Free The King’s Sister by Anne O'Brien Page A

lock of her hair and supportedan all-enveloping veil, but I could hear her explosion of anger.
    ‘God’s Blood! Where is my son?’
    Sensibly Richard had made himself available, with as many members of his court as he could muster when the Princess’s proximity was announced. Now he emerged from the royal apartments, walking in stately fashion down the steps, only to be seized in the Princess’s arms and dragged into a close embrace as if he were still a small boy, while I slid my way between shoulders and overlapping skirts until it was easy for me to see the strange pair they made in this reunion. Richard, young and angelically fair, had grown tall in recent months, over-reaching his mother who had become so stout that even climbing the steps at his side made her catch her breath. Once, before my birth in the reign of the old King, Joan had been acknowledged as the most beautiful woman in England, and led a scandal-ridden life that made the most of her undoubted charms. Now her broad features and less than svelte figure proclaimed a woman who was a shadow of that former beauty.
    But her eyes, although they might be swathed in little mounds of flesh, were still keen and beautifully sharp, and the timbre of her voice was mellifluous even though it could cut like a knife. As it did.
    ‘Holy Virgin! That journey was a nightmare from start to finish. The state of the roads between here and Wallingford is a disgrace, Richard. You must do something about it. And the riff-raff that use them. I have come to meet the bride. I should have been here yesterday.’
    ‘I would have sent my own escort, Madam,’ Richard said, not pleased at being taken to task.
    ‘That would hardly shorten my journey.’
    ‘You appear to have travelled in comfort,’ Richard observed with an eye to the equipage being led away.
    The Princess waved this irrelevance aside but her complaint ground to a halt as, noticing them in the crowd, she graciously extended her hand for her two sons by her first marriage to Thomas Holland, Earl of Kent, to kiss. Which I noticed they did with alacrity, yet much affection, even if they were now grown men and royal counsellors.
    ‘Thomas …’ she said. ‘And John …’
    ‘My wife is within,’ Richard announced, intent on reclaiming his mother’s attention.
    ‘In a moment …’
    The Princess’s eye, still quartering the crowd like a huntsman searching out its prey, fell on me. Since she saw fit to snap her fingers in imperious command, I approached and curtsied again, wishing Philippa was with me. I might be Elizabeth of Lancaster but this lady, my aunt by marriage, was the King’s Mother and of vast consequence. She was also a person of hasty temper and trenchant opinions. Besides, she had more affection for Philippa than she held for me.
    ‘So you’re here too, Elizabeth. Of course you are. And your father? Where’s Constanza? Not that it matters. She’ll do as she chooses—she always has. You’d better join my ladies. I have need of an intelligent woman about me.’ She looked me over from head to foot with a surprising degree of speculation. ‘Come with me. I need to regain my strengthbefore I make the acquaintance of my new daughter. You can be of use.’
    So I followed Princess Joan who walked without hesitation to the chambers usually allotted to her when she stayed at Westminster, her habitual accommodation and my own obedience presumed with royal hauteur. And that was the manner in which, for a short period of time, I became a member of Princess Joan’s demanding household. An unnerving experience, all in all, as the lady, her colour high, dismissed her own women, piled her outer garments into my arms, instructed me to send for wine and food, then handed me a comb as she removed the complication of her hair-covering. And I complied. Princess Joan, not a woman blessed with tolerance, appeared to be in a mood of high volatility.
    Eventually she was settled to her liking on a bank of pillows,