by Lucy Jago
There had been a stone at Barbara’s core, which her body had accommodated these long years. It had weighed down her hopes, stopped her marrying and often blocked off laughter. As Lady Anne spoke, she felt it shifting. She had expected to find someone brittle, ready to defend her mother and deny her past. Instead, here was a woman of deep understanding, who recognised and shared in Barbara’s long-held grief.
Barbara took from her pocket a worn handkerchief, embroidered with the initials A.T. She did not dab at her streaming eyes but opened it. Nestled within were a diamond ring and a string of pearls; the times she had wanted to pawn them were without number, but her mother’s wishes stopped her. She thought it might upset Lady Anne to know that the ring had been sent to the fifteen-year-old Frankie by the fourteen-year-old Earl of Essex, with a terse note as to its value but no word of love; that Frankie had given it to a cunning woman who had pawned it; that it had been retrieved and later sent to Anne Turner during her detention, along with the pearls; that Anne had passed them to her confessor, hidden in this handkerchief, while she stood on the tumbril seconds before death.
Barbara put the ring and pearls into Lady Anne’s hand and said only, ‘Your mother gave these pearls and this ring to mine. Their friendship was the most important of my mother’s life.’ Lady Anne took them both and held them in her hands as if she could feel the two women through them. She slipped the ring on to the index finger of her right hand. It was a little big but looked well against her white skin. The pearls she rubbed against her cheek, closing her eyes.
‘Are these Margaret’s?’ she asked.
Barbara nodded.
‘My mother told me about her sister and these pearls. She hoped the gaoler had not stolen them and that they had been placed in your mother’s coffin.’
‘They were, but a Mr Palmer arrived just before the lid was shut. He knew my mother well and thought she would not like the waste. When Dr Whiting came to bury her, he gave me the note with her final wishes. Mr Palmer was right. I have kept them safe ever since, waiting for the right time to give them back.’
‘I thank you for your kindness in coming here,’ said Lady Anne, still rubbing the pearls with her thumb. ‘You have eased my heart and I hope that, for whatever time God grants us, we can be good friends.’ She leant forward and put the pearls over Barbara’s head. ‘My mother would want you to have these.’ Then, quite unexpectedly, she embraced Barbara for a long time. Barbara could feel the movement of the child inside her belly.
The sounds of footsteps and laughter came to them and Prospero squawked, ‘Hail Mary!’ The chamber door was thrown open and the Countess’s children burst in; two ran, one toddled, one crawled at speed and the smallest was carried by his nurse. Without suspicion or fear of Barbara, they clambered on to the laps of the two women seated side-by-side, seeking affection and asking questions.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
At the time of the ‘Overbury Scandal’, as the events detailed in this book are usually known, English women already had a reputation on the continent of being too independent of their husbands, drinking in taverns and frequenting theatres with no male chaperone. That two of them could have poisoned a courtier out of lust and venality fits the various tropes of female behaviour widely held at the time and, seemingly, since. Mine is not an attempt to whitewash their actions but to give Anne and Frankie greater complexity of motive: to reclaim them from the limbo of misogynist stereotype where wraiths lament at how they are reduced. The furore provoked by Anne and Frankie was so great that they lost all individuality and became icons co-opted by various parties to prove the villainy of villainous women, the rottenness of the English Court, the immorality of the courtier and so on. My research has been more than an exercise in bringing to light, but of sifting through centuries of prejudice and assumption (interesting in its own way) to find something that feels truthful to the known facts and to human behaviour. Of course, my job really begins where the facts end. This is a work of imagination within the bounds of possibility. Mistress Bowdlery and the beadles are fictional, but all other named characters are mentioned in letters, Wills and records of court cases. Anne’s lover was called Sir Arthur Mainwaring, not Waring, but for obvious reasons (if you watch Dad’s Army) I changed this slightly. I could not have Arthur Mainwaring appearing alongside Frankie Howard.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank my agent, Eugenie Furniss, whose advice and encouragement over the years of writing this book have been invaluable. My UK publishers, Bloomsbury, have improved and beautified it: a special thank-you to Alexandra Pringle and Allegra Le Fanu, and to Sarah Murphy at Flatiron Books in the US, who asked perceptive questions. David Lindley’s open-minded approach in his excellent book, The Trials of Frances Howard (Routledge, 1996), set me off in search of Anne and Frankie and was a scholarly and entertaining foil to the vitriol and assumption slung at my protagonists in many other books on the subject. Steve Cook at The Royal Literary Fund gave me work, confidence and a writing community exactly when I needed it, and huge thanks also to Greg Klerx for telling me about the RLF and sharing the writing journey. Research has taken me to many archives, libraries, museums and old houses and to all those who keep these alive, available and polished, I offer thanks, but especially to the staff at the London Library, my second home for many years; to Nick Humphrey, Curator in the Furniture Department of the Victoria and Albert Museum; and Elaine Uttley at the Fashion Museum in Bath.
I have plundered too many books and articles, of and on the period, to list them all, but I found particularly helpful and interesting the work of historians Linda Levy Peck (Court Patronage and Corruption in Early Stuart London, Routledge, 1993; The Mental World of the Jacobean Court, Cambridge University Press, 2008; Northampton: Patronage and Policy at the Court of James I, HarperCollins, 1982; and Consuming Splendour, Cambridge University Press, 2005); Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass (‘“Rugges of London and the Diuell’s Band”: Irish Mantles and Yellow Starch as Hybrid London Fashion’ in Material London c. 1600, edited by Lena Cowen Orlin, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000); Alastair Bellany (The Politics of Court Scandal in Early Modern England: News Culture and the Overbury Affair, 1603–1660, Cambridge University Press, 2002); Neil Cuddy (‘The Revival of the Entourage: The Bedchamber of James I, 1603–1625’ in The English Court, edited by David Starkey, Longman, 1987), David Bergeron (King James and Letters of Homoerotic Desire, University of Iowa Press 1991); and Keith Thomas (The Ends of Life: Roads to Fulfilment in Early Modern England, Oxford University Press, 2010), and warmly recommend anyone interested in the period to seek out these publications.
Several writers of far greater skill and experience than my own have been generous enough to read the manuscript (or part thereof) and given very helpful feedback: Helen Cross, Andrew Miller, Catherine Temma Davidson, Lucy Ellmann, Gillian Slovo, Sarah Dunant and Susan Elderkin, and also Diana Carr, Gillian Stern, Edwina Bowen, Allen Samuels and special thanks to Shireen Jilla and Francesca Brill, whose wisdom and kindness lit every step of the way.
For the love and support of my parents, Anna and Robert, my sister Camilla, and my favourite un-parents, Alan and Sheila, I feel deep gratitude. I offer love and thanks to my husband, Paul, and to my three daughters, Lily, Jasmine and Cecily, who inspire and amaze me every day.
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
LUCY JAGO is an award-winning writer of fiction and nonfiction and Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund. Her first book, The Northern Lights, won the National Biography prize and has been translated into eight languages. She lives in Somerset.
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First published in Great Britain 2021
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ISBN: HB: 978-1-5266-1662-3; TPB: 978-1-5266-1661-6; eBook: 978-1-5266-1664-7
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