The King's Concubine

The noisome overcrowded squalor of London shocked me. The environs of Barking Abbey, bustling as they might be on market day, had not prepared me for the crowds, the perpetual racket, the stench of humanity packed so close together. I did not know where to look next. At close-packed houses in streets barely wider than the wagon, where upper storeys leaned drunkenly to embrace each other, blocking out the sky. At the wares on display in shop frontages, at women who paraded in bright colours. At scruffy urchins and bold prostitutes who carried on a different business in the rank courts and passageways. A new world, both frightening and seductive: I stared, gawped, as naive as any child from the country.

‘Here’s where you get off.’

The wagon lurched and I was set down, directed by a filthy finger that pointed at my destination, a narrow house taking up no space at all, but rising above my head in three storeys. I picked my way through the mess of offal and waste in the gutters to the door. Was this the one? It did not seem to be the house of a man of means. I knocked.

The woman who opened the door was far taller than I and as thin as a willow lath, with her hair scraped into a pair of metallic cylindrical cauls on either side of her gaunt face, as if she were encased in a cage. ‘Well?’

‘Is this the house of Janyn Perres?’

‘What’s it to you?’

Her gaze flicked over me, briefly. She made to close the door. I could not blame her: I was not an attractive object. But this was where I had been sent, where I was expected. I would not have the door shut in my face.

‘I have been sent,’ I said, slapping my palm boldly against the wood.

‘What do you want?’

‘I am Alice,’ I said, remembering, at last, to curtsey.

‘If you’re begging, I’ll take my brush to you …’

‘I’m sent by the nuns at the Abbey,’ I stated.

The revulsion in her stare deepened, and the woman’s lips twisted like a hank of rope. ‘So you’re the girl. Are you the best they could manage?’ She flapped her hand when I opened my mouth to reply that, yes, I supposed I was the best they could offer, since I was the only novice. ‘Never mind. You’re here now so we’ll make the best of it. But in future you’ll use the door at the back beside the privy.’

And that was that.

I had become part of a new household.

And what an uneasy household it was. Even I, with no experience of such, was aware of the tensions from the moment I set my feet over the threshold.

Janyn Perrers—master of the house, pawnbroker, moneylender and bloodsucker. His appearance did not suggest a rapacious man but, then, as I rapidly learned, it was not his word that was the law within his four walls. Tall and stooped with not an ounce of spare flesh on his frame and a foreign slur to his speech, he spoke only when he had to, and then not greatly. In his business dealings he was painstaking. Totally absorbed, he lived and breathed the acquisition and lending at extortionate rates of gold and silver coin. His face might have been kindly, if not for the deep grooves and hollow cheeks more reminiscent of a death’s head. His hair—or lack of—some few greasy wisps around his neck, gave him the appearance of a well-polished egg when he removed his felt cap. I could not guess his age but he seemed very old to me with his uneven gait and faded eyes. His fingers were always stained with ink, his mouth too when he chewed his pen.

He nodded to me when I served supper, placing the dishes carefully on the table before him: it was the only sign that he noted a new addition to his family. This was the man who now employed me and would govern my future.

The power in the house rested on the shoulders of Damiata Perrers, his sister, who had made it clear when I arrived that I was not welcome. The Signora. There was no kindness in her face. She was the strength, the firm grip on the reins, the imposer of punishment on those who displeased her. Nothing happened in that house without her knowledge or her permission.

There was a boy to haul and carry and clean the privy, a lad who said little and thought less. He led a miserable existence, gobbling his food with filthy fingers before bolting back to his own pursuits in the nether regions of the house. I never learned his name.

Then there was Master William de Greseley. He was a man who was and was not of the household since he spread his services further afield, an interesting man who took my attention but ignored me with a remarkable determination. A clerk, a clever individual with black hair and brows, sharp features much like a rat, and a pale face, as if he never saw the light of day. A man with as little emotion about him as one of the flounders brought home by Signora Damiata from the market, his employment was to note down the business of the day. Ink might stain Master Perrers’s fingers but I swore that it ran in Master Greseley’s veins. He disregarded me to the same extent as he was deaf to the vermin that scuttled across the floor of the room in which he kept the books and ledgers of money lent and reclaimed. I was wary of him. There was a coldness that I found unpalatable.

And then there was me. The maidservant who undertook all the work not assigned to the boy. And some that was.

Thus my first introduction to the Perrers family. And since it was a good score of miles away from Barking Abbey, it was not beyond my tolerance.

‘God help th’man who weds you, mistress!’

‘I’m not going to be married!’

Holy Mother! My vigorous assertion returned to mock me. Within a se’nnight I found myself exchanging marriage vows at the church door.

Given the tone of her remonstration, Signora Damiata was as astonished as I, and unpleasantly frank when I was summoned to join brother and sister in the parlour at the rear of the house, where, by the expression on the lady’s face, Master Perrers had just broken the news of his intent.

‘Blessed Mary! Why marry?’ she demanded. ‘You have a son, an heir, learning the family business in Lombardy. I keep your house. Why would you want a wife at your age?’ Her accent grew stronger, the syllables hissing over each other. ‘If you must, then choose a girl from one of our merchant families. A girl with a dowry and a family with some standing. Jesu! Are you not listening?’ She raised her fists as if she might strike him. ‘She is not a suitable wife for a man of your importance.’

Did I think that Master Perrers did not rule the roost? He looked briefly at me as he continued leafing through the pages of a small ledger he had taken from his pocket.

‘I will have this one. I will wed her. That is the end of the matter.’

I, of course, was not asked. I stood in this three-cornered dialogue yet not a part of it, the bone squabbled over by two dogs. Except that Master Perrers did not squabble. He simply stated his intention and held to it, until his sister closed her mouth and let it be. So I was wed in the soiled skirts in which I chopped the onions and gutted the fish: clearly there was no money earmarked to be spent on a new wife. Sullen and resentful, shocked into silence, certainly no joyful bride, I complied because I must. I was joined in matrimony with Janyn Perrers on the steps of the church with witnesses to attest the deed: Signora Damiata, grim-faced and silent; and Master Greseley, because he was available, with no expression at all. A few words muttered over us by a bored priest in an empty ritual, and I was a wife.

And afterwards?

No celebration, no festivity, no recognition of my change in position in the household. Not even a cup of ale and a bride cake. It was, I realised, nothing more than a business agreement, and since I had brought nothing to it, there was no need to celebrate it. All I recall was the rain soaking through my hood as we stood and exchanged vows and the shrill cries of lads who fought amongst themselves for the handful of coin that Master Perrers scattered as a reluctant sign of his goodwill. Oh, and I recall Master Perrers’s fingers gripping hard on mine, the only reality in this ceremony that was otherwise not real at all to me.

Was it better than being a Bride of Christ? Was marriage better than servitude? To my mind there was little difference. After the ceremony I was directed to sweeping down the cobwebs that festooned the storerooms in the cellar. I took out my bad temper with my brush, making the spiders run for cover.

There was no cover for me. Where would I run?

And beneath my anger was a dark lurking fear, for the night, my wedding night, was ominously close, and Master Perrers was no handsome lover.

The Signora came to my room, which was hardly bigger than a large coffer, tucked high under the eaves, and gestured with a scowl. In shift and bare feet I followed her down the stairs. Opening the door to my husband’s bedchamber, she thrust me inside and closed it at my back. I stood just within, not daring to move. My throat was so dry I could barely swallow. Apprehension was a rock in my belly and fear of my ignorance filled me to the brim. I did not want to be here. I did not want this. I could not imagine why Master Perrers would want me, plain and unfinished and undowered as I was. Silence closed round me—except for a persistent scratching like a mouse trapped behind the plastered wall.

In that moment I was a coward. I admit it. I closed my eyes.

Still nothing.

So I squinted, only to find my gaze resting on the large bed with its dust-laden hangings to shut out the night air. Holy Virgin! To preserve intimacy for the couple enclosed within. Closing my eyes again, I prayed for deliverance.

What, exactly, would he want me to do?

‘You can open your eyes now. She’s gone.’

There was humour in the gruff, accented voice. I obeyed and there was Janyn, in a chamber robe of astonishingly virulent yellow ochre that encased him from neck to bony ankles, seated at a table covered with piles of documents and heaped scrolls. At his right hand was a leather purse spilling out strips of wood, another smaller pouch containing silver coin. And to his left a branch of good-quality candles that lit the atmosphere with gold as the dust motes danced. But it was the pungent aroma, of dust and parchment and vellum, and perhaps the ink that he had been stirring, that made my nose wrinkle. Intuitively I knew that it was the smell of careful record-keeping and of wealth. It almost dispelled my fear.

‘Come in. Come nearer to the fire.’ I took a step, warily. At least he was not about to leap on me quite yet. There was no flesh in sight on either of us.

‘Here.’ He stretched toward the coffer at his side and scooped up the folds of a mantle. ‘You’ll be cold. Take it. It’s yours.’

This was the first gift I had ever had, given honestly, and I wrapped the luxurious woollen length round my shoulders, marvelling at the quality of its weaving, its softness and warm russet colouring, wishing I had a pair of shoes. He must have seen me shuffling on the cold boards.

‘Put these on.’

A pair of leather shoes of an incongruous red were pushed across the floor towards me. Enormous, but soft and warm from his own feet as I slid mine in with a sigh of pleasure.

‘Are you a virgin?’ he asked conversationally.

My pleasure dissipated like mist in morning sun, my blood running as icily cold as my feet, and I shivered. A goose walking over my grave. I did not want this old man to touch me. The last thing I wanted was to share a bed with him and have him fumble against my naked flesh with his ink-stained fingers, their untrimmed nails scraping and scratching.

‘Yes,’ I managed, hoping my abhorrence was not obvious, but Master Perrers was watching me with narrowed eyes. How could it not be obvious? I felt my face flame with humiliation.

‘Of course you are,’ my husband said with a laconic nod. ‘Let me tell you something that might take that anxious look from your face. I’ll not trouble you. It’s many a year since I’ve found comfort in a woman.’ I had never heard him string so many words together.

‘Then why did you wed me?’ I asked.

Since I had nothing else to give, I had thought it must be a desire for young flesh in his bed. So, if not that …? Master Perrers looked at me as if one of his ledgers had spoken, then grunted in what could have been amusement.

‘Someone to tend my bones in old age. A wife to shut my sister up from nagging me to wed a merchant’s daughter whose family would demand a weighty settlement.’

I sighed. I had asked for the truth, had I not? I would nurse him and demand nothing in return. It was not flattering.

‘Marriage will give security to you,’ he continued as if he read my thoughts. And then: ‘Have you a young lover in mind?’

‘No!’ Such directness startled me. ‘Well, not yet. I don’t know any young men.’

He chuckled. ‘Good. Then we shall rub along well enough, I expect. When you do know a young man you can set your fancy on, let me know. I’ll make provision for you when I am dead,’ he remarked.

He went back to his writing. I stood and watched, not knowing what to do or say now that he had told me what he did not want from me. Should I leave? His gnarled hand with its thick fingers moved up and down the columns, rows of figures growing from his pen, columns of marks in heavy black ink spreading from top to bottom. They intrigued me. The minutes passed. The fire settled. Well, I couldn’t stand there for ever.

‘What do I do now, Master Perrers?’

He looked up as if surprised that I was still there. ‘Do you wish to sleep?’

‘No.’

‘I suppose we must do something. Let me …’ He peered at me with his pale eyes. ‘Pour two cups of ale and sit there.’

I poured and took the stool he pushed in my direction.

‘You can write.’

‘Yes.’

In my later years at the Abbey, driven by a boredom so intense that even study had offered some relief, I had applied myself to my lessons with some fervour, enough to cause Sister Goda to offer a rosary in gratitude to Saint Jude Thaddeus, a saint with a fine reputation for pursuing desperate causes. I could now write with a fair hand.

‘The convents are good for something, then. Can you write and tally numbers?’

‘No.’

‘Then you will learn. There.’ He reversed the ledger and pushed it toward me across the table. ‘Copy that list there. I’ll watch you.’

I sat, inveterate curiosity getting the better of me, and as I saw what it was that he wished me to do, I picked up one of his pens and began to mend the end with a sharp blade my new husband kept for the purpose. I had learned the skill, by chance—or perhaps by my own devising—from a woman of dramatic beauty and vicious pleasures, who had once honoured the Abbey with her presence. A woman who had an unfortunate habit of creeping into my mind when I least wished her to be there. This was no time or place to think of her, the much-lauded Countess of Kent.

‘What are those?’ I asked, pointing at the leather purse.

‘Tally sticks.’

‘What do they do? What are the notches for?’

‘They record income, debts paid and debts owed,’ he informed me, watching me to ensure I didn’t destroy his pen. ‘The wood is split down the middle, each party to the deal keeping half. They must match.’

‘Clever,’ I observed, picking up one of the tallies to inspect it. It was beautifully made out of a hazel stick, and its sole purpose to record ownership of money.

‘Never mind those. Write the figures.’

And I did, under his eye for the first five minutes, and then he left me to it, satisfied.

The strangest night. My blood settled to a quiet hum of pleasure as the figures grew to record a vast accumulation of gold coin, and when we had finished the accounts of the week’s business, my husband instructed me to get into the vast bed and go to sleep. I fell into it, and into sleep, to the sound of the scratching pen. Did my husband join me when his work was done? I think he did not. The bed linen was not disturbed, and neither was my shift, arranged neatly from chin to ankles, decorous as any virgin nun.

It was not what I expected but it could have been much worse.

* * *

Next morning I awoke abruptly to silence. Still very early, I presumed, and dark because the bed curtains had been drawn around me. When I peeped out it was to see that the fire had burnt itself out, the cups and ledgers tidied away and the room empty. I was at a loss, my role spectacularly unclear. Sitting back against the pillows, reluctant to leave the warmth of the bed, I looked at my hands, turning them, seeing the unfortunate results of proximity to icy cold water, hot dishes, grimy tasks. They were now the hands of Mistress Perrers. I grimaced in a moment of hard-edged humour. Was I now mistress of the household? If I was, I would have to usurp Signora Damiata’s domain. I tried to imagine myself walking into the parlour and informing the Signora what I might wish to eat, the length of cloth I might wish to purchase to fashion a new gown. And then I imagined her response. I dared not!

But it is your right!

Undeniably. But not right at this moment. My sense of self-preservation was always keen. I redirected my thoughts, to a matter of more immediacy. What would I say to Master Perrers this morning? How would I address him? Was I truly his wife if I was still a virgin? Wrapping myself in my new mantle, I returned to my own room and dressed as the maidservant I still seemed to be, before descending the stairs to the kitchen to start the tasks for the new day. The fire would have to be laid, the oven heated. If I walked quickly and quietly I would not draw attention to myself from any quarter. Such was my plan, except that my clumsy shoes clattered on the stair, and a voice called out.

‘Alice.’

I considered bolting, as if I had not heard.

‘Come here, Alice. Close the door.’

I gripped hard on my courage. Had he not been kind last night? I redirected my footsteps, and there my husband of less than twenty-four hours sat behind his desk, head bent over his ledgers, pen in hand, in the room where he dealt with the endless stream of borrowers. No different from any other morning when I might bring him ale and bread. I curtseyed. Habits were very difficult to break.

He looked up. ‘Did you sleep well?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Too much excitement, I expect.’ I might have suspected him of laughing at me but there was no change of expression on his dolorous features. He held out a small leather pouch, the strings pulled tight. I looked at it—and then at him.

‘Take it.’

‘Do you wish for me to purchase something for you, sir?’

‘It is yours.’ Since I still did not move, he placed it on the desk and pushed it across the wood toward me.

‘Mine …?’

It contained coin. And far more, as I could estimate, than was due to me as a maidservant. Planting his elbows on the desk, folding his hands and resting his chin on them, Janyn Perrers regarded me gravely, speaking slowly as if I might be a lackwit.

‘It is a bride gift, Alice. A morning gift. Is that not the custom in this country?’

‘I don’t know.’ How would I?

‘It is, if you will, a gift in recompense for the bride’s virginity.’

I frowned. ‘I don’t qualify for it, then. You did not want mine.’

‘The fault was mine, not yours. You have earned a bride gift by tolerating the whims and weaknesses of an old man.’ I think my cheeks were as scarlet as the seals on the documents before him, so astonished was I that he would thank me, regretful that my words had seemed to be so judgmental of him. ‘Take it, Alice. You look bewildered.’ At last what might have been a smile touched his mouth.

‘I am, sir. I have done nothing to make me worthy of such a gift.’

‘You are my wife and we will keep the custom.’

‘Yes, sir.’ I curtseyed.

‘One thing …’ He brushed the end of his quill pen uneasily over the mess of scrolls and lists. ‘It would please me if you would not talk about …’

‘About our night together,’ I supplied for him, compassion stirred by his gentleness, even as my eye sought the bag with its burden of coin. ‘That is between you and me, sir.’

‘And our future nights.’

‘I will not speak of them either.’ After all, who would I tell?

‘Thank you. If you would now fetch me ale. And tell the Signora that I will be going out in an hour.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And it will please me if you will call me Janyn.’

‘Yes, sir,’ I replied, though I could not imagine doing so.

I stood in the whitewashed passage outside the door and leaned back against the wall as if my legs needed the support. The purse was not a light one. It moved in my fingers, coins sliding with a comforting chink as I weighed it in my hand. I had never seen so much money all in one place in the whole of my life. And it was mine. Whatever I was or was not, I was no longer a penniless novice.

But what was I? It seemed I was neither flesh nor fowl. Here I stood in a house that was not mine, a wife but a virgin, with the knowledge that my marriage vows would make absolutely no difference to my role in the household. I would wager the whole of my sudden windfall on it. Signora Damiata would never retreat before my authority. I would never sit at the foot of the table.

A scuff of leather against stone made me look up.

I was not the only one occupying the narrow space. Detaching himself from a similar stance, further along in the shadows, Master Greseley walked softly towards me. Since there was an air of secrecy about him—of complicity almost—I hid the pouch in the folds of my skirt. Within an arm’s length of me he stopped, and leaned his narrow shoulder blades on the wall beside me, arms folded across his chest, staring at the opposite plasterwork in a manner that was not companionable but neither was it hostile. Here was a man adept through long practice at masking his intentions. As for his thoughts—they were buried so deep beneath his impassivity that it would take an earthquake to dislodge them.

‘You weren’t going to hide it under your pillow, were you?’ he enquired in a low voice.

‘Hide what?’ I replied, clutching the purse tightly.

‘The morning gift he’s just given you.’

‘How do you—?’

‘Of course I know. Who keeps the books in this household? It was no clever guesswork.’ A sharp glance slid in my direction before fixing on the wall again. ‘I would hazard that the sum was payment for something that was never bought.’

Annoyance sharpened my tongue. I would not be intimidated by a clerk. ‘That is entirely between Master Perrers and myself.’

‘Of course it is.’ How smoothly unpleasant he was, like mutton fat floating on water after the roasting pans had been scoured.

‘And nothing to do with you.’

He bowed his head. ‘Absolutely nothing. I am here only to give you some good advice.’

Turning my head I looked directly at him. ‘Why?’

He did not return my regard. ‘I have no idea.’

‘That makes no sense.’

‘No. It doesn’t. It’s against all my tenets of business practice. But even so. Let’s just say that I am drawn to advise you. Don’t hide the money under your pillow or anywhere else in this house. She’ll find it.’

‘Who?’ Although I knew the answer well enough.

‘The Signora. She has a nose for it, as keen as any mouse finding the cheese safe stored in a cupboard. And when she sniffs it out, you’ll not see it again.’

I thought about this as well. ‘I thought she didn’t know.’

‘Is that what Janyn told you? Of course she does. Nothing happens in this place without her knowledge. She knows you have money, and she doesn’t agree with it. Any profits are the inheritance of her nephew, Janyn’s son.’

The absent heir, learning the business in Lombardy. ‘Since you’re keen to offer advice, what do I do?’ I asked crossly. ‘Short of digging a hole in the garden?’

‘Which she’d find.’

‘A cranny in the eaves?’

‘She’d find that too.’