“Yes, madam. No, madam. If it pleases you—how should I address you?”

The lady crowed and addressed her tire-woman, who smirked knowingly.

“She does not know who I am! But then, why should a novice in this backwater of a nunnery know me? But by God! She will within a twelvemonth; I swear it! The whole country will know of me!” The viciousness of the tone was incongruous, stridently at odds with her beauty. “You will call me ‘my lady,’” she said as she tossed the box onto the bed and approached me to finger my veil with obvious distaste, pulling its folds into some sort of order. “I am Joan, Countess of Kent. For now, at least. Soon I will be wife to Prince Edward. The future King of England.”

I knew nothing of her. What I did know was that I had been chosen. She had chosen me to serve her. I think pride touched my heart.

Mistakenly, as it turned out.

I became a willing slave to Countess Joan. The Fair Maid of Kent whose grace and beauty were, she informed me, a matter for renown throughout the land. When she needed me, she rang a little silver bell that had a remarkable carrying quality. It rang with great frequency. The Countess’s tire-woman, Lady Marian, a distant and impecunious cousin of Fair Joan, seemed to find every excuse to be absent when the need arose.

“Take this gown and brush the hem—so much dust. And treat it with care.”

I brushed. I was very careful.

“Fetch lavender—you do have lavender in your herb garden, I presume? Find some for my furs. I’ll not wear them again for some months.…”

I ravaged Sister Margery’s herb patch for lavender, risking the sharp edge of the Infirmarian’s tongue.

“Take that infernal monkey”—for so I learned it to be—“outside. Its chatter makes my head ache. And water. I need a basin of water. Hot water—not cold like last time. And when you’ve done that, bring me ink. And a pen.”

My reply to everything: “Yes, my lady.”

Countess Joan was an exacting mistress. If she was in mourning for her dead husband—he had been dead a mere few weeks, she informed me—I saw no evidence of it: Her attendance at the offices of the day was shockingly infrequent. But I never minded the summons of her bell. A window into the exhilarating world of the royal Court had been unlatched and flung wide for me to see and wonder at. How would I not enjoy the attention she gave me, even though she never addressed me except to issue orders? She called me “girl” when she called me anything at all, but I was not dismayed. If I made myself indispensible to her, what further doors might she not unlock…?

“Comb out my hair,” she ordered me.

So I did, loosening the plaited ropes of red-gold to free them of tangles with an ivory comb that I wished were mine.

“Careful, girl!” She struck out, catching my hand with her nails, hard enough to draw blood. “My head aches even without your clumsy efforts!”

Countess Joan’s head frequently ached. I learned to move smartly out of range, but as often as she repelled me she lured me back with one astonishing revelation after another. And the most awe-inspiring to my naive gaze?

The Countess Joan bathed!

It was a ceremony. Lady Marian folded a freshly laundered chemise over her arm; I held a towel of coarse linen. And Countess Joan? She stripped off all her clothes without modesty. For a moment, embarrassed shock crept over my skin, as if I too were unclothed. I had had no exposure to nakedness. No nun removed her undershift—it was one of the first lessons taught to me. A nun slept in her chemise, washed beneath it with a cloth and a bowl of water, would die in it. Nakedness was a sin in the eyes of God. Countess Joan had no such inhibitions. Gloriously naked, she stepped into her tub of scented water, while I simply gaped as I waited to hand her the linen when her washing was complete.

“Now what’s wrong, girl?” she asked with obvious amusement at my expense. “Have you never seen a woman in the flesh before? No, I don’t suppose you have, living with these old crones.” She laughed aloud, an appealing sound that made me want to smile, until I read the lines of malice in her face. “You’ll not have seen a man either, I wager.” She yawned prettily in the heat, stretching her arms so that her breasts rose above the surface of the scented water. “Both my husbands were good to look at in the flesh, were they not, Marian?”

“You have been married twice, my lady?” Aghast at my impudence, still I asked.

“I have. And at the same time!” She glanced up at me, intent on mischief. “What do you think of that?”

“That it is a sin!” I replied, unforgivably outspoken.

Her finely carved nostrils narrowed on an intake of breath. “Do you judge me, then?”

“No, my lady. How should I?”

“How indeed. You know nothing about it.” Her voice had become brittle. “But many do. And I’ll not tolerate their interference.…”

“My lady…” Marian admonished.

“I know, I know.” The Countess’s prettiness vanished beneath a grimace. “I should not speak of it. And I will not. Wash my hair for me, girl.”

I did, of course.

Wrapped in a chamber robe with her damp hair loose over her shoulders, Countess Joan delved into one of her coffers, removed a looking glass, and stepped to the light from the window to inspect her features. She smiled at what she saw. Why would she not? I simply stared at the object, with its silver frame and gleaming surface, until the Countess looked up, haughty, sensing my gaze.

“What is it? What are you looking at?”

I shook my head.

“I have no more need of you for now.” She cast the shining object onto the bed. “Come back after Compline.” But my fingers itched to touch it.…

“Your looking glass, my lady…”

“Well?”

“May I look?” I asked.

Her brows rose in perfect arcs. “If you wish.”

I took it from where it lay—and looked. A reflection that was more honest than anything I had seen in my water bowl looked back at me. Then without a word—for I could not find any to utter—I gently placed the glass facedown on the bed.

“Do you like your countenance?” Countess Joan inquired, enjoying my discomfort.

“No!” I managed through dry lips. My image in the water was no less than truth, and here it was proved beyond doubt. The dark, depthless eyes, like night water under a moonless sky. Even darker brows, so well marked as if drawn in ink by a clumsy hand. The strong jaw. The dominant nose and wide mouth. All so…so forceful! It was a blessing that my hair was covered. I was a grub, a worm, nothing compared with this red-gold, pale-skinned beauty who smiled at her empty victory over me.

I was ugly.

“What did you expect?” the Countess asked.

“I don’t know,” I managed.

“You expected to see some semblance of attraction that might make a man turn his head, didn’t you? Of course you did. What woman doesn’t? Much can be forgiven a woman who is beautiful. But an ill-favored one? Such is not to be tolerated.”

How cruel an indictment, stated without passion, without any thought for my feelings. And in that precise moment, when she tilted her chin in evident satisfaction, I saw the truth in her face. She was of a mind to be deliberately cruel.

“What a malformed little creature you are! I wonder why I bother to indulge you?”

Thus was the Countess doubly spiteful, rubbing salt in my wounds with callous indifference. As my heart fell with the weight of the evidence against me, I knew beyond doubt why she had chosen me—chosen me before all others—to wait on her. I had had no part in the choosing. It had nothing to do with the antics of her perverse monkey, or my own foolish attempt to catch her attention, or my labors to be a good maidservant. She had chosen me because I was ugly, while in stark contrast, this educated, sophisticated, highly polished Court beauty would shine like a warning beacon lit for all to wonder at on a hilltop. I was the perfect foil: too unlovely, too gauche, too ignorant to pose any threat to the splendor that was Joan of Kent.

“Leave me!” she ordered in a sudden blast of ill humor. “I find you repellent!”

I might have fled in a burst of emotional tears, but I did not. At least she had noticed me!

What did I think of this woman who stepped so heedlessly into my life and left so lasting an impression? Sometimes I despised her, for her beautiful face masked a heart of stone. And yet I found myself admiring her ambition, her determination to get her own way. Sometimes she was in the mood to talk, not caring what she said.

“I’m here only to curry favor!” she announced, glaring through her window at the enclosing walls of the Abbey, half-shrouded in a relentless downpour of rain.

“Whose favor do you need, my lady?” I asked, because it was expected of me.

“The King. The Queen,” she snapped. “They don’t want it—they’ll put obstacles in my way—but I’ll have him yet! The Prince, dolt!” She flung up her hands in exasperation, causing the monkey to cower. “It’s time he was wed and got himself an heir. Am I not fertile? Do you know how many children I have carried? Of course you don’t. Five. Three sons, two daughters. I can give the Prince heirs. The King wants his precious son to marry a rich heiress from the Low Countries. The Queen doesn’t approve of me. We’ll need a papal dispensation, since we are second cousins—but that should not be impossible if enough gold exchanges hands.”

“Why would the Queen disapprove?” I asked. I had no finesse in those days. “Is not your husband dead, my lady?”

Her mouth shut like a trap and she would say no more except: “I’ll get my own way; you’ll see. I’ll be a princess yet.”

How could I not be fascinated? And yes, I coveted her possessions. A package was delivered to her from London.

“Open it,” she ordered.

I unrolled the leather to find a set of jeweled buttons clustered in the palms of my hands. A fire in each heart: sapphires set in gold.

“Don’t touch them.” Impossibly wayward, she snatched them from me. “Do you know what they cost me? More than two hundred pounds. They’re not for such as you!”

I think, weighing the good against the bad, I truly detested her.

“I am leaving,” the Countess announced after three weeks. The most exciting, the most exhilarating three weeks of my life.

“Yes, my lady.” I had already seen the preparations—the litter had returned, the escort at this very moment cluttering up the courtyard—and I was sorry.

“God’s Wounds! I’ll be glad to rid myself of these stultifying walls. I could die here and no one would be any the wiser!”

I knew that too.

“You have been useful to me.” The Countess sat in the high-backed chair in her bedchamber, her feet neatly together in gilded leather shoes on a little stool, while the business of repacking her accoutrements went on around her.

“Yes, my lady.”

“I daresay you’ve learned something, other than your usual diet of prayer and confession.”

“Yes, my lady,” I replied quite seriously. “I have learned to curtsy.” She insisted on it every time I entered the room. “And to mend your pens.”

She took me by surprise, and I was not fast enough. Leaning forward, Countess Joan suddenly struck out with careless, casual violence, for no reason that I could see other than savage temper, bringing her hand to my cheek with an echoing slap. I staggered, catching my breath and my balance.

“Don’t be impertinent, girl!”

“But I was not.…”

Nor was I. Countess Joan spent an inordinate length of time in correspondence, and I had learned to mend a quill with great skill. The communication intrigued me—letters sent off every week to names I did not know. To courtiers, for the most part. Once to King Edward himself. More than one to Queen Philippa. And to the Prince—enough letters to keep the Abbey courier in work traveling back and forth to Westminster, and Sister Matilda’s tongue clicking at the expense. I could do little more than write a series of crabbed marks, but Joan’s hand moved over the parchment with speed and accuracy. She had a talent for it and saw a need to keep in touch with the world she had withdrawn from, weaving a web of intricate connections to tie those she knew to her will. Now, that I did admire, both her unexpected skill and the use she made of it.

As if she had not struck me, the Countess rose to her feet. “I suppose I should reward you. Take this. You’ll find more use for it than I.”

I accepted the illuminated Book of Hours, astounded at the generosity, except that it was given with no spirit of gratitude. The giving of the gift meant nothing to her. She did not want it, she had done with this place, and she would forget us as soon as her palanquin passed between the stone posts of the Abbey gatehouse.