by Lucy Jago
Frankie had listened keenly to all I had told her of my offspring; her gifts to them were perfectly chosen and I felt flattered yet heavy with the burden of them. What need had she to bribe me through gifts to my children? I glanced at George and knew he was thinking the same.
‘Will you drink something?’ I asked, sending out the children and the cat.
‘Brandy,’ she said, and as George unlocked the cupboard and poured them both a tot, Frankie pulled a final gift from her sack. She handed me a flat, wooden box, inside which lay a pair of perfumed silk gloves with long fingers and cuffs embroidered and laced. I had never owned anything so fine in my life. They were worth two years’ wages for my maid, at least. I stammered thanks but she waved these away, downed the brandy and handed the glass back to George. We all sat, he and I uncertain whether we were permitted to start a conversation with so high a personage. Frankie was looking at her fingers, listening to the children who had gone upstairs to play.
‘Dr Turner, is my husband quite well?’ she finally enquired. I felt him relax beside me and wondered what he had expected her to say.
‘There is no danger; the smallpox is receding.’
‘But he is still lacking in … appetite.’
‘Do you find it so?’ Thank you, George, I thought, for concealing my indiscretion. I had informed him of the Earl’s failure to consummate his marriage, along with every other detail of my visit to the palace and the silk factory. George, in turn, had told me that the Earl had not admitted this insufficiency to him.
‘Sometimes he thinks he is hungry, but when it comes to … it … his appetite deserts him. I worry he will not regain his vigour or else that he will seek food from other tables that better accommodate his tastes.’ There were rumours of prostitutes. ‘I believe that he will accept assistance only from you, Dr Turner, and only if you have no other patients at Court, he is so afeared of talk. My proposal is that you both come to live in our household. It has taken all this time since I saw you, Anne, for him to agree to my coming to ask this of you, even though I could not broach the reason why I wished it.’
I knew that George would not agree to the Earl’s stipulations, and nor would I, but I felt a strange desperation not to lose her.
‘That is a generous proposal,’ I said. ‘We could not leave our children but can offer help in other ways.’ I looked to my husband, but he said nothing.
‘You would see them often,’ said Frankie.
‘We are too tender-hearted towards them to do what others do.’
‘My wife is right,’ said George. ‘I cannot abandon my children or my patients. Your husband must trust to my discretion, as did the Queen of England, God rest her soul.’
‘It is not a lack of trust, only shame. He will not speak of what ails him. He becomes enraged if I so much as hint at it.’
‘That is not to be surprised at,’ George said, gently. ‘He is but seventeen. A wife must not question her husband any more than I may question a King; especially a young husband, in need of the support and obedience of his spouse as he brings to bear his authority over his household. When all is in its proper place, then he will rule with kindness and mercy. I have observed that too lusty a wife can dishearten a husband. Until he sees fit to speak of it to me, I can do nothing to encourage him. However, you are wan. I suspect you are suffering from greensickness, for which I can treat you until such time as it is cured by your husband’s seed?’
Frankie’s face and neck flushed, her pallor momentarily banished. She was unused to refusals and resented George’s assertion that she was to blame for her husband’s lack of desire. She did not know that this was a grievous subject for us also, and that she was the recipient of ire provoked by his own impotence. She looked away from George and we sat in awkward silence awhile. Each laugh from above made her shrink further into herself.
George stood and bowed, but Frankie did not acknowledge him as he left the room. I was angry that he had made no effort to please a woman whose friendship I sought. I expected her to rise and ask for her cloak but she sat silently; it was not awkward between us, even then.
‘Have you more brandy?’ she said eventually.
The cupboard was locked and only George had a key. I found one of my hypericum brews, distilled in brandy.
‘Small sips whenever you are enervated. I will give you more to take with you,’ I said, allowing her a gracious exit with that cue. There seemed little point in discussing George’s homily; obedience to God’s will is a challenge for all, especially for women like us. She stood, but instead of leaving said, ‘Will you show me round your house?’
There could be no other reason to look into my life but that we were to be friends and my heart jigged about like a child at the fair. The house would be a mess but I made no apologies. Frankie wanted to know me; best she knew the truth. Taking a candle, I handed her another.
‘Is there a kitchen?’
‘You want to see the kitchen?’
‘I want to see everything.’
It dawned on me that Frankie had never been in a middling sort of home. She had probably never entered a kitchen, never stoked a fire or opened a shutter, certainly never boiled water in which to wash or cook a pottage. There can be contentment in these simple things, especially when they are done for children, and she wanted to experience it. And so I let her taste my life, hoping it would not turn bitter in her mouth as she returned to the opulent prison of her own, bereft of her little sister Katherine and maltreated by a husband infuriated by his inadequacies.
Old Maggie, the cook and the kitchen maid were affronted by our invasion of their realm but could not object to my showing Frankie our modern range with built-in bread oven and spit. Sitting by its warmth, feeding titbits to the cat, was Richard Weston, George’s bailiff. In his sixtieth year or more, he was tall and strong. Although from Essex, near Hinxton where I was born, he had been apprenticed to a London tailor as a young man and had taught me much about men’s clothing. That aside, he was little educated and quick with his fists. He rose, hoping for an introduction, but as he is of no rank I only nodded. I left George undisturbed in the smaller parlour but took Frankie into the distillery that we had built on to the back of our house, where he and I brewed medicines, elixirs and tonics, and formulated new recipes, such as that for my yellow starch, which we had also patented. Of course, many women distil cures for their families and neighbours, there is nothing unusual in it, but I knew no other goodwife whose recipes received a patent.
‘You are allowed?’ asked Frankie, repeatedly. Although I was envious of the honour in which she was held, I understood that day what it cost her.
I led her back into the house and upstairs; she ran her fingers along both walls, perhaps never having trod stairs so narrow. She spent a long time in the girls’ chamber, asking them questions, letting the little ones play with her clothes, discussing recipes for face washes with Barbara. She made my younger daughters hoot like little owls, her affection for them unfeigned. How could I have thought her a Trojan horse? At one point, as she ruffled their curly heads, she looked at me enquiringly. I had been waiting for that look since she saw my children gathered in the parlour. The eldest three, fair and blue-eyed like George and me, so different from the little red-brown squirrels.
My husband understood that, being twenty years my senior and impotent for the past few years, my frustration would lead to greensickness. He liked and approved of my lover, Sir Arthur Waring, and knew I was no bedswerver. Arthur visited regularly and took the youngest three for rides in his carriage but was never openly referred to as their father. Knighted the year we met, he was carver to Prince Henry and steward to Baron Ellesmere, but earlier that month he had turned up at our door, elated.
‘Francis Woolley has died!’
‘Is that cause for celebration?’ I asked him.
‘I inherit.’
I was not pleased. More young women needing husbands would be thrust beneath his nose. I loved him. I loved Georg
e too. And I loved my children more than my own life. Neither in its giving or receiving did I lack for love, yet still I sought honour. Reputation. The safety and respect that accompany title and wealth.
Arthur’s increased eligibility and the never-ending business of running my household meant that I, like the children, became fractious as dark fell early and dragged on long that month. There was an itch in me that I had caught from my first encounter with Frankie, of which I could not be rid.
None of this did I tell her then. Our friendship was as yet a tight bud, I did not know what variety of flower would emerge.
‘I hope I have not given offence,’ said Frankie, having taken her leave of the children and followed me downstairs. It was true that she had treated us as if we were Indians in a menagerie; but she was envious of what I had and had behaved with tact. I signalled that she should follow me into the parlour. Throughout the visit, I had thought how to give her what she had come for. I shut the door behind us.
‘Despite what George said, he understands a woman’s grief at having no children. I know what he would prescribe to cure the Earl’s difficulties,’ I said in a low voice so that he would not hear in the next room. ‘If you can promise me, on your life, that you will never tell your husband or mine, then I can provide what you need.’
Our heads were almost touching.
‘I promise,’ she whispered. ‘Is it a crime to give medicine to another without them knowing?’ She seemed excited by the idea.
‘It is not poison you are giving him!’
‘But to give it to him secretly?’
‘How else? His melancholy humours obstruct the path to happiness for you both. Your children will be proof enough of the rightness of your actions.’
‘We are so rarely together, he and I.’
‘Ask him to teach you something; husbands like to instruct their wives. French?’
‘He never learnt it well.’
‘Music?’
‘He dislikes it.’
‘Not dance then.’
‘He studied military defences during his travels.’
‘Could you pretend an interest in it?’
She shook her head. ‘He would not think it seemly.’
‘Is there nothing at all that you have in common? Theatre?’
‘I love plays. He hates them.’
‘Walking in the park?’
‘He says it is for women and children as are coach rides, shopping at the Exchanges, fashion, card games, any form of gambling, bear baiting, pleasure gardens, quoits … anything except preparing for, or fighting, a war.’
‘Then you must buy a puppy. Not a lapdog, a big dog. He will train you to train it.’
As Frankie considered this idea, I searched quietly amongst the bottles clustered about the room.
‘I must talk frankly. This is chafing ointment: in it there is mustard, pepper, cinnamon and ginger. Rub it on his part to make the sap rise but remember to wipe it away before he uses it, or your insides will sting. It is something any wife could make so there is no need for secrecy. Pretend it is only to give him pleasure.’ Frankie nodded, as eager to learn as the good child at her psalter. ‘Have warm meats prepared for him: hens, capons, young doves, sparrows, mountain birds and lambs. Also, eggs, asparagus and quinces. He may object but encourage the eating of parsnips and turnips, they provoke lust and nourish good seed. Also, any white foods like milk puddings, artichokes and shellfish. Of course, the stones of male animals are very potent, be they of bulls, bucks or boars, and sparrows’ skulls and bones, crushed and ground with their meat, are all good; these foods stimulate an appetite for venery and fill the body with seed. This,’ I said, handing Frankie another pot, ‘is to rub on his privy member at any time he will allow it and especially just before the act; use it after the chafing ointment. Rub it on your own privitie too, for it provokes lust and improves fruitfulness.’
Frankie pulled out the cork and sniffed. ‘It smells strong.’
‘Lust smells strong. Be not too clean if you wish to stir him up.’
‘What is it?’
‘Crushed and powdered brain of crane mixed with goose fat and the grease of a fox’s stones together with dried hare’s womb. Your husband has an excess of the cold humours, it is very marked in him, he needs to be warmed up. All that I have given you, of advice and ointment, is easily found. This,’ I said, holding up a small bottle from the highest shelf, ‘is brewed nowhere else but here and is very secret.’ I looked at her before handing it over, to be sure she had understood to tell no one. She nodded. ‘Put three drops in his food or drink. It will force his yard erect and make it more likely that you will conceive a boy, especially if you lie on your right side after he has put his seed in you. Give him too much and it will blister and burn his body, cause him to pass blood, then bring delirium and death.’
Frankie held it with the very tips of her fingers. ‘I am giving him poison.’
‘It is medicine in the correct dose.’
Very carefully, she placed the pots in her hanging pocket. The tiny phial she wrapped first in her handkerchief before gingerly placing it in the pocket and tying the drawstring very tight.
‘Thank you,’ she said, rather formally.
I held out my arms and she gladly let me embrace her. ‘God bless your efforts, Frankie, go forth and multiply.’ She laughed, a wonderful, deep chuckle that set me off too. There was some madness in our cackling, no doubt about it; we were wild with our own defiance.
I called for her cloak and showed her to the door. As she stepped up into her coach she asked, ‘Do you know a good place to buy a dog?’
4
‘This?’ asked Frankie a month later, holding up a sleeve of beige silk.
‘It is worth nothing without its pair,’ I said.
Frankie stood barefoot, as if in rising water, surrounded by the disarray of her chamber. It was clear that this was her first attempt to bring order to her belongings, or even to know what she had. She leapt, as if at an escaping pet, and dragged a sleeve from the pile of clothes half under the bed. Her little white dog barked and dashed about, enjoying the game, while the new puppy shivered in the corner where it had been put after chewing the heel off a shoe.
‘A guinea?’ she asked, dangling the matching sleeve like exotic game.
‘At least,’ I said, laughing. Only with Frankie could sorting clothes be so entertaining. I thought how much my younger children and Barbara would have enjoyed playing amongst these riches, each item more valuable than all our vestments combined. Frankie had asked me to bring them, as often I did, but that day they were with my sister, Mary, who was staying with us while her husband was away on business.
Frankie’s mother had summoned me again to Whitehall when it became clear that her daughter intended to befriend me; she suggested, or rather ordered, a more modest style for her daughter, an entirely hypocritical campaign as she herself was the brashest woman at Court. I listened politely and ignored her; Frankie must be above the ordinary, only in that way could she inspire respect until such time as she had male children. The more she was noticed and admired, in particular by the King, the less freedom Essex would enjoy to abuse her. Frankie’s mother pretended not to notice our defiance, then told Essex to give her daughter less money, which was why Frankie and I were sorting through her clothes and trinkets, so as to pawn those she did not like.
As we were propping the pile against the bedstead, Frankie’s husband entered. In his hand was a whip and what looked like a long leash. Frankie’s shoulders hunched over. He looked first at his wife’s bare feet, then at me, then at the disorder in the room. He neither greeted us nor bowed, but nor was he scowling. He whistled at the puppy, who pattered obediently after him and we followed, Brutus yapping at our heels.
‘Here,’ said the Earl, pointing at the floor. Frankie hesitated, unsure whether he meant her or the dog. He clicked his fingers in her direction.
‘Why are your feet bare?’
‘
To run after the puppy,’ Frankie lied, standing on the spot he had indicated. They were bare because she disliked the restriction of shoes.
‘We do not run after dogs. They obey us,’ he said. ‘Mistress Turner, take Purkoy to the far end of the room.’ I started. He had never used my name before and, I think, only allowed my visits because Frankie had been making greater efforts to please him since my arrival. Not only had she asked him to choose a puppy from the litter she had found, but also to name it. Essex had decided on the same name that Frankie’s kinswoman, Anne Boleyn, had given her dog. French for ‘why’, the Earl claimed it was because the puppy was inquisitive, an unfortunate trait in dog or wife; I suspected it was to remind Frankie of the consequences of displeasing a husband.
I carried the puppy to the far end of the long chamber.
‘Call your dog,’ he instructed Frankie. ‘Once, firmly.’
‘Purkoy!’ she called.
The puppy lolloped forward promisingly but lost interest halfway and sniffed at the floor. Brutus, however, rushed with all enthusiasm at his mistress and jumped as high as her waist. She deftly caught him, laughing.
‘Down!’ roared the Earl, grabbing the tiny dog by its scruff and slamming it on to the floor, pressing on the neck of the whimpering creature. Frankie’s hand flew to her mouth but she made no sound. Once the dog was silent, the Earl released his grip and pointed towards the open door of Frankie’s chamber. ‘Go!’ The little dog sloped off, his tail pressed between his back legs, looking at Frankie reproachfully from the corner of his eyes.
‘You must show a dog who is master,’ said the Earl. ‘Now, call the pup.’
‘Purkoy,’ said Frankie, all enjoyment gone from her voice. Purkoy ignored her and Essex marched up to the dog, tied the long leash to its collar and carried him back to me. As he pushed the dog’s tail down to make him sit, he spoke quietly.
