The Poison Bed

by Elizabeth Fremantle

  I rummaged for a handful of shillings, which I held out, suggesting he return another time. He refused the coins, saying it was a job he was after rather than charity.

  ‘I thought you would be more like him,’ he said, as he left.

  I hope you are ashamed, whispered Thomas.

  Her

  Robert burst in, ugly with rage, slamming the door. An angry vein pulsated in his forehead. ‘That snake! He’s knighted the bastard.’ He grabbed a candlestick, violently hacking at the table with it, splintering the polished oak surface. ‘He can’t do that.’ The candlestick flew across the room crashing against the far wall.

  Frances watched with chilled calm, recalling, with a sliver of disgust, her first husband flinging a glass once in a similar petulant fit and their rage-fuelled coupling in the aftermath.

  A crack was forming. This husband was collecting enemies. The snake he referred to was George Villiers, a young man to whom the King had taken a shine lately. Another object whistled past, shattering on the skirting. He reached for a precious alabaster vessel that belonged to her.

  ‘Leave it!’ She spoke as if to a dog, stepping towards him and grasping his wrist, prising the object from him. He was shaking. ‘Take hold of yourself.’

  ‘But he’s an impostor. It’s a plot to push me out and James is giving him ...’ He slumped. ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘I understand perfectly, Robert. You must be able to see that this is your own doing. You neglected the King.’ Robert’s infatuation with her had increased to the level of mania. It was becoming a problem. He was becoming a problem.

  ‘James can’t stop talking about how wonderful he is. “Such a fine horseman, Robbie. Have you seen him in the saddle? An accomplished linguist... have you seen what a beauty he is?” and now a knighthood. Give it a month and he’ll be lord something or other and telling me what to do.’ The vein continued to throb as he ranted. ‘I’m going to tell him he’s making a mistake.’ He tried to shake off her grip but she held him firmly.

  ‘You’ll do nothing of the sort. Do you want to make a bad situation worse?’ Frances had been aware that George Villiers was being groomed by their enemies to supplant her husband. She’d been keeping an eye on the situation. ‘You should befriend him.’

  ‘Befriend him? I’d rather cut my own arm off.’

  ‘Yes – get close enough to discover his weaknesses. Find a way to discredit him.’

  ‘I’ll make James send the bastard away.’

  She would have liked to knock some guile into her husband. ‘Don’t. It’s not as if his rise is your loss.’ Not yet, she was thinking. ‘You’ll only push the King into Villiers’s arms.’

  Frances went instead.

  She cut across the courtyard. It was deserted and there was no moon. The only light came from a brazier next to the stable arch. She could hear two cats squalling on a nearby wall and one dropped suddenly into her path, startling her before slithering off into the shadows. Her mind churned on Villiers. It wouldn’t be impossible to make him disappear, though risky. But the obstacle was Robert. As long as he continued to neglect his duties, there would always be some young thing ready to step into his shoes.

  Villiers was with the King, making to leave as she arrived. There was no doubt about his physical charms: bright, inquisitive eyes and a complexion that left most women boiling with envy, teamed with a languid poise, surprising in one so new to court. His suit was cut tight to the body and the breeches short, to make the best of his lean, muscular legs, which unfurled gracefully as he stood.

  She touched his sleeve. ‘Beautiful, this.’ She happened to know Pembroke had funded that suit of clothes. Villiers was as poor as a church mouse. ‘Who’s your tailor?’

  She’d intended to embarrass him a little, hoping to measure his willingness to tell a lie, but he thanked her with a straightforward smile. ‘It was a gift.’

  His calm self-possession made it difficult for her to assess what kind of adversary he would make. Beside that dewy boy, the king looked dog-eared. It was vanity on his part to think a young favourite would make him seem anything other than an old fool.

  Once Villiers had left, she sat, a little closer than was correct. ‘I’m worried about Robert.’

  ‘He’s not ill, is he?’

  She registered the King’s genuine expression of concern. It gave her confidence that her husband had not drifted too far from his affections. ‘No, it’s nothing like that. You know what he’s like. Driven by his passions. And he’s got a bee in his bonnet that you don’t care for him any more. He’s eaten away with jealousy, you see.’ She stopped, allowing her words to sink in. ‘He’s very much in love with you.’

  ‘Jealous of?’ He nodded towards the door, through which Villiers had recently left. She saw the slight smile and felt her message hit its mark.

  ‘He’s afraid he’s losing you.’ She placed a hand carefully on his arm.

  ‘And after everything I’ve given him –’

  She interrupted: ‘He doesn’t care about any of that. He only cares about you.’

  His features hardened. ‘Well, he has a strange way of showing it. I’ve barely seen him lately.’ The sceptical look he wore made her understand that this would not be as straightforward as she’d hoped.

  ‘He’s... Oh, never mind. Shall we play something? Remember the game we played on my wedding night?’ She ran her finger lightly across her neckline, leaning back with a breathless little laugh. He seemed amused by the memory, just as she’d hoped. ‘That was fun. Life can become so serious, can’t it?’

  ‘What would you like to play?’ There was a flash of mischief in his eyes.

  She ran her hand down on to his, turning it palm up. ‘I could read your fortune.’

  He laughed. ‘I’ve heard about you and your soothsaying games.’

  ‘Oh, but they’re not games.’ She began to inspect the creases with studied concentration. ‘This is your head line and this your heart line.’ She allowed her breath to deepen. ‘I can hear someone.’ Tipping her head back, she rolled her eyes, half closing them, lids flickering, and whispered, ‘What are you telling me? Who are you?’ She could feel the force of his fascination. ‘What is your message?’

  Jolting suddenly with a loud gasp, her eyes flew open and she dropped his hand with a terrified expression.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘No, no.’ She frowned. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘I order you.’

  ‘It’s a warning!’ She wiped the back of her hand over her brow. ‘I see destruction. There’s an untrustworthy person newly in your orbit. Someone who seeks to take from you rather than give.’

  She hadn’t expected his great guffaw of laughter. ‘I don’t need your soothsaying game to tell me that. You describe most of my court.’

  She suspected then that he might be impervious to her but, rather than feeling quashed, she rose to the challenge. ‘It is your choice to disbelieve.’

  ‘If it’s not a game’ – he drilled into her with a stony look – ‘I should have you burned as a witch.’ He paused in a charged silence, then laughed again.

  ‘You’re making fun of me.’ She feigned amusement. ‘Divination is not witchcraft.’

  ‘Most can’t see the difference.’ He was smirking.

  ‘But you can.’ She tilted her head, keeping her tone light.

  ‘There’s a good deal I can see that most can’t,’ he said, ‘such as all those who take rather than give.’

  It was abundantly clear to Frances that he would not be manipulated. Of course, he, like she, had been raised to trust no one. ‘My husband doesn’t fit that description.’

  ‘Ah, Robbie.’ He gave a wistful sigh. ‘That’s true. He’s not a taker. It’s what made me want to be so generous with him.’ She noticed that he was talking of his generosity in the past tense. ‘He mustn’t neglect me, though.’ There it is, she thought, the real warning, hidden by a smile. ‘And what about you, Frances, are you a giver or a taker?
’

  ‘I do as I’m told.’

  He laughed again, as if she’d made a joke. ‘If you seek to give me something’ – he was pointed – ‘then let it be his child.’

  Frances felt her way back across the courtyard through the dense night. She could sense her hard-won power slipping through her fingers. Two men in a shadowy huddle to one side fell silent as she passed. Picking up her pace, she stumbled on a loose cobble. A hand reached out to steady her. ‘Take care.’ His coat smelt strongly of tobacco smoke. It was Pembroke, and the other man, hidden in the gloom, she suspected was Villiers. Had she imagined it, or were Pembroke’s words weighted with a double meaning?

  ‘Thank you.’ Her response was perfunctory and she continued up the steps to the side door, unease swilling inside her.

  It was clear that if it came to it, and Robert fell from power, her family would detach themselves from him. It meant she, too, Howard or not, would be cast adrift, for there would be no denying her marriage a second time.

  ‘Only death will get you out of this one,’ her brother Harry had said to her on her wedding day. It was meant as a joke. But things had changed and Frances was determined she would not be swept into oblivion with a fallen favourite. Better to be a widow. And she would always be a Howard.

  Him

  I stood unseen on the threshold, watching. The room was hot, the windows misted, making it impossible to imagine the February chill outside. Frances was draped in a fine, almost transparent, linen shift and was seated with her bare feet in Anne Turner’s lap. Anne was paring her toenails with a small blade. I was transfixed by the intimacy of the scene, its secret femaleness, as if I was witnessing something forbidden. She held a mirror close to her face and seemed to inspect some small blemish but must have seen my reflection there as she turned, saying, ‘What are you doing lurking in the shadows like a thief?’

  Anne got up and slipped away, leaving us alone. I’d quickly warmed to my wife’s companion, had sensed instantly her deep care for Frances. I felt she was a kind of saintly presence in our lives with her angelic looks and gentle disposition. How strange it is that sometimes people are not what they most appear to be.

  ‘What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be with the King? Hasn’t he asked for you?’ Frances was blunt as a club and I felt my desire flare.

  I began to pour out my fears, fears that Villiers was supplanting me and that Winwood was hatching something against me. She lifted one leg up, bending it so her foot was in her own lap and took the little knife to her nails. Her hair fell forward like a flow of treacle so I couldn’t see her face as she spoke. ‘Will you never learn that if you have the best of things there will always be someone who wants to take them from you? Rise above it. And you’ll be giving it all away if you don’t spend any time with the King.’

  I reached out to touch her hair and a sharp jolt forced my arm to recoil, an invisible charge of power. It was as if beneath her skin she might not be human at all but something that came from the heavens, brought to life by the force of lightning.

  ‘I’ll go to him shortly. He hasn’t called for me yet.’

  She passed me her comb. ‘I may as well put you to good use if you insist on staying.’ She ran her tongue over her teeth, standing, turning her back. ‘You shouldn’t wait until he calls for you. It’ll annoy him.’

  ‘You have a heart of stone, Frances.’

  She knew I didn’t mean it but still replied, ‘I’m only acting in our interests. One of us must.’

  ‘I know, my darling. I know.’ The comb slid through her hair, where I buried my face to breathe the clean dry scent. I lifted her shift over her head. She stood, as ever entirely at ease unclothed – a prelapsarian Eve – and I continued combing, crouching to reach the full length of that extraordinary mane, listening to the faint crackle of the teeth separating its strands.

  The backs of her knees, exposed where her hair thinned towards the ends, strangely enthralled me, a place usually hidden beneath layers of stocking and skirt. It was impossible to believe that after more than a year of marriage there were still territories of Frances’s body that remained undiscovered to me. While I’d accepted that her mind would always be just out of reach – that enigma was the seat of her powerful allure – I’d believed her physical self entirely knowable. But in that moment I understood how wrong I’d been. Nothing was knowable about Frances.

  Boyish, her knees curved out only slightly from the slender adolescent shape of her long thighs and in again before giving way to the slight swell of her calves. Where they folded at the back, each knee was decorated with a filigree of blue veins visible through her transparent skin and marked with a definite H shape, as if God had branded her a Howard.

  I dropped to my own knees as if in worship. That fragile part made her seem so friable and human and transient, and I was struck profoundly by the fear of her loss, like panic, as if time were running out. I never wanted her more than in that moment and never more clearly understood the impossibility of truly possessing her. It made me want to snatch up that sharp little knife, nick one of those veins, and suck the blood from her.

  A rap at the door interrupted me. I jumped to my feet, sickened by myself, feeling I’d been caught with blood around my mouth, like a monster. She, though completely naked, didn’t move to cover herself, just called out, ‘Who is it?’

  ‘I come from the King. He is expecting the Earl of Somerset in his chambers.’

  ‘Understood,’ she replied. ‘You can tell His Majesty the earl is on his way.’ She sounded so business-like, bolted through with pragmatism, while I was being pulled hither and thither on waves of desire, unable to think of anything but her. ‘You have to go,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll make an excuse.’ I put my arms round her, running my fingers down the small articulations of her spine – down, down to the soft bulge and cleft of her buttocks. ‘He can’t deny me time with my wife.’

  ‘You’ll upset him. He’s upset already.’ Her whisper was almost too much for me.

  ‘Think of me, Frances, how upset I’ll be.’ I knew how unattractive my petulance must be but I couldn’t help myself, and her sheer calm flustered me. I wanted her to beg me to stay but it was the very fact that she would never do such a thing that kept me captive to her.

  ‘I am thinking of you, Robert.’ She skimmed my cheek with the tips of her fingers, running them over my lips. ‘If you continue to offend him our lives will become very difficult. We’ll lose his favour and that boy will step into your shoes before you know it. Then what?’

  ‘I don’t care.’ It was unimaginable to think of leaving her and going to him.

  ‘Well, you should. Everything he’s given he could just as easily take away.’

  ‘Don’t you ever feel jealous?’ I asked, desperate for her to tell me she was eaten away by it.

  ‘Should I be?’

  ‘What he wants usually from me is affection and friendship.’ I feared the truth would repulse her, feared most that she would stop loving me.

  ‘Usually?’ She laughed baldly. ‘You look as if you wish the floor would swallow you. I understand my part of the bargain.’ She stroked my head, taking a lock of hair, tugging it sharply. ‘There has long been speculation about the exact nature of your relationship with the King. The depravity.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I felt my hackles rise as if I’d been threatened. She laughed again. In that instant, she became something monstrous. Grabbing her by the hair, I spat, ‘Don’t laugh at me!’ I could sniff the fear on her.

  She spoke softly. ‘Oh, my love, I didn’t mean to suggest... It’s nothing. But people like to imagine things. That’s all. Nobody really believes that it’s less than pure, what you have with him.’

  I let her go, horrified by myself, distraught, apologizing repeatedly.

  ‘It’s all right, Robert. I understand.’ She took my hand and kissed each of its fingers. ‘Nothing you could do or have done could make me love you less.’

&nbs
p; I was aghast that I’d cast her as my enemy, even for a moment. ‘Once there might have been more to tell but there was an incident that changed things.’ I found myself telling her about how Thomas had come upon us at Royston and how it was never the same between the King and me after that. ‘It felt as if something innocent had been sullied.’

  ‘So, Overbury tried to blackmail the King.’ The word ‘blackmail’ rolled off her tongue in the way a thief might talk of diamonds.

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘You didn’t need to.’ We were silent for a moment, and I hoped she wouldn’t press me further for details, but she simply said, ‘Well, he’s gone now, God rest his soul.’ She tried to pull herself out of my arms. ‘You’d better be off.’

  But I held her. ‘What he wants most is for us to have a child. You said it yourself. If I spend all my time with him and none with you –’

  She made a small sound that was half sigh, half moan and pressed her mouth over mine. Her tongue tasted of aniseed. We crumpled to the floor and with the efficiency of a surgeon she unlaced me.

  When she was done, I wanted to linger, to bask a while in the aftermath, hold her in my arms, but she pulled herself back together with brutal swiftness and returned to the paring of her toenails.

  Her

  The early-morning bustle had started in the yard and she could hear the servants padding along the corridor. Frances pulled back the curtains so light flooded over the bed. Robert lay in a tangle of sheets looking as if he hadn’t slept for a month. Dark smudges ringed his eyes. Frances was ebullient. Fortune was smiling on her, or perhaps it was a darker force that had taken her part and swung the wheel to her advantage. She didn’t care which.