The King's Concubine

‘What are you looking at?’ I shook my head. ‘I have no more need of you for now.’ She cast the shining object onto the bed. ‘Come back after Compline.’

But my fingers itched to touch it.

‘Your looking glass, my lady …’

‘Well?’

‘May I look?’ I asked.

She took me by surprise, and I was not fast enough. Countess Joan struck out with careless, casual violence, for no reason that I could see other than savage temper. An echoing slap made contact with my cheek so that I staggered, catching my breath.

‘Don’t be impertinent, girl!’ For a moment she considered me. Then her brows rose in perfect arcs and her lips curved. ‘But use the looking glass—if you really wish to.’

I took it from where it lay—and I looked. A reflection, a face that was more honest than anything I had seen in my water bowl, looked back at me. I was transfixed. Then without a word—for I could not find any to utter—I gently placed the glass face down on the bed.

‘Do you like what you see?’ Countess Joan enquired, enjoying my humiliation.

‘No!’ I managed through dry lips. My image in the water was no less than truth, and here it was proved beyond doubt. The dark eyes, depthless and without light like night water under a moonless sky. Even darker brows, as if drawn in ink with a clumsy hand. The strong jaw, the dominant nose and wide mouth. All so forceful! It was a blessing that my hair was covered. I was a grub, a worm, a nothing compared with this red-gold, pale-skinned beauty who smiled at her empty victory over me.

‘What did you expect?’ the Countess asked.

‘I don’t know,’ I managed.

‘You expected to see something that might make a man turn his head, didn’t you? Of course you did. What woman doesn’t? Much can be forgiven a woman who is beautiful. Not so an ugly one.’

How cruel an indictment, stated without passion, without any thought for my feelings. And it was at that moment, when she tilted her chin in satisfaction, that I saw the truth in her face. She was of a mind to be deliberately cruel, and as my heart fell with the weight of the evidence against me, I knew beyond doubt why she had chosen me to wait on her. I had had no part in the choosing. It had nothing to do with the antics of her perverse monkey, or my own foolish attempt to catch her attention, or my labours to be a good maidservant. She had chosen me because I was ugly, while in stark contrast this educated, sophisticated, highly polished Court beauty would shine as a warning beacon lit for all to wonder at on a hilltop. I was the perfect foil—too unlovely, too gauche, too ignorant to pose any threat to the splendour that was Joan of Kent.

I think, weighing the good against the bad, I truly detested her.

Without warning it all came to an end, of course. ‘I am leaving,’ the Countess announced after three weeks, the most exciting, exhilarating three weeks of my life. I had already seen the preparations—the litter had returned, the escort at that very moment cluttering up the courtyard—and I was sorry. ‘God’s Wounds! I’ll be glad to rid myself of these stultifying walls. I could die here and no one would be any the wiser. You have been useful to me.’ The Countess sat in the high-backed chair in her bedchamber, her feet neatly together in gilded leather shoes on a little stool, while the business of repacking her accoutrements went on around her. ‘I suppose I should reward you, but I cannot think how.’ She pointed as she stood with a swish of her damask skirts. ‘Take that box and carry the Barbary.’

With difficulty, at the cost of a bite, I recovered the monkey, but my mind was not on the sharp nip. There was one piece of knowledge I wanted from her. If I did not ask now …

‘My lady …’

‘I haven’t time.’ She was already walking through the doorway.

‘What gives a woman …?’ I thought about the word I wanted. ‘What gives a woman power?’

She stopped. She turned slowly, laughing softly, but her face was writ with a mockery so vivid that I flushed at my temerity. ‘Power? What would a creature such as you know of true power? What would you do with it, even if it came to you?’ The disdain for my ignorance was cruel in its sleek elegance.

‘I mean—the power to determine my own path in life.’

‘So! Is that what you seek?’ She allowed me a complacent little smile. And I saw that beneath her carelessness ran a far deeper emotion. She actually despised me, as perhaps she despised all creatures of low birth. ‘You’ll not get power, my dear. That is, if you mean rank. Unless you can rise above your station and become Abbess of this place.’ Her voice purred in derision. ‘You’ll not do it—but I’ll give you an answer. If you have no breeding then you need beauty. Your looks will get you nowhere. There is only one way left to you.’ Her smile vanished and I thought she gave my question some weight of consideration. ‘Knowledge.’

‘How can knowledge be power?’

‘It can, if what you know is of importance to someone else.’

What could I learn at the Abbey? To read the order of the day. To dig roots in the garden. To make simples in the Infirmary. To polish the silver vessels in the Abbey church.

‘What would I do with such learning?’ I asked in despair. How I loathed her in that moment of self-knowledge.

‘How would I know that? But I would say this. It is important for a woman to have the duplicity to make good use of what gifts she might have, however valueless they might seem. Do you have that?’

Duplicity? Did I possess it? I had no idea. I shook my head.

‘Guile! Cunning! Scheming!’ she snapped, my ignorance an affront. ‘Do you understand?’ The Countess retraced her steps to murmur in my ear as if it were a kindness. ‘You have to have the strength to pursue your goal, without caring how many enemies you make along the road. It is not easy. I have made enemies all my life, but on the day I wed the Prince they will be as chaff before the wind. I will laugh in their faces and care not what they say of me. Would you be willing to do that? I doubt it.’ The mockery of concern came swiftly to an end. ‘Set your mind to it, girl. All you have before you is your life in this cold tomb, until the day they clothe you in your death habit and sew you into your shroud.’

‘No!’ The terrible image drove me to cry out as if I had been pricked on the arm with one of Countess Joan’s well-sharpened pens. ‘I would escape from here.’ I had never said it aloud before, never put it into words. How despairing it sounded. How hopeless, but in that moment I was overwhelmed by the enormity of all that I lacked, and all that I might become if I could only encompass it.

‘Escape? And how would you live?’ An echo of Sister Goda’s words that were like a knife against my heart. ‘Without resources you would need a husband. Unless you would be a whore. A chancy life, short and brutish. Not one I would recommend. Better to be a nun.’ Sweeping me aside, she strode from the room and out into the courtyard, where she settled herself in her litter, and as I reached to deposit the monkey on the cushions and close the curtains, my services for her complete, I heard her final condemnation. ‘You’ll never be anything of value in life. So turn your mind from it.’ Then with a glinting smile, ‘I have decided how to reward you. Take the Barbary. I suppose it will give you some distraction—I begin to find it a nuisance.’

The creature was thrust out of the litter, back into my arms.

Thus in a cloud of dust Countess Joan was gone with her dogs and hawk and all her unsettling influences. But I did not forget her. For Countess Joan had applied a flame to my imagination. When it burned so fiercely that it was almost a physical hurt, I wished with all my heart I could quench it, but the fire never left me. The venal hand of ambition had fallen on me, grasping my shoulder with lethal strength, and refused to release me.

I am worth more than this, I determined as I knelt with the sisters at Compline, young as I was. I will be of value! I will make something of my life.

And had I not done so, by one means or another? Now I smiled, even as the vile stench of tallow filled my nose and throat. Despite the Countess’s judgement of me, here I was, by some miracle, at Havering-atte-Bower. Fate had snatched me up from the Abbey. I hummed tunelessly to myself. Why should fate not see a path to get me out of this hellish pit of heat and rank odours to where I might spread my wings? Especially if I gave it a helping hand.

As I dissuaded with the side of my foot one of the kitchen kittens from clawing at my skirts, I was distracted and my humming became a sharp hiss as the tallow dripped hotly onto my hand, pulling me back into the present.

When Princess Joan returned from Aquitaine, the frivolous royal Court would circle round the vivacious new Princess rather than the fading, unprepossessing Queen. Queen Philippa’s virtues would count for nothing against the brilliance of Princess Joan. I felt sorry that the Queen would be so eclipsed by a woman who was not worthy of fastening her laces, but was that not the order of things?

‘Well,’ I announced to the kitten, which had latched its claws into my shoe, ‘virtue or ambition? Goodness or worldliness? I would enjoy being able to choose between the two.’

Scooping it up, I shut the creature outside in the scullery, ignoring its plaintive mewing, as I went to answer an enraged bellow from Master Humphrey. Virtue was a fine thing—but could be as dull as a platter of day-old bread. Now, ambition was quite another matter—as succulent as the pheasants that Master Humphrey was simmering in spiced wine for the royal table.

And what happened to the monkey? Mother Abbess ordered it to be taken to the Infirmary and locked in a cellar. I never saw it again. Considering its propensity to bite, I was not sorry. Still I smiled. If I had the monkey now, I would set it loose on Sim with much malice and enjoyment.

Then all was danger, without warning. Two weeks of the whirlwind of kitchen life at Havering had lulled me into carelessness. And on that day I had been taken up with the noxious task of scrubbing down the chopping block where the joints of meat were dismembered.

‘And when you’ve done that, fetch a basket of scallions from the storeroom—and see if you can find some sage in the garden. Can you recognise it?’ Master Humphrey, shouting after me, still leaned toward the scathing.

‘Yes, Master Humphrey.’ Any fool can recognise sage.

I wrung out the cloth, relieved to escape the heat and sickening stench of fresh blood.

‘And bring some chives while you’re at it, girl!’

I was barely out of the door when my wrist was seized in a hard grip and I was almost jolted off my feet—and into the loathsome arms of Sim.

‘Well, if it isn’t Mistress Alice with her good opinion of herself!’

I raised my hand to cuff his ear but he ducked and held on. This was just Sim trying to make trouble since I had deterred him from lifting my skirts with the point of a knife and the red punctures still stood proud on his hand.

‘Get off me, you oaf!’