The Poison Bed

by Elizabeth Fremantle

  ‘I don’t understand.’ He was looking at me, right in the eye, right into my soul.

  ‘When Overbury made those – those threats.’ I was stumbling over my words. He went to speak but I asked him to let me finish. ‘When he made those threats and you – you discarded me, I was desperate, Robert. Utterly desperate. I went to her in the vain hope that she could see a future in which you loved me once more. Not knowing was unendurable.’

  ‘God, Frances!’ he said, as if he were trying to prevent me from throwing myself off a cliff. ‘How can you think that I ever stopped loving you?’

  ‘Anne took me there with that servant of hers. She told me the woman was a fortune-teller, but she was a witch. I was duped.’ Tears were coursing down my face. ‘Such a fool... I was such a fool. She took my ring, refused to return it and made a spell, against my wishes. I should have stopped her. I tried but...’ I felt Robert recoil from me. ‘But – but now I see that your friend’s life was the price for your love.’

  ‘That woman was proved a fraud.’ He was almost shouting, or so it seemed in the entombed space of our bed. ‘You fell for her ruse. There’s no shame in that. She robbed you of your ring and would have had more if she could have got away with it.’

  No matter how much I wanted to believe him, no matter how much I rejected the idea of some supernatural force conjured up as nothing but plain deception, I couldn’t quite accept my innocence. ‘I craved him dead so I could have you.’

  ‘No, Frances. No!’ He knelt up, holding my upper arms, not quite shaking me. ‘If anyone is to blame it is me.’ He let me go, twisting his hands together as if squeezing liquid from a cloth. ‘I shouldn’t have allowed it to go so far. You’re entirely blameless. That whole business was corrupt. Your great-uncle’s scheming – oh, God.’ He shivered then, as if someone had walked over his grave. ‘I’m the guilty one, Frances. It was me. I killed my friend.’

  ‘You see, Nelly, I knew that and chose to do nothing. That’s why I have a black heart.’

  The girl has been hanging on to every word and is shaking her head. ‘That’s not true.’

  The fire is almost dead and Frances’s fingers are white with cold. She prepares for bed in silence, stuffing her hair into a cap so she cannot smell the bergamot in it, and slides under the covers almost fully clothed. Sometimes she thinks it would be better not to wake up.

  Him

  We left the Privy Council meeting. James intended, finally, to appoint a secretary of state, and tempers had flared over the matter, making for an atmosphere of stiff politeness as we filed out. Northampton was limping badly, leaning on me. He looked derelict, his skin sallow, eyes discoloured. It seemed to me that his smooth surface was rusting in places, making visible the years of hidden corruption – the secrets and lies.

  Nine months had passed since Thomas’s death and no one spoke of him but he was on my mind constantly. I had confronted Northampton about the haste in which he’d been buried.

  ‘Dear boy!’ he’d said, his insincerity like a smack to the face. ‘It was the only way to give your poor friend the dignity he deserved in death.’ He made the sign of the cross. ‘Awful business.’

  ‘You didn’t think to consult me?’ I stood my ground, holding his cold, hard gaze.

  ‘You were grieving. Such a terrible loss.’ I began to see he had an answer for everything and felt a fool for ever having trusted him. All the rumours I’d dismissed about his iniquity began to haunt me. But I was chained to him. It felt like a pact with the devil.

  We were the last to exit the council chamber, making slow progress. Loitering outside in the melée of the hall were three men I’d been trying to avoid for some months. I’d accepted favours from them all in return for appointments that I hadn’t yet fulfilled. On becoming Earl of Somerset I’d been beset by an endless stream of requests for patronage and had accepted the gifts on offer – some might call them bribes – making assurances without proper consideration. I was fast gaining a reputation as someone who promised much but delivered little.

  I avoided eye contact but one of the men was bullish and stood in our path. Northampton gave him short shrift. ‘If you want to speak to the earl, then make an appointment through the proper channels. Stand aside, or I’ll call the guard.’ Despite his enfeebled state, he was as intimidating as ever. The man slunk off, throwing me a poisonous glare, and the others melted away with him. Keeping at bay all those to whom I was indebted was proving problematic.

  We shuffled along. He talked of Frances, asking how I was finding married life. Frances was my world, and it was a world I guarded jealously, so I glibly joked that she was making a man of me, but would never have shared the depth of intimacy I felt. If people know what you love most, it is a fault line they can exploit to break you.

  Once the gallery was empty he pulled me into an alcove. ‘Listen, dear boy, I’m relying on you to make sure our man is installed as secretary. He’s the one to help us achieve the alliance we want.’ He looked at me directly. ‘It’ll resolve the King’s debt. You want to help the King, don’t you? Have a word with him.’

  It was not the first occasion Northampton had mentioned this but it was clear he hadn’t considered the possibility that I might not do his bidding. He was oblivious to the fact that I had already promised the position to Winwood, who had paid me a very large sum of money. It was Thomas who had championed Winwood and it became a point of personal honour that I fulfil his wish, even posthumously. It would be a signal to Northampton, too, that I wouldn’t be manipulated.

  It was Frances who had encouraged me to show him that I was my own man. ‘He’ll respect you all the more if you make it clear you are not simply the instrument of his will. I know Uncle very well,’ she had said. ‘I know how his mind works. If you always do exactly as he asks, you will never gain his admiration.’

  She was lying on her front, completely naked, on the floor beside the fire. Her narrow-hipped shape and long, slender limbs made her seem like an adolescent boy. Stripped bare like that, unencumbered by the trickery of clothes and disarmingly at ease with her nakedness, she was at her most perfect.

  She rolled over, transforming suddenly from boy to woman, and began to run her finger absently over her belly. I was that finger, traversing the undulating landscape of skin and muscle, skimming the edge of her pubic hair and up, round her navel, circling. ‘Uncle hates a lapdog.’

  Northampton was waiting for my response.

  I said firmly: ‘I’m afraid I can’t promote a man I don’t know.’

  I felt him tense but he maintained his surface calm. ‘He’s sympathetic to us.’

  I was fast coming to understand that what he meant by sympathetic was a shared open-mindedness in religious matters and a willingness to turn a blind eye. I imagined Thomas turning in his grave. I knew by then that Northampton planned to convert privately to Catholicism, which caused me to wonder if he thought he was dying. People tend to make amends with their faith when they feel their life is coming to an end. I am ashamed to say it had crossed my mind that his demise would be a relief.

  My response was noncommittal: ‘I’m sure he is.’

  Northampton fixed me with a menacing look. ‘I don’t think you fully understand the advantages of being one of us.’

  I found Frances with James, playing cards. They were laughing at something. I watched them unseen for a while. Watched the abandon of her laughter, measuring it, comparing it to how she laughed with me. Before my wedding, I had worried that James might not take to my wife. As a rule he didn’t like women. But I should have known that she would work her magic on him. He took to her – of course he did: she was perfect and seemed to have an innate understanding of what would please him.

  It was as if the pair of us belonged to him, and we did, I suppose, though I resented the nights I had to spend with him. Frances was adamant that I do my duty, and when I quizzed her as to whether she minded, she said, ‘If half of you is all I can have then I am happy with half of you.�
� But I wanted her to want all of me. I wanted her jealous and angry, as I was, about those lost nights, and came to see that there was an innate coolness to Frances, which made my desire burn even more ferociously.

  I stepped out of the shadows. ‘Thank goodness you’re here,’ James said, waving his hand of cards. ‘I’m in deficit, three shillings, to your wife. I need your help, come.’ He shuffled along to make a space for me to sit and continued playing but even with my help he didn’t win. Frances was simply too canny.

  ‘It’s only luck,’ she said.

  ‘I have a riddle,’ said James. ‘I wound the heart and please the eye. Tell me what I am, by and by.’ He was looking at me. ‘Come on, Robbie, don’t you know?’

  ‘I loathe word games.’

  ‘I’m sure your wife has the answer.’ I hated him in that moment and the thought blasted through my mind of some violent accident befalling him, a piece of the plasterwork crashing from the ceiling, knocking him dead.

  ‘I came to tell you about the council meeting.’

  ‘Wound the heart and please the eye,’ repeated Frances. ‘It’s beauty, of course!’

  ‘Sharp as a pin,’ oozed James. They shared a smile.

  I began to list the potential candidates for secretary – who on the council was backing whom. James had deliberately remained absent to see if he could flush out the true opinions of his councillors.

  He sighed pointedly. ‘If you’re determined to ruin our pleasure, why don’t you tell me who you think I should appoint?’

  ‘Winwood.’

  ‘Winwood!’ said Frances. ‘Is that a good idea?’

  The tic in James’s eye began to judder. He turned towards her. ‘This is men’s business.’ Frances was seething, but part of me was pleased to see their friendly bond fractured. ‘Why Winwood?’ He had turned back to me, shutting her out. ‘You don’t find him intransigent?’

  ‘He can be stubborn, it’s true, but I think that might be a good thing. It means he knows his own mind.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ James seemed doubtful. ‘He’s rather more fervently religious than I’d like ideally ... I suppose you could continue handling the more delicate foreign business. We wouldn’t want Winwood disrupting things. You know what I mean.’ What he meant was, it wouldn’t be wise to let Winwood get in the way of his hoped-for Spanish deal.

  I noticed that Frances was still simmering, her expression rigid. ‘It might appease the Essex crowd,’ I added, ‘to have someone with such obvious Protestant sympathies appointed. If they become too disenfranchised they may seek new ways to cause problems.’

  ‘You’ve thought of everything.’ He was impressed and I felt the glow of his approval.

  Frances had begun to gather up the cards, putting them back in their box. She caught me then with a look of displeasure that cut me to the quick.

  ‘Well, you’d better call Winwood in to see me,’ said James. ‘The sooner the better.’

  Once we had left, Frances said, ‘Why in Heaven’s name did you do that?’

  ‘Not here,’ I hissed. We walked in silence through the crowded corridor until we arrived at our rooms.

  The minute the door was shut she turned to me. ‘When I suggested you stand up to Uncle, I didn’t expect you to do something as reckless as favour a Howard enemy.’

  ‘I don’t think you understand –’

  She snapped back, ‘Don’t patronize me, like he does. I understand everything – everything.’ She was staring strangely into the fire. ‘I’ve seen it. Seen how it all unfolds.’

  ‘Whatever do you mean, you’ve seen it?’

  She took my hand, opening the palm. ‘I saw it here.’ She half turned. ‘When we first met.’ The flames scintillated in her eyes. She folded my fingers into a fist, lifting it to kiss the knuckles, hooking her gaze into me, whispering, ‘Please, Robert, I beg you, don’t let that appointment go through. That man will come back and bite you.’

  The air seemed alive, and an image infiltrated my mind’s eye of Thomas, so vivid it was as if time had folded back on itself. I could hear him, clearly, as if he was in the room with me: You owe me, Robin, and this would be a way ... It was Winwood he talked of and I knew I couldn’t refuse him, even in the face of Frances’s pleading. His gelding broke into a canter, leaving me behind, watching his back, so straight – he always looked fine in the saddle, better than anyone. Then he turned and flashed me that rare lightning smile.

  I want to remember you like that, Tom, not the image that haunts me: your glass stare from sunken sockets and your mouth, flaccid and bruised. Was it painful, Tom, or did you slip into sleep and never wake up?

  Her

  The windows are open allowing the outside in: the distinct scent of fresh-cut grass and birdsong mingles with the calls of the men on the river. But there are the other sounds, the sounds you wouldn’t know a human could make unless you had been in a place like this.

  Frances hums to keep those noises at bay while she practises Nelly’s card trick. The cards are succumbing to her will at last, when the lieutenant arrives wearing a grave expression, his rodent eyes flicking about as if he is guilty of something.

  ‘Are you here to tell me a date has been set for my trial?’

  ‘I’m so very sorry.’ He seems devastated to have to impart the news. ‘You have a week –’ He stumbles slightly over his words and his small hands pick at his gloves.

  She looks at Nelly to see her reaction. Perhaps she knew of this already – Heaven knows what she is party to. Nelly is on the brink of tears. In the five months since Frances arrived in this place she has never seen the girl cry.

  He didn’t know I was awake and watching him through slitted eyes. He was perched on the edge of the bed gazing at my husband. In his nightclothes he looked quite ordinary, like the man who lays the fire or the one who tacks up the horses. But the way he looked at Robert wasn’t ordinary: it was the exact look that Robert had when he looked at me.

  I wondered if the King regretted giving me his lover. There were signs that the novelty of his beloved favourite having a female plaything seemed to be fading. I lay still as a corpse. Robert made a little groan, beginning to wake and they kissed, tongues writhing like fish in a net. Robert shifted, releasing the smell of our mingled bodies that had been trapped in the bed. I felt hot, too hot, but couldn’t throw off the covers without drawing attention to myself.

  ‘Not now,’ whispered Robert.

  The King made a noise of resignation as he pulled away. ‘Any news?’

  Each morning he asked this. He was more desperate than either of us to know whether I was carrying a child. I wasn’t. I was glad. Some happy alchemy occurred when Robert and I were together, making ours a charmed existence that I feared a baby might fracture. We were courted by everyone. No one could touch us, except perhaps the King. Even Uncle was satisfied.

  A soft tap at the door catapulted the King to stand by the window. Robert nudged me, thinking I was asleep. I clambered from the bed, dragging on my robe and turning my back so he wouldn’t look at me, with that hungry longing, and would give the King his attention instead. It was Anne at the door with news that Uncle had taken a turn for the worse.

  Father was there when Anne and I arrived, pacing the hall, restless, barking orders to the servants. ‘He’s been asking for you.’ He sounded brittle and vindictive. As a child I’d learned to avoid him in that mood, but on that day, there was no choice. ‘Over here first!’

  He yanked me to one side, handling me roughly. ‘I’ve learned that it was your husband,’ he spat, as if he couldn’t bear to say Robert’s name, ‘who recommended the appointment of Winwood.’ He had my finger bent back. I shook off his hold. ‘Explain to me how that happened.’ His face was pushed up close to mine. ‘I thought we could trust you.’

  ‘I did everything in my power to stop him, but he wouldn’t listen.’ I was up against the panelling and turned my face so I didn’t have to look at him. I often wondered if Father’s dislike of me stemmed
from Uncle’s fondness. He must have known of the rumours, the doubts about my paternity.

  ‘Let’s hope he doesn’t become a fly in our ointment.’ His mouth was a pinched line but, for all his posturing, Father had never really had Uncle’s talent for intimidation. ‘In future keep your husband in line.’

  My retort was sharp: ‘Or what?’

  His lip curled but Anne’s small cough made his eyes flick up to the stairs where she was on the half-landing, looking down on us. ‘Just do as you’re told.’

  Uncle’s room was quiet as a church and the scent of incense hung in the air, only half masking the stench of decay. Dr Mayerne was with him, which puzzled me, for Uncle had always seemed to disapprove of what he called Mayerne’s ‘unconventional methods’. Methods, he’d always maintained, that had brought on the prince’s death. The doctor stepped aside as Anne and I approached, going to the far end of the chamber where Uncle’s greyhound was curled in the only small patch of sun that penetrated the heavily curtained space.

  Uncle seemed small and feeble, dwarfed by the expanse of bed and acres of spotless linen emblazoned with the Howard arms. In a weak and ponderous voice, he told us he’d recently heard mass. ‘The priest will still be loitering, no doubt, waiting to come back and give me extreme unction.’ Shock rendered me dumb.

  Though he had been deteriorating for some months, I hadn’t fully registered the extent of his physical diminishment until that moment. His bony wrists poked from the crisp, bright cuffs of his nightshirt, and his face was grey with pain, eyes opaque. I did my best to hide my response but Uncle knew me too well. ‘It’s monstrous what the march of death does to us, isn’t it, Frances?’

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t patronize him with a lie, and silently asked God to give me strength. Anne hovered half in and half out of the door. ‘Is that Mistress Turner?’ he asked. ‘Come here. Let me see you properly.’ Anne approached to stand beside the bed. ‘Time has been kind to you, my dear.’