The King’s Concubine: A Novel of Alice Perrers (58 page)

“Master Thomas Webster.” I stood before his desk, arms at my sides, as he came slowly to his feet.

“Mistress Perrers…”

“Do they exist?”

He knew why I was here in his den. His eyes shifted beneath mine, and slid down to where one hand toyed with an inky quill. He knew exactly my meaning: the documents to prove that Gaunt had had the pardons drawn up.

“I am sure they do, mistress.”

“Will you find them for me? Will you stand as witness for me?”

“No, mistress.”

Well, that was plain enough. “Why not?”

Now he looked at me. “You know the reason. It’s more than my position is worth to help you.”

“Will you not even help me to prove that my banishment from Court was revoked by my lord of Gaunt?”

He did not even bother to answer.

“Then who will?” I demanded. “Who will help me?”

His face as bland as a baked custard tart, he cast the quill with its ruined nib onto the desk. He did not need to reply. As I discovered in further fruitless search for the whole of that afternoon, no one would help me. The Court lawyers became invisible. They vanished into the stonework and paneled walls like cockroaches at the approach of a candle. Those whom I cornered claimed an astonishing loss of recall.

“It’s hopeless!” I met up with Windsor, who was looking unusually harassed, in the Great Hall.

“So Webster is intransigent?”

“Webster is a self-serving bastard!”

“Edward’s servants are also less than cooperative,” he remarked. “But there is one who might come up to the mark.…”

“How much did you pay him?”

“Best not to ask! I wouldn’t wager on his appearing in the final shake-up, but at least he did not refuse outright.”

I had little hope. If a lawyer would not stand for the truth, with all the legal documents to prove his case, how could I expect a page or servant to put himself forward against the will of Parliament?

“Don’t give up hope, Alice,” Windsor said, though his face was grim. “Not until the final judgment is given. There’s always hope.”

“I’m not so sanguine.”

“Nor am I. But we can’t both give up before we begin!” I balked at the unexpected harshness, but he drew my hand through his arm and led me toward the screened door at the end of the hall.

“What do we do now?” I asked.

“We stir up the kitchens to find us ale and something that passes for food. Then we keep my wavering witness under surveillance.” His
grin had a not altogether pleasant edge. “If he changes his mind, we do all we can to change it back!”

We had little sleep that night.

Ten o’clock. Edward’s beloved clock at Havering would be marking the hour. The Committee chose a smaller, more intimate chamber in which to examine my evidence, one just large enough to hold a half dozen of their number and the accused. And a witness, if one were brave enough to appear. Or sufficiently foolhardy…

I entered. I curtsied to the chosen Lords seated before me behind a table, a solid barrier between accusers and accused. I looked from face to face to see who would determine my future.

The temperature in the room dropped to ice.

Seated in the center of my judges, presiding over the case against me, was Gaunt himself. My erstwhile supporter, my ally, who had striven to win my allegiance, who had annulled my banishment to allow me to return to Edward.

Sitting in judgment?

I inhaled slowly, deeply, trying to calm the terror that flared anew. Why had he chosen to do this? What effect would his weighty presence have on the judgment for or against me? The answer was as plain as the flamboyant black-and-red damask of his tunic. I looked directly at him. He looked at me. If I had hoped to find a friend amongst the Lords, I had been woefully mistaken. But then, I had never trusted him, had I? I was right not to. Gaunt’s presence, I knew full well, would destroy the one solitary hope I had clung to, however hopelessly, through that endless night: that he might once again come to my rescue. He was here to punish me. He was here to destroy any evidence that we had worked together in the past by making an example of me. He was hunting, his eyes as hard and cold as granite, and I was the quarry. I would find no rescue here.

“Mistress Perrers…”

My attention was dragged back, my interrogator once more Northumberland. Not that it mattered. Gaunt might not personally undertake
the examination of my evidence, but his authority would color the whole proceedings. The outcome was, I feared, his to direct.

“Mistress Perrers—we will weigh your evidence to support your innocence. Have you discovered any lawyer who will speak of the origin of Lyons’s pardon? Have you discovered the documents?”

“No, my lords. I have not.”

“Then the evidence against you still stands and you must be presumed guilty.” How gentle his voice sounded. How venomous!

“I have found one who will speak for me,” I stated.

“Indeed?” The disbelief in that single word was impressive, and chilling to the depths of my soul.

“I would call John Beverley,” I said.

“And he is?”

“An attendant in King Edward’s retinue. A personal body servant. A man whom the King—the late King—trusted implicitly.”

“Then we will hear him.”

The door at my back was opened. I prayed, I prayed as hard as I could, that John Beverley had not fled.

“Keep him here, whatever you do!” I had told Windsor that morning, “and stop scowling at him.” John Beverley was the only man Windsor and I could locate who had a smidgen of courage and respect for the truth. Whatever effort it had taken from Windsor, we had brought Beverley at least as far as the door to the chamber. I thought perhaps the means employed by my determined husband had been physical: Beverley was nervous. I feared he was also untrustworthy. But what choice had I but to put my freedom into his hands? All I could do was pray that his past loyalties would hold true. He entered, thinning hair untidy, as if he had dragged his hands through it, his gaze flickering over the Committee. When he saw Gaunt, his nervousness changed to horror. The skin of his face became gray, and my heart fell.

“John Beverley,” Northumberland addressed him.

“Yes, my lord.” His hands were gripped ferociously, his broad features anxious.

“You were body servant to King Edward?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“We are here to ascertain the truth of the pardoning of Richard Lyons. You recall the matter to which I allude? To your knowledge, did Mistress Perrers persuade His late Majesty to grant Lyons a pardon?”

“Not to my knowledge, my lord.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Yes, my lord.”

I sighed. Beverley was a man of few words, his eyes those of a terrified deer facing the hounds. Pray God he would use those words on my behalf.

“How is that? How can you be so sure?”

“I was in attendance on His Majesty constantly in those last days, my lord.” A few petals of hope began to unfurl beneath my heart. Beverley’s voice grew stronger as his confidence grew. Here was something he could speak of with authority. “I never heard the matter of a pardon mentioned by the King or by Mistress Perrers.”

“So neither of them talked of it.”

“No, my lord. Neither King Edward nor his…nor Mistress Perrers. I swear the King never gave the order for a pardon for the man.”

A dangerous statement, all in all. If the pardon had not come from Edward, it had been on Gaunt’s own initiative. Thus, Gaunt had usurped a royal power that was not his by right to use. I held my breath as the tension in the room tightened. There was a shifting of bodies, the slide of silk against damask, a scrape of boots against the floor. And on Gaunt’s brow a storm cloud gathered. If Beverley did not notice it, he was a fool. Would he stand by his word, or would he play the coward? Windsor’s intimidation or monetary inducement suddenly weighed little against Gaunt’s unspoken ire.

“You will swear to that? You will take an oath to that effect?” asked Northumberland. “That Mistress Perrers did at no time persuade the late King to issue a pardon for Richard Lyons.”

“Well…yes, my lord.”

“It would, you understand, be dangerous to swear to something of which you are to any degree uncertain.…”

“Ah…” And as I watched him, Beverley’s eyes skipped from Northumberland to Gaunt.

“Do you claim, Master Beverley, that Mistress Perrers had
no
influence on the King’s decisions? You say that you were with the late King constantly.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“But were there not times when Mistress Perrers was alone with the King, without your presence?”

“Of course, my lord.”

“And during those times, could she perhaps have raised the question of Lyons and his pardon?”

“Well…she could, my lord.” Beverley gulped.

“If that is so…are you free to say that Mistress Perrers did not undertake the pardon of Richard Lyons?”

I heard him swallow again, seeing the pit before his feet, a dark morass of claim and counterclaim that he had dug for himself. I too saw it, but forced myself to stand perfectly still, watching Gaunt’s face.

“No, my lord. I suppose I am not.”

“Then, by my reckoning, you cannot support Mistress Perrers with your testimony. Can you?”

“No, sir. By my conscience, I cannot.” I thought Beverley sounded relieved at having the decision made for him.

“Thank you. We appreciate your honesty. You are free to go.”

Gaunt’s face was blandly tranquil; he appeared satisfied with a job well-done as he looked at me. It was as if we were alone in the room, and I knew that I would be judged without mercy.

The Committee conferred in low voices.

John Beverley left the chamber with not one look in my direction, keen to dissociate himself from any suspicion of connivance between us. I could hardly blame him. Not all men were given the courage to stand by the truth. Not all men were like Windsor, who I knew would stand by me to the death. Standing alone before Gaunt’s handpicked lordly minions, I needed Windsor as I had never needed anyone before. Since Philippa’s intervention in my life, I had struggled and maneuvered to keep my feet in the fast-flowing stream of Court politics. I had
striven to make my future and that of my children safe. I was even proud of my success. Now all was brought to nothing. Here I stood, helpless and vulnerable, without friends.

Except for William de Windsor.

The strange sense of relief that I was not completely alone, whatever happened, was my only glimmer of hope in this moment of dread.

“Mistress Perrers!” There was Northumberland demanding my attention. Gaunt’s expression was carved in stone. Northumberland stepped forward. “We have made our decision. This is our judgment.…”

And how little time it took to undermine all I had made of my life.

“We consider you to be guilty of obtaining the pardon for Richard Lyons.”

Guilty!

“Therefore this Committee, in the name of the Lords of the Realm of England, confirms the original sentence delivered by the Good Parliament. The sentence of banishment remains against you.…”

Banishment! Again! The word beat heavily against my mind.

But Northumberland had not yet finished twisting the knife in my heart’s wound.

“…also we command the forfeiture of all your remaining lands and possessions obtained by fraud and deceit.”

The enormity of it shook me. The illegality of my actions was simply presumed without any need to show proof. My own purchase of land and property was presumed to be through deceit, and so I was to be stripped of everything, whether illegal or not. I was
presumed
guilty, not proven to be so. So much for justice. How they must hate me. But had that not always been the case?

“Do you understand our decisions, Mistress Perrers?”

I stood unmoving, aware of all those eyes: some condemning, some sanctimonious, some merely curious to see how I would react. Gaunt’s eyes glittered with triumph and avarice. My estates were open to his picking. From ally to enemy in that one sentence. I could barely comprehend it. And when I did, I despised him for it.

“I understand perfectly, my lords,” I remarked. “Am I free to go?”

“We are finished here.”

I curtsied deeply and walked from the room.

Am I free to go?
I had asked. But where would I go?

Before my mind could fully grasp what had been done, I was standing in the antechamber. The judgment was passed; I was not restrained, yet banishment, a black cloud, pressed down on me. Blindly I looked for Windsor, waiting for me by the window. I think I must have staggered, for in three strides he was beside me, holding my arm.

“Beverley played the rabbit, I presume. He scuttled out before I could get my hands around his scrawny little neck.”

I blinked, unable to string two thoughts together or find words to explain what had been done to me.

“Alice?”

I shook my head. “I…I can’t…but I need to…”

One close look at my bleak expression was enough for him. “Don’t try to speak. Come with me.”

He lost no time, but led me out into the icy air. I shivered but was glad of the cold wind on my face. In the courtyard, horses were waiting with Windsor’s servants. As if from a distance, I realized that he had feared this, and made provision even as he had encouraged me to believe that justice would smile in my favor.

“Thank you,” I whispered. How dear he was to me. How much I had begun to lean on his good sense, his cynical streak of practicality.

He raised the palm of my hand to his lips, then, realizing how cold I was, stripped off his own gloves and drew them onto my hands, wrapping his own mantle around my shoulders. The warmth was intense, welcome, despite the cruel tingling of my fingers.

“You are very…kind to me.”

“Kind, by God! Do I not love you, foolish one?” He peered into my frozen face. “I suppose you still don’t believe me. But this is neither the time nor the place to beat you about the head with it. Just accept that it’s true and that I won’t desert you. Feel that?” He pressed my gloved palm to his chest. “It beats in unison with yours. Is that poetic enough for you? Perhaps not, but it’s the best you’ll get at this juncture.” His
kiss on my mouth was firm. “Now up with you. Before the vermin change their mind. I’ll take you home.”