A Net for Small Fishes

by Lucy Jago

  ‘How are you here?’ she said eventually, her voice thick from the acid in her throat.

  ‘An unsigned note.’

  ‘Someone must care.’

  Then she told me what had happened, the events conjured in my mind’s eye by her words.

  Frankie was accompanying her husband to Richmond Palace to celebrate Prince Henry’s investiture as Prince of Wales. All three Courts were on the river, that of the King, the Queen and the new Prince of Wales, and she was wishing me there to witness the splendour instead of her husband, for I was better company even in my grief. They were in her barge as her husband had none; he called them a tremendous vanity but used Frankie’s when he needed it.

  ‘What is that on your sleeve?’ Essex asked, as if it was stained.

  ‘A silk favour from the King’s factory and my sister’s pearls,’ she said.

  The Earl snorted. Frankie was relieved that his disdain outstripped his curiosity, for the favour had been left outside her apartment that morning with a note reading: ‘This was spat by royal worms only.’ There was no signature but the hand was not elegant; it could be Carr’s, the colour was his, and amongst the folds were sprigs of purple heather, betokening admiration, beauty and luck. But the Court was brimming with Scots and she prayed that this was indeed from Carr and not some crusty old laird with a fancy for her. She felt like Brutus and Purkoy, straining at their leashes to find a mate. When she passed Robert Carr, she let out a sigh that he might walk through a cloud of her lust. He was a flirt, she knew it, but since the night at Holland’s Leaguer she believed he had elevated her to his prime quarry.

  ‘Why do you count?’ said Essex. Frankie had been adding up the moments she had been near her admirer that week, counting on her fingers without realising what she was doing. They amounted to no more than a quarter of an hour, a minuscule fraction of life upon which to dream of happiness.

  ‘There are so many Howard vessels,’ she said calmly, ‘fifteen at least.’

  ‘A swarm.’

  ‘I meant nothing by it; an idle calculation.’

  ‘Idle? You are never idle but always running about the Court and hanging around in passageways. There is no dignity in those who fish for attention.’

  Frankie did not look at her husband. ‘I was told that not for a hundred years has there been an investiture of a Prince of Wales. Prince Henry has so long wanted his own Court.’ As she well knew, her husband had yet to be noticed by Prince Henry in any favourable way. Although they had been brought up together as children and both were strict Protestants, the Prince was elegant, agreeable, a seeker of beauty and adventure, and therefore had found no bond with the adult Essex.

  Her husband grunted. ‘He’s another one you’ve been accused of lying with when I was away. Did you think he’d make you his princess?’

  ‘You know that gossip to be untrue.’

  ‘He’s a nobler target at least than the lapdog Carr.’

  ‘Sir Robert Carr?’ Frankie laughed, pleased to say his name aloud.

  ‘What ambition, to compete with the King for love! In looks I give you better odds, but the King trumps even you in dominion. Tell me more of Kerr,’ said Essex, knocking the toe of his boot against her knee. In another man, it might have been an affectionate gesture. ‘The King’s dog will never be loved by us even if he has changed his name; he loses the esteem of his own countrymen in so doing.’

  ‘I know nothing of such things.’

  ‘He shows loyalty only to vanity; his collar and doublet are French, his narrow sleeve from Italy, breeches Dutch, his sloppes and boots Spanish. He is a traitor to his own land.’

  Frankie only shrugged and looked across the water.

  ‘Still the King loves him best,’ continued Essex, knocking his boot a little harder against her knee, as if this were her fault. ‘The King even loves your mother better than his own true servants.’

  ‘Perhaps she serves him better.’

  ‘It’s not him she serves, is it?’ he said. Frankie did not know whether her husband was referring to her mother’s long-standing affair with Lord Salisbury or her stipend from Spain, earnt as an informal ambassador, passing information between the English and Spanish Courts. Both circumstances infuriated Essex, less for the ambiguous morality they displayed than for the fact a woman was acting outside of home and duty to her husband, to which narrow spheres she should confine herself.

  ‘Why don’t you join the winning pack, husband – then you will not need me to inform you of those close to the throne but will be one of them yourself.’

  ‘I will not frizz my hair for the King. He heaps wealth on his favourite like a boy gathering flowers for his sweetheart, not realising that his coffers have hard floors. He risks the standing of us all.’

  ‘What you speak is treason, not to mention poisonous.’

  ‘Poison? Tell me of it, wife. The Court is alive with rumour that you wish to poison me.’

  ‘You will die of your own discontent soon enough.’

  He leant forward. ‘I cannot desire a woman who speaks for herself, dresses without modesty, and is unchaste and disobedient. No man would, but for that you wish me dead.’

  ‘You should join a company of players, my lord, you have a talent for wild imaginings.’ She reached up and yanked shut the curtains of the awning under which they sat; anger had an effect on his member that tenderness had not. She fished a leather flask from her hanging pocket and took a small sip.

  ‘What wife imbibes while her husband goes thirsty? Unnatural woman.’ Frankie handed the flask to him.

  As she described the scene to me, I experienced a moment of fear. In that flask was the strong aphrodisiac I had given her. What was she going to tell me? Had it done him permanent harm? George had persuaded Essex to take a tiny dose, twice daily, but since his doctor’s death, Essex had stopped.

  Frankie went on. She described how she had bent forward to retie the ribbon on one shoe, her breasts near popping out of her lacings as she did so. She was careful to keep her head lowered as Essex’s arousal was often halted if he caught sight of her face.

  He drained the flask and closed the curtains nearest him. Frankie begged God, as she retied the second shoe, that this time her husband kept his member stiff enough that he could penetrate her and a baby result. Essex reached forward and gripped her arm. He steered her until she was kneeling on the hard floor with her back to him. She did not struggle, knowing he preferred her back view. He tussled with the willow hoops and fabric that encased Frankie’s lower half and pressed her face on to the seat so that the velvet nap rubbed painfully. She could hear and feel him fumbling to get his yard free while keeping up her skirts.

  He talked, as if to soothe her. ‘You are beautiful, like the perfume bottles on your dressing table.’ Frankie was encouraged. This was the first compliment her husband had ever paid her. ‘When I stamp on those, they shatter. I can break you too.’ She tried not to feel the impact of his words, to think only of the better love she could have once Essex had broken her, but fear rose in her; he did not usually talk at all. His member bounced out of its covering, against her buttocks. Frankie prayed continuously that this torture would bring a child and keep him from her for at least as long as she carried it. He slapped her buttocks and the back of her head, lightly at first, increasing in force as he pressed himself against her.

  He hit her harder and suddenly she understood that he did not want her virginity, for that was something she also desired, but to break her spirit. She tried to twist around, to show him her face, but he pressed his hand so hard over her mouth that her neck bent back until she thought it would snap. Her throat was distended beyond screaming.

  Then she felt a searing pain and for a moment thought he had stabbed her. He had entered her where no man should. She tried to scrabble away but he slammed a hand on to her back. He grunted as he moved, his free hand yanking back her head to throttle her screams. Tears ran from her eyes but nothing else of her was free to move. He he
ld on tighter, grunted a few more times, then let out a thin, hissing sigh.

  Gradually, as if wary she would bite him, he peeled his hand from her damp face. A fresh surge of agony accompanied his pulling out of her, but she could not cry out for he leant his whole weight on her back, pressing her into the hard bench. In her ear he said, ‘Tomorrow you can have this again, and every day after, until you are obedient. Then I may give you a child.’ He sat back on his seat, pushing his now limp member under cover.

  As I listened to Frankie, her voice strangely flat, I was mute with fury and disgust. I had provided the aphrodisiac, but it encourages only what is already in a person.

  Frankie explained how afterwards the pain was too intense for her to move, she could only cover her face with her arms. Essex began to nudge her backside with the toe of his boot as if she were a lazy dog. Each time the nudge was sharper but Frankie stayed prostrate; indeed like a mangy, hated dog dying of hunger, belonging to no one.

  ‘Get up,’ Essex snapped, but she was thinking only that she could no longer endure her marriage. As if dragging her sodden body from the river, she hauled herself on to the bench. The hatred she felt for her husband then could scarcely be contained; although she had not wanted him dead before, she did now. What other escape was there from this devil? This man who inflicted upon her his loathing of women and his fury towards those who sent his father to his death.

  The rhythm of the oars changed as the barge neared the stairs at Richmond, each answering jolt of the vessel agony to her. As the boat slowed, Essex pulled back the curtains and jumped out. Milling along the bank was a noisy crowd of courtiers peering into arriving craft. With exaggerated gallantry, he held out a hand to his wife. Nearby, her mother and sisters were nodding at this unusual chivalry.

  ‘Out,’ he said. Now that he had discovered a way to punish her, Frankie saw that her husband had grown taller. She ignored his hand and clung to the pole of the canopy as she gingerly stepped ashore, feeling as she did so warm liquid running down her thighs.

  ‘Stand straight, cow, or tonight I will come to you again,’ said Essex. Frankie did not cry, not even with rage, for loathing had replaced self-pity.

  ‘My lord …’ she whispered, such that Essex was forced to lean in to hear ‘… if you visit me tonight, or any other night henceforth, I will report you for sodomy to the Court of Arches.’ Essex heard her, for his eyes narrowed in loathing.

  ‘Why would they believe a woman?’

  ‘The evidence is writ upon my body.’

  Frankie turned away and walked carefully towards her mother, more of his seed escaping with each step.

  ‘If you treat him with disdain you will not keep in his good grace,’ said her mother, noting the return of Essex’s scowl. ‘His mood seemed briefly improved.’ Frankie, feeling cold and faint, vomited on to the grass. The crowd moved back, their pleasure in the day further heightened by the Countess’s display and the sight of the Earl of Essex storming away towards the palace buildings.

  ‘Are you with child?’ asked her mother. Frankie wiped her mouth with her handkerchief and allowed the Countess of Suffolk, alight with self-importance at the thought of her first grandchild, to steer her towards the palace. Frankie’s two sisters fell in behind with long faces.

  Her father and great-uncle bowed as they passed. Behind them stood Sir Robert Carr, his cape lined in silk the same colour as her favour, laughing with the Earl of Dunbar. She sensed him look at her but hid behind her fan, convinced that he would notice her humiliation.

  For three days Frankie plastered the courtier’s mask to her face as the nation celebrated its new Prince of Wales. She watched the great sea fight on the Thames and a river pageant with Ancient Britain as its theme. She painted herself blue from head to toe and performed in Queen Anna’s masque, as the river that runs through the county of Essex. She danced at parties and, on the final night, gazed with the whole city at the fireworks that lit up the sky and the water around her, but she saw only false stars.

  ‘God will judge him,’ I told her.

  ‘I hope so,’ she replied, without conviction. She looked at me and hesitated; did she expect me to treat her differently, knowing of her violation on the barge? She was defiant, ready to assert her rank if I showed condescension; but since George’s death I too had felt weak, humiliated by my sudden poverty and the behaviour of my son as well as, on occasion, my lover. I was frightened that she would sense the loss of respect I had suffered, which sometimes left me dull and angry, and discard me. Her violation by Essex made me useful to her again, though what sort of sinful-hearted friend was I to think that way?

  She was shivering with the effect of the willow-bark decoction.

  ‘Go to the Court of Arches. Tell your family what has happened.’

  ‘Let the world know that I am violated? Essex will grow strong on my shame.’

  ‘They might allow you to separate from bed and board.’

  ‘Then I will be put out to pasture somewhere distant.’

  ‘Could you bear that?’

  ‘I would be away from everyone I know. It is hard to be always alone.’

  We lay together, two birds exhausted from long migration. To my thinking, Essex’s violation of her set Frankie free from any obligation to him. The anger I felt revived my own spirits. Although in my middle years and widowed, I was not ready to vanish either. Where once I was proud to call myself wife of a good man, I was not content to be shackled to a dead one. I warmed Frankie with my own body and rubbed her back when her tremors became violent, conjuring the ways before us. More than anything, it was important not to feel trapped. As when dreaming a new design for apparel, I strayed around my mind, following paths until I found one that led somewhere I wanted to go. The sun set, but a beautiful twilight lent its grace to the air.

  ‘Perhaps there is another way,’ I said. For the first time since George’s passing, I felt a spark of excitement. I sat up and hauled her upright beside me. ‘I know someone who might help us.’

  ‘An assassin?’

  ‘No! But we must go to him in disguise.’

  ‘Is it unlawful?’

  ‘It is a little desperate, and no one must ever know we are that.’

  7

  We do not know the significance of some events until they are long gone; others are heavy with import from the moment they begin. Our visit to Simon Forman was the latter. It started with a nightmare.

  It was early autumn before he could see us. He requested we not arrive before eight o’clock in the evening, it being too light for his work before then, and so I slept a little in the late afternoon. The weather was unseasonably warm and the window stood open in my chamber. The stench of mud and effluent rolled off the Thames at low tide. It forced its way into the enclosed space of my bed and into my dreams. I saw in them the weekly Mortality Bill with George’s name on it, but also Mary’s, dead from a cough, and then all my other children’s with the cause listed against each name: worms, griping in the guts, plague. My own was missing but, bereft of my children, I longed for death. Someone was throttling me. I was choking … it was a tremendous relief to open my eyes and see only my elderly maid’s wrinkled face. I was soaked in sweat.

  Old Maggie opened the bed curtains, prattling on about the river’s stink and that it was never like that in Fetter Lane. The move over the summer had been difficult for us all. The place in Paternoster Row was three hundred years old and near collapse, but cheap. Richard Weston had tried to persuade me to retire to the manor George had bought in Bedfordshire, but I might as well have climbed into the grave, for the place was damp and we would all have been dead before the end of winter. Nor would there be any profit from its sale, for it was mortgaged. There were not enough funds to send John to Oxford or provide a dowry for Barbara. I, four children, old Maggie and a kitchen maid, were living in a decrepit terrace that felt something akin to debtors’ prison.

  On the day of the move, Richard Weston had hired a large cart and loaded
it for me. We had walked behind to guard the contents from thieves, all of us in tears, the children clinging to their few possessions that I had held back from the pawn merchant. It felt like a funeral. Henry, only four, suffered the loss of his father very badly and this further grief and turmoil sent him into a silence that lasted for weeks. I missed George so much that it weighed on my chest like a great stone in unexpected moments, such that I wept when I found a bag, neatly packed for a trip he had expected to take, or when a half-sucked sweet fell out of his document chest. Even so, I was angry that he had kept from me the level of our debt. I rose every morning for the children’s sake, though the crumbling of their prospects doubled my grief. Arthur had visited us when he could, with hampers of food and good cheer, but he was required to follow Baron Ellesmere to his estates for some of the summer months, the city too fetid and plague-ridden for the wealthy to endure.

  A letter had arrived from him as I slept and at the sight of it my sadness lifted a little. I put it in my pocket to read when I was alone and tidied the house before I went out, only able to bear the daily drama of widowhood on an ordered stage. My skin had erupted in red patches since George’s death, making my grief visible for all to see. As I neatened our few remaining possessions in the parlour, Katherine and Mary entered, ready for bed.

  ‘You may choose a Baby each but be quick,’ I told them.

  I opened the cupboard to the left of the fireplace on the shelves of which sat more than a hundred French Babies dressed in clothes of my design. I had nearly thrown them out when we moved but could not; they were the relics of my married life and I might have need of them to earn our living.

  On the top shelf were the earliest examples, shabby things made when I was a child, kept only because my mother helped me to sew them. When I married, the maquettes became smarter as I had money from George to pay for better fabrics. Only one shelf was labelled with a date, 1603, seven years before but a different life; it was the year that I fell in love with Arthur, the old Queen died, and the new King’s arrival was delayed by so fierce a bout of plague that the city was filled with ghosts. Our neighbour, a lovely girl, collapsed outside our house on her way to be married and was dead by nightfall. Every family on the street suffered loss except us. The Devil was cheated then and has looked for any carelessness on my part. Since George’s death he has been breathing down my neck. I placed two French Babies into the hands of my girls and kissed them many times.