Vanora Bennett - The People’s Queen

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 want a fight, she thinks. They want to see me humiliated.

She clutches 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.