How can you be sure it will work?” I wanted to know. “You are no midwife or wise woman.”
    “I know,” Joan responded, “because I have lain with boys and men since I was younger than you, and I am eighteen now, and I have never yet been with child. I learned what I know from other girls, of course. Older girls. How else?”
    She looked over at Alice, who was holding her stomach with both hands.
    “She’s going to need the chamber pot,” Joan told me. “Don’t be alarmed. The drink I gave her—the second one—was very strong. The juice of tansy and pennyroyal. It will cause her to expel her child. The pain will be great, but it will not last long.”
    Alice was doubled over, grimacing and moaning. She squatted over the chamber pot to relieve herself but could only grunt and emit little shrieks.