A Net for Small Fishes

by Lucy Jago

  Although I am blessed with a sanguine temper, able to appear calm when ruffled, this was different. The morning was punctuated by Mary’s worsening cough that strained my heart until I thought it would crumble like moth-eaten fabric. Barbara and old Maggie went about with red eyes. Every night I woke at two or three of the clock, if I slept at all, full of worry.

  When I was close to shouting at the people blocking my way, I spied a servant of Frankie’s in a courtyard to my right. A boy with fingers stained red led me to a studio on the top floor.

  I tried to calm myself as I looked for Frankie. Large windows in the north wall cast a glow over the real and the artificed. The boy returned to his task of grinding pigment on a stone, another was cleaning brushes, and two apprentices painted curtains and carpets into the backgrounds of portraits. Frankie’s sisters and mother were depicted there in such colourful array that Frankie was for once obscured. I finally spotted her, beyond the artist at his easel, standing motionless beside a huge chair. I nodded briefly at Larkin as I passed.

  ‘Forgive us,’ called Frankie to the painter as she abandoned her pose to kiss me. ‘I have finally been persuaded to sit for a portrait, to mark Tommy’s wedding to Elizabeth Cecil. She is eighteen.’ Frankie was fishing. She was older than Elizabeth but still twice as beautiful, as she well knew. ‘Are you ill?’ Frankie asked me, suddenly serious, seeing my eyes half-closed from the pain in my head and heart.

  ‘Robert Carr has asked for Overbury’s release,’ I told her.

  Frankie’s face, so filled with love and concern a moment before, stiffened like a death mask.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘The Lieutenant of the Tower was drunk and talkative last night. Weston came to see me this morning as soon as his watch was over.’

  ‘Robin will not sacrifice me for Overbury,’ she said.

  ‘An intimate friendship of many years cannot be easily surrendered and Carr is suffering remorse at his friend’s long imprisonment,’ I said. Tiny pearls of sweat broke through the ceruse on Frankie’s skin. Her self-assurance was worn paper-thin, the slightest stress tore it.

  ‘They will abandon the annulment,’ she whispered, to herself.

  I glanced at Larkin, to be sure he could not overhear. ‘Visit Robin.’

  ‘I have tried. He says we are too closely watched. The outcry about the annulment has shocked him and the King has refused him a London house and wants him close at all times.’ I could picture it all: the King forever pawing at Carr, like an old woman strokes a cat, the old crone’s love answered by a purr, which gives her purpose. Carr was to purr and wind himself around the King’s ankles, ever agreeable and wanting of favour. He who was called the most powerful man at Court was nothing but a pet. His whole life, since birth, had depended on the King for its shape and direction. Even then, although the King was agreeable to Frankie being rid of a bad marriage, Carr had not asked it of him, the Earl of Northampton had. It suited the King to agree, and so it must suit Carr too. Purr, purr, around the King’s bony, bent ankles. I had sympathy for him; sometimes I felt the same.

  ‘If Overbury is released, he will run straight to Essex. They will bribe some servant for evidence of my love for Robin and use it to bring down my family. If that happens, Robin will have to fall with me or restore Overbury to his side. Simon Forman was right. Overbury is my greatest enemy because he still loves Robin.’

  ‘Or hates him with the same passion. Can he be bribed?’

  ‘No. He seeks only to destroy us.’

  ‘Could the Lieutenant of the Tower threaten him?’

  ‘The Lieutenant has used every form of intimidation, short of violence, to persuade Overbury to apologise to me; he says he has never met a more stubborn man.’

  ‘What of the letter of denunciation Overbury says he smuggled out?’

  ‘My great-uncle is sure he would have heard already of any such a letter. He thinks Overbury is bluffing to get Robin to act … it seems to have worked.’

  A voice carried up the stairs, chastising the young apprentice for his sluggardly pace. ‘My lady mother,’ said Frankie, stepping back into her pose as if the ground where she stood was red-hot. ‘Shall we continue?’ she called to Larkin, who was equally enthusiastic to look busy.

  The Countess of Suffolk marched into the room, her gaze upon everything. With admiration, I noted that Frankie’s face was already impassive. Only her hands were restless.

  Lady Suffolk greeted neither of us, but stood behind Larkin and watched critically as he painted, looking from easel to daughter until, with a slight tut, she moved to a full-length portrait leaning against the south wall. It was of herself. She spent some time appraising it before walking slowly past others of similar size and composition, all painted to commemorate the marriage of her second son, Thomas. She paused by some covered paintings in the corner. ‘Who is under here?’ she called the length of the studio. Larkin pretended not to hear. The Countess flicked at the coverings before the painter could stop her.

  ‘Herberts, Russells and Seymours, hmm? What is the happy event?’ she said, with so sharp an edge to her voice that I worried she had intelligence about these members of Essex’s crew. Since Frankie’s separation from the Earl, they had formed a close-knit party.

  ‘If he be not Master Rubens, a painter cannot refuse commissions,’ said Larkin.

  The Countess stared at Larkin but he said no more. ‘I will stay a while, hmm?’ she announced, pleasing no one, and a chair was brought. ‘Mistress Turner, I am surprised to discover you here. I have seen you little of late.’

  ‘I have been at home, my lady,’ I said. ‘I have a daughter in poor health.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ said she, brightly, ‘that must leave you little time to follow fashion. Hmm?’ She looked me up and down with exaggerated amazement at the modesty of my attire and I grew hot at the insult but said nothing. There was no money for me to make or repair clothes. Soon there would be none left for bread and broth. Frankie was also studying my worn hems and the thinning silk at my elbows.

  She waved me closer as her mother told Larkin how to improve the likeness.

  ‘Weston says Overbury is very ill and Dr Mayerne has been in attendance, which will soon put an end to him,’ I told her, expecting a smile, but Frankie remained serious.

  ‘Are you quite well?’ her mother called out.

  ‘Doctors kill people all the time with their physick,’ murmured Frankie. I knew what she was hinting at, but I would not take the bait.

  ‘But Robert Carr might be too distraught at the death of his best friend to marry the woman he hated.’

  She nodded, but without appearing to consider what I had said. ‘If Overbury is released, we will not survive it.’ She returned to her pose, looking straight at Larkin, but her attention was on me.

  ‘This portrait will be of an old woman if you two do not stop gossiping,’ called out the Countess.

  ‘What are you saying, Frankie?’ I said, very softly.

  ‘Is it not plain? If Overbury is released, he will stop at nothing to prove my adultery and halt the annulment. You and I will be forced apart and cast out. I will be sent to Chartley, the whipping boy of my husband, dead whilst living. And you? How will your children eat? If Overbury is freed he will kill us as surely as if he ran us through.’

  Larkin lowered his brush in frustration.

  Frankie was right. A pawn, once swept from the board, is not mourned.

  Talking to herself, she continued, ‘If I were a man, I could end this with a duel. There would be only honour in it. But it will have to be done with a woman’s weapons.’

  She kept her pose, and I mine, and her mother nodded and sat back in her chair, but I did not draw breath for a long time.

  ‘No,’ I said finally. ‘Even if he dies and we are not caught, we will face God’s judgement.’ I had seen plays in which women go mad when their desires are thwarted; they reach for the dagger or the phial of poison, and everyone dies. I wanted no
such conclusion. ‘You would draw us on to the rocks, doing wrong in the name of good. You would lead us to a dog’s death.’ But the news of Overbury’s imminent release had made her heart burn; had she been a man, what a soldier she would have made.

  ‘You would put Overbury’s hook in your own cheek?’ she asked.

  ‘You are brave beyond caution,’ I warned. Was it my own ignoble passions that drew me to her – pride in my talents, greed for higher place, and safety from want? There were times I feared I used her as ill as everyone else. I did not want to risk my life for Frankie, but she was right that to do nothing was to be ruined by Overbury and give up on living.

  ‘Think of Icarus. Better to fall from the sky than die in prison.’

  As I looked at Frankie by the steady north light of Larkin’s studio, I saw Judith surrounded by her enemies. She was fighting to escape the man who hated her, the laws and customs that imprisoned us, to marry the man she loved. Despite all that she demanded of me, I admired that.

  ‘I will speak to Weston,’ I said finally, amazed at the boldness of my voice, ‘but if we are discovered …’

  We did not kiss or embrace. I curtsied to Frankie’s mother as I left, but she gave barely a nod in acknowledgement. She had no idea what risks I took to save her child and her family from disgrace.

  Outside, the brightness of late summer took me by surprise: I had expected darkness. I leant against the warm brick, closed my eyes, and saw a network of tiny lines, a delicate tracery of life. I thought of Sir Thomas Overbury and wondered whether he too saw blood-red lace when he closed his eyes. I prayed fervently that he would die from the illnesses that assailed him and spare us the need to quicken his end.

  20

  I recognised James Franklin at once as the feculent character I had encountered in the backstreet apothecary shop who had behaved with too great familiarity towards me. In one hand he held a long, thin branch, wielding it like a staff of office. He lurched into a bow, revealing the single lock of reddish-grey hair that lay down his back. I stood up quickly, the better to move away, for his was the rankest compound of villainous smells ever to reach my nostrils.

  I led Weston into a corner. ‘How can you bring him to my house? He is … unsteady,’ I said.

  Weston clicked his tongue in irritation. ‘How much choice do you think I had?’

  ‘There must be a person of better character.’

  ‘You cannot choose a poisoner like you can a maid. Have you no stomach for this?’ He appeared relieved and ready to leave.

  I studied Franklin. He was on one knee, stroking George’s cat. The two youngest children huddled around him, asking questions I could not hear. Mary was sitting by the fire, feverish and bored, humming tunelessly. We were gathered in the kitchen because the day was cold, although it was early September.

  ‘I never thought you should take this path, you know that,’ said Weston, eyeing Franklin amongst the children. ‘But now you are so far along, it is better to keep going. He’s a strange man, but who of sound mind will do what you request?’

  ‘Mary, please stop humming,’ I said. Weston looked askance at my sharp tone but since agreeing to help Frankie murder a man, I found myself always with an ear half-cocked for the constable at the door and snapping more often at my children.

  The apothecary gave the cat a final stroke and rose unsteadily with the help of his stick, which he then poked into corners around the range as if afeared mice might be hiding there.

  ‘Tell him to get something that will lie in the belly a few days before it … is effective,’ I said.

  Weston nodded and immediately summoned Franklin to follow him.

  ‘I hope Mistress will be pleased with my work,’ he leered, bowing to me. There were liver spots on his balding scalp.

  ‘What’s your stick for?’ asked Mary, wide-eyed at his strange behaviour.

  ‘It’s cut from a hazel tree at midnight on Good Friday and charmed in the name of the Holy Trinity to find silver and gold.’

  ‘Do you find silver and gold?’

  ‘Often.’

  ‘Mama, can we get a stick like that?’

  The visitor bent down and stroked her cheek with a filthy finger. ‘I’ll cut you one next Easter time.’

  ‘Franklin,’ said Weston, and the man juddered upright. I could only stare after him as he shuffled out. The cat, freed from his attention, jumped on to Mary’s lap. My little girl had taken care of the creature since George’s death, for she believed something of her father survived in it. I felt the same, although I knew it to be exactly the sort of superstitious belief for which Catholics are despised.

  Two nights later, I was pulled from the deepest sleep by Mary tugging on my hand.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘The cat is mewling,’ she said.

  ‘Does she want to go out?’

  ‘She is walking in circles,’ said the little girl through tears. I hauled myself out of bed. The room was cold. ‘Come lie in my warm patch,’ I said, helping Mary climb into the bed. Her body was hot as an iron and my heart sickened to feel it. I left the cover untucked to cool her fever. ‘Daddy will be cross if we don’t make her better,’ Mary insisted. I cringed as I too heard the dreadful noise the animal was making, almost screaming.

  I ran downstairs into the kitchen. Moonlight through the windows made a shadow lattice on the cat’s white fur as it paced. Mary was right; she was curling around herself in circles. Sitting briefly then standing again. The noise was terrible and I shut the kitchen door behind me so that the other children did not wake. The tortured animal began retching and sinking then dragging itself up again. I bent to pick her up but she hissed. Close to, I could see a brown seepage from her ear.

  ‘Do you have Mary’s sickness?’ I murmured. ‘Is your ear painful? Now it is burst it might feel better?’ Unconvinced, I poured a little milk into a bowl, and placed it on the floor near the cat. She began to screech again. The noise was terrible. I felt so helpless that I pressed my hands over my ears as hard as I could. The door opened slowly and all the children stood there, staring in horror. Mary crept in and knelt beside me.

  ‘That is blood, Mother,’ she said.

  ‘Sometimes you children have that,’ I said, trying to compose myself. ‘It is very painful but then something bursts and with this brown emission comes relief.’

  ‘But she is still screeching,’ said Mary. She reached for the cat but it hissed at her too. With tears streaming down her face, Mary went to sit in the chair by the empty grate. As she did so, a picture came into my mind of Franklin crouching over the cat. Cold bile rushed up my throat and I ran to the back door to be sick.

  ‘I cannot bear it!’ Mary cried out, putting her hands over her ears as the cat howled again. I wanted to comfort my child but could not for disgust at myself. I shooed them all out, carrying Mary upstairs, then returned to the stink of my vomit and the screams of the cat.

  I cried for the animal and for George and Arthur and Mary and dreams now impossible.

  Before dawn, when the watch lamps were out and cooking fires not yet lit, I let myself out of the back door into the clear air of St Paul’s yard, carrying a small parcel. Around the preaching cross the cobbles had been lifted for the construction of a new wall. I began to dig in the exposed earth with a large spoon. My eyes were stinging. Putting the cat out of its misery, as it clawed at my arms, had felt like drowning one of my own children. I sobbed as I harrowed the earth with the blunt, wooden tool. I was lost. My soul was damned. I stabbed the earth harder and harder, ripping into it as if ripping into my own body to let out the evil.

  The spoon snapped and I fell on my hands into the shallow pit that I had gouged. The shattered wood scraped my wrist and blood welled up. I did not stem it but pushed myself up to kneeling and gently laid the shrouded body of George’s cat in the grave. Blood dripped on to the white napkin and spread like mould across the damp linen. I left the spoon where it lay and pushed the earth over the small corpse with my h
ands. This sin would need repaying. Pray God it was on me that vengeance was wrought for I could face my own death better than that of any of my children. May God spare Mary, I begged. May it never be my child that I bury. May this creature find a place with George and carry to him this message: I am sorry.

  From Cheapside to Charing Cross, the poisoner trailed me. Drops of warm rain exploded on my hood with the soft noise of threshing flails. I was sweating yet cold as if I had taken too much tobacco. The skin inside my elbows and behind my knees itched mercilessly and bled, and as I walked I prayed that the same would not happen to my hands and face, as it had when George had died; just when it was imperative to conceal my agitation, my body risked trumpeting it.

  Franklin spoke only once, as we passed a tavern open late. ‘I’m hungry,’ he whined. I was hungry myself but could not watch this man stuff his belly, with the knowledge I had of him.

  Inside the palace precinct I moved quickly. The soft night rain would be insufficient to sweeten the place. A bleary-eyed servant bowed as I entered. He took our damp outer clothes, led us to Frankie’s bed chamber, and quickly withdrew.

  I entered first and told Franklin to wait. The room was well lit, although candles in the many stands were almost burnt down. Frankie sat with her little dog on her lap, Prospero perched on the back of her chair, picking at his feet. The monkey, Caesar, had been given to Harry, for it had made life miserable for Brutus.

  ‘Put on your mask,’ I said, ‘he’s here.’

  Frankie looked up at me, affronted despite the worry in her face. ‘Servants,’ she swept the air with her hand as if indicating a large crowd, which I suppose it was, ‘may not feel much loyalty, but they cannot move against such as us. It is not those we need fear.’