The Poison Bed: 'Gone Girl meets The Miniaturist'

by E C Fremantle

  The woman emerged, finally in her clothes, and was not what I’d expected at all. She was compact with a round face and lovely wavy auburn hair that made her seem prettier than she was. But she was old, perhaps even old enough to be his mother.

  She slid by me with a little curtsy and out of the door, leaving the two of us alone.

  ‘Look,’ I said, at last finding my voice. ‘Shall we start again – imagine I never saw her?’ I went to perch on the bed beside him. The covers smelt musty, as if they hadn’t been aired in months. We sat in silence. One of his dogs, curled up by the fire, started twitching in its sleep. He was folding and unfolding his hands, which were long and fine. I’d noticed them at our wedding and thought them quite lovely, imagined him strumming a lute with those fingers and singing me love songs, silly girl that I was. I reached over to touch them.

  ‘Get off!’ He pulled away, his face blurred with tears. That shocked me. Weeping was scorned in our household, even for the girls, and in childhood I’d developed strategies to control myself. If I bit the inside of my cheek until I could taste blood, it helped.

  ‘I don’t mind.’ I didn’t mind. Uncle had warned me on the journey up that my husband might have mistresses. I made my voice soft. ‘We barely know each other yet. But we have to, you know, do what married couples do.’

  He still refused to look at me, so I undid the tie of my nightgown, slid it over my head and lay down on the bed. Some girls were shy of nakedness, but not me. I wasn’t ashamed of my body. It didn’t make sense to me that God had given us bodies yet insisted we take no pleasure in them.

  He turned to me, seething. ‘You brazen little whore.’ His hands were fisted, knuckles white.

  ‘But I’m your wife.’ As I said it, the thought struck me that I was not really his wife, not until we consummated our marriage.

  He didn’t respond, just threw my nightgown at me and I fumbled my way back into it. ‘Now, get out of here.’ His silent anger abraded me as I scrabbled on the floor for my slippers, finding them eventually and slinking from the room, wishing myself invisible.

  The mistress was skulking in the shadows outside. If I’d had more confidence I would have said something to her, shown her I wasn’t cowed, but I crept by in silence as if I were the impostor.

  I made my way straight to Uncle’s rooms, where he was still up, playing dice with Harry. Uncle bellowed with laughter as I told them what had happened. ‘You can work out what to do with a man surely, Frances. It’s not so difficult.’

  I was grateful for his lightness, for it had been so awkward and heavy. ‘I tried my best.’

  ‘I’m sure you did – lad must need his head examining.’ He patted my hand and reassured me that we’d become accustomed to each other in time.

  ‘He called me a brazen whore,’ I said.

  Uncle snorted. ‘He should be so lucky.’

  ‘Bastard,’ growled Harry. ‘I should run my sword through him for that.’ It was just like Harry to jump to my defence. He was a hothead, whereas I had learned the value of appearing calm, whatever the circumstances.

  ‘No trouble! Do you hear?’ said Uncle, with a daunting firmness.

  I asked him what I should do about the mistress. He advised me to do nothing, adding, ‘She’ll disappear eventually. They all do.’ He shook the dice in his fist and rolled them on to the table. ‘And if she doesn’t, she can be made to disappear.’

  My stomach shrank, and I met Harry’s eye. We were both thinking of our childhood chaplain. Harry and I had found him suspended from a beam in the stables, his dangling shoes dripping urine. He had crossed Uncle. It was called suicide.

  When I left them, instead of going to bed I went to the chapel where I knelt in the gloom, silently pleading with God to make my husband love me.

  Him

  ‘Tell me what happened in the Prince’s rooms.’ The tic in James’s eye was pronounced, which usually meant he was tired or worried or both.

  ‘He refused the proposal.’ I forced myself to concentrate, to stop for a moment my obsessive mulling over how to make Frances Howard my mistress.

  ‘I didn’t expect him to accept, if I’m honest.’ He lifted his arms so I could undo his jacket, which was too tight, straining against the fastenings. ‘It’s all very well Henry wanting a Protestant bride but none of those German girls has two pennies to rub together. He’s so brimming with principles. He’ll understand one day that things are not so straightforward.’

  I knew what he meant by ‘one day’: the day Prince Henry became King. ‘It won’t come soon. Plenty of life in you yet. You Stuarts are robust as they come.’

  ‘If an assassin doesn’t get me,’ he said bitterly, shrugging himself out of the garment, releasing a musky waft.

  We fell silent. The talk had riled me, and my mind began to churn on the fact that if James died my own position would be precarious, unless I found a way to shore myself up. I was painfully aware of my lack of powerful relations. I rinsed a cloth in a basin of water and began to wipe it over his chest. His body had lost some of its tautness, but for a man in his mid-forties he was still sinewy and strong. He always said I made him feel young again but I wondered if one day the twenty-two years between us would have the opposite effect.

  ‘Doubtless Southampton and all the rest of the Essex crowd, who cluster about my boy like flies on shite, pray nightly that I’ll drop dead and leave them with a young king in their pocket. They’d help me into my grave if they could get away with it. And they’d be at war with Spain before my body was cold.’

  His knee began to jig. I gently placed my hand to steady it, stroking back and forth, still unable to shake off thoughts about my own future.

  ‘They all think they want a soldier king who’ll seek glory by going to war. But if they had what they wished for they’d see that war is a beastly business. If you learn a single thing from me, Robbie, let it be that diplomacy is a far greater weapon.’ He paused, as if deep in thought.

  ‘Why not get rid of Southampton?’

  He gave me a wry look. ‘Trying to play them at their own game? That’s not like you.’ I wanted to qualify what I’d said, tell him I hadn’t been serious. I didn’t want him to think of me like that, but he continued talking. ‘Was young Essex there?’

  ‘No, but his wife was.’ Her smile flashed through my mind.

  ‘Frances Howard – she’s wasted on that charmless pup. He’s been a disappointment, that one. Nothing like the spirit of his father.’

  I combed his hair and rubbed ointment into his dry skin. It was worse than usual, raised and sore in patches. I preferred him peeled back to his human self with all its frailties, the king set aside, because in those moments of intimacy we were just two ordinary men and, in some strange way, we were equal – it was an illusion, of course.

  ‘Henry challenged me to a fight. I accepted.’ I replaced the lid on the ointment, watching his frown take hold.

  ‘For God’s sake, Robbie, you can’t go –’

  ‘Just a fencing match.’ Taking out my pipe, I pressed a pinch of tobacco into its bowl.

  His expression softened. ‘I thought …’

  ‘What do you take me for?’

  ‘I suppose you let him win?’

  ‘Actually, no.’ I grinned, lighting my pipe, inhaling deeply and expelling a stream of smoke.

  ‘I bet Henry didn’t like that.’ He laughed, and I knew I had him in my clutches. There’s power in humour. Just ask the playwrights.

  ‘In fact, your son was perfectly chivalrous. It was Southampton who didn’t like it. Should’ve seen his face – like a monkey’s arse.’

  ‘Oh, Robbie,’ he sputtered, pulling me towards him. ‘What would I do without you to cheer me up?’ He wrapped his arms around me, trapping me, pressing his mouth over mine. The pungent ointment, with his smell beneath it, made me suddenly nauseous.

  I had a momentary vision of Frances’s black eyes boring through my surface and was glad James didn’t have sight of my face
as I feared my disgust was spelled out on it.

  I pulled away slightly, taking another draw on my pipe but it had gone out. ‘Northampton arrived for a private conversation with Henry. He asked to see me later. I don’t know why. He’s never shown any interest in me before.’

  ‘Watch him,’ James said. ‘He’s bound to want something but it will be well disguised. Likely he wants to get to me through you. So, bear that in mind when he flatters you, which he will.’ He caressed the side of my face with rough fingers.

  ‘But he has your favour anyway, doesn’t he? Don’t all the Howards?’

  ‘At present, yes – but Northampton knows better than most that favour needs to be kept warm.’ James stifled a yawn.

  ‘You’re tired. You’ve been up since dawn. Why don’t you rest?’ Really, I wanted to be free of him for a while and left alone to unpick the morning’s events. I patted the bed.

  He sat. ‘Lie down with me, Robbie. Take this off.’ He was pulling at my sleeve, looking at me with heavy eyes.

  As I stroked his hair, his free hand wandered to my crotch and his breath deepened. ‘Take it off. I want to look at you.’ He was more insistent. ‘Since when were you so coy?’ He was losing his patience, still tugging at my jacket.

  A vivid image of Frances, her finger in her mouth, distracted me and I knew he’d misinterpret my arousal.

  But he pulled his hand away, drawing something, a fold of paper, from my sleeve. ‘What’s this?’

  I snatched it back. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘Just some powders the doctor advised I take for my sore throat.’

  He looked at me, head tilted. ‘I wasn’t aware you were unwell.’

  I couldn’t tell if he believed my lie. ‘It’s nothing, really.’ I stashed the fold back in my sleeve. It contained Frances’s discarded broken nail.

  Just then, thankfully, a servant knocked. We hastily pulled ourselves back together and I went to open the door. He’d come to conduct me to Northampton House. James complained as I gathered my things. ‘The wretch! What the hell does he want with you anyway?’

  We needed each other, James and I, in our own way. I lacked a father and he … Well, I cannot speak for him. The love between a mature man and a youth was the purest kind there was, he’d always maintained. ‘You see, Robbie,’ he’d said of it, ‘women are inherently deceitful with their primping and preening and face paint. You never know what they really are, while a man shows his true self to the world.’ Now it made me think of Frances’s clean scrubbed face.

  Evening had fallen by the time I arrived at Northampton House. The place was designed to impress, making even Whitehall seem tawdry. Its polished surfaces gleamed and its ceiling was high, high enough to accommodate the grand sweep of two staircases, which rose on either side of the hall, coming together at the top in a balcony. Having climbed, I stood a moment to marvel at the inlaid pattern of the floor below, before entering the gallery.

  Northampton was at the far end, framed in a doorway, inviting me in. His study was more intimate, lit by several lamps. On the desk was an abandoned game of chess but no sign of an opponent, just a dog, flat out on the floor, lifting its head to inspect the visitor.

  ‘Good of you to come.’ Something in the directness of his gaze reminded me of his great-niece, though his eyes were set in a bed of creases and were sharper, less warm certainly. Given his reputation, I was surprised by his friendliness, if a little wary.

  He poured wine. ‘I was told about your fencing match with the prince. Sounded most impressive.’ His manner teetered on the edge of ingratiating and I assumed he was buttering me up to petition James about a promotion, so I didn’t say much, hoping to draw him out. It couldn’t do me any harm to have a favour owed by a man like him.

  But no petition was mentioned. He talked about a tilt he was organizing, wondered whether I would participate. I showed some interest but remained equivocal. ‘Though don’t go falling off and break your leg, like you did once.’ He snorted with laughter. ‘Didn’t do you any harm, did it?’ He slapped me on the back. He was referring to the accident that had first drawn the King’s attention to me. Even before my bones had knitted together, I was in his bed.

  ‘I’m a better horseman, these days.’ I laughed too. The awful humiliation of that fall had long gone, smoothed over by the royal attention and my rapid elevation, other favourites booted aside to accommodate me.

  He explained the theme of the tilt and how he imagined it would be, how many horses, who would participate. ‘The Howards’ll make the Essex crowd look like a bunch of incompetents. Southampton and Pembroke think they’re fighters but we’ll put them in their place.’

  I knew where I stood in those court factions. I was part of neither. I belonged to the King. Perhaps I was like the Fool in the cards, blithely walking off the cliff while looking at the sky.

  ‘There’s no doubt, if you join us, you’ll outshine young Essex,’ he said.

  I knew he was appealing to my vanity but the prospect was tempting of having the opportunity to knock Frances’s husband off his horse, so I agreed to participate.

  He couldn’t hide his delight and repeated his statement about crushing the Essex crowd. It occurred to me that James might enjoy me taking sides for once too.

  ‘Have you read it?’

  I didn’t understand what Northampton was asking, until he pointed at a book on the table that I’d been absently running my fingers over. I picked it up. Tooled into the spine were the words Troilus and Criseyde. ‘I’m not really interested in poetry.’

  ‘You should be. Everyone speaks of the value of reading political tracts but I’ve learned some of my greatest lessons from poetry. And this’ – he snatched the book from under my hand – ‘this is majestic. It’s about a warrior destroyed by his passion for a woman – poisoned by love.’ He looked at me. ‘See, I’ve ignited your fascination.’

  I laughed, admitting he had.

  ‘Women!’ he said. ‘Cause of all problems, but wouldn’t the world be a poorer place without them?’

  ‘I’m not sure I agree with that. I’d say pride and greed were a greater source of problems than women.’

  He cocked his head, seeming surprised. Perhaps he was unaccustomed to being contradicted. ‘Well, this would suggest otherwise.’ He tapped the book. ‘You see, love can take you by surprise and make you its captive without your permission.’ He gave a snort of laughter. ‘Talking of women,’ he held the book up to his nose and inhaled deeply, ‘have you considered marriage?’

  I hadn’t expected that. ‘No, I suppose I haven’t,’ It was true. The idea had never crossed my mind. I was more concerned with finding my place in the world.

  ‘If you want my advice, pick a girl from an old family – good blood is always an asset.’

  ‘I’m very taken up with my duties to the King.’ One of the lamps began to flicker and smoke, dying, making half the room fall into darkness.

  ‘Of course you are, of course, but the King won’t want to see you without offspring, I’m sure.’ He refilled my cup. ‘I have a proposition.’ He looked at me, head tipped to one side, a congenial smile on his lips. I sensed that at last we had come to the true reason he had called for me. ‘A Howard girl might do the job. You and I could be very helpful to each other. We Howards have a good deal of influence.’ He paused. ‘And I like you.’ He patted my shoulder. ‘Now, I have a great-niece –’

  I cursed the blood rushing to my cheeks, as Frances had sprung uninvited to my mind, when I was well aware he couldn’t have meant her. I knew she had more than one unmarried sister. He didn’t seem to notice my embarrassment and began to rummage on his desk.

  ‘I have a picture of the girl somewhere.’ He finally passed me a miniature of a surprised-looking woman. I’d hoped for more of a similarity with her sister, at least a glimmer of that unquantifiable spirit. My disappointment must have shown, for he said, ‘I know she’s a little plain, but that’s not the point. The
point is that through her you could become part of our family.’ He took a taper and relit the extinguished lamp, having snipped off the blackened end of its wick. ‘Will you consider it?’

  I wasn’t utterly devoid of sense. I realized that he, too, might gain a good deal by connecting himself to me, given my proximity to the King. But the advantage wasn’t his alone. My mind whirred. An alliance with the great Howard tribe would prevent my downfall, should anything to happen to James.

  ‘I’ll certainly give it some thought,’ I said, returning the portrait to him as I made to leave.

  He smiled and held out the book. ‘Here, why don’t you borrow this? I think you’ll enjoy it.’

  I took it, thanking him. ‘Poisoned by love, you say?’

  He was still wearing that smile, and nodded slightly, raising his eyebrows, as if he knew something I didn’t.

  Her

  It is dark outside with rain driving at the windows, which at least masks the night chorus of inhuman sounds that threaten to drive Frances out of her mind. Damp has seeped into everything. She begins to uncoil her hair in the hope of drying it a little by the fire, pulling out the pins with numb fingers.

  The baby sighs in its sleep. Nelly, who seems strangely impervious to the cold, is shuffling her cards, making them appear to flow magically from one hand to the other in an uninterrupted stream. She has been teaching Frances one of her tricks but progress is slow. Frances wonders about Nelly’s tricks: there is something inscrutable about the girl, despite her willingness to talk about even the most intimate aspects of her life.

  ‘Let me help you.’ Nelly puts the cards down and goes to stand behind Frances, who hands her the comb. ‘The length of it.’ Nelly holds a half-unravelled plait carefully by the end, as if it might take her by surprise and bite her.

  Frances is remembering how as a child her great-uncle used to make her take her hair down for him to comb while he recounted the Howard stories for her, teaching her about power, how it is hard won and easy to lose. ‘You have to learn resilience,’ he used to tell her, twisting a hank around his fist and pulling hard. If she didn’t make a sound, not even allow her breath to tremble, he would stop.