The Poison Bed

by Elizabeth Fremantle

  Frances snorts an indignant puff of air. ‘How like them.’

  ‘But I thought you’d want to see your daughter.’ Lizzie goes to the door, saying, ‘Come in.’

  The pendulous-breasted wet-nurse lumbers in carrying the baby. Frances wonders what became of Nelly, thinks of her rolling that diamond ring, like quicksilver, over her knuckles. Nelly can look after herself but Frances is a little disappointed not to be able to show her how well she has mastered the sleight of hand.

  Lizzie cuts through her thoughts. ‘She’s good as gold. A little dream.’

  The nurse holds out the baby for her to take. It offers her a big gummy grin, and Frances can see the edge of a single tooth that must have appeared in the last week. It is wearing a little brocade dress and has a string of amber beads that it brings up to its mouth with a fat hand. She takes it on her lap.

  ‘She’s just like you,’ says Lizzie.

  A little fist grips Frances’s finger. She feels herself momentarily captivated by the child who looks like her.

  ‘Do you have news from Westminster Hall?’ She tears her gaze away from her baby.

  ‘We stopped there on the way and saw Harry. He said it’s going on and on and Robert has yet to make an account of himself.’ Frances can tell by her sister’s taut expression that it is not going well.

  ‘But what was his plea?’

  ‘Oh, not guilty.’

  ‘The fool,’ says Frances, and, with a little moan, claps a hand to her forehead in mock distress. ‘If he’d only done as I did, he’d likely be back here already and sitting with us now.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ Lizzie is clearly upset at her sister’s apparent suffering. ‘But I fear you must prepare for the worst. There are too many who want to see him fall.’

  ‘There may yet be a miracle.’ Frances shapes her expression into one of forlorn hope but her sister remains grave.

  Him

  I don’t know the lawyer who is speaking now. His eyesight is poor, and when he consults his notes he does so through a pair of glasses. ‘... I have not known, heard, or read of a felony more foul... He that dares to commit such an odious evil...’

  I am glad of that slug of wine, as it makes his words skim over me like flat stones over a pond. But now he is talking of the white powder, saying that, according to Franklin, it was arsenic. Now he is reiterating what Lawrence Davies said about it. Now he is reading from Frances’s deposition, telling of the poisoned tarts. My mind flaps and I am trying to note down all that is said, but Thomas will not give me back my pen.

  He brings up Franklin, seems convinced I knew the man, is saying that he visited me at Whitehall in the wake of Weston’s arrest.

  I don’t know what he’s talking about. I wouldn’t know Franklin if he were before me now, and I barely knew Weston, but he is making it seem as if we were a cabal of wickedness. Apparently his information comes directly from Frances. They are twisting her words. She would not say I knew Franklin when I did not. I am beginning to regret the wine for I am too muddleheaded to follow properly what is being said.

  There is more: ‘The accused ensured that a great number of the letters he wrote to Northampton were burned and –’ He stops, tapping once more for effect. ‘Letters from Overbury, he had doctored with false dates. The destroying of evidence,’ tap, ‘in the burning arid altering of letters,’ tap, ‘the signing of a warrant to search Weston’s house,’ tap, ‘and that he sought a general pardon from the King,’ tap. He is almost drooling, thinking he is in at the kill. ‘These are not the actions of an innocent man.’

  Put like that, I cannot imagine anyone who would not send me to the gallows. In my mind I run through all those things I did on Frances’s advice – the burned letters, the search warrant, the royal pardon – and I have Frances’s voice in my head: It wouldn’t even be subterfuge to change one or two dates by a few weeks. That way, if it ever comes to it – which I very much doubt it will but if it does – then nothing can be misinterpreted. Oh, God, Frances, what have you done?

  Several of my papers slide to the floor again. I retrieve them, tucking them beneath the inkpot, which Thomas tips so it spills in a pool over my scribbled notes. I could cry.

  I can see Frances in my mind’s eye, a hand on her swollen belly that houses the infant we made together, a crease on her brow, unbearably beautiful: I need you, Robert. And I know with certainty that any ill she has done was with the best, the most pure, of intentions.

  All at once I am gripped by fear for her. It knocks the breath out of me, has an intensity that surpasses any fear I have yet felt for myself. I’d always believed her judgement so utterly sound and had turned to her for strength and direction. But if she has been so mistaken in her advice to me, then what kind of hazards must she have fallen into at her own trial? I imagine her in the Tower, half crazed with desperation and terror.

  It is deep into evening by the time the prosecution has finished making its case. I am on the brink of collapse. My Garter jewel feels like a dead weight about my neck but it is all I have left of my dignity. Ellesmere asks me yet again whether I want to alter my plea. ‘I feel sure the King will be merciful if you do so.’

  I am paralysed with doubt. Do I follow Frances’s advice or her example? She confessed and is condemned. My refusal is barely audible.

  Another interval is announced and I am hustled into an anteroom, where, mercifully, at last I can sit for a half-hour. Kind More sits with me, neither of us saying a word. I cling to the letter cached in my prayer book – my last hope. He tries to make me eat some bread. It is like sawdust. I drink more wine. It is sharp as vinegar. The thought flits through my jumbled head that I could send word to the King, threatening to reveal our secrets. It shocks me deeply that I have become a man who would even consider such a low act. I am horrified by myself even as I dismiss the idea.

  As we return to the hall More feigns brightness, reminding me that it is my turn to give my account of things. ‘You will put it right.’ I can see he thinks this is unlikely.

  My hands are damp with sweat, my notes a jumble, and I try to recall each point but there was so much said, so many aspersions cast, my head swills with it all. When I find my voice, it is weak.

  ‘I do confess that I wished for Overbury to be imprisoned.’ I can feel the whole place prick its ears. ‘But I never contrived that he should be killed.’ I can feel the disappointment – they had been hoping for a confession.

  ‘It is true Overbury and I argued often. We argued bitterly over my wife but he never did threaten me with blackmail.’ Overbury’s threat was to the King, not me, but all the same I am skimming the very edge of perjury with this.

  I try to explain about the embassy, describe my efforts to convince him to take it. I keep fumbling through my illegible notes and attempt to address all the accusations.

  ‘I did send Overbury tarts, but good ones. He was my friend. I wanted to make his time in the Tower less arduous with a few comforts.’ Doubt is smeared through the room. ‘Did Lieutenant Elwes not say in his testimony that the food I sent was good?’

  I deny that I met Franklin, as my wife is supposed to have said. ‘I didn’t know him, have just heard him spoken of as some kind of apothecary. And neither did I know Weston then.’

  One of the lawyers counters this, waving his papers. ‘But I have it here that Weston was a go-between for you and the countess when you were not yet wed.’

  I have dug a hole for myself. But rather than telling the truth and saying that may be the case, that I didn’t ‘know’ the fellow, had never exchanged words with him, I say, ‘He must have passed the letters to my servants to bring to me.’ It sounds implausible and I realize I have cast even more doubt over my defence. So, when I tell of the chalk powders and how Thomas requested them himself, I can see that no one believes me.

  But I have the letter – a spark of hope. I allow myself to imagine it as the catalyst to change all the minds in Westminster Hall.

  I whip it out, flapp
ing it. ‘This letter here demonstrates incontrovertibly that the powders I sent were benign.’ I feel the tide turn fractionally in my favour as I pass it to the clerk, who reads it out. Thomas’s words fill the space: The remedy you sent has had no effect. You must send me stronger. I can feel Thomas is ready to forgive me: he has a hand on my shoulder. I can sense the atmosphere change as my accusers reassess their opinion. One or two flickering smiles and sympathetic looks are flung my way. My spark of hope becomes a steady flame.

  The clerk passes the letter to the lawyer. Silence falls as he inspects it, slowly and thoroughly, through a magnifying glass.

  Eventually he speaks. ‘It looks to me as if the date has been altered on this letter.’

  ‘No,’ I wail. ‘That’s not true.’ That steady flame wavers.

  The lawyer passes it to Bacon, who also inspects it closely. ’It has been established that the accused has had other correspondence altered.’

  ‘That one is untouched,’ I say, but incredulity is carved into them. ’It has sat untouched in my apartments for three years.’ It is God’s truth but what use is the truth when no one can be made to believe it? Thomas’s hand on my shoulder is heavy as lead.

  ‘Why did you not produce it before now as evidence to support your case?’ His voice seems tempered, or perhaps I am imagining it.

  ‘I had forgotten about it.’ I am aware of how unconvincing I sound.

  ‘Is that so?’ He has his fox’s eyes on me and I can’t tell what he is thinking.

  Ellesmere is now inspecting the paper. He shakes his head firmly, saying, ‘Inadmissible.’

  And my flame is doused.

  I am dog tired, can barely stay on my feet, but I continue nonetheless, tangling myself further and further into the trap that they have elaborately laid. Why did I burn Northampton’s correspondence, why the warrant to search Anne Turner’s house, why the doctored letters, why the request for a general pardon? They twist everything out of shape and my excuses ring hollow. ‘That is not how it was.’

  I know I am beaten and I wonder if Frances was reduced to this, for I, too, am on the brink of confessing. But I manage to cling to the truth – the truth is all I have left.

  The lords withdraw and I am returned to the anteroom where I lift my Garter jewel over my head, handing it quietly to More. The humiliation of being publicly stripped of it would be too much for me to bear. With it go the final shreds of my dignity.

  Out in the hall once more I try to hold on to my self-possession. I grip tightly to the lectern to prevent myself collapsing as the guilty verdict is announced and the sentence read out: You are to be carried from hence to the Tower, and from thence to the place of execution where you are to be hanged until you are dead. And the Lord have mercy upon you.

  I cannot hear properly for Thomas’s laughter is too loud, so loud I cannot hear my own thoughts.

  Her

  Frances has been walking with her brother in the gardens. Like children, they have made daisy chains and woven them through each other’s hair. After she has waved him off at the gatehouse she returns across Tower Green towards her chambers, speculating on when they will erect the scaffold there or if Robert will be executed on the Hill. His trial was a month ago, so it is bound to be done soon.

  More finds her there, picking sprigs of love-in-the-mist, so pretty now, but they will be dead by dusk. All the summer flowers here remind her of Forman’s garden, that heady display of beauty with its hidden menace. More seems to have something pressing he wants to divulge. He twitches with it, and she can imagine rodent whiskers sprouting from his cheeks.

  ‘What is it, More?’ She hopes he is not about to announce that she has been allowed the charge of her infant.

  She is preparing to convince him that the child would be much better off remaining with its cousins, when he says, ‘Your husband has news.’

  ‘What news?’ She knows what the news is, and he knows she knows. She knots her brow, allowing her breath to stumble. ‘It’s not –’ She points an unsteady hand towards Tower Green.

  ‘I think it best he tells you himself.’

  Robert’s rooms are in one of the round towers, up a winding set of steps. She prepares what she will say. He will want her to cry. She will give him that, at least, allow him the delusion that he is still loved when he meets his end.

  More remains outside and she finds Robert alone in the gloom. He seems to have dropped off in his chair with his head at an awkward angle, as if his neck is broken already. He looks gaunt with exhaustion. His eyes pop open and he must suspect he is dreaming when he sees her, as he looks confused, asking, ‘Is it you?’

  She flings back the hanging that covers the window and light floods the space. He shades his eyes with a hand, blinking. ‘Frances?’

  She watches his face break into a smile as it dawns on him that she is real. There is almost nothing left of the golden boy who ignited all the hungry animal desire in her. She misses that force of feeling a little but not enough for it to matter. There are always others to satisfy her needs. His shirt hangs open, revealing a hollow pigeon chest with a sparse smattering of pale fuzz. His skin is dry and his hair unkempt. She can see now that the abundant charisma he once had was a mere mirage, created by his proximity to the King, nothing more than a trick of the light.

  He gets to his feet and she hopes he will not try to kiss her, as his lips are chapped and there is a residue of white matter in the corners of his mouth that makes her stomach turn. But he embraces her, burrowing his face into her neck. He is all skin and bone and smells musty. She feels nothing much and wishes he would let her go. There is wetness on her neck. He is crying.

  She breaks apart from him, saying, ‘I’m so sorry, Robert. So very sorry.’ She has an image in her mind of him on the scaffold.

  ‘It was terrible, Frances. Everything was twisted. I had no way to defend myself.’ She wishes he sounded less defeated, more angry, more defiant. ‘But you, what of you, my darling?’

  ‘I have my pardon. My sentence is withdrawn.’

  ‘You’re saved! Oh, God, thank God.’ He clasps her hands, holding them as if he will never let go.

  ‘If you’d done as I did, Robert, you, too, would be facing freedom rather than –’

  ‘My darling.’ She waits for him to remind her, heaving with tragedy, that it was she who advised him not to confess. But his face lights up, confusing her, and she sees a glimmer of his old magnetism. It fails to move her. His breathless joy is making her uneasy. ‘I heard from the King this morning. My sentence will not be carried out either. So, we live. Both of us. Together.’ He opens his arms, as if he is Jesus performing a miracle.

  ‘Together,’ she repeats, lost for what to say.

  ‘Look, you have daisies in your hair.’ His banal delight is unfathomable. She touches her head, pulling them away, letting them fall. He reaches for her, kissing her throat and breast like a ravenous animal and fumbling with a hand to grope beneath her skirts.

  ‘No.’ She removes it, retreating a step. ‘More is outside. He will hear.’

  ‘What if he does? You are my wife, my darling wife. Do you remember our first time in those rooms at Paternoster Row?’ His eyes are half shut in bliss as he presses those chapped lips to her mouth.

  She turns her face away from him, stopping herself uttering the truth. This is not the moment to disabuse him of his belief that he took her virginity. She says instead, ‘Has the King promised you a full pardon? The return of your estates? The reinstatement of your titles, your position on the Council?’

  ‘What use are titles to us now? During my time in this place I have come to understand the emptiness of all those trappings. We have each other. What else matters?’

  Uncertainty wraps itself about her. He is smiling like an idiot, talking about the quiet life they will lead when they are released – a life of purgatory.

  ‘If!’ she snaps. ‘If you are released.’

  ‘Don’t be afraid of that, my darling. He won
’t keep me in here for ever. Why would he do that? It’s not as if I was tried for treason.’

  All she can think of is that she wants to get as far away as she can from this grim little chamber and its inhabitant. ‘I must go – not really meant to be here. Don’t want to visit trouble on More.’

  He grabs her hand, pulling her back to him, whispering, ‘Together for ever.’

  Him

  More arrives in my rooms. I half expect – it is a hope, really – Frances to be with him, though he hasn’t brought her in the several weeks since we had that tantalizing encounter, and he hasn’t today. My disappointment is small. We have the rest of our lives to spend together and the afterlife, so a few weeks’ wait will only make our eventual reunion all the more passionate.

  More seems cheerful. He is holding something, which he places on the table with a knowing smile. It is my Garter jewel. The little St George on his rearing horse winks in a ray of evening sun. The tapestry covering the window has long been moved and my rooms are, consequently, light-filled and quite pleasant.

  I look at More. ‘What does this mean?’

  It means that I have word from His Majesty. He wants you to keep it.’

  ‘So?’ I feel my heart dilate, opening out as if it will burst from my ribcage.

  ‘You continue to be a Garter knight.’

  I spring from my chair, tempted to embrace his small form but he steps away, embarrassed.

  ‘There is more,’ he says. ‘You are no longer to be kept as a close prisoner. You have the freedom of the Tower environs.’

  ‘I can visit my wife?’ Joy splits my face.

  ‘Indeed you can.’ He is smiling, too, and not the tight smile I am used to seeing on him but a broad, joyous beam.

  ‘And I will have a full pardon?’

  ‘Not exactly. The King says you may write to him and that he is prepared to reinstate a manor to you, which will provide a living. Eventually you will be released but you will not be permitted to return to court.’ He looks apologetic and seems surprised by my ebullience.