A Net for Small Fishes

by Lucy Jago

  ‘It is the same here. The Queen has lost her wits with grief, the doctors fear for her life. The King is in bed with vomiting and spasms in his limbs. The Princess cannot eat for crying. Her wedding will be postponed. Prince Charles walks around clutching the little bronze horse he brought to his brother’s bedside as he lay dying. All entertainments for Christmas are cancelled. His death has brought back all our losses.’

  ‘You are thinking of Margaret?’

  Frankie nodded and fat tears fell on Brutus. ‘For her, always, and my own children who will never be born. I long to hold a baby of my own so much that I fear my grief will turn to madness,’ she said, lighting forbidden tobacco in a silver pipe. ‘Robin is never let out of the King’s sight.’ She stared into the glowing strands in the bowl as a trickle of white smoke escaped her lips, making her look like a beautiful dragon.

  ‘The Prince’s death will bring change to us all. We cannot foresee how, but the King will not keep Robin so close forever,’ I said. ‘Something good has come of it at least. Arthur has proposed.’

  There was no joy in Frankie’s expression and she quickly looked away from me. She did this when she was struggling against harsh words.

  ‘Then you too will leave me,’ she said finally, but I knew that she was also unconvinced of Arthur’s merit. A manservant entered and Brutus jumped from Frankie’s arms and skittered to the door.

  ‘It is time, my lady,’ he said, closing the door to trap the dog. Frankie stood to pin the veil on my hat where it had come loose.

  Muffled against the gelid December day, we walked through the palace to the King’s Way, where scaffolding had been erected for noble ladies of the Court to watch the passing bier. There was no sound but the distant thump of great drums that made manifest the absence of the Prince’s heartbeat.

  I brooded, as did we all that day, upon death. I had survived childbed six times but would I outlive the younger Arthur? Would my children, and perhaps grandchildren, gather around my bed as they had for George? When I was a child and my first little tooth wobbled out of my gums, I was upset that my body had a will beyond my control. The same feeling assailed me again when my menses came and each time I became pregnant. How would I be, I wondered, when illness, not the short illnesses of life but the chronic and final diseases of death, began to overtake me? How strange I found it, not to know when and how a moment of such import would occur.

  As the drummers turned the corner, I could feel vibrations in the cavities of my body; there was profundity in bearing witness to a moment that would change the course of all our lives and the lives of those to come. The first mourners of the procession passed before us, at least five hundred before the catafalque and the same number behind. Arthur was amongst the Prince’s household servants, carrying the white stave of office that he would break and throw into Henry’s grave. The coffin, under a black pall and canopy, on which were embroidered the Prince’s many coats of arms, rolled silently over the straw-covered cobbles. On top of it, dressed in the Garter robes of the Prince of Wales, was a wooden effigy with wax face and hands so like the dead Henry that it provoked gasps and crying in its wake. The King, the Queen and Princess Elizabeth were too heartbroken to attend, and so it fell to Prince Charles to lead the mourners, walking behind the bier like a little ghost, still clutching the precious bronze horse. He was accompanied by Frankie’s father, her great-uncle, and Robert Carr. Her husband was several rows behind.

  Frankie leant over and whispered to me, her eyes flicking between Essex and Robin. ‘I will not lie beside Essex for all eternity whatever happens.’ Slowly, she turned her eyes to me, as if her words were lamps approaching through a dark mist. ‘Prince Henry despised my family and loathed Robin. Now that he is dead, something might be done about my marriage.’ Perhaps it showed a cold heart to think of her own advantage when the heir to the throne was passing in his coffin below her nose. I think the opposite. Unlike most of us that day, she knew him. They had grown up at the same time, often in the same palaces. She remembered the feel of her hand in his when they danced. His death, and with it that of his heirs, made finding her own happiness more urgent.

  ‘My great-uncle Northampton is running the country now, with Robin,’ said Frankie, looking towards him. ‘I shall request an audience. Perhaps you are right to be hopeful of change.’

  I had not said that I was hopeful of change. Only that it would come. And if her great-uncle were involved, I would be more afraid than hopeful.

  A summons from Lord Northampton, requiring me to attend Frankie at Salisbury House, arrived two days before Christmas, but with no hint as to the reason. As Weston and I walked to the Strand, I prayed with unusual fervour that Frankie was not ill, discovered in adultery, badly beaten by her husband or suffering any other calamity.

  Salisbury House reared up like forbidding cliffs, three storeys high with taller corner towers. The new palace had been built by Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury and was now occupied by his son, William Cecil, Frankie’s brother-in-law. It was so recently finished that the wall brackets lacked torches and the coats of arms were not yet gilded. Many of the windows in the inner court were shuttered but I could see that the rooms behind glowed brightly. The sound of music filled the air, growing loud at one point as a footman opened the main doors to let out a dog. The Howards and Salisburys were marking Christmas away from a court in mourning. I walked towards the sound of laughter, but Weston took my arm and steered me instead to a door in an unlit corner.

  ‘These are Lord Northampton’s instructions,’ he said. I wondered how it was that Weston knew this house and this entrance.

  We climbed a winding stair to a cramped and bare passage on the second floor. I had heard that concealed ways for servants were fashionable in new houses, but never expected to use one. I could well imagine old Maggie’s indignity at being hidden from us, as if she were something shameful; this was one new fashion of which I did not approve.

  Weston found a door that emerged near the head of the principal staircase. The sound of voices and music was loud from the floor below. A maid, clearly waiting for us, led the way to a richly furnished bed chamber but immediately retreated, indicating that Weston should follow her. To distract myself from worry, I tried out the chairs set against the walls. I had only George’s chair in my house; we sat on stools or cushions on the rare occasions there was time for sitting. There was as much furniture in this one bed chamber as I had owned in my lifetime. As I rose to look at the plaster coat of arms over the fireplace, I heard a burst of loud cheering in the distance, then a door closing on the sound. The same maid rushed in, followed by Frankie. She stopped dead on seeing me.

  ‘Anne! You here?’ she said.

  ‘Your great-uncle sent for me,’ I said, alarmed by Frankie’s high colour. ‘Did you not know?’

  ‘No. But how glad I am to see you,’ she said, embracing me briefly. ‘There is no time. He is coming soon. Bring me a sharp and clean knife,’ she said to the maid, who dashed out. ‘My great-uncle has ordered Essex into my bed. You heard the cheering?’

  My hand flew to my mouth. ‘Why? Has Essex accused you of loving Carr?’

  Frankie looked suddenly exhausted. ‘No. He hinted that I was bedswerving but he has always done that.’

  ‘I will not let you kill yourself, Frankie.’

  She looked puzzled then laughed rather loudly; she had been drinking heavily judging by the flush on her cheeks. ‘I would sooner kill Essex than myself. If he enters me, there must be blood.’ I could sense the wheels in her mind frantically spinning. ‘That must be why my great-uncle sent for you. You can let blood.’

  The maid returned with a small knife for scraping hard skin from feet. Frankie and I looked at it askance. ‘Have you wiped it?’ I asked.

  The poor girl nodded. I took the knife and held it close to a candle; it was encrusted in places with dead skin, which I pared off with my fingernail.

  ‘Essex will see the cut,’ I said, suddenly realising the proble
m. ‘It must be my blood.’

  ‘No,’ said Frankie immediately. ‘Lady Cheke let blood to cure an itch last month and was dead in two days. I cannot ask it of you.’

  ‘No, you cannot, but I offer myself freely. How can it serve your great-uncle to prove you an adulteress?’

  ‘I thought he would agree that the marriage is of no value if I cannot have heirs. Now, it seems he means to force them on me.’

  The maid began unlacing Frankie’s clothes. I poured her more wine and examined the cleanliness of her undershirt. ‘It doesn’t matter if I stink,’ she said.

  ‘For a man who loves horses more than women, a clean shirt will be less enticing,’ I said and commanded Frankie to wash. Clean and perfumed, I arranged her against the tester with care; chaste yet ardent would be most dampening to Essex.

  ‘Do not cut yourself,’ she said, as I drew the curtains around the bed.

  ‘If he manages to enter you, pretend great pain and I will …’ I could say no more for Lord Essex arrived, trailed by his manservant. He scowled at me and I feared he would send me away, but he did not.

  He yanked open a bed-hanging and I saw Frankie inside, pulling the sheet up to her neck. I frowned, worried that too much timidity would excite him. Indeed, he threw off his gown and quickly entered the bed in his night shirt. Essex’s man closed the curtains and went to sit in the window.

  ‘Snuff them,’ I heard Essex order. Frankie, as she described to me afterwards and I could hear for myself, knelt up and blew out the candles on her side of the headboard. To get to the other sconce, she had to lean over Essex. As she did, Essex pulled her down to sit on his member, already hard.

  She yelped. His thrust missed and so he rolled her on to her back, pushing up her shirt so forcefully it bunched over her face. As he prised her legs apart with his knee, Frankie clawed the shirt down so that she could breathe. Essex had taken off his shirt and Frankie told me later that she snorted in surprise at seeing her husband naked for the first time.

  ‘His member went limp,’ she said.

  ‘It will not happen if you discourage me,’ I heard Essex snap.

  ‘Why would I help a beast like you?’

  I dipped my head to my sewing and the gentleman turned to look out of the window. There was no pleasure in eavesdropping on this pair.

  ‘So be it,’ said Essex in a hard voice that did not quite disguise his mortification. He sighed, as one who considered himself much maligned, and got out of the bed.

  ‘A light,’ said the Earl, leaving his gentleman to close the door. Frankie sat with her knees drawn up, her head buried in her arms. When I embraced her, she was shaking. It was a long while before she stopped repeating, over and over: ‘How could they order him into my bed? How could they?’

  That Christmas, for many, there was only grief.

  PART TWO

  February 1613

  15

  After St Valentine’s Day, I was again summoned to Salisbury House, this time by Frankie. The place looked blind, with every window shuttered and snow unswept in the courtyard. I knocked on the main doors and an ancient custodian eventually opened them and led me to the same bed chamber I had been in before Christmas. Here at least the shutters were open and the furniture uncovered, but no fire or candles burnt and the room was cold and untidy.

  ‘In here,’ came Frankie’s voice from an adjacent cabinet that I had not noticed previously, the walls of which were covered in huge chevrons of garish colour. She sprawled in a chair beside a fire, at her elbow a nearly empty decanter, a glass, a cone of gilded sweetmeats and a heap of scrolls tied with ribbons of pale blue silk. More were scattered on the floor, untied and variously curling like wood shavings. Brutus was chewing on one.

  ‘At last,’ she said, although I was early. ‘It’s better if you sit,’ she said, observing me flinch at the sight of the walls.

  ‘I have never seen the like.’

  ‘Dornix. My sister claims it is the latest fashion in wall-coverings. It is giving me a headache.’ Frankie wore an unlaced house gown and her hair was tangled and dirty. She was a little drunk although it was early in the afternoon.

  ‘You are alone?’

  ‘There is no amusement to be had at Court since Prince Henry died so my family left after the wedding.’

  ‘Did it pass off well?’ Frankie’s great-uncle had led Princess Elizabeth down the aisle to marry the Elector Palatinate, past her brother’s effigy.

  ‘Nothing was more magnificent,’ said Frankie in a sing-song voice. This sarcasm was new and I did not like it. Her mood was capricious and destructive.

  ‘Have you received more poems?’ I asked, nodding towards the scrolls.

  ‘No, which is why I look at old ones. The King still keeps Robin by his side, day and night. I haven’t seen him for a fortnight with all the buttering up he has to do of foreign princes.’ Frankie tossed the scroll she was reading on to the floor.

  ‘My separation from Essex has led to nothing.’

  ‘It has only been six weeks!’ I said. Having been unable to penetrate Frankie when ordered into her bed at Christmas, Essex had finally admitted his sexual insufficiency to her family; this had, it seemed, been Lord Northampton’s plan. They had been allowed to separate; Essex moved to his grandmother’s palace on the Strand and Frankie continued in her grace-and-favour apartments.

  ‘Six weeks is an eternity at Court,’ said Frankie, kicking at the litter around her. ‘Other countesses, younger ones, are paraded before Robin while my family do nothing. My great-uncle will not even enquire whether an unconsummated marriage can be dissolved; Essex must ask him to do so first! My family say I will show myself disobedient and lustful if I do anything at all.’ With the care of someone who knows they are drunk, she placed her empty glass on the table. ‘While they fret over my honour, I grow old. I must do something for myself, Anne. I have asked someone to come who can help.’

  ‘Help how?’ I asked, a momentary vision of sham apothecaries in their stinking shops forcing its way into my mind.

  ‘In the same manner as Simon Forman.’

  ‘No one is as trustworthy.’

  ‘Trustworthy?’ she said, rather loudly. ‘It is not even safe to keep these.’ She picked up what scrolls she could and tossed them into the fire. It was a few moments before brown patches bloomed across the words of love. The skin did not blaze but darkened and fell apart.

  We both started at a knock on the door. I left the stifling cabinet and saw a barrel-like woman standing in the doorway to the bed chamber, the custodian just visible behind her bulk.

  ‘Am I to come in or not?’ she said, resting her weight on one leg.

  ‘Yes, do,’ said Frankie, who had followed me. The woman turned and shut the door in the retainer’s face. I looked pointedly at Frankie but was ignored.

  ‘You must be Mary Woods? Would you care for anything?’ asked Frankie.

  ‘Ale and cakes, if you please,’ said Mary, plonking herself on the only chair without invitation. Frankie’s look of astonishment made me smile. She would as much know how to procure ale and cakes as to raise a corpse.

  ‘Forgive me,’ said Frankie, waving her arm about vaguely, ‘but we are alone. Next time I shall ensure that there is plentiful ale and cakes. I have wine?’

  ‘I don’t touch spirits,’ grunted Mary Woods. Frankie turned her back and made a face at me that said ‘What a character!’ but I did not smile back. The woman was ignorant.

  ‘What are your talents?’ I asked.

  The washerwoman looked at Frankie as she answered. ‘Finding lost valuables, damping or increasing men’s ardour, untying marriage vows, predicting the sex of babies, the time of going to childbed and death.’ She folded strong arms under the shelf of her chest.

  ‘Your methods?’ I asked. The malapert ignored me. ‘How do you “untie marriage vows”?’ I insisted.

  The woman turned from Frankie to me, running her eyes over my plain attire with utmost insolence.

  ‘
Prayers to small devils and, if a woman can give it to him, a potion. The prayers work without, but it’s slower.’

  Forman had always conversed with angels. To conjure devils was a hanging offence. It was only a matter of months since the country had been set on edge by the discovery of covens in Yorkshire; hanging the witches had not quelled fear of their evil. It was deemed possible that they could still work magic from the grave.

  ‘We want it to happen quickly,’ said Frankie, sitting on a stool opposite Mary Woods, who did not uncross her arms. ‘How long might it take?’

  ‘How long could what take?’ asked Mary Woods, looking at Frankie and pursing her fat lips so they oozed out from her face like raw sausages. The room grew dark as snow began to fall outside. Frankie hesitated and I cleared my throat, willing her to keep quiet.

  ‘To release me from my marriage?’ she whispered. I began to suspect that Frankie was ill as well as drunk. The separation from Essex appeared to have removed all discretion.

  The visitor made a mummery of looking around her. ‘Got ghosts, have you? Who’s going to hear us?’ Frankie shook her head and looked at her hands. I had not seen her cowed before. Desperation had weakened her.

  ‘Once you pay me, I can start work straightaway,’ said Mary Woods, her voice loud. ‘My clients are satisfied within a few weeks.’

  ‘How?’ I repeated.

  A smile spread across the wide jaw of Mary Woods. ‘My husband keeps from my bed and does not complain who takes his place. He bored two holes in my chamber door to watch me with another man but said nothing and never will. He is in my power and so is any man I choose.’

  Frankie’s eyes flicked over this grubby laundress to see what made her so tempting to men. I was convinced of nothing but the woman’s impertinence.