Duke of Lancaster steps back in time with the lilting twelve-quaver beat, but with an interested look that suggests the conversation isn’t over. A second later, as they lean together again, he goes on, glancing down at her finery: ‘Your robe is almost exactly the same as the Princess of England’s at Christmas…as I’m sure you realise,’ and gives her a challenging smile with one eyebrow raised.
Of course I realise, she thinks patiently. I had Princess Joan’s dress copied, didn’t I? And I did it so you’d notice, didn’t I? The Princess never showed herself at a public court dinner at Christmas; she only attended family occasions. So no one outside the royal family will have seen it. And Edward’s eyes are failing; he never notices the colour of robes any more. It’s a joke for the two of us to share. We’re supposed to draw closer, and wink, and enjoy ourselves watching each other enjoying ourselves poking a bit of fun at the Princess, and then you’re supposed to think: Why, Alice Perrers, you and I, we’re kindred spirits. Two peas in a pod.
But that’s not what she says. She just flirts. She lifts her eyebrows and flashes him a smile that’s all teeth and daring. Demurely, she says, ‘No one else has mentioned a resemblance.’ Then she turns the corners of her lips up again.
She’s rewarded by a deep snort of scandalised laughter. She’s got his attention, all right. He’s shaking his head as he goes through the dance step, looking half-disapproving, but half-amused too.
‘What will you do if she turns up?’ he says. He sounds serious, but she can see that the corners of his lips, like the corners of hers, can’t quite stay down.
Alice knows John of Gaunt is said to love his much older sister-in-law and brother, and be sad that, in the past few years, since the Prince’s illness, they’ve gone cold on him. It’s obvious to everyone they’re scared he’s going to wait till his brother’s dead, then try and steal the throne from the little boy; but perhaps it isn’t obvious to him. People say he misses them. Probably, knowing what a stickler he is for the old ways, the old respect, no one’s ever tried lightening his feelings about losing his brother’s family’s affection by sending that old trout of a Princess Joan up, just a bit.
Alice thinks: I won’t let myself be rattled by the idea of Princess Joan coming here. Serenely, she replies, ‘Why would she?’
It’s unanswerable. They both know Joan of Kent will stay home on her side of the river, in Kennington, with her dropsy-ridden hulk of a husband and her mewling, puking seven-year-old. She was once a beauty, Joan of Kent. They even say she was Edward’s mistress, long ago, before she married his son, though Edward’s never breathed a word of any such thing to Alice. But Joan certainly isn’t the most beautiful woman in England any more, hasn’t been for years – certainly not since Alice first clapped eyes on her. She wasn’t a beauty any more even in her thirties, when she scandalised Christendom by taking for her third husband her royal cousin – a childhood playmate – in the obvious hope of getting a crown when he became king. And she’s fat and forty-five now, and the violet eyes poets wrote about long ago are puffy and mean. She’s hardly ever at court.
Alice thinks: She calls me a gold-digger, but what’s she? She might be a king’s granddaughter, but when it comes down to it, really, she’s nothing better than an old, failed gold-digger herself. Fortune has swung Joan up on her wheel, all right, to the dizzying heights of power, but she’s swung it down again too, and it’s all but destroyed her, poor old thing.
Whereas Alice…Alice sometimes feels the wind rushing through her head as she flies upwards through the golden clouds. And the last thing Alice thinks Joan will want to see is a younger woman lording it there in her place – succeeding where Joan failed – especially a younger woman she’s made a point of snubbing for so many years.
John of Gaunt’s eyes are fixed on Alice. She’s intrigued him beyond measure with this little display of insouciance, she sees. She knows it’s often the men who talk loudest about respect for the old ways who are most nervous of anything new. But she hasn’t expected, until now, to feel timidity behind this man’s arrogance. Hearing the music about to reach its final chord, she adds, quickly, almost comfortingly, ‘…so don’t worry.’
It would be a mistake to linger after that. But she enjoys the flash of discomfiture in his eyes as she bows and retreats to the dais. She doesn’t think her impudence has put him off. She can feel, from the way his eyes are following her across the floor, that he’ll be back for more.
By the time it’s fully dark, Alice has completely forgotten she wasn’t planning to dance. With fresh breezes coming in from the river, and Edward smiling dreamily down at her to the thin skirl of lute and dulcimer, and the stout guardsmen in a living ring of fire around the edge of the hall, each man’s feet planted a yard apart on the stone floor, each strong pair of arms holding a torch, a kind of careless magic enters the air.
She’s laughing and as pink as the rest of them, skipping in and out of the great wavering round of the carole, even clapping whole-heartedly as that born dancer Katherine Swynford does an especially complicated response to the Duke of Lancaster’s advance without losing her poise for a second, and the throng pauses and catches breath so everyone can admire the lovely young widow’s skill.
Alice’s vis-à-vis at that moment is Philippa de Roët’s merry-eyed little husband. She’s always rather liked him. He’s not from the nobility originally either. His father was a City magnate, a vintner, and she senses, in his slightly mocking smile, that sometimes he might find the endless tempers and savage pride of the courtiers as limiting as she does. He’s mopping his brow now and saying hazy but appreciative things of his sister-in-law: ‘Terpsichore…wouldn’t you say? The Muse of the dance…it’s a divine gift, to dance that well…as my own dear wife does too, and’ – hastily he twinkles at her, and bows – ‘your good self, of course, madame.’ Alice bows back. Master Chaucer tails off, in amusing mock-wistfulness: ‘Alas…if only I had the same gift…’
It doesn’t for a moment occur to Alice to wonder what the muffled tramp of feet outside, the horns and flutes, might signify.
It’s only when the already relaxed line of dancers wavers and breaks up, and, unaccountably, the crowd falls silent, like a group of animals at the approach of a predator, that Alice feels danger.
By then it’s too late.
With prickles at her spine, she turns.
Behind her, on the dais, Edward is on his feet, his grey beard streaming down his front, his mouth open. He looks old and dazed. His eyes are fixed on the door.
Through it, walking away from the little troop of musicians and soldiers and rowers she’s arrived with, and down the step straight towards Alice, in the middle of the crowded hall, the Princess of England is stumping.
Joan of Kent is carrying a jewelled goblet of wine that a servant must have hastily pressed into her hand. She isn’t taking any notice of it.
She’s wearing her own red taffeta Christmas robe – just like Alice’s, down to the pattern of the seed pearls.
And she’s staring at the younger woman with empty, frightening eyes.
The courtiers close quietly in as the two would-be queens, in their identical reds, come face to face. The expression on Joan of Kent’s face is that of a woman looking at her reflection in the mirror and hating it. Alice, who’s felt the dread start to wash through her at the sight of the Princess, like cold dirty riverwater, senses their suppressed excitement.
They
