Terri Brisbin - The King's Mistress

His stomach sank as she waved several parchments in his face. Without any attempt to lower her voice, she addressed her most pressing concern to him.

“Swear to me that you will not marry Marguerite of Alencon!”

How had she known? They had just arrived at the keep after a strenuous ride back from Abbeytown. The king’s messenger reported to him there without traveling here. How could she have known?

“Mother, the king has ordered our marriage. I go now to answer his summons and to bring her back here. How did you know her name?”

He watched as the confusion and anger and frustration filled her face. She turned to several of her ladies and none gave her the answer or reassurance she sought from them. Orrick was becoming convinced, as Godfrey was, that his mother spent entirely too much time fretting over gossip and other womanly worries such as those. Mayhap his new wife could help to distract her from such ways?

“You cannot marry her.”

This was getting out of hand. This was why he should not have delayed his marriage this long and why his mother needed to take her place within his wife’s household. But her sorrow over his father’s death had driven him to mercy and her excellent skills at chatelaine had won out. ’Twas time to change that and his wife would be just the person to do so, with his guidance and control.

“The king has gifted me with Marguerite of Alencon, as you apparently know. And the king is generous in doing so….” His words drifted off as even he experienced an uneasy feeling over the amount of gold being paid to take this woman as wife. Damn, but his mother knew what was at the heart of this matter and now he feared asking her. But he must know what he faced from the king. “Tell me now, for I would hear all of it.”

Steeling himself for what was to come, Orrick took a deep breath and faced his mother in the midst of all who looked on around them.

“The king is truly generous, Orrick, but not in this instance. He pays you gold for he seeks to give you his mistress as wife. Marguerite of Alencon is the king’s whore.”

The king’s whore?

Now that he’d heard his mother’s words, he turned and sought his chambers. Orrick needed to prepare for this summons and prepare himself to take the king’s refuse as his wife.

At least now he completely understood that he was being punished for some sin committed by either himself or his father. What other reason could there be for such an insult as this?

“Henry will not do this to me. You are wrong,” Marguerite argued. “He loves me.”

But the words sounded hollow and unconvincing even to her ears. Marguerite turned away from her companion and looked at the elaborate dress spread on her bed. It could not be. It simply could not be true that Henry had given her in marriage to someone else.

“You know him better than anyone, Marguerite,” Johanna replied in a bland tone of voice. “If you say he will claim you before the marriage can happen, I believe you.”

Her temper flared and she flung the dress from the bed onto the floor. Grasping the edges of it, she tore it open and pearls and gems went flying all over the room. Before she could rip it into the pieces she wanted to, another voice called out to her from the doorway.

“Is this how you treat the gifts of the king?”

Marguerite turned as Lord Bardrick, Henry’s steward and henchman here at Woodstock, entered her chambers. Johanna made a quick curtsy and escaped, though Marguerite was not sure if her own temper or the steward’s lecherous gazes at the woman’s ample bosom made her run from the room. The door slammed and she was alone with one of very few men who had Henry’s confidence and knew the king’s secrets.

“My lord,” Marguerite said, dipping gracefully as she knew she could to the floor in a curtsy, one that shared a glimpse of her own now well-endowed bosom with him. “I fear I am overwrought with excitement over my impending marriage to Lord…Lord…” She pretended not to remember the name of her prospective husband for a moment until Bardrick said it.

“Lord Orrick of Silloth.”

“Just so. Lord Orrick of Silloth. I mean no disrespect to the king. Indeed I am always pleased by his attentions and his gifts.”

They both knew the gift most recently given to her by Henry. The babe had been a girl unfortunately, and of no use to Marguerite in her plans to make a claim for Henry’s further attentions and affections. At least a boy would have been accepted and graced with a title and a position of power and wealth as Henry’s other bastard son, Geoffrey, had been. Through a boy she could have some hold. But the girl born a few months ago was worthless to her and remained behind at the convent where she had given birth to her, a nameless noble, nay a royal bastard, to be raised by the nuns there. Her own sister stayed behind to oversee the baby and to answer her own call to a life of service to God.

Bardrick walked to the door of the room, opened it and spoke to one of the servants waiting outside. “Take this to one of the seamstresses and have her see to it. And quickly, girl,” he yelled, pushing the servant to move more rapidly. “The wedding is on the morrow and it must be ready.”

Marguerite watched with a sense of amusement as the girl gathered the pieces of the dress together and stumbled from the room. She had not moved from the spot in which she stood.

“The king plans on carrying out this farce then, Bardrick?” she asked.

“’Tis no farce, lady. You will marry Lord Orrick and Henry will brook no refusal on your part.”

“And if I do not?” Marguerite could not believe this was the end. Henry would reclaim her. He would object, mayhap even at the last moment, and save her from this unspeakable match.

“The last three people who refused the king’s generosity are not alive to tell you the stupidity of doing so. Think on that tonight as you prepare yourself for your marriage in the morn.”

A shiver shook her and, even though she tried to hide it from this weasel, his smarmy grin told her of her failure.

“Aye, lady. The prudent thing to do would be to acquiesce to Henry’s wishes. His loyal subjects who do usually live longer and better than those foolish enough to stand against him.”

Fight it though she did, she nodded slightly in his direction, never meeting his eyes since she knew the satisfaction she would see there at her surrender. Bardrick bowed to her and backed to the doorway, the way he did when she was the king’s favorite. The insult of it was clear—she was one of the many who had sought the king’s bed and now were to be used as rewards for services rendered to his faithful.

“Sleep well, Marguerite.”

The sound of his laughter and scorn as he made his way down the corridor away from her was the worst of it. It broke her resolve and she fell onto the now-empty bed and let the tears flow.

This could not happen to her. She had been groomed throughout her life to be the consort of a great man. Her blood was of royal stock and she deserved a husband of the same. She did not expect to be given instead to some barbarian of mixed blood in the north of England. This Lord Orrick lived as far from the court and the king as anyone could get. His lands were in some godforsaken place where there was never sunshine as in her own homeland. He was simply some minor lord over a few keeps and a mongrel group of villeins. She deserved more than this, more than him.

She deserved the king.

Marguerite waited for her grief to pass. There was still time. Henry could still, would still intervene before the words proclaiming her Orrick’s wife were pronounced. He could step in at anytime and call off this farce and gift this “lord of the north,” as he was called, with some mealy-mouthed chit more of his class. Someone content to suffer his touch and his life in the rough place he called his own.