The Poison Bed

by Elizabeth Fremantle

  Helping me dress, Mother managed to jab me with a pin, sucking her teeth to see a smear of blood defiling the fabric. My laces were drawn tight, pressing my stomach into my throat. ‘It’s been agreed that you can wear a veil for modesty’s sake’. She draped a length of dense lace over her arm.

  ‘I don’t see how a veil will help,’ I’d said.

  ‘You don’t need to worry about a thing.’ Lizzie’s tone was softer. Sensible Lizzie, who had all Mother’s beauty but none of her hardness, was too kind-hearted to be a Howard.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ I blurted. ‘I’m not intact.’

  I expected her anger but Mother barely looked at me, and said, with practised insouciance, ‘Really, Frances, do you take me for a fool? I know what you’ve been up to.’

  ‘How? How do you know?’ I felt turned inside out, the holes in my lining on show. ‘Did Anne tell you?’

  ‘It’s all in hand.’ She didn’t answer my question and I knew there was no use in pushing her. I assumed someone must have been bribed, or something like it, and felt heavy with the weight of all the untruths. If it all came toppling down it would be my loss, mine and Robert’s – no one else’s.

  A woman I’d thought a friend pushed forward to stand in our way. ‘It’s witchcraft that makes a man impotent with one and not others.’ She looked around the gathering for support and a few mumbled their agreement. I could have slapped her.

  ‘Ignore her,’ said Lizzie, and we marched on, giving the woman no choice but to stand aside.

  Once out of earshot, Mother said, ‘In a month they’ll all be paying homage to you – eating their words – and we will have our revenge.’

  My mother’s vindictiveness was ugly. Revenge was the last thing on my mind. All I wanted was Robert. I held him firm in my thoughts to bolster me against all those pursed mouths and narrowed eyes. They might judge me but they wouldn’t break me.

  At the door I felt my resolve slip and stopped a moment, resisting the impulse to flee, girding myself before following Mother and Lizzie inside. It was gloomy, just a sharp blade of light slicing through the room from a gap in the curtains. A bank of six matrons hovered around a large canopied bed. One or two of them I knew, like Lady Tyrwhitt, others I had never seen before. I wondered if their pockets were heavy with their enticement – filthy coins that would stain those fingers that would soon be probing me. The mood was sober. None of them could quite look me in the eye, and I wondered if they’d agreed to my wearing a veil to preserve them from embarrassment rather than myself.

  Mother, as ever, was haughty and unapproachable and I was relieved that Lizzie took control with her light, easy manner, which lifted the awkward atmosphere for them, if not for me. Two more women arrived, introduced as midwives. They, contrarily, were rather jolly and undaunted, saying things like, ‘Let’s get this over and done with, shall we?’

  I felt unsure of myself. Was I to lay myself open there and then on that bed? My dress was unbearably tight and I doubted I’d even be able to sit unaided. But one of the midwives said to Lizzie, ‘Why don’t you take your sister in there, dear, and help her get ready?’ She pointed at a low door in the corner that I hadn’t noticed.

  Lizzie took my hand and we entered a small space, not much wider than a corridor, designed, I supposed, as a wardrobe. Lizzie peeled back a curtain at the far end, revealing another, smaller, door, which she opened and in walked a girl. Confused, I saw that she was almost my duplicate, exactly my build and colouring and wearing identical petticoats to the ones beneath my own dress.

  ‘She’s to take my place?’ Lizzie hushed me, nodding, and it dawned on me then that everything had been thought of: the chamber with its convenient anteroom and secret door, and the girl, my mirror image. Wherever had they found her? So, there had been no need of a bribe.

  ‘Why wasn’t I told of this?’

  ‘You know what Uncle’s like. He insisted. Even I didn’t know until an hour ago.’

  It occurred to me that perhaps Uncle enjoyed the idea of me agitating over the humiliation. It was so like him, wanting to control us all.

  I cast my eyes over the girl again. She wouldn’t look directly at me. She was a child, really, couldn’t have been much more than twelve or thirteen, a good half-dozen years my junior, though she was quite well developed and could easily pass for me veiled in that shadowy room.

  It was only then that I remembered where I’d seen her. It was at Paternoster Row: she had served us drinks. I supposed that Uncle had asked Anne to procure her for this purpose, but Anne hadn’t mentioned it. The whole business stank of some quiet plot between the two of them from which I was excluded. Imagining them cooking up their ruse together, I felt steeped in bitterness and had to keep my attention firmly adhered to the fact that the aim of the piece of shady theatre was to unite me with Robert. Perhaps I’d been kept in the dark for my own protection.

  Lizzie set to work, removing my jewels and clasping them round the girl’s neck and wrists, pushing my rings on to her thin fingers. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, thinking of the humiliation she was to suffer on my behalf, all those matrons tutting over her privates. She lifted one shoulder minutely in response as my sister draped the veil over her head.

  ‘You wait through there,’ whispered Lizzie, indicating the far door. ‘We won’t be long.’

  Behind the door was a set of steps, which must have led to one of the back courtyards, or even, it occurred to me, the underground corridor to Northampton House. I would have sat on the top step but my dress wouldn’t allow it so I leaned against the wall and tried not to think about what the girl was going through on my behalf.

  Soon Lizzie returned with her. The jewels were unclipped and the veil removed. She was red-eyed, clearly distraught. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said once more, but she turned away to look at the floor.

  ‘If you go down the stairs,’ Lizzie whispered, as she helped her into her dress, ‘someone will be there to take you home.’ She pressed a purse into her small hand. It all seemed so sordid.

  I took off a bracelet, holding it out for her. It was unusual and quite valuable, a long string that wrapped several times round the wrist, threaded with seed pearls and rubies. She seemed in two minds, her hand floating. I could hear the chapel bell ringing below. Eventually she snatched it, folding it into her tight little fist, still unable to look me in the eye.

  I was whisked back to thank the matrons for their trouble. The shutters had been opened wide, bright light bleaching the hangings pale, and the atmosphere had lifted. The women seemed relieved it was over, smiling and chattering quietly as they took turns to wash their hands at a copper basin. Lady Tyrwhitt turned to me with a serious look. ‘I’m speaking for all of us when I say there’s no doubt in our minds that you are still intact. I’m only sorry you had to be put through such an ordeal.’ She seemed genuinely sympathetic and completely unaware of the sleight of hand that had just been perpetrated.

  ‘I’m very glad you now know I have nothing to hide.’ The untruth felt like a stone in my shoe. I sensed God listening and shame crept into my bones.

  Nelly is clearly amused. ‘I’m picturing those embarrassed matrons. I won’t breathe a word of that either.’

  ‘It probably wouldn’t matter if you did.’ Cozening a nullity commission is a small offence beside a charge of murder, and it will make no difference now if anyone discovers she slept with Robert before they were married.

  ‘What became of the girl – the child?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. Poor sweet, it must have been an awful trial for her.’

  ‘She will have liked the money.’ Most girls would put themselves in the child’s shoes, feel her humiliation, but not Nelly. Nothing in Nelly’s world is complicated by problematic morality. It makes Frances wonder, not for the first time, what price would buy Nelly and who might pay it.

  ‘I expect she did,’ Frances says.

  ‘So, then you were married.’

  ‘Eventually, yes.’

&n
bsp; ‘Hallelujah to that!’ Nelly claps her hands together, startling the baby out of its sleep, making it cry.

  The sound burrows beneath Frances’s skin, like a maggot into an apple, its damage invisible. Nelly picks the infant up, walking about, jigging her until she is quiet.

  ‘And what about Overbury?’ Frances is caught off guard by the directness of the question. ‘Was he dead by the time of your wedding?’ Nelly’s back is turned and Frances can’t tell if she means anything by it.

  ‘He died a few days before the nullity was granted.’ Frances coughs, feeling the dead man in the air.

  ‘And then you had your wedding.’ It sounds, for a moment, like an accusation, but then she adds, ‘Your great-uncle, I hope he’s burning in Hell.’

  The two women are silent, and Frances is thinking about the confession she made to Bacon, doubting the wisdom of it once more.

  Nelly offers the baby for her to take; Frances shakes her head. The idea of holding her child is intolerable.

  The girl sits down, cradling it, cooing and gurning. ‘Why can’t you love her?’

  ‘I suppose I’m loath to become too attached. My future is so uncertain.’ Frances tastes blood in her mouth.

  ‘I hadn’t thought.’ Nelly looks apologetic.

  ‘You see, I wanted him dead. I wished him dead.’ Frances seems to overflow with distress, words streaming out of her. ‘He’d been imprisoned on my account, so deep in my heart I believed that I’d done it to him. That it was my fault.’ Frances fixes Nelly with a desperate look.

  Nelly starts to speak and Frances knows what she’ll say: But wishing someone dead and actually killing them is not the same thing.

  She holds up a hand to silence the girl.

  She can’t begin to explain how it is or how she feels about it.

  Him

  The look of the river on the morning I learned of Thomas’s death is branded on my memory. It was not long after dawn and the moon was still visible, a pale sliver in a violet sky, and the water, flat and livid as a slate floor, was part shrouded in mist.

  I whistled down a sculler and clambered into his small boat only half listening to his chatter. He told me how much he liked being out early, when no one was around, how it got him out of the house, which was swarming with children and never a moment’s peace to be had. How I envied his ordinary life. He talked of a monstrous fish, which had beached at Deptford the day before, and how the locals had tried to haul it back into the water with ropes but that it had died and no one dared eat its flesh in case it had been sent by the devil.

  I watched the sky, its colour leaching away as day began to assert itself, the fact of Thomas’s death a spillage of darkness in my mind. It was a terrible shock, though not a surprise. Mayerne had warned me a few days before that he didn’t think his patient would last the week. I’d wanted to visit him then, and I’d tried, but Elwes hadn’t allowed me in. He was sympathetic enough but said he feared punishment if he contravened his orders.

  I tried to envisage what would happen next, dreaded the thought of encountering the Howards in case they were jubilant. Frances wouldn’t be. I knew that. She had taken so much care to make sure Thomas was comfortable and well fed. In the few snatched moments we had had together she confessed to me how terrible she felt about his incarceration. Her concern touched me deeply. That she was facing public humiliation yet still had sympathy for a man who had loathed her made me feel small and grubby in the face of her love.

  On arrival, I was shown into Elwes’s chambers to wait. Thomas’s servant, Lawrence Davies, was there, seeming confused and very young, like a boy who’s witnessed his house burning to the ground. We exchanged a few bland condolences. ‘I don’t know what to do with myself,’ he said, and he hit his head with the heel of his hand several times as if to knock the grief out of it. I was reminded that Thomas had been his saviour. That day came tumbling back to me, Davies’s shredded back and Thomas’s kindness. It struck me then – the brutal finality of death.

  Elwes appeared soon after. He attempted a smile, more of a grimace, exposing a huddle of yellow teeth. He was dishevelled and agitated, grasping a fistful of letters, which he deposited between the pages of a book on his desk among a mess of other papers and dockets. ‘This is not a good occasion,’ he said, to no one in particular. ‘I feared it would come to this.’ We stood facing each other, floundering in a moment of silence. Then he fitted a cap carefully over his thinning hair and straightened his rumpled outfit, saying, ‘I’ll take you over there.’

  Leaving Davies, we walked across the green where the birds were chattering, flitting in and about the vegetation; a dog-rose, heavy with bright clusters of hips, climbed over a nearby wall. The scene was incongruously pretty. As we entered a building we passed a man whose appearance was so grotesque – bent-backed, his nose rotted almost to the bone from the pox – that the sight of him made my stomach turn. He seemed the outward manifestation of my inner State, and I thought how much more appropriate that hideous fellow was to the occasion than the pretty gardens.

  Elwes stopped and said a few words to the creature before we continued down a short flight of steps and into a dark corridor. Master Weston was there, a big brute of a man whom I half recognized: he had occasionally brought letters to me from Frances. I remembered the white scar, like a stitched seam, running from his cheekbone to the corner of his mouth that had made me wonder what kind of trouble lay in his past.

  He greeted me, saying how sorry he was and that he knew how dear a friend Thomas had been to me. His accent was coarse but he was well turned out. ‘Terrible business,’ he kept saying, shaking his head and shuffling his huge, rough hands.

  ‘There’s no need for you to stay down here, Weston,’ said Elwes. ‘It’s not as if –’ He stopped himself. It’s not as if the prisoner needs guarding now. ‘Though don’t leave the Tower just yet in case the coroner has any questions for you.’ Weston went, leaving a key with Elwes, who used it to open the heavy door. Before we entered he suggested I tie a handkerchief around my mouth and nose in case of infection.

  Even so the stench took me by surprise, making me gag. It was not the pleasant room above the Watergate where I’d believed Thomas to have been housed but a small hostile chamber, half underground. One wall was slimed green with damp and there was a single, very small window that looked out on to an inner yard at ground level, so all Thomas could have had was a view of people’s feet and the dung heap across the way.

  He was in the corner laid out on a bed of sorts. An array of magnificent cushions surrounded him, and beneath him the soft puff of a featherbed was visible. The sight of that displaced luxury, sent by Frances, I supposed, made me feel choked once more with tears.

  I crouched down. Thomas’s hands, which someone had crossed over his chest, looked raw. Glass eyes stared out from sunken sockets. His lips were blue and scattered with sores and his mouth hung open so I could see that several of his teeth were missing. He’d always been so proud of them. Somehow those missing teeth touched me more profoundly than anything else I saw that day.

  My hand hovered over him. I wanted to coax him awake, to tell him I’d make him better. Elwes pulled me back sharply. ‘I wouldn’t. Not without gloves. We don’t yet know the cause and he might be infectious.’

  ’I’d like to take him out of here, give him a proper burial – some dignity.’ Even saying it I knew there was no dignity in death, not that kind of death – the worst kind.

  ‘The coroner will have to look at him first, with witnesses.’

  I hated the idea of a stranger picking over him, cutting him open, no secret left unexposed. I knelt to pray but felt the weight of God’s judgement. It was too late for His intervention anyway, so I got back to my feet. ‘I’ll stay to witness the post-mortem.’

  ‘It’ll be a grim business. Are you sure you want –’

  ‘I am.’ I sounded more assertive than I felt but I was compelled to be there while he suffered that final indignity. It was the l
east I could do.

  We went in silence to Elwes’s lodgings to wait. Lawrence Davies was still there, hunched on a bench, cradling his head in his hands. Elwes suggested he go home.

  He deliberately bumped me with his shoulder as he made for the door, saying under his breath, ‘If it wasn’t for you he’d still be alive.’

  The sickening accuracy of his statement jolted me. I saw he wanted someone to blame and tried to placate him, but he told me he had no use for my sympathy. ‘If you want to help me, find me work. Nothing will bring Sir Thomas back, but the means to put food on my table and a roof over my head ...’ He paused. ‘Someone like you could never understand what it is to be stalked by destitution.’

  I heard Thomas in his words; it pulled me up. I hadn’t even considered that the boy had lost his livelihood. ‘Of course,’ I promised. ‘I’ll find you a position.’

  He looked me full in the eye, then went on past me and out of the door.

  ‘What was that about?’ asked Elwes.

  ‘Poor lad’s beside himself with grief. Overbury was something of a father figure to him, you see.’ Elwes was happy with my explanation but I was left with the feeling that Davies had been coercing me – with what I wasn’t quite sure. Grief had addled me too.

  It wasn’t long before the coroner arrived. Elwes gathered six of the Tower guards to stand witness and before long we were all crammed into that stinking charnel house of a room.

  The coroner came with an assistant – a young lad who might have been his son, for they both had the same dark hair and sallow skin. He was asking questions of Elwes and carefully noting the answers. He opened a large bag to reveal the instruments of his trade: long-bladed shears and clamps, and a set of knives buckled to the lid in order of size. He asked what Elwes knew of the treatments that had been given to Thomas. He called him ‘the deceased’.