“It is not right that my ministers be attacked by Parliament.…” Did he realize that I too was not invulnerable against attack? I don’t think he did. His mind, besieged by all manner of evils, could not see the full scope of what de la Mare was planning. I enfolded Edward’s icy hand, warming it between both of mine. “I want to see the Prince…” he announced, snatching his hand away.

“He is not well enough to come to you.”

“I need to listen to his advice.” He was determined, struggling to his feet. I sighed. “I want to go today, Alice.…”

“Then you shall.…”

I could not stop him, so I would make it as easy as I could, arranging everything for Edward’s comfort for a journey to Kennington. I did not go with him: I would not be welcome there, and it would do no good to add to Edward’s distress by creating some cataclysmic explosion of emotion between myself and Joan. I prayed that the Prince would be able to give his father the comfort that I could not.

And so I made my own preparations. No longer could I delude myself that Latimer, Lyons, and Neville would escape without penalty. And when they fell…

So far my name had not been voiced in de la Mare’s persecutions. I had remained unremarked, but that would not last; I saw retribution approaching. I had myself rowed up the Thames to Pallenswick—thereby removing myself from Westminster and from any of the royal palaces. Discretion might be good policy. What effect would it have on Edward’s failing intellect and body if the one firm center of his life was gone? For once, the prospect of Pallenswick, the most beloved of all my manors, and reunion with my daughters, did not fill me with joy. Rather a black cloud of de la Mare’s making settled over my head.

Storm clouds. Storm crows.

The words came back to me, Windsor at his most trenchant. The presentiments of doom were gathering.

I shivered with fear as the days passed, heavy with portent. Even though I was isolated from the Court, could I not see the future danger, its teeth bared like a rogue alaunt? I needed no recourse to a fortune-teller, or to my physician, who had something of a reputation for the reading of signs. I could read them for myself while sitting watchful at Pallenswick, every nerve strained. Braveheart slept at my feet, unconcerned, lost in a dream of coneys and mice. The blade Windsor had given me lay forgotten in a coffer upstairs. The threat to me came not from an assassin’s dagger but from the heavy fist of the law.

The three royal ministers were dealt summary justice, their offices and possessions stripped from them. They were confined to prison, but the demands for execution died. Not even de la Mare could make the charge of treason stick. There was no treachery in these men to endanger King or state, unless acquiring a purseful of gold was treason. And if it was, then every man in government employ was guilty. But imprisonment was considered a just punishment. This was the price Latimer and Neville and Lyons paid for their association with John of Gaunt and Alice Perrers!

Holy Virgin! Would I be next? Gaunt, a royal son, would be safe, but the royal Concubine would be a worthy target. I too might end my days in a prison cell.

My mind leaped to Ireland, as it often did in those days.

Did Windsor know of my plight? It gave me some foolish comfort to think of him riding to my rescue. But of course he would not, and he was too far away to stretch out a hand to me. I shut out the image of his arms protecting me, his strength resisting any attack. It was too painful to imagine when I had no weapon that I might use. I had given Edward all I could—my youth, my body, my children. My unquestioning allegiance. Now I was truly alone.

And then, as expected, the charges against me arrived, ominously red-sealed. I had to sit, my legs suddenly too weak to hold me upright, as I read de la Mare’s accusations, a pain hammering at my temples as I absorbed the horror of it. What had they concocted to make my freedom untenable?

Ah…! As I read the first charge, the pain lessened. My breathing steadied. Predictable, nothing outrageous to shock me. I could answer this. I could state my defense. This was not so very terrible after all.…

She has seized three thousand pounds a year from the royal purse!

From where had they conjured that sum? Any monies I had taken were gifts from Edward. I had stolen nothing. It was his right to give gifts where he chose, and when I had borrowed to purchase some manor or feudal rights, it had never been without Edward’s consent. Except for the purchase of the manors of Hitchin and Plumpton End that very year, when Edward’s mind had slipped into some distant territory. And the borrowed sums had been paid back. For the most part, anyway…And if I had not repaid them through some oversight—well, I defied Parliament to find me guilty of fraud or embezzlement in that quarter.

She has seized Queen Philippa’s jewels. She wears them. She has no shame in proclaiming her immorality with the King.

Yes, I wore them. Yes, I had no shame. Had Edward not given them to me? There was no illegality here. I read on.

She has shut the King away from his people. The only influence over him is hers, so that she might squeeze him dry of wealth and power.

True. I had kept him apart, protected. If it was a crime, I must answer for it, but it was not treason.

Ah! And then a charge with more than a snap of teeth. My heartbeat jumped again.

She has made use of the King’s Court in her acquisition of land. She has been so bold as to sit beside the judges, influencing their verdicts in manorial disputes to her own ends.

I had. If I had been a man, intent on urging my interests in the courts, there would have been no accusation made. Was it a crime to do so? Windsor’s harsh warning came back in a flood. They would seek to punish me for overstepping the boundaries suitable for a woman—but it was not treason.

My heart settled again. It would all come to nothing. By the end of the year there would be some new scandal to stir Parliament’s ire. Edward need not be troubled, for the threats against me were empty ones and would die on their feet. My mind was more at ease, and, reassured by the power of my logic, I returned to Westminster and from there, as the heat of June began to press down on us, I wrote to Windsor.

Latimer and Lyons and Neville languish in prison, for which I am sorry. I have no power to help them. Gaunt is furious. Edward is inconsolable for reasons that will be known to you. De la Mare is frustrated that he can find no evidence of treason against me. I think that they might be content to let me go.

There is no need for your concern about my safety.

Of late I have wished you here with me.

Edward is inconsolable, I had written, but not in reaction to my own predicament, because I told him nothing of the accusations leveled at me. How could I? The loss of his beloved son, in the same month that Parliament delivered those accusations, was too much for him to bear.

The Prince was dead.

I was with the King in those final days of his son’s life, as were many from London and far beyond who traveled to see the end of this great warrior, struck down before his allotted time. At Westminster, men and women filed before the Prince’s bed and wept openly as he wavered between sense and delirium. Joan remained beside him, rigid and tearless in her grief.

I did not weep for the Prince, but I did for Edward. For it was Edward’s burden that he must watch the Prince die, his favorite son, his firstborn, his hope for the future and the protector of England. What hope could Edward have in Richard, the nine-year-old child who was ushered into the death-ridden chamber to make his nervous farewell and be recognized as the future King of England? The Prince slid in and out of consciousness, the pain great enough to disfigure his noble face, and Edward remained throughout to witness his passing. The outpouring of grief was too much for the King’s spare frame. His face was gray with fatigue.

When it was over, I helped Edward to turn his stumbling steps back to his rooms and lie down on his bed, unseeing, unmoving, as if the Prince’s death had drawn some of the life from his own body. Sitting beside him well into the night hours, I knew that I would not tell him of Parliament’s attack on me. I told myself, willing myself to believe, that the Commons had slaked its thirst for blood on Latimer and Lyons; that the evidence against me was weak, and they would abandon me as not worth their effort.

Wrong! How desperately wrong I was. De la Mare would conjure the evidence from the ashes in the fire grate if he had to. I should have known he would not let me be, yet if I had, what could I have done?

I soon learned the depths to which de la Mare could sink in his desire for revenge.

We were at Sheen, where I hoped that the superb quality of the hunting and the comfort of tiled courtyards and newly glazed windows would give Edward’s mind a more optimistic turn. Wykeham, restored to earthly glory as one of the newly appointed twelve high-minded men to counsel Edward in place of his scurvy ministers, arrived at the same time as a group of merchants representing the City of London, who had come to petition the King. Complaining bitterly over the precarious state of law and order in the capital, they were determined to be heard, though I would have preferred to send them away. They had been invited to send a delegation, so here they were to see the King and beg his intervention. Accepting the rightness of their cause, and perhaps conscious of the hate-filled de la Mare breathing his fetid breath down my neck, I allowed it. I had no intention of adding fuel to the fire by keeping Edward shut away from his people. We worked hard to make the best show we could, not in the great audience chamber, but in a smaller one, where the King was already seated when the petitioners arrived.

They bowed before him. Edward made no gesture of recognition.

Forgive me, Edward! Forgive me! I could have wept again for him. How close my tears were in those days, when for most of my life I had been dry-eyed. Could de la Mare, in rare pity for his King, not acknowledge the truth of why I had kept Edward from the public eye?

We had swathed him in cloth of gold and tied him as well as we could into his chair so that at least he gave the appearance of normality, but it was as if a statue filled the royal throne, not a living, breathing man. He looked vacantly at the merchants when they complained that the peace of the realm was in jeopardy. And when they went on to describe the lawless behavior of the mobs and John of Gaunt’s troops, and the scandal of an attack against the Bishop of London himself, Edward, uncomprehending, replied with a mumbling of incoherent words that no one could hear, let alone understand.

“This is a travesty,” murmured Wykeham in my ear where we stood a little removed from the audience.

“But I must allow it,” I stated.

“Why?”

“Because de la Mare accuses me of standing between the people and the King, and—before God!—what he says is true. I have done exactly that.” I could hear despair building in my voice. “You can see why.…”

“Yes…” Wykeham looked back to where Edward remained engraved in stone. “The commons should not have to see this.”

“Nor should the King have to endure it,” I added more curtly than I had intended. “To put him on show in this manner is…” I recalled having had the same argument with Windsor. Suddenly I felt very tired.

“…is cruel.” Wykeham finished my train of thought with a sigh.

One of the knights standing beside Edward leaned over to grasp his shoulder and keep him upright.

“End this, Alice,” Wykeham murmured. “It can’t go on.”

The delegation stood uncertainly, a mix of horror and pity on their faces, and I hurried forward.

“The audience is at an end, gentlemen.…” And as the merchants bowed themselves out, gestures that Edward did not see, I touched Edward’s hand. He did not respond. “Take the King to his chamber,” I instructed. “I will come to him.”

“I doubt he will know whether you do or not. I had not known he had faded so quickly,” Wykeham said.

“The Prince’s death was the final blow.”

“Before God, it’s pitiful.”

“It’s more than that.…” I could not watch as the knights lifted Edward from the throne and led him stumbling away. “Now, why are you here, Wykeham? I hope it’s good news.” I did not need to ask, now that I had time to read his expression.

“No.”