A Net for Small Fishes

by Lucy Jago

  Although Frankie was the most exquisite, the Howards were always an extraordinary sight. It is no exaggeration to say that the value of a large estate was lavished on the clothes and adornment of each. They were ever encased in gold and silver constructions that took up four times the space of their naked bodies, sewn with so many jewels that they lit up the air around them, making them seem larger and, were it not a sin to say it, somewhat divine. At the very core of the family, however, was a man who did not radiate light but stole it.

  ‘Is Lord Northampton married?’

  ‘He prefers the company of educated young men. Follow me,’ she said. I grabbed her arm to stop her, preferring to stay near the back. She gave me one of her looks that said her confidence was sufficient for us both, and took my hand. She pulled me towards her family but, as we neared, we saw that the King was just behind them. We curtsied low, blood rushing in my ears and muffling the sounds around me, but the King paid us no attention; he was watching a keeper in the pit maddening the lions by passing in front of their cages with lumps of dripping offal. Queen Anna gave us a brief nod but Lord Salisbury was too busy trying to catch the attention of the young man next to him, Sir Robert Carr. Salisbury looked especially crook-backed, ancient and ill-favoured beside Carr, who paid him no heed for his eyes were caught by Frankie’s approach. He pressed his velvet cap to his heart and bowed deeply.

  Seeing him dressed in a bright blue that made jewels of his eyes, I was stirred anew by his looks. His shadow, Sir Thomas Overbury, echoed Carr’s gesture without sincerity, exaggerating his surprise to see us there at all. Having been officially introduced only in a brothel, and being of lower rank, Carr was still barred from addressing Frankie in public. She, a married woman, was prohibited from paying him the slightest notice.

  ‘How well you look, my lady,’ he said, her husband not twenty feet away. That Frankie did not rebuff Carr made me sweat. I pulled on her hand but she ignored me. In a simple action that changed our world, she lowered her fan and lifted her eyes.

  Until that moment, Carr had not known whether Frankie yearned for him or was indifferent. Now, she was flirting with the King’s favourite in front of her family, husband, the Court, the Howard haters and her rivals-in-love, the King and Sir Thomas Overbury. This was her plan? To provoke her family to action before she brought disgrace upon them all? For the first time, I feared that she was oblivious to consequences. Overbury’s fascination with their exchange confirmed my fears.

  I was also aware of a deeper distress in myself that Frankie had not confided in me the depth of her feelings. I had thought Carr the subject of her pipe-dreams, the man she would marry if Essex were killed while out hunting; but he had become more than that. She was putting him before herself, and before me.

  ‘Viscount Rochester,’ she said, his new title still lower than her own, ‘how have the Lords welcomed a Scot into their midst?’

  ‘They’ve not written me an anthem.’

  ‘And you are to be made a Garter knight, along with my cousin? At this rate, you will soon be an earl,’ she finished, with a little laugh that revealed her teeth and attracted the attention of the few who were not already listening to every word, lapping at their flirtation like dogs at the butcher’s drain. The spectacle of the royal minion trifling with the unhappy wife of the Earl of Essex was more enjoyable than even the fiercest bear baiting.

  Sir Thomas Overbury turned to see whether the Earls of Northampton, Suffolk and Essex were as captivated by the performance as was he. They were. I saw in his narrow, cockerel’s face that he was enjoying the sight of Frankie compromised.

  At that moment, a bear was tugged into the enclosure and chained to a post in the centre of the yard. Its open mouth was full of stumps for all its teeth had been broken by the keepers.

  ‘It murdered a child,’ said Carr, noticing my distaste. His attention was touching; it was not difficult to understand why Frankie was caught by his charm. ‘The lion, King of Beasts, will kill it and restore justice,’ he said, with less solemnity than the King might have expected, for this show of justice was his monarch’s idea.

  ‘The child died through the negligence of its parents,’ said Frankie. ‘To punish the death of one innocent with that of another is not justice.’

  Carr looked at her with great seriousness. I believe I witnessed then the very moment in which they fell in love. In that exchange of looks, they understood that no one else at Court was as well suited as they were to each other. This handsome foreigner, not brought up in the English Court, was less trammelled by its ornate hierarchies and stifling conventions. Although Overbury claimed him for the Essex camp, Carr belonged to no faction, only to the King. He did not need Frankie to access the power wielded by her relations. He could love her for herself. Frankie blushed and raised her fan.

  I turned to the ring, despairing of the lack of discretion shown by both parties. A cage was opened to the side of the pit but no lion appeared, causing the King to mutter with frustration. Carr leant in to his master, talking intimately, and the King ran his nail absent-mindedly up and down the lacing on the young man’s chest. Then suddenly he bellowed into the yard, causing us all to jump.

  ‘Enough waiting!’

  The bear raised its great head and stared at the King. Shouting could be heard in the cages and an enormous lion bolted into the pit, followed by a keeper wielding a flaming torch, but it slunk away to the perimeter of the yard. The King swore long and loud.

  ‘Bring the dogs!’ he shouted.

  The lion was shooed back into its cage and a man wearing leather arm protectors and a metal gorget was pulled into the yard by four mastiffs, strands of saliva swinging from their bulging jaws. Six men carrying long, leather-tipped staves followed. The bear retreated as far as its chain allowed.

  The courtiers around me screamed. Even Frankie yelled at the bear to fight, but I only prayed for the quick deliverance of all the creatures in the pit. I had never found the suffering of others, even animals, entertaining. I would not watch hangings; I stopped up my ears to the calamities befalling others read out by news-criers. There was enough over which to weep without going in search of more.

  The first dog leapt at the bear’s face but was batted away. The men sprinted to break its fall with their staves then laid it, bleeding, on the sand. The second dog sank its teeth into the bear’s hind paw, putting it off its stroke and allowing the third dog to clamp itself to the beast’s nose. The great creature let out a howl.

  It shook its back leg, by chance striking the dog against the post. The animal fell to the ground, twitching, before lying still. There was a brief lull in the noise from the crowd until the final and largest of the dogs leapt at the bear’s throat, the shock of impact toppling the bear on to its back. A terrible wheezing erupted from it. In a last attempt to free itself, the bear clasped its enemy to its chest, goring it until bones could be seen through the dog’s flesh. Then it pried the injured cur away but in so doing hastened its own end by pulling out its windpipe, clamped in the dog’s jaws. The bear collapsed with its killer across its chest.

  ‘The King’s justice to murderers!’ shouted the audience. Only the first dog had survived and the keepers lifted it with their staves and carried it away to loud whooping. The King allowed the applause to continue, as if it was for himself, before standing. The Court fell silent, leaving only the sound of pennants whipping in the strong breeze.

  ‘The font of justice flows from God to His creation, from the King to his people,’ he proclaimed, spittle leaping from his wet lips. And if the font was full of weeds and filth? Or shallow and yellowed with the piss of courtiers, what then? I looked around me. This.

  The Court bowed low as the King left the platform and walked down into the lion pit. Carr followed, flanked by the other gentlemen of the bed chamber. I counted eight Scots to one Englishman and thought it no surprise there was ill will against the Scots, at Court as in the street.

  The King bent and dipped his fingers in
the blood of the great dog that lay across the bear, smearing it on the cheeks of his gentlemen. He held out his fingers to be cleansed and I felt a charge in the air. The bed-chamber crew had not foreseen the need for warm, scented towels and the King would clean his hands no other way. There was a green-furred drinking trough in one corner and several Gentlemen looked at it as if it could be magicked into rose-water. Carr, unruffled, took from his sleeve a lace-edged handkerchief of immense value, knelt and gently wiped the King’s fingers.

  ‘Do you hear the grinding of teeth?’ Frankie whispered to me.

  ‘Distinctly,’ I replied, glad to have her back with me again.

  Once the royal hands were clean the King raised Carr and kissed his cheeks. Carr bowed, then held the bloodied linen to his lips before tucking it back into his sleeve. Queen Anna stood and Prince Henry, seeing his mother’s stony face, bowed to his father and led the way off the platform. The Earl of Essex followed without Frankie, a snub that she ignored.

  ‘What a beautiful creature,’ she said, watching Carr beside the King. Blood seeped from the bear, staining the sand as red as the feather that shifted in the breeze beside it.

  The Earl of Northampton, moving rapidly for an old man, seized Frankie’s upper arm and propelled her from the platform. Frankie protested but her great-uncle ignored her. Her plan was working. I was about to slink to the back of the queue when I saw Arthur. He was ahead, laughing with other gentlemen of the Prince’s household, and I willed him to see me. He turned and looked appreciatively at the beautiful woman alone on the platform; then realised it was me. Would he acknowledge me and bring an end to our subterfuge? He stared so long that I was embarrassed.

  When he walked towards me, his pace was slow, and I suspected he wished his friends to leave the platform before having to introduce us. He was not ashamed of me, only unsure of what to call me. If he had walked a little faster, or I had gone towards him and forced his hand, perhaps everything that happened after this moment would have taken a different course.

  He gave me a formal bow but his words belied it. ‘How beautiful you look.’ He offered me his arm and led me out. I was the happiest I had been since George’s death. In a few months’ time I would be Lady Waring, wife to a coming man, safe with our children in his wealth and good prospects.

  Frankie was standing beside a low wall above the stinking moat at the base of Lion Tower, looking out for me, while her great-uncle Northampton stood over her, talking. She waved us over, appraising the fact that Arthur had my arm.

  ‘… speaks to you in public, he may only do so following a formal introduction by your father or brothers,’ admonished Lord Northampton, unaware, of course, that Frankie’s brother had introduced her to Carr in Queane Donna’s brothel. Despite our presence, Northampton continued to berate his great-niece until he saw Sir Robert Carr and Sir Thomas Overbury returning from accompanying the King to his barge. They walked over to a red-eyed man and Lord Northampton again took Frankie’s arm and steered her towards the little group, with Arthur and me following.

  ‘My wife could not forbear to set eyes on that beast again,’ the man was saying. Carr handed him a heavy purse, which the man cradled, as if it held the remains of his child. I found it a pitiful sight but could not but think him and his wife fools to have left their child alone in the menagerie. The man bowed and walked away with his bag of coins.

  ‘Lord Rochester,’ said Lord Northampton to Robert Carr, in his dry, high voice, ‘may I acquaint you with my great-niece?’

  Sir Robert Carr bowed. The skin around Lord Northampton’s nostrils wrinkled in what was, perhaps, a smile.

  Before Carr could kiss Frankie’s hand, a strange creature approached, somewhat like a lion but delicate and spotted, accompanied by a strong odour of decaying offal. As it drew near, it was clear that the stench emanated from its keeper and not the beast.

  Taking advantage of this diversion, Robert Carr moved so that he stood close to Frankie. They did not speak, but the stillness of both revealed that they were aware only of the place at which their arms touched. Arthur, called by members of the Prince’s household, whispered his love for me into my ear, then slipped away.

  ‘Goodman,’ said Lord Northampton to the keeper, ‘tell us more of this beast.’ Carr took Frankie’s hand, unobserved except by me, and entwined his fingers in hers. She kept her head still but glanced at him from the corner of her eye. He stroked her wrist and began to probe a finger under the lace of her cuff to feel the nakedness beneath. I looked around to see who would notice but none did, not even Sir Thomas, who was watching Lord Northampton. Seeing the gentleness in Carr’s attentions to Frankie, I could no longer suspect that his plan was to ruin her, even if that was Overbury’s aim.

  The keeper, used to tourists and the coins they gave him, spoke immediately: ‘Noble gentlemen and ladies,’ he declaimed, as if addressing a multitude, ‘this wondrous Leo-pard from the Orient runs at such speed that the spots on its coat vanish. It is fifty years old but that is no great age as a Leo-pard can live to one hundred and fifty years or more. She was a gift to His Majesty from the King of France just before his murder, God Rest his Soul.’ I immediately pictured not the dead King, but the assassin, ripped apart by horses in the Place de Grève. The keeper encouraged us to stroke the nervous creature and observe the patterns in her shivering pelt. Whenever she growled, she was struck on the haunches with a stick. Frankie studied the delicate head of the animal and I wondered if she saw misery in the beast’s golden eyes as I did.

  ‘Do they remain loyal to one mate, like the swan?’ asked Sir Thomas Overbury, looking directly at Frankie. She disentangled her fingers from Carr’s. The pleasant mood among our party turned immediately tense. Robert Carr did not hush his friend but frowned deeply.

  ‘They mate with whatever male is available when they are on heat,’ said the keeper. Sir Thomas Overbury smirked at this answer.

  ‘Can they be trained to attack unwanted persons, like a guard dog?’ asked Frankie, looking at Overbury. Robert Carr laughed and I confess I could not hide a smile; even Lord Northampton appeared delighted by Frankie’s riposte.

  ‘No, my lady, they do not seek engagement,’ replied the keeper.

  ‘A pity,’ said Frankie, bending low to the animal. Carr followed her every gesture and Overbury watched him narrowly.

  ‘When it is dead, I would like its skin,’ Overbury said. Frankie’s face was still but I could guess her feelings.

  ‘I had decided on the pelt myself,’ said Lord Northampton, smiling at no one in particular. Carr looked to Overbury, who did nothing to break the awkward silence.

  ‘My Lord Northampton, of course you must have the pelt,’ said Carr. Overbury reddened but Lord Northampton smiled warmly at the young favourite. Robert Carr was the brightest star at Court and Lord Northampton a perceptive astronomer.

  ‘They don’t last long in confinement,’ said the keeper, clearly delighted at the profit he would make from the creature’s demise.

  9

  About four months after the baiting I was shown into Frankie’s parlour. Although a low, dark room, it was cooler here than outside, which was hot as a bread oven. Breezes from the river carried with them an eye-watering aroma of Thames mud. I had never known such heat and feared that fire would sweep the city and destroy the little I still had.

  I had not seen Frankie since the bear baiting for I had been unwell. Although I lived away from the pestilent courts and tenements near the Thames, where death walks daily, we had such fevers and griping in the guts as I thought we had plague. My maid and Robert Weston nursed me until I was well enough to succour the children, who were afflicted each in turn. Simon Forman visited the very day I fell ill and every day thereafter until he was assured of our recovery. He brewed strong medicines for us and saved the lives of Mary and Henry, who would have been taken to God without his care. It therefore affected me very deeply that my old friend died suddenly during the period of our recuperation. I cried as if it wa
s George dying again. I had lost a helpmeet whose love and care for me was that rare thing, disinterested.

  There was, at least, no reason to leave the house that summer, no pretence to maintain. Frankie and Arthur were in the country. They sent medicinal herbs and food that helped us more than they can have realised. Arthur wanted to visit before he left but I forbade it, not wanting him amongst the miasmas that were rising from the evil-smelling streets and making us sick. My eldest, Thomas, did not call, nor offer us assistance. He had barged and screamed his way through childhood and altered little with the years.

  I visited Frankie as soon as I and the children were sufficiently recovered. As usual, her apartments were busy. The summer progress was over for most, although Arthur was still away. I was shown into the receiving room, which Frankie had redecorated during my illness; the panelling had been ripped out and replaced with red leather, deeply tooled in repeating gold patterns, and matching gilded leather covered the seats of the chairs. In one corner, four men were hanging a large painting. I put my nose to the wall to inhale the scent of hides dyed in Cordova, stamped with gold in Granada, cities I would never see. There were fewer than five families in the land who could afford the luxury Frankie displayed in that room and yet, thanks to our friendship, I was admitted to that paradise. Even though she was a Howard, I did wonder how she had paid for it. Which tradesman would be fool enough to trust Frankie’s promises of future payment? For a brief moment, I felt my heart grow cold, like a dying ember. Was I not doing the same as these credulous tradesmen? Investing my time and hopes in her?

  ‘Whatever are you doing?’ she said, approaching soundlessly across new woven rushes, accompanied by her little dog Brutus and Purkoy, now much grown and hardly a puppy. Around her neck was a long golden chain, set with enamelled flowers and precious stones, that I had not seen before. Indeed, her every surface gleamed; I felt sympathy for those saps with their gilded-leather samples, they would have been lost the moment they saw her. ‘Have you found a fault?’