at the defiance this realisation brings with it. She needs the anger.
Brightly, she smiles, bows a deep bow, and says, in a loud enough voice for half the court to hear, ‘The Lady of the Sun welcomes you, madame. I am delighted you were able to honour us with your presence…’
Instead of edging back, as every instinct in her body is telling her to, she steps confidently forward, with a gracious hand outstretched towards the bulging silk of the Princess of England’s upper arm.
No one breathes. Now Joan will have to answer with a grated politesse of her own – at least, she would if she were minded to recognise Alice as a noblewoman like herself.
The silence continues for an unbearable moment.
Joan doesn’t bother with politesses, grated or otherwise. She rasps out one phrase. ‘You’re wearing my robe.’
There’s a little intake of breath. Alice is painfully aware of Edward’s eyes on her, from behind. Even he can’t help her now. She’ll have to deal with it herself.
If Joan’s going to insult her, there’s no telling how far she might go. Last year at Council, Joan’s husband had so lost his temper with the Archbishop of Canterbury, whom he suspected of preferring to obey the Pope than his King, that he’d yelled at the trembling prelate, in front of dozens of noblemen, ‘ANSWER, DONKEY!’
Alice squares her shoulders to stop them shaking. She’s not going to cut a pitiful figure like the poor Archbishop, whatever the Princess does. Not being frightened, that’s the key thing. She learned that years ago. Never show fear.
Bravely, she grins. Looking round to catch Edward’s eye, and draw him, from the dais, into this nightmarish conversation, she quips, brightly, perhaps too brightly: ‘Well, you know what they say. There’s never a new fashion but it’s old.’
Breaths are sucked in.
She waits, hardly daring to breathe herself.
At last, there’s a scared eddy of laughter. Alice senses the mood move, the support beginning to flow her way. She sees Edward shake his head in delight, and chuckle. You could always trust Alice to find a good line.
The danger’s past now, Alice tells herself, breathing easier. A laugh always eases things. Forcing herself forward again, she begins, with all the grace and charm she can muster: ‘My lady, allow me to…’
But before she can touch the Princess’s sleeve, so tightly packed with coldly furious flesh around taut muscle that the seams are straining, Joan pulls back her arm.
The older woman looks down, almost in surprise, at the jewelled goblet in her hand.
Then she jerks it forward.
At first, Alice feels the cold shock that comes next as just more of the dread and humiliation that swept through her a moment ago, when she first saw the Princess bearing down on her.
Then she realises there actually is dark liquid on her face and running down her front. Her eyes are stinging from it. She can’t see.
There’s wine all over her.
Alice blinks and breathes, and the claret drips down her hair. Her whole head is wet. She can’t move, even her eyes. She can’t look down and see how badly the robe is damaged. She’s trying to control the surges of humiliation – and rage – rushing through her, the hot and cold of them.
Perhaps the Princess knows she’s gone too far. She goes on standing opposite Alice with the goblet in her hand. There’s no expression on her face.
Alice goes on standing there too, blinking wine out of her face. After a while, she puts a hand to her sopping wet face and brushes a purplish strand of hair out of her eye. She knows there’s nothing she can do that won’t be too angry for court. She can only breathe, and blink, and wait for someone else to take the initiative.
Surely this is an insult to the King, as well as to her? Surely someone in this crowd of self-willed, self-regarding donkeys will defend his honour at least?
But it seems no one, even the King, knows what to do.
Until, after what seems an eternity, a completely unexpected voice pipes up, a nasal-ish, confiding, friendly little male voice, followed by Geoffrey Chaucer, stepping out from behind the Princess. ‘A thousand pardons. A thousand pardons! How could I have been so clumsy? I jogged your elbow, Madame d’Angleterre. There was nothing you could do, nothing at all.’
He’s wringing his hands, and bowing his head over them, and twinkling at the Princess, his slightly thin voice so apologetic, so charming, that the court can’t help but laugh. He has beautiful eyes, and when his face is animated, dancing with wit and intelligence, as it often is, he becomes handsome. Even Joan, who is perhaps almost as shocked by her transgression as Alice, softens as she looks at him, and almost smiles.
‘Utterly my fault; utterly. Amends, how to make them? A pilgrimage…to Jerusalem? No, what good would that be?…To Venice, for more silk, to replace your damaged robe, Madame Perrers, to the cloth fairs?’
Alice wipes her hand across her eyes again. She stares through her tangle of wine-dark hair. How has he done it? The little valet has them all laughing, and joining in his clothbuying fantasy, and forgetting the anger. It’s like a miracle. Of course there’s no way on earth or in Heaven that Geoffrey Chaucer could ever afford the cloth on the back of Alice Perrers, not on his ten-pound-a-year pension and free pitcher of wine a day, but then it’s obviously only a turn of phrase. There’s no need for him to worry particularly. Chaucer can say what he likes. He’ll never be called to carry out the pilgrimage he’s promising. This is pure face-saving improvisation – and a successful improvisation too. Even through the alcohol, Alice can see that the King is grateful to his man for drawing the sting out of the occasion.
Edward steps urbanely forward, bows to Chaucer, and draws his still glowering daughter-in-law up to the dais and out of trouble.
The crowd moves, relaxes and begins to talk (though no one rushes to meet Alice’s eye still). The fairy ring at the centre of the hall around her vanishes. The music starts again.
For a moment, Alice doesn’t know what to do. It is the Duke of Lancaster who steps up to her, very straight-backed, very long-nosed and serious, to offer her a very white kerchief, with which he dabs away the last of the wine, and then his hand, for the next dance. He’s helping her restore appearances, as is proper. Behind his correctness, she sees sympathy in his eyes, and hears it in his voice.
‘Joan can be…’ he begins, as he turns her into the dance. ‘Sometimes…’ But his voice dries up. He’s a nobleman, not the type to wink and shrug and laugh things off, she remembers. He’s here with her in homage to her gallantry; but all the same, he can’t quite bring himself to be verbally disloyal to his sister-in-law.
She nods, so choked with gratitude that, for once, she’s also unable to speak. She hasn’t expected it to happen like this, but she can sense new beginnings. When she passes Geoffrey Chaucer, she’s recovered her poise enough to be able to incline her head and smile. With sparkling eyes, he bows back. And he winks.
‘Why did you do that?’ Philippa Chaucer asks her husband curiously, materialising through the crowd and taking his arm. Geoffrey tries not to show surprise. His wife doesn’t usually
