The Velvet Promise Read online

  “You are perfect. Now come and let the king look at you.”

  Judith tried to still her beating heart at the idea of meeting the king of England. She didn’t know what she expected, but the rather ordinary great hall was not it. Men and women sat about, playing chess and other games. Three women sat on stools at the feet of a handsome man who played a psaltery. Nowhere did she see any man who could be King Henry.

  Judith was astonished when Gavin stopped before a plain middle-aged man with small blue eyes and thin white hair. He looked very tired.

  Judith recovered herself and quickly curtsied.

  King Henry took her hand.

  “Come to the light and let me look at you. I have heard much of your beauty.” He led her away, towering over her, for he was six feet tall. “You are as pretty as I have heard. Come here, Bess,” King Henry said, “and see the Lady Judith, Gavin’s new bride.”

  Judith turned and saw a pretty middle-aged woman behind her. She had been surprised that Henry was the king, but there was no doubt that this woman was queen. She was a regal woman, so sure of herself, that she could be kind and generous. Her eyes held welcome for Judith. “Your Majesty,” Judith said and curtsied.

  Elizabeth held out her hand. “Countess,” the queen said. “I’m so glad you could come to stay with us for a while. Have I said something amiss?”

  Judith smiled at the woman’s sensitivity. “I haven’t been called ‘countess’ before. It has been such a short time since my father’s death.”

  “Yes, that was tragic, wasn’t it? And the man who did the deed?”

  “He is dead,” Judith said firmly, remembering too well the feel of the sword sinking into Walter’s spine.

  “Come, you must be tired after your journey.”

  “No. I’m not.”

  Elizabeth smiled fondly. “Then perhaps you would like to come to my chambers for some wine.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty, I would.”

  “You will excuse me, Henry?”

  Judith suddenly realized she had turned her back on the king. She turned, her cheeks flushed pink.

  “Don’t mind me, child,” Henry said in a distracted manner. “I am sure Bess will put you to work on the wedding plans for our oldest son, Arthur.”

  Judith smiled and curtsied to him before she followed the queen up the wide stairs to the solar above.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  ALICE SAT ON A STOOL BEFORE A MIRROR IN A LARGE ROOM on the top floor of the palace. All around her were a profusion of bright colors. There were purple and green satins, scarlet taffetas, orange brocades. Each cloth, each garment had been chosen as an instrument to call attention to herself. She had seen Judith Revedoune’s gowns at her wedding and Alice knew that the heiress’s taste ran to simple colors of lush, finely woven fabrics. Alice meant to draw attention away from Gavin’s wife with her brilliant clothes.

  She wore an undertunic of pale rose, the arms embroidered with black braid swirling round and round. Her crimson velvet dress was cut in deep scallops at the hem and the skirt was appliquéd with enormous wildflowers of every known color. The capelet about her shoulders was her pride. It was of Italian brocade, and in the fabric were colored animals, each one as large as a man’s hand, woven in green, purple, orange and black. She was sure no one would outshine her today.

  And it was very important that Alice draw attention to herself today because she was to see Gavin again. She smiled at herself in the mirror. She knew she needed Gavin’s love after that awful time she’d spent with Edmund. Now that she was a widow, she could look back on Edmund almost fondly. Of course, the poor man was only jealous.

  “Look at this circlet!” Alice suddenly commanded her maid, Ela. “Do you think that blue stone matches my eyes? Or is it too light?” Angrily, she snatched the golden circle from her head. “Damn that goldsmith! He must have used his feet to do such clumsy work.”

  Ela took the headdress from her angry mistress. “The goldsmith is the king’s own, the best in all of England, and the circlet is the most beautiful one he has ever created,” Ela soothed. “Of course the stone looks light—no stone could match the rich color of your eyes.”

  Alice looked back at the mirror and began to quiet. “Do you truly think so?”

  “Yes,” Ela answered honestly. “No woman could rival your beauty.”

  “Not even that Revedoune bitch?” Alice demanded, refusing to use Judith’s married name.

  “Most assuredly. My lady, you don’t plan something…that goes against the church, do you?”

  “How could what I do to her be against the church? Gavin was mine before she took him, and he will be mine again!”

  Ela knew from experience that it was impossible to reason with Alice once her mind was set on something. “Do you remember that you mourn your husband as she mourns her father?”

  Alice laughed. “I imagine we feel the same about those two men. I have heard that her father was even more despicable than my late beloved husband.”

  “Don’t speak so of the dead.”

  “And don’t you reprimand me, or I will see you go to someone else.” It was a familiar threat—one Ela no longer paid any attention to. The worst punishment Alice could imagine was to deny a person her company.

  Alice stood and smoothed her gown. All the colors and textures flashed and competed with one another. “Do you think he will notice me?” she asked breathlessly.

  “Who could not?”

  “Yes,” Alice agreed. “Who could not?”

  Judith stood silently by her husband’s side, overawed by the king’s many guests. Gavin seemed at ease with them all, a man respected, his word valued. It was good to see him in another setting besides a highly personal one. For all their quarrels and disputes, he took care of her, protected her. He knew she was not used to crowds, so he kept her close to him, not forcing her to go to the women, where she would be among strangers. He took much ribbing about this but he smiled good-naturedly with no embarrassment, as most men would have shown.

  The long trestle tables were being set for supper, the troubadors organizing their musicians, the jongleurs, the acrobats rehearsing their stunts.

  “Are you enjoying yourself?” Gavin asked, smiling down at her.

  “Yes. It’s all so noisy and active, though.”

  He laughed. “It will get worse. Let me know if you get tired, and we’ll leave.”

  “You don’t mind that I stay so near you?”

  “I would mind if you didn’t. I wouldn’t like you to be free amid these people. Too many young men—and old men, for that matter—look at you.”

  “They do?” Judith asked innocently. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Judith, don’t tease these men. The morals at court are very loose, and I wouldn’t like for you to be trapped in some web of your own innocent making. Stay by me or Stephen. Don’t venture too far away alone. Unless”—his eyes hardened in memory of Walter Demari,—“you wish to encourage someone.”

  She started to speak, to tell him what she thought of his insinuations, but an earl of somewhere—she could never keep them straight—came to talk to Gavin. “I will go to Stephen,” she said and walked along the edge of the enormous room to where her brother-in-law leaned against the tapestried wall.

  He, like Gavin, was dressed in a rich garment of dark wool, Stephen’s brown, Gavin’s gray. The form-fitting doublets were also of finely woven dark wool. Judith couldn’t help but feel a shiver of pride at being associated with such magnificent men.

  Judith noticed a pretty, freckle-faced young woman with a turned-up nose who kept looking at Stephen from around her father’s back. “She seems to like you,” Judith said.

  Stephen didn’t look up. “Yes,” he said dejectedly. “But my days are numbered, aren’t they? A few weeks from now, and I’ll have a bit of brown woman on my arm, screeching at my every movement.”

  “Stephen!” Judith laughed. “She surely couldn’t be as bad as you think she is. No woman co