A Net for Small Fishes

by Lucy Jago

  ‘“Herein is a list of which Ladies Love which Men at Court.”’ Coke leant forward, eager for evidence of Frankie’s affair with Carr, as did the crowd, again with much creaking. The clerk hesitated, reading silently what he had been requested to broadcast. Looking deeply anxious, he handed the book back to the Lord Chief Justice. The judge read the first few lines then snapped the book shut and slammed it down on his desk. The name at the top of the list was that of his own estranged wife. He stared at me with such loathing that I knew he considered hell the only fit place for me.

  ‘Do you deny that you used witchcraft and the summoning of devils in your attempts to force Sir Arthur Waring into matrimony with yourself, and Sir Robert Carr, afterwards Earl of Somerset, into matrimony with Frances Howard, then Countess of Essex?’

  ‘I do,’ I said, but Lord Coke turned away, wincing, as if it hurt to listen to my denial.

  ‘Should these sins not be enough for any woman? Adultery, sorcery and witchcraft? To this let me add another. You are a bawd – as much of a bawd as any common brothel-keeper, acting the pander between your great friend, the Lady Frances, and Robert Carr. We have depositions from the trial of your manservant Richard Weston, describing how you arranged for Robert Carr to meet the Countess of Essex at your house in Paternoster Row, in private, at night. At other times, you arranged for a farmhouse to be made available beyond the village of Hammersmith, where the Countess went to meet, for two hours at a time, the aforementioned Robert Carr. Weston has confessed to carrying letters between them, given to him by you. And for all this time the Countess was the wife of the Earl of Essex, and you did facilitate that terrible sin of fornication between her and her lover. What say you to this charge?’

  The crowd could not restrain themselves in light of such revelations. I felt faint but there was no rail to hold, nor chair or stool on which to sit. To defend myself would, in the same breath, be to damn myself.

  ‘Speak, madam, or we must take your silence for confession of guilt.’

  ‘I am innocent of the crime of which I stand accused. I murdered no one.’ To confess anything at all would be to condemn Frankie.

  ‘Woman is born guilty of the sins of Eve and only in perfect purity and good conduct can she redeem herself. Once she has committed any sin, even that of vanity, her weak virtue is prey to all the evils natural to her sex. She who steps away from the path of duty, who puts herself beyond the guidance of husband, father or brother, is lost to wickedness. You have acted of and for yourself, which is itself against the proper bounds of womanhood. But how shameless is your conduct! An adulteress, a witch, a sorceress and a bawd, reveals herself capable of any crime, including that of murder.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Do you deny also that you are a poisoner?’ cried Lord Coke, leaning out over his bench to emphasise the words as they struck at me. ‘Poison. The most devious weapon, for it takes a man away when he expects it least and cannot defend himself. It gives him no time to repent before death, is easily concealed and used, as hard to prevent as to discover. There is no manner in which evidence of poisoning can be attained, thus we dispense with such proofs in trials of poisoners. If testimony were required in cases of poisoning, the King might as well proclaim impunity. It is an Italian device, fit for the Court of Rome, a crime of cowardice, of women, and of Papists. Is it true that you are a Catholic, Mistress Turner? And the Countess too, and Richard Weston, and the Lieutenant of the Tower, and all those involved in this plot to kill an innocent, Protestant man?’

  The crowd felt themselves on safe ground with this accusation. They shouted and would have thrown their shoes at me had they been assured of retrieving them.

  ‘The principal in this crime, Richard Weston, confessed to receiving a phial of clear liquid from you, with instructions to give the same to Sir Thomas but to taste not of it himself.’ Coke paused. ‘If this phial were but an innocent tincture, why should you warn him of it? James Franklin has confessed to acquiring poisons, many of them – aqua fortis, mercury water, great spiders, white arsenic, and more. Sir Gervase Elwes at the Tower has confessed to knowing that you and the Countess sent such a phial to Weston, and also jellies and tarts tainted with the same.

  ‘You, lacking title or wealth, made yourself indispensable by slipping between Court and the villainous apothecaries and necromancers who are your friends. You are a canker one knows not of, silently lying within a body until it kills. Corruption at Court poisons the whole land. Like beauty, it secretly works its way into men’s hearts and is hard to defend against. Was it you or the Countess of Somerset who planned the murder of Overbury? When Richard Weston was tried, he said, “This be a net for small fishes, that the great ones swim away!” He was speaking of the Earl and Countess of Somerset, was he not, Mistress Turner? And of the late Earl of Northampton, whose letters to the Tower also condemn him.’ Coke nodded at the clerk, who lifted a letter from the high table beside him.

  ‘“God is Gracious in cutting off ill instruments before the time wherein their mischiefs are to be wrought. Bury him this very day, between three and four in the afternoon, with all haste and without ceremony, for the putrefaction is in an advanced state. Allow not his brother-in-law Lidcote to remove the body.”’ Coke waited for the crowd to quieten.

  ‘Why is it that Lord Northampton wanted none to see the body save the coroner? And not even the correct coroner for the Tower jurisdiction, but the coroner for Middlesex. Was the Middlesex coroner Lord Northampton’s man? Is it not the case that those “great ones” sought Overbury’s death, such that the Catholic faith might be restored in this land?’

  At this the crowd erupted. ‘Treason! Catholic traitors!’ Lord Coke let them rant.

  ‘Weston did not keep your secrets during his trial, Mistress Turner, as you must have prayed that he would,’ he finally said, holding up his hand for silence. ‘He confessed to participating in this, the most heinous and hateful offence of our times. He is dead, hanged two weeks ago at Tyburn for murder. What say you now?’

  Weston was dead.

  Hanged while I sat alone in the alderman’s cell. Was his beloved son William witness to it?

  Stupefaction kept me upright as Lord Coke pointed at me and shouted, ‘The crowd of witnesses to your crimes envelops you. I say again, you possess the seven deadly sins. You are whore, bawd, witch, sorcerer, Papist, felon and murderer. Confess it!’

  27

  Someone felt their way down the three steps into the cell; I heard a hand sliding along the stone wall. Was it Mr Palmer? Frankie? The executioner come to ask my forgiveness for what he had to do? All they would see was my hair, the only point of light in this narrow prison.

  ‘Something to warm you?’ I heard Alderman Smith ask of the visitor. I lay on my truckle, face to the wall.

  ‘I do not drink, sir.’ A man’s voice I did not recognise. ‘Just a table and chair if you please. I am anxious to start directly, as the Lord Chief Justice must have her confession.’

  ‘Ah, then we must jump to it if Sir Edward has our salvation to hand,’ said Alderman Smith. A bristling pause.

  ‘I am against the commodious accommodation of criminals; she wants for nothing, I see,’ said the newcomer.

  ‘Save her freedom, her children, her friends and all hope,’ the alderman replied. ‘Since the trial she has not washed, spoken, risen from her bed or eaten. She is hardly in her wits.’

  ‘If her abjection is real, she can be brought to the Lord.’

  ‘You seek her salvation, Dr Whiting? I thought you were here for a confession? Tell her of God’s forgiveness, sir, and do not dishearten her further or she will be dead before they can hang her.’

  ‘There are no candles,’ said this Dr Whiting, irritated to have been told his business.

  ‘Who pays for them? She’s been here six weeks and I’ve had nothing for her keep.’ Scrabbling in a coin belt. ‘I’ll send someone along.’

  ‘Bring fire too, if you please, it’s cold as death in here.�
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  The door banged closed and was locked.

  ‘No vermin, no lousy cell-mates urinating on your silk and defecating where they stand. Comfort will not speed your redemption,’ was his opening address. ‘I am Dr Whiting, a minister of the Church, sent by the King’s Bench to hear your confession, that God might forgive and return you to His flock.’ Was I to have no peace, even after receiving sentence of death? I did not move. The bells rang eight. It was morning, I think. Would I know that hour again?

  I heard him moving about as if my body was in the cell but my mind was elsewhere.

  ‘It is within the human heart that Satan builds his nest. God never had fewer servants than in our days; where God has least, the Devil has most. He has forced his way into your mind and filled you with loathsome ambition. You have sought a higher state than that God ordained you and committed sins without number when all that God asks of us is to know our station. We must cheerfully and virtuously fulfil the duties appropriate to our lot, making ourselves useful to others as did Jesus; to do so is the only preparation for the life everlasting. Was it also you who poisoned Prince Henry?’

  His accusations and questions I could not differentiate from the clatter of boatmen below, the screams of the gulls and the gusts of wind that made him pace faster about the freezing cell; all and none reached me. I cannot say how much later it was when he shook my shoulder. ‘Widow Turner, if you confess, your children will be brought to you.’

  I rolled over to look at him. He turned his back to me and moved to look out of the narrow window, perhaps thinking I would speak more freely that way, as children chatter when travelling behind their parents in a cart. His hair was grey and close-cut to his skull; on it he wore the black cap of his calling, and over his thin, straight body a black robe. The crowds were gathering at Tyburn Tree, I could feel them pressing around me, but Frankie could still save me from that end. For that hope, and for love of her, I would say nothing of import to this man for why was he bribing me with the hope of a visit from my children? Even so, to see them again, to hold them, was my greatest wish. I heard myself whisper over and over, ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Richard Weston poured away the poisons you gave to him,’ he said. I thought I had misheard but he turned to me. His face was deeply lined and severe but perhaps there was also kindness there, well hidden. ‘The Lieutenant of the Tower also attested that he and Weston threw away the poisons you brought.’

  ‘Then I am free?’ I said, confused. I sat up slowly and my head spun.

  ‘Whether by poison or smothering or other means, Sir Thomas Overbury died at the hand of Richard Weston with your complicity. Perhaps the Countess encouraged her great-uncle, Lord Northampton, to rid her of him? What are the late Earl’s dealings in this? There is no little suspicion cast upon him.’

  ‘As God knows everything, Dr Whiting, it cannot be He who seeks information.’

  He looked at me, clearly appraising how to approach so brave-mouthed a woman. Finally, he sat nearby me, perhaps hoping to appear more friendly.

  ‘When I took Richard Weston’s confession, he said the King’s justice is “a net for small fishes”. Do you feel the same?’

  Tears pricked and fell but I paid them no heed. ‘You saw Weston? Did he speak harshly of me? Was his son present at … Did he make a good end?’ How strange that this man had seen my near-constant companion more recently than had I. But Dr Whiting would not be drawn to tell me more, and perhaps that was wise on his part.

  ‘Please answer my question,’ he said.

  ‘Justice is dispensed at the whim of the King: he dislikes women and knows none of the poorer sort, so certainly it must pain him less to punish them.’

  ‘And what of Lord Northampton in this business?’ It was irritating Dr Whiting that I spoke in general terms when he wanted specific moments to take back to Lord Coke, to prove the guilt of the King’s closest advisers.

  ‘There was never anybody had a window into Lord Northampton’s mind, nor his heart either,’ I said, but I thought he was more to blame for Overbury’s death than Frankie and I had realised at the time. Since hearing his letters read out at my trial, I believed he used Frankie to cover his own killing of Overbury, so that Carr could be brought into the Howard sphere. Even so, I had intended to murder Overbury. I made great efforts to that effect and, in so doing, had caused Weston’s death. I deserved to die, in that there was no injustice, although I prayed Frankie could still save me.

  ‘Perhaps so, but was it he who had Overbury killed?’

  ‘I have told Lord Coke all I know.’ Even talking about a dead man might somehow condemn Frankie.

  ‘Would it ease your tongue to confess to a Papist priest? I have authority to release one from prison, although I consider it not in your best interests.’ I shook my head. ‘You have been proven guilty and condemned to hang. What will you confess?’

  ‘I have been declared guilty. There was no proof.’ I took Mistress Bowdlery’s handkerchief from my sleeve and twisted it between my fingers. ‘I confess only the truth I have learnt: that there can be no freedom when you love. One prevents the other.’

  ‘You attempt philosophy with me?’

  ‘Frankie,’ I said, barely stung by the confessor’s words. Compared to the insults of Lord Coke, his manner was mild.

  ‘What?’

  ‘If I called her Frances, or my lady, or Countess of Somerset, she would wonder what was wrong between us. Have you news of her?’ The man flinched at my directness and lack of humility. I wanted to rage, to scratch at my face; that would tell the story well enough. For Frankie, my blood. But I have a horror of violent reactions. It was always Frankie who cried out her pain and her love, and for a long time I thought she must feel more than I and that was why she commanded every person and event into her own story, including me. But the loss of my children kills me more surely than will the rope, so now I think I feel as much as she.

  ‘Your friend has been arrested, as has her husband. The Lady Frances attempted to take her own life and that of her unborn child, by laying wet cloths on her belly. By chance a maid discovered her before fatal illness took hold. Do not let pity for your friend tie up your tongue, for she is not thinking of you but only of her own selfish desires.’

  That news left me numb and I could feel nothing but the cold … cold like the earth into which my body would soon be lowered for all Eternity. I pressed my trembling fingers against my lips, picturing the moment my last and only connection to this life would be a cord, as was my first. I do not know how long I stared at him, thinking only of my abandoned children, of Frankie and Robin clept up, of what misery drove her to attempt to take her own life and that of the child for which she had longed for so many years. We are all caught, from the highest to the lowest, in nets of custom and propriety; those that cut themselves free do not swim away but are destroyed.

  ‘You will see your children if you confess,’ said Dr Whiting.

  ‘Your false promise is barbaric,’ I said, and saw in his eyes that, indeed, he was lying. ‘If I fail to repent because you insist I sacrifice my friend in order to do so, then your soul will be stained by the desire for advancement as much as is mine. Lord Chief Justices come and go, but God does not. Be careful whom you choose to serve if serving both becomes impossible.’

  A servant brought in candles and laid a small fire, and for all that time we said nothing, but the confessor broke his gaze from mine and contemplated his folded hands as if he still held the high ground, which we both knew he had lost. When the servant left, the confessor said: ‘You wear collar and cuffs dyed the saffron yellow you made fashionable at Court; is that not a conceited display inappropriate to a widow condemned to death?’

  ‘I have not changed clothes since my trial, Dr Whiting.’ It clearly discomforted him to find no other sign of evil upon me: my lips not mean, my brow not heavy, no warts in sight. Perhaps in a murderess of good birth they are not to be expected? He was unsure; I suspect I was his first. He stood and
put his rump before the flames.

  ‘Perhaps she hates you, who once loved you?’

  ‘I am not allowed to see my children, but I have not a second’s doubt of their love for me. With Frankie it is the same. Your attempt to make me doubt my friend will not make me betray her.’ As I said it, I knew it was equally true that Frankie would not betray me.

  ‘I attempt to convince you only that God is a better receptacle of your trust than Frances Howard. How often was the Countess with you when you visited the apothecary?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘She shops at the New Exchange.’

  ‘The skin displayed at your trial on which were written Forman’s prayers, did it come from a child?’

  ‘It was the skin of a pig. I could tell you of fifty others who write prayers on pigskin.’

  He only shrugged at this for he probably knew several himself, so widespread is the practice. ‘And the doll? Did you prick it to make Sir Thomas die?’

  ‘It is a female doll! A French Baby wearing designs for Simon Forman’s wife. I have a hundred more at home. Do you think that because I paint my face and wear yellow ruffs, I would torture a hundred women too?’ For the first time, I saw unease in his expression. He believed me. ‘My trial? Fabulous drama! Did you attend it, sir? Mr Shakespeare and Mr Jonson together would be hard pressed to bring together in one play scenes of adultery, bastardy, witchcraft, poison, Popery, conspiracy and treason, but Lord Justice Coke managed it with consummate skill. To witness my distress at first hearing of the hanging of my friend, Richard Weston, must have been worth the price of admission, even at ten pounds for two seats.’

  For the rest of the day Dr Whiting harangued or sermonised me, baiting me with snippets of worrying tidings about Frankie and her husband. I knew that the chance of Frankie’s relatives ensuring my release, or hers, was small. Still I believed that this was not my time to die; I would see her and my children again.