Lyons leans forward on the leopard-skin rug he's placed on the biggest bench in the room. He has his back to the window, and the late afternoon sun is behind him so Alice can't see into his face; she can just see his silhouette. But he, lord of all he surveys, can stare into her eyes. It's an uncomfortable position to be in.

This room, Lyons' great hall, makes Alice uncomfortable at the best of times, with its mute proofs of its owner's rampant self-importance. Lyons by name, lions by nature, as he likes to say of himself. Since he threw out his wife, and divorced her (poor Isabella, so English, so outraged), it's only got more extreme. There are ermine skins sewn on to borders and fringes in here; royal furs (what would the sumptuary law enforcers have made of that that?); and, squashed in among the arras that were already hanging everywhere, there are now curtains in the boldest blue and red, embroidered with royal(ish) lions.

'Your man is free,' Alice is telling the s.h.i.+mmering silhouette, wondering as she speaks whether it would be wise to mention what she's found out about some of Lyons' other entrepreneurial tricks while setting Wat free, then opting (for the thousandth time when it came to him) to let sleeping dogs lie. Best not to be seen to know too much. 'Belknap didn't make much fuss.'

Lyons' head nods. He rumbles appreciatively: 'Ach, Belknap, that great coward.'

He laughs his ba.s.s laugh. 'You're more than a match for him, Alice.'

Alice is remembering the softness on Wat's hard face when he talked about seeing her children in Ess.e.x. She's remembering the tears her nearly-brother couldn't stop when he couldn't say goodbye. She's remembering how Wat, to whom she feels so close, and whom she might never have seen again if he hadn't fallen foul of some Mantuan murderer and escaped home, has been saved from dest.i.tution because Richard Lyons decided to employ him.

It doesn't make any difference. She's got to do what she's got to do.

She says, 'Now you have to turn him loose. Your man. Tyler. His cover is blown. If they arrest him again...' She draws a finger across her throat.

'...it wouldn't be good for me, you mean?' Lyons' voice comes out of the glitter.

Alice says, 'Give him enough money to go away. Abroad, maybe. He'll be fine there. He's a natural recruit for the Free Companies.'

She laughs. She can see the dark head nodding agreement, moving against the gold behind. Lyons doesn't bother to tell her that his heavy has escaped to him from from the Free Companies. Lyons is as economical with words as Alice is. Words dilute and dissipate intent; words can be dangerous. the Free Companies. Lyons is as economical with words as Alice is. Words dilute and dissipate intent; words can be dangerous.

Alice goes to bed that night still thinking of Wat, still full of warmth and nostalgia and guilt. She'd have so liked to see him again. If only he hadn't told her so much. If only he hadn't said he'd seen her children.

ELEVEN.

Alice has always prided herself on being more alert than most to the first whiff of danger, and quicker than most to neutralise it, too.

But she is far from even imagining the four people walking, very fast, around the cloister of the Abbey of St Albans, in a dusk with snow threatening, as the year 1374 draws to a close. There are three men and a woman in the group. It's the woman who's talking, flas.h.i.+ng her eyes, sweeping her long cloak behind her. But all of them, one way or another, are Alice's enemies, or are about to be.

It's the Prince of England who has called these people together. From his stinking, miserable sickbed, he's been planning action ever since the spring night when Joan, his wife, came back, pinch-lipped and angry, from Westminster, with the information that that woman, the wh.o.r.e that woman, the wh.o.r.e, had been dancing with John.

Edward of England remembers the moment he heard those words like a knife thrust in the side. 'He's going to try and make Perrers his creature,' he remembers saying; and Joan, with her eyes, so like his, long and almond-shaped above high cheekbones, agreeing: 'Or she she to make him to make him hers hers.'

Edward and his wife, cousins, like as twins, have always shared thoughts that scarcely need to be put into words. But it's only in these last years, the years of his decline, that they've started to share the same all-consuming fear.

Their shared fear is so terrible that, for a long time, they even feared to give it words, a shape, a living, breathing form that might come roaring out of the darkness of the night. But that was the night when it did, finally, emerge.

What they fear, this dying Prince and his Princess, is the Prince's brother.

Not John himself, for there's a part of John they've both always loved, a John who grew up in the same nursery they remembered, even if he came a few years later; a John they recall as a solemn, intense, dark-eyed toddler for whom, as merry twelve- and thirteen-year-olds with life unfolding brightly just ahead, they hid Easter toys in tubs of bran, whom they made jump for honeycakes.

There's a way in which they both still love the present John, too, a prince who shares their slanting Plantagenet beauty and finely honed sense of honour and pride in his own n.o.bility. He's richer than them, but he's never inspired the great love Prince Edward commands from his people, or become the war hero his older brother once was. There's nothing in John, this John, to arouse their fear.

It's the thought of John in the future that makes the Prince and Princess of England wake in the night, more and more often, with their hearts thudding in their chests. It's the choking fear of what John might be moved to do to their only child if Prince Edward were to die before his time.

They both know Prince Edward will die before his time - soon - though they dare not voice that thought to each other. Richard is not yet eight. What grown prince, faced with a throne that would be so easy to steal, would resist the temptation?

So John has become mylordofLancaster in their minds: the implacably waiting enemy, the besieging army, the darkness waiting to come cras.h.i.+ng through their walls to destroy their child's life. The change in their feelings has come quietly, imperceptibly. There's never been a harsh word said, never a blow struck. They don't even know if John is aware of their fear.

But, around the sickbed, they talk of nothing else. MylordofLancaster has to be contained, his alliances watched, his every move considered and countered. Fearing him has become the centre of both their lives, a chilly darkness eating away at them from inside.

They've sniffed at, fretted over, ferreted out more information about, considered from every angle and finally decided there's no danger to Richard in John's affair with the pretty widow Madame de Swynford, which he still thinks is a secret.

They've narrowed their eyes at, called in priests over, sent out spies to investigate further and finally decided there's no real danger to Richard in mylordofLancaster's flirtation with Wyclif.

But all kinds of harm might come from mylordofLancaster turning his mind to a friends.h.i.+p with Perrers and the rest of the grubby, gleeful thieves who've come swarming into the palaces of the court like rats ever since the King has grown too feeble of mind to loathe them for the vermin they are, and ever since his oldest son has grown too weak of body to catch them and swing them out by their tails.

Edward can only guess at what the harm might actually be. But each vague picture is more frightening than the last. And the one that stays with him is this. Perrers, he knows, is in cahoots with the merchants. What if she somehow finagled it so John got into the good books of the money-men of London, and made the City his power base? What if the merchants backed John for King?

It's time for action. Or it would be if Edward weren't reduced by the illness he's suffered from for seven years to a sodden, skeletal, exhausted, living corpse.

So Edward and Joan have fretted impotently at how to best to counter the threat of mylordofLancaster's friends.h.i.+p with Perrers, all through the summer, all through the autumn.

The answer, when it does finally occur to them, is blessedly simple. It's a name: that of Prince Edward's old friend, Thomas de la Mare, the Abbot of St Albans.

There's already bad blood between the Abbot and Perrers, he recalls, a land question of some sort. And Thomas de la Mare is full of the energy and relentless drive the Prince once had: a capacity to wait, and plan, for the destruction of his enemies. The Prince knows, as soon as he's thought of it, that this is a mission he can safely delegate to the priest. But he knows, too, that he must be discreet.

So, painfully, they've set off to winter at their estate at Riseberg. St Albans is on the way. Nothing could be more natural than to spend a night there.

Thomas de la Mare, Alice's old foe in a nagging legal battle for the lands of Oxhey manor just by his abbey, is a man without pleasures, unless you count the sting of the scourge on his back in the hours of solitary night prayer, or the itch of the hair s.h.i.+rt chafing at him all day, or the extra, selfimposed hours of foodlessness and sleeplessness he takes on himself beyond what he asks of the men whose wors.h.i.+p he directs. That's why the pale flesh of his face has withered and sunk between jaw and cheekbone; why the hand's gristly knuckles seem so enormous.

The Abbot himself would not agree with those acolytes at the abbey who whisper that their master is utterly devoid of caritas caritas - that spirit of generous, forgiving, divinely inspired loving-kindness that the Holy Church to which he has devoted his life urges its followers to be guided by. The unfree peasants who cut and hack and plough and dig and shoe and groom and pay on the hundreds of rolling acres of the abbey's land would not dare say anything so bold, even in a whisper. But they might widen their sunken eyes, just for a second, in as close as they dared to agreement. This, after all, is an abbot who has never forgiven a villein an hour's uncompleted work, or a single turnip short of the two-thirds of the harvest demanded, or the fee required when a poor man's relative leaves abbey lands. This man is the reason why the peasants of Oxhey were happy to leave Church jurisdiction and come under Alice's control. This is a man whose discipline borders on ruthlessness, whose ruthlessness borders on obsession, who doesn't stop until he draws blood. - that spirit of generous, forgiving, divinely inspired loving-kindness that the Holy Church to which he has devoted his life urges its followers to be guided by. The unfree peasants who cut and hack and plough and dig and shoe and groom and pay on the hundreds of rolling acres of the abbey's land would not dare say anything so bold, even in a whisper. But they might widen their sunken eyes, just for a second, in as close as they dared to agreement. This, after all, is an abbot who has never forgiven a villein an hour's uncompleted work, or a single turnip short of the two-thirds of the harvest demanded, or the fee required when a poor man's relative leaves abbey lands. This man is the reason why the peasants of Oxhey were happy to leave Church jurisdiction and come under Alice's control. This is a man whose discipline borders on ruthlessness, whose ruthlessness borders on obsession, who doesn't stop until he draws blood.

Thomas de la Mare would put the thing differently. What he would say is he has often been disappointed by the men and women - the backsliders, the failures, the faint-hearts - whom it has so often been his unhappy lot to meet. This earthly life is full of bitter disappointments. G.o.d moves in mysterious ways.

He's never forgotten the defining disappointment of his life - in his own father, that big, red-cheeked simpleton of a man, who a.s.sumed that Thomas' early interest in books meant he should be the one chosen for a career in the Church. Thomas was the second son, a youth who, out of the urgent desire to prove himself, had run the family manor with ruthless efficiency for five years while his elder brother Lionel and father were away at the wars, putting more land under the plough, to better profit, than ever before. So why should he be the one for G.o.d? There were two younger brothers who would have made perfectly pa.s.sable priests, he told his father when the old man came back. But there was no changing things. The old man had his mind made up, and he was stubborn. Thomas took holy orders and, when Lionel was killed in France, John, the third brother, took on the t.i.tle and the estates and the wife; and their father, grey now, if still red-faced, and hangdog from not having grabbed enough booty in France to give his sons the wealth and destinies they'd have chosen for themselves, couldn't ever meet his disinherited son's eye again. 'You'll make your way faster in the Church,' he'd mumble, scuffing at the dust, eyes on his toecap. 'You'll see.' Thomas de la Mare still fears the shaft of pure savagery that pierces his soul whenever he remembers his father. The old fool.

Yet, as he ponders how best to obey his Prince's command, being conveyed with such force by Princess Joan, his eyes have begun to gleam. He glances from her towards his two surviving brothers, who are keeping pace, more or less, both with the speed of his stride and that of the Princess's speech. He's called them in to advise, with two different purposes, one for each of them. For once in his life, the Abbot is feeling something he hardly knows how to describe. A different sort of man might call it happiness.

Princess Joan, striding forward, has kept her burning eyes turned sideways on the Abbot right through her explanation. 'So, my lords,' she says by way of conclusion. She's raking them all with her eyes. 'What now?'

The Princess can see that encouraging answers from these three brothers will always be problematic. Sir John de la Mare has the family t.i.tle, but there is something so awkward between him and my lord Abbot that she doesn't like to look at the way the two of them don't look at each other.

She shrugs to herself. It's natural, she thinks. They're men. Men fight.

But for all her hopes of instant wisdom from the Abbot, he remains silent. He has no immediate ideas.

It's the third brother, Sir Peter de la Mare, who has an opinion. Peter is lord of the manor of Yatton in Herefords.h.i.+re, through his wife, and, more importantly, steward to Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, who is third in line to the throne - behind little Prince Richard, and in front of Duke John. That a.s.sociation makes Peter de la Mare a man of rank. Peter is also one of the two county leaders for Herefords.h.i.+re who will go to Parliament whenever the King next dares call it to ask for money. He'll represent the general ma.s.s of disgruntled minor n.o.bility and medium-sized landowners called the Commons.

Perhaps it is the weight of all that authority that does it. But certainly Peter de la Mare doesn't seem to know fear. He is walking along, not getting breathless, thinking how to put his answer to the Princess. And everyone, even the Princess, is becoming aware of it.

Sir Peter's tall like his brothers, thin like his brothers, and he doesn't smile much. But he stands upright and looks you straightforwardly in the eye when he talks to you. There is no malice in his gaze, either.

Why is he so different from bitter old Thomas, with his sour comments and hateful judgements, and from me? Sir John de la Mare finds himself wondering a little enviously, as he flicks a sideways glance up at his brother Peter. Why do you find yourself waiting to hear what Peter thinks, and trusting what he says?

It's not that what he says is so different from anyone else. Since the brothers all turned up at St Albans yesterday, John's heard that Peter de la Mare is as indignant as the next man that the country's in such disarray.

It's not that he's doing anything different with his life from his brother, either. Peter and John: both country lords. Though they say Peter's better than him at running his lands, John thinks anxiously; he he doesn't rush into the wrong crops, the wrong expenses, punis.h.i.+ng the wrong peasants - all the mistakes a lord who prefers war to farming can make. doesn't rush into the wrong crops, the wrong expenses, punis.h.i.+ng the wrong peasants - all the mistakes a lord who prefers war to farming can make.

John digs his bitten nails into his palms to hide them. It's not success, or wit, or efficiency, either, that makes you pay heed to Peter. It's this. In some fundamental way that has pa.s.sed his brothers by, Peter de la Mare is happy.

Even the Princess seems to relax a little when Peter de la Mare does finally speak, as if that deep-down contentment they can all sense in some way comforts her, even though what he says can't possibly please her.

'If the wh.o.r.e is conspiring with my lord the Duke to the detriment of England,' he says, 'then it's a matter for trial before Parliament.'

The Princess nods, with a grim pleasure that the mention of Parliament doesn't usually arouse in her.

'But what we know now is not enough,' Peter de la Mare continues. Apparently unaware of the Princess's terrible stare, he scratches his head. 'We need facts. Provable facts.'

The Princess's jaw juts out. She grates: 'But you have my word.'

The two other brothers, keeping well clear of each other, one on either side of the talking pair, are staying silent.

But Peter is gently shaking his head. 'That won't take us far in a court of law, dear lady,' he replies, and his eyes twinkle at her with the beginning of humour. 'Not by itself. And that's the problem. Do you see?' He's talking to this great lady as candidly and straightforwardly as if they were equals, brother and sister, husband and wife, which John de la Mare also secretly admires. Where does he get the courage?

Peter pauses, giving the Princess time to acknowledge the truth of this. Her only response is to increase her pace and look as angry as a caged lion.

John, who is timid behind his countryman's bl.u.s.ter, can scarcely breathe. The heavens move in their appointed orbits; human life too. So there is something uncanny about Peter's confidence in challenging the opinion of a princess.

'But I doubt it would be hard to find legal proofs,' Peter de la Mare goes on, conceding something in his turn, and his voice is as smooth as before. 'G.o.d knows there's enough talk about Perrers' private dealings. And as you know so well, dear lady, there's no smoke without fire.'

Sullenly, reluctantly, the Princess grunts. To John's astonishment, she appears to have conceded that Peter is talking sense.

There is a silence. As he catches his breath, and ponders, John realises uncomfortably that he doesn't fully understand why Peter de la Mare would want to apply a higher standard of proof to the question of Alice Perrers' infamy than the Princess does. What does it matter what they say she's done? They all know the woman's a bad lot, and if the Princess wants her punished, then surely they should be working on ways to use what they have against her. There's more going on here than he has understood.

Cautiously, he raises his eyes sideways to s.n.a.t.c.h a furtive glance at the speaker and see if he can read extra layers of meaning on his brother's face. As he does so, Peter stops walking.

'It's been my ambition, for some time,' he says, looking very searchingly into every one of the faces now turning towards him like flowers to the light, 'to use the next Parliament to put real, serious charges against the court clique, and anyone who has been promoting and supporting them. Perrers is one of the people I'd like to investigate. I want to rid the country of their corruption for once and for all. Like you, madame' - he bows towards the Princess - 'I believe that this corruption may go higher, far higher, than Perrers and her cronies. I suspect that your royal brother-in-law has been...unwise, to say the least, in his choice of a.s.sociates. He may indeed be trying to build secret a.s.sociations of allies at court, and perhaps also in London, and in the country at large, for reasons of his own that we can only guess at. I agree that he needs to be reined in; and it's my view that if we succeed in framing serious charges against Mistress Perrers and her friends, the Duke will, at the very least, learn from his creatures' fate, and give up whatever his own private plan has been. But our our plan will only work if we are absolutely clear as to what our purpose is. We must work to frame one clear set of charges. We must be able to prove them. We must be able to condemn Perrers and her friends through the application of the law - which, since we suspect them of acting against the law, should not be difficult. And we mustn't let anything turn us aside from that purpose.' plan will only work if we are absolutely clear as to what our purpose is. We must work to frame one clear set of charges. We must be able to prove them. We must be able to condemn Perrers and her friends through the application of the law - which, since we suspect them of acting against the law, should not be difficult. And we mustn't let anything turn us aside from that purpose.'

He pauses. He says, 'Do you agree?'

'Be simpler just to get her for witchcraft, wouldn't it?' barks Sir John, trying to a.s.sert himself at last. He's the one with the family t.i.tle, after all; with the deep lines like gorges through his face to prove his experience in France and knowledge of life. He should be taking charge. He laughs, a whiskery, rustic, drunken, bullying sort of laugh. The kind of laugh he gives when he's trying to impress, or strike fear into people. It seldom works.

It doesn't now. Peter turns to him. 'Only if you can prove her a witch, brother,' he says calmly. 'In a way that everyone in the land would believe, in their hearts, to be true. And even if you could, that isn't the aim we want to achieve, is it? It's the corruption eating away at England that we want to root out, not Mistress Perrers herself. She's only a symptom of the disease. We want to get the cause.'

But John has already dropped his eyes. It's not Peter who's quelled him. It's the utterly malevolent stare his other brother, the Abbot, is bending his way.

'This is a problem of power. It's about the misuse of money and power,' Peter says, and the Princess nods. 'It goes higher than Perrers. It may, Heaven forfend, stretch right up to certain members of the royal family. Likewise, the solution needs to be clearly about power, and money, and corruption.

'What we need now is information about these people's financial dealings, not about their use of magical herbs,' he continues. 'We need information about the way they abuse power they shouldn't have.'

There's a silence, while the brothers look at each other. Sir John shrugs helplessly. 'I don't know anything about financial dealings,' he says, then tries, inanely for a n.o.bleman's joke. 'I'm no bailiff.'

'I think', Peter says, 'that there are certain things I must find out for myself.'

The Princess nods again. 'I see you are the man for the job, Sir Peter,' she says. 'My lord Abbot, you've done well to think of introducing me to your brother.' There's respect in her voice. Even though she hasn't for a moment stopped thinking of, and worrying about, her husband, being moved off his stretcher inside, she almost smiles.

The Abbot nods, with apparent courtesy. But he isn't paying full attention. He's let his eyes slide sideways towards his brother John, who's looking foolishly left out, and knows it; he's scuffing his toes on the flagstones. John, if no one else, saw the fugitive look of satisfaction on the Abbot's face when the Princess humiliatingly ignored him. John is burning inside.

TWELVE.

The woods outside Eltham are as dead as world's end. Not a bird, not a rabbit, just the clip of hooves on hardened mud, the rustle of old dead leaves and the creak of harness.

Alice watches the plumes of horse-breath rise, white on white.

She will be glad to be away.

The court's Christmas at Eltham was to have been a joy: three hundred people, with Alice as their female figurehead, in the Queen's jewels. She organised it meticulously: the hunts, the feasts, the fireworks, the minstrels, the troupes of actors, the private moments with Edward, the lavish New Year's gifts. Alice's pleasure at the prospect stemmed largely from the certainty that there would be no need to kow-tow, no need to hide away pretending some other, n.o.bler, lady was in charge. Princess Joan would be safely locked up at Riseberg, nursing her husband. The Duke's Castilian d.u.c.h.ess, Constanza, would spend the holiday locked up at Hertford with her little girl and her Castilian ladies. But the Duke himself, invited on the King's behalf by Alice, months ago, had bowed and declared, graciously, that it would be his great pleasure to be with his father. He'd added, in a laughing, arch, undertone, 'And, of course, with Madame Perrers.' Alice liked that. From the beginning, Alice has thought of the Duke's near-single status as an advantage in making him her patron: his relations with his d.u.c.h.ess are so remote that there's never been the least risk of a hostile, suspicious wife whispering negative things about Alice in his ear.

So, for all the months she was planning Christmas, she was looking forward to having the two most important men in the land, dancing attendance on her alone for two weeks clear, grateful for the elegant festival she'd organised for them.

She doesn't even like to remember that hope now. False, all of it, dust and ashes in her mouth. For, shortly before the retinues began arriving at Eltham Palace, the Duke's steward asked for a private audience and then, squirming and staring at his feet, asked whether she'd thought to invite Madame Swynford. At her politely bewildered headshake - of course she hadn't invited either of the de Roet sisters, for surely they had plans of their own, and in any case wasn't Madame Swynford planning to be with her charges at Hertford, or away in the country with her own children? - the man only squirmed harder, and went pinker. In strangulated tones, he finally brought out the words he'd been told to say: 'My lord of Lancaster...my lord the King of Castile...asks that Madame Swynford be included.' Alice could see, from the way he was behaving, that the steward, too, had at some point been stung by that swaying, supercilious creature, with her gentle voice and the polite contempt in her eyes. When she stared, then, recovering herself and saying gently, enquiringly, 'I see... see...?' the steward refused to be drawn into confidences. Still, Alice couldn't help but feel uneasy.

Not that, at first, there seemed any real cause for that unease. The holiday started as well as she'd ever dreamed it might.

The Duke arrived first, and alone (alone, that is, ducal style - with only a retinue of thirty or forty at his heels). And he was in good health, with roses in his cheeks and a spring in his step, and in good humour, and pleased to see her. His eyes lit up as she came out on to the steps to greet him. He said, 'Ah, Madame Perrers, my dear friend.' He bowed. He kissed her hand.