The King’s Concubine: A Novel of Alice Perrers (8 page)

“This is my…What is the word? Retainer? You are now my man of law, Master Greseley.”

“I am indeed, Mistress Perrers.”

The coins were swept into his purse with alacrity.

And where did I keep the evidence of my ownership? I kept it hidden on my person between shift and overgown, tied with a cord, except when I took it out and touched it, running my fingers over the words that made it all official. There it was for my future. Security. Permanence. The words were like warm hands around mine on a winter’s day.

I did not dislike Greseley as much as I once had.

Plague returned. The same dread pestilence that had struck without mercy just before my birth came creeping stealthily into London. It was the only gossip to be had in the streets, the market, the alehouses. It was different this time, so they said in whispers. The plague of children, they called it, striking cruelly at infants but not the hale and hearty who had reached adult years.

But the pestilence, stepping over our threshold, proved to be a chancy creature.

Of us all it was Janyn who was struck down. He drew aside the sleeve of his tunic to reveal the dread whirls of red spots as we gathered for dinner on an ordinary day. We stared at the signs as if we could not believe in their existence. The meal was abandoned. Without a word Janyn walked up the stairs and shut himself in his chamber. Terror, rank and loathsome, set its claws into the Perrers household.

The boy disappeared overnight. Greseley found work in other parts of London. Mistress Damiata fled with disgraceful speed to stay with her cousin, whose house was uncontaminated. Who nursed Janyn? I did. I was his wife, even if he had never touched me unless his calloused fingers grazed mine when he pointed out a mistake in my copying. I owed him at least this final service.

From that first red-and-purple pattern on his arms there was no recovery.

I bathed his face and body, holding my breath at the stench of putrefying flesh. I racked my brains for anything Sister Margery had said of her experiences of the pestilence. It was not much but I acted on it, flinging the windows of Janyn’s chamber wide to allow the escape of the corrupt air. For my own safety I washed my hands and face in vinegar, and ate bread soaked in Janyn’s best wine—how Signora Damiata would have ranted at the waste—but for Janyn nothing halted the terrifying onset. The empty house echoed around me, the only sound the harsh breathing from my stricken husband and the approaching footsteps of death.

Was I afraid for myself?

I was, but if the horror of the vile swellings could pass from Janyn to me, the damage was already done. If the pestilence had the ability to hop across the desk where we sat to keep the ledgers, then I was already doomed. I would stay and weather the storm.

A note appeared under the bedchamber door. I watched it slide slowly, from my position slumped on a stool from sheer exhaustion as Janyn labored with increasingly distressed breaths. The fever had him in its thrall. Stepping softly to the door, listening to someone walking quietly away, I picked up the note and unfolded the single page, curiosity overcoming
my weariness. Ha! No mystery after all. I recognized Greseley’s script with ease, and the content was written as a clerk might write a legal treatise. I sank back to the stool to read.

When you are a widow you have legal right to a dower—one-third of the income of your husband’s estate. You will not get it.

You have by law forty days in which to vacate the house: for the good of the heir—her nephew—who will take his inheritance. You will be evicted within the day.

As your legal man, my advice: Take what you can. It is your right. You will get nothing else that is due to you.

A stark warning. A chilling one.

Leaving Janyn in a restless sleep, I began to search.

Nothing! Absolutely nothing!

Signora Damiata had done a thorough job of it while her brother lay dying and I preoccupied with his dire sufferings or fallen into a torpor of utter bone-weariness. His room of business—the whole house—was empty of all items of value. There were no bags of gold in Janyn’s coffers. There were no scrolls; the ledgers and tally sticks had gone. She had swept through the house, removing everything that might become an attraction for looters. Or for me. Everything from my own chamber had been taken. Even my new mantle—especially that—the only thing of value I owned and that the Signora would covet.

I had nothing.

Above me in his bedchamber, Janyn shrieked in an extremity of agony and I returned to his side. I would do for him what I could, ruling my mind and my body to bathe and tend this man who was now little more than a rotting corpse.

In the end it all happened so fast. I expect it was Janyn’s wine that saved me, but the decoction of green sage from the scrubby patch in Signora Damiata’s yard, used to dry and heal the foul ulcers and boils, did nothing for him. Before the end of the second day he breathed no more. How could a man switch from rude health to rigid mortality within the time it took to pluck and boil a chicken? He never knew I was there with him. Did I pray for him? Only if prayer was lancing the
boils to free the foul-smelling pus. Now the house was truly silent around me, holding its breath, as I placed the linen gently over his face, catching a document that fell from its folds at the foot of the bed. And then I sat on the stool by Janyn’s body, not daring to move for fear that death would notice me too.

It was the clatter of a rook falling down the chimney that brought me back to my senses. Death obviously had no need of my soul, so I opened the manuscript that I still held. It was a document of ownership in Janyn’s name of a manor in West Peckham, somewhere in Kent. I read it twice, a tiny seed of a plan beginning to unfurl in my mind. Now, here was a possibility. I did not know how to achieve what I envisaged, but of course I knew someone who would.

Where to find him? I walked slowly down the stairs, halting halfway when I saw a figure below me.

“Is he dead?” Signora Damiata was waiting for me in the narrow hall.

“Yes.”

She made the sign of the cross on her bosom, a cursory acknowledgment, then flung back the outer door and gestured for me to leave. “I’ve arranged for his body to be collected. I’ll return when the pestilence has gone.”

“What about me?”

“I’m sure you’ll find some means of employment,” she said, barely acknowledging me. “Plague does not quench men’s appetites.”

“And my dower?”

“What dower?”

“You can’t do this!” I announced. “You can’t leave me homeless and without money.”

But she could. “Out!”

I was pushed through the doorway onto the street. With a flourish and a rattle of the key, Signora Damiata locked the door and strode off, stepping through the waste and puddles.

It was a lesson to me in brutal coldheartedness when dealing with matters of coin and survival. And there I was, sixteen years old to my reckoning, widowed after little more than a year of marriage, cast adrift, standing alone outside the house, and homeless. It felt as if my
feet were chained to the floor. Where would I go? Who would give me shelter? Reality was a bitter draft. London seethed around me but offered me no refuge.

“Mistress Perrers…!”

“Greseley!”

For there he was—I hadn’t had to find him after all—emerging from a rank alley to slouch beside me. Never had I been so relieved to see anyone, but not without a shade of rancor. He might have lost a master too, but he would never be short of employment or a bed.

“What did the old besom give you?” he asked without preamble.

“Nothing,” I retorted. “The old besom has stripped the house.” And then I smiled, waving the document in front of his eyes. “Except for this. She overlooked it. It’s a manor.”

Those eyes gleamed. “Is it, now? And what do you intend to do with it?”

“I intend
you
to arrange that it becomes
mine
, Master Greseley. Enfeoffment for use, I think you called it.” I could be a fast learner, and I had seen my chance. “Can you do that?”

He ran his finger down his nose. “Easy for those who know how. I can—if it suits me—have it made over to you as the widow of Master Perrers, and now
femme sole
.”

A woman alone. With property. A not unpleasing thought that made my smile widen.

“And will it suit you, Master Greseley?” I slid a persuasive glance at the clerk. “Will you do it for me?”

His face flushed under my gaze as he considered.

I softened my voice. “I cannot do this on my own, Master Greseley. But you have the knowledge.…”

He grinned, a quick slash of thin lips and discolored teeth. “Why not? We have, I believe, the basis of a partnership here, Mistress Perrers. I’ll work for you, and you’ll put business my way—when you can. I’ll enfeoff the manor to the use of a local knight—and myself.”

So that was it. Master Greseley was not entirely altruistic, but he was willing with a little female enticement. How easily men could be seduced
with a smile and outrageous flattery offered in sweet tones. He extended his hand. I looked at it: not overclean but with long, surprisingly elegant fingers that could work magic with figures far more ably than I, and I knew his mind to be just as clever. There on the doorstep of my erstwhile home, I handed over the document and we shook hands as I had seen Janyn do when confirming some deal with a customer.

“You’ll not cheat me, will you?” I made my voice stern.

“Certainly not!” His outrage was amusing. And then his brows twitched together suspiciously. “Where will you go?”

“There’s only one place.” I had already made my decision. There really was no other to be made. It would be a roof over my head and food in my belly, and far preferable to life on the streets or docks as a common whore. Should I have turned up on the doorstep of my property in Gracechurch Street and demanded entry? Today I would have done just that—but then I was too inexperienced, too ill-prepared to fight for my legal claim. Besides, I looked no better than a kitchen wench. “Back to St. Mary’s,” I said. “They’ll take me in. I’ll stay there and wait for better times. Something will turn up.”

Greseley nodded. “Not a bad idea, all in all. But you’ll need this. Here…” He rummaged in the purse at his belt and brought out two gold coins. “I’ll return these to you. They should persuade the Abbess to open the doors to you for a little time, at least. Remember, though: You now owe me. I want it back.”

“Where do I find you?” I shrieked, coarse as a fishwife, as he put distance between us, the proof of ownership of the manor at West Peckham stowed in his tunic.

“Try the Tabard. At Southwark.”

That was as much as I got.

So I went back to the convent, where I had vowed I would never return, wheedling a ride in a wagon empty of all but the rank whiff of fish. I might own a manor and a house in London—I had left both precious documents in Greseley’s care—but I was in debt to the tune of two gold nobles to my partner in business. And though those coins
opened the doors of the Abbey to me, they bought me no luxury. It was made clear to me that I must earn my keep, and so I found myself joining the ranks of the
conversa
: a lay sister toiling for the benefit of the Brides of Christ. Perhaps it was the stink of salt cod clinging to my skirts that worked against me.

Why did I accept my diminished status?

Because the sanctuary the convent offered me was a temporary measure. I knew it deep within me. I had supped in the outside world and found it to my taste. In those days of silent labor, a determination was born in me. I would never become a nun. I would never wed again at anyone’s dictates. At some point in the future, in Greseley’s clever hands, my land would bring me enough coin to allow me to live as a
femme sole
in my own house with my own bed and good clothing and servants at my beck and call.

I liked the image. It spurred me on as I scrubbed the nuns’ habits and beat the stains from their wimples to restore them to pristine whiteness. I would prove Countess Joan wrong. I would make something of my life beyond the governance of others, neither nun nor wife nor whore. I would amount to something in my own right. But for now I was safe in the familiar surroundings of the Abbey, accepting the unchanging routine of work and prayer.

“
I’ll stay there and wait for better times
,” I had said to Greseley.

And I would. But not, I prayed as my arms throbbed from wielding the heavy hoe amongst the Abbey cabbages, for too long.

I regretted the loss of my warm mantle.

Chapter Three

“S
he’s here. She’s come.” The whispers rustled like a brisk wind through a field of oats.

It was Vespers. We entered the Abbey church, the hush of habits and soft shoes a quiet sound against the paving, and we knelt, ranks of black veils and white wimples, I in a coarse fustian overkirtle and hood with the rest of the
conversa
. Ordinarily the mind of every sister, choir or lay, centered on the need for God’s grace in a world of transgression. But not tonight. The sin of self-indulgence was rife, bright as the candle flames. Excitement was tangible, shivering in the air. For in the bishop’s own chair, placed to one side of the High Altar, sat the Queen of England.

From my lowly place in the choir stalls I could see nothing of Her Majesty; nor could I even hazard a guess as to why she would so honor us. The service proceeded as if that carved chair were unoccupied, and once the final blessing was given, the nuns and
conversa
stood as one, with heads bowed and hands folded discreetly within their sleeves. Mother Sybil genuflected before the altar, and Her Majesty, still outside my vision, moved slowly through our midst toward the transept.

Slowly. Very slowly.

Which allowed me my first sight of true royalty.

Even today I recall my astonishment. Where was Countess Joan’s
show of ostentatious wealth and power? There was no such magnificence here. I had envisaged a noble bearing, a gown in rich colors, sumptuous materials stitched with embroidery, with train and furred oversleeves. A crown, a gold chain, gold and silver rings heavy with jewels. A presence of authority and elegance, of royal beauty. Joan’s arrival had been announced to us by courier and trumpet blast. I looked at the Queen of England, and looked again.