by Lucy Jago
As a hundred jewelled hands finally came to rest the King called out, ‘My commendations to yer tailor, Lady Frances. We like our Court to shine.’ Frankie inclined her head but mine fair burst with pride. That morning I had never been to Court; by dinnertime the King himself was commending my work.
Frankie found my hand and squeezed it.
The King grew bored of us then and turned his attention to the young man beside him, who was as fresh and lovely as Frankie herself. He possessed male and female beauty equally. I guessed him to be about twenty or twenty-two summers, half his sovereign’s age, beardless and smooth-skinned as a girl yet broad in the shoulder. His fair hair was elaborately frizzed around his face and from one ear dangled a sapphire of a size that could only have come from a King. Not yet masked for Court life, his face revealed the heart below and I found in it the melancholy of a man needing love. He gently took the worm from his monarch’s hand. As he examined it, the King fussed over him as fondly as any besotted man would his wife. He patted his cheek and smoothed a fold in the young man’s collar, picking off a loose thread. But when the youth glanced up it was not at the King but at Frankie. She immediately looked away and I wondered who he was, and for how long he had been flirting with her.
‘Go on, Stallenge,’ the King commanded.
A man standing at the end of the tables began to talk of mulberry trees, white and red, their leaves the diet of the worms. After a very short time the Court grew restless and the guide ushered his audience towards the adjoining shed. The King kept the young man as close as the miniature greyhound that shivered at his heels. The dog was so thin that every bone was visible through its pelt, the tail an osseous crescent no thicker than a pencil line. In that moment I understood that our monarch felt as vulnerable as his elfin hound. From this sprang his need for strong wine and padded doublets. His dread was not without foundation. I felt sad for him.
I was not so self-assured as to push my way amongst nobles and was last to enter the second shed. It was lighter and cooler than the one we had left, festooned with thick cobwebs in which lodged a multitude of small, opaque orbs.
‘That was what my mother gave me,’ Frankie whispered, making space for me by her side. She was treating me as an equal and a friend, although I was neither. Several courtiers looked me up and down, then turned away without so much as a nod.
‘In here cocoons are harvested,’ Master Stallenge continued. ‘We will soon outstrip France in the production and finishing of silk.’ The King clapped and all followed suit.
‘Every county will buy ten thousand mulberry trees at a shilling a hundredweight,’ the King announced, ‘and I expect you courtiers to do the same. Sir Robert will be the first.’ The youth at his side bowed and the clapping grew strained; this was applause with hatred in its rhythm, smiling with jealousy beneath. I gadded very often to the theatre, it was my greatest pleasure after fashioning, but here was a performance finer than any I had seen, and it thrilled me to have a walk-on part.
‘That is the King’s new favourite. Sir Robert Carr. Everyone hates him,’ whispered Frankie.
I remembered George’s response when I had quizzed him about rumours that pursued the King. ‘Sodomy is punishable with death, even to mention it is a crime. The King has written at length to condemn it in the strongest terms,’ he had said, as if from a pulpit.
‘Of course. But what have you observed?’
My husband paused for a long time. He and I were ever honest with each other.
‘He has decried drinking and swearing with equal fervour yet indulges prodigiously in both.’
‘That Sir Robert might have ample space in which to plant his mulberries,’ the King continued, ‘it pleases us to grant upon him royal lands abutting his estate of Sherbourne.’
Sir Robert Carr looked abashed, as if the King’s gifts were heaped upon him whether he sought them or not. At his side, however, was a man who appeared vexed.
‘Who is the cockerel?’ I asked quietly.
Frankie smothered a smile to save her paint. ‘Sir Thomas Overbury, Carr’s bosom friend,’ she whispered. ‘He is hated even more.’
His head was unusually narrow with deeply indented temples, the divine fingers that pulled him out so thin from his original clay having left their mark. On top was a cockscomb of red hair and his beard was clipped to a sharp point. The avian impression was completed by a very thin nose and small, darting eyes that missed nothing and disdained all. He seemed like a fighting cock on his post, surveying his territory for intruders. I wondered at the King’s favourite wanting the protection of this strutting companion.
We moved into the final room and came to a halt before simmering vats. Thousands of cocoons danced on the surface.
‘When boiled sufficiently,’ explained Stallenge, ‘the end of a cocoon comes free, is caught and threaded on to a wheel, unravelling in a single filament as long as St James’s Park.’ The sight of dead caterpillars floating on the heaving water appeared to disturb Frankie but I did not share her dismay. I thought the beauty of silk worth the lives of a few grubs.
‘Is there a use for the dead worms?’ asked one.
‘They could grace your table!’
‘Would you like that better than beef?’
‘The poor could eat them!’
‘A feast for orphans!’
Eventually Master Stallenge made himself heard above the braying courtiers.
‘They can be used as bait. Fish appreciate them very much.’
Over the sniggering came a serious, female voice. It was Frankie’s. My skin prickled at her bravery.
‘If the babies are boiled, how do butterflies emerge to make more?’
‘A good question, my lady,’ said Master Stallenge, a man keen to prove himself modern by not taking fright at a woman speaking in public. ‘Some of the cocoons are allowed to hatch into butterflies. The eggs they produce become the next batch of silkworms. And so it continues,’ he said with a flourish.
At that moment a corpse arrived.
A tall, skeletal man of extreme pallor pushed his way to the front of the group. He seemed fit for the grave. His face was painted with a thick layer of lead that did not quite disguise the livid spots disfiguring his complexion. A straggly black beard showed very dark against his pallid cheeks. Frankie stepped backwards, crushing my foot.
‘Declare yourself, man!’ said the King, rattled. He had too often been subject to kidnap and assassination plots to take such an appearance calmly. The figure bowed to him stiffly.
‘Sire, I am Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex.’
This! This was Frankie’s husband?
I was astonished. I had last seen him at his wedding, exactly three years before, and had been surprised that the son of a handsome hero could have no notable features other than the thinness of his legs and the bitterness of his expression. He was but fourteen then, and I had expected time and travel in Europe to improve him. It had not. George had told me that the Earl’s nickname at Court was ‘Grumbling Essex’, which I found too mild a jibe for this pitted lad who whipped his wife. It was well known that his father had not written to him on the eve of his execution, an exceptional disregard that had left his ten-year-old son with the conviction that everyone around him was more fortunate than he. It seemed to me that the growth of his heart had been stunted at that moment, by the implacable hatred he felt towards those he deemed responsible for his father’s execution, namely Lord Salisbury and his allies, the Howards.
‘Ye’re back then,’ said the King, eyeing the Earl’s spots with alarm. ‘Ye’ve been ill?’
‘I have, Sire, but I am recovered.’
The King looked doubtful. ‘Come to claim yer bonnie lassie?’
The Earl of Essex followed the King’s gaze. He looked blankly at Frankie until a start of recognition made him flush. His eyes travelled with increasing alarm over her high heels and exposed ankles, yellow ruffs and cuffs, the armature of clothing, her painted face, up to the pink feat
hers that made her much taller than him. Where was the bleeding, snivelling girl he had chastised that morning? He forgot, or refused, to bow to her. Frankie’s face was as blank as a new-plastered wall.
‘With such a wife, ye might need to visit a tailor yerself, man!’ laughed the King, and the whole Court joined in, though I sensed with reluctance. Essex was dressed in plain English wool to plain English design; those who could afford velvet but did not wear it, did so to denounce fashion, luxury and everything else originating in Catholic lands. No Spanish leather in glove or boot, no Venetian velvet or embroidery, enlivened his appearance. The young Earl had even refused to visit Catholic countries during his tour of Europe. I wondered then, not for the first time that day, who had considered it a sensible notion to marry him into a Catholic family for whom luxury and display were more important than air?
Humiliating her husband was not Frankie’s plan and she curtsied deeply to him. He ignored her and Robert Carr smiled; it would be a kindness for him to flirt with a beautiful woman whose husband appeared only to scowl.
‘Come, lad, give the lass yer arm!’ said the King, whose love of peace was as controversial as his love for men. Essex had no choice but to allow Frankie to put her hand on his forearm.
The King draped his own arm across the shoulders of his favourite and shuffled out, his dog close behind. Essex followed with Frankie, who winked at me as she passed.
After the King and Robert Carr had left, Frankie’s husband and parents climbed into her father’s coach. As Frankie joined them, she offered me her own carriage to take me home. Her mother and husband looked aggrieved. Did the Countess of Suffolk regret her order to me? Had I done too good a job?
‘Go on, Anne,’ said Frankie, laughing, the paint cracking outwards from her lips like an eruption, ‘then my coachman will know where to find you.’
The nobles departed in order of rank, with much shouting and jostling to enforce precedence.
‘Fetter Lane,’ I said to Frankie’s driver when only our vehicle remained. I climbed up, for all the world like Elijah into his chariot, and sat forward on the upholstered bench so as to be seen. We travelled familiar streets made strange and important by the golden frame through which I viewed them. By the time we left Westminster and joined the Strand I was accustomed to the stares (how quickly we adjust to admiration) and settled back in comfort. I thought of Frankie and the Earl of Essex, children of opposite sides of the divided Court, married to heal wounds … or rather, to bring Essex to heel. The plan to muzzle him and his supporters through marriage to Frankie was optimistic, some might say unpardonable. I grasped at that moment, with equal dread and pride, what her mother had understood at the sight of Frankie’s wounded back; the marriage, vital to Howard interests, would rupture unless a remedy could be found, and the person best placed to provide it was me.
3
I waited to hear from Frankie as if from a new lover. Towards the end of January, I gave her up as a beautiful dream.
It was a mild but wet winter and I was content to keep indoors with my family, away from skidding carts and starving dogs. Poor harvests and high taxes were creating discontent in the markets and drinking shops. Not a day passed when I did not thank the Lord, my keeping angel and husband George for our smart new house on Fetter Lane, with its brick walls, glazed windows and large garden giving on to the fields of Holborn, sufficient space in which we and our six children could breathe. Nonetheless filth and pestilence were ever at the door in this City of Babel. I requested our cook to make a daily batch of bread to hand out to the beggars outside St Andrew’s and under the gibbet at the junction with Fleet Street, but it assuaged my conscience more than their hunger.
‘Paddy goes everywhere with an armed guard now, Kennedy has twice tried to kill him,’ George said, chuckling as he watched me attire a wax poppet, a French Baby, with a new design for Lady Kennedy’s approval. She had requested something daring in which to attend the Queen’s Masque, having grown too thin for her heavy Scotch gowns. As I stitched, I pictured her running bare-legged through the streets at night in nothing but her nightgown, chased by her husband who had discovered her in bed with Sir William, George’s friend and President of the College of Physicians.
George was sitting almost in the fire, his round form wrapped in a blanket, books all about him and his great white cat on his knee. We had no monkeys or finches on account of this cat, despite the children’s begging for them, and I loved the animal more because of it. The room was littered with the flotsam of children’s play, every surface covered in bottles of George’s medicine, penny broadsides, some small trinkets one of the children had found, all coated with cat hair and ash from the fire that was continuously burning to keep out the damp. The shutters muffled sound from the street. I felt safe in this patch of warmth and light; several times I had thought to tidy but had not found the inspiration to do so, it being dark and cold beyond this room.
‘Mama,’ said Katherine, our youngest daughter, barging into the room. She was swathed in so thick a shawl only the top half of her face could be seen. My neighbours laughed at the care I took of my children, jibing that I was a ‘fuss-a-lot’, but when their own fell ill they ran to me, shamefaced, for remedies. Katherine’s eyes were huge with wonder and she held before her a painted doll I had not seen before. ‘There’s a princess at the door,’ she announced. Maggie, my aged maid, trudged past carrying a cloak with great dignity, for all the world like she was properly trained. I rose quickly, cheeks burning at the state of the room.
Frankie appeared in the doorway.
‘Your ladyship!’ I could not call her Frankie, so glorious did she appear amongst the detritus of family life. George pushed the cat from his knee as he stood and Katherine slipped her free hand into Frankie’s. How trusting are the young and greedy.
‘Forgive my intrusion,’ she said, making way for Mary, who elbowed past Frankie’s skirts to stare at her sister’s doll. ‘I would have come sooner but have been daily required to rehearse the Queen’s Masque. I am to play a warrior queen who leads the wives of my kingdom to slaughter their husbands!’ Her laughter was strained and her eyes darted around but rested on nothing. I ushered her in.
‘May I present Dr Turner?’
‘My husband speaks very highly of your care.’
‘Gratified,’ George said, bowing again but not smiling. He gestured to Frankie to take his chair and made to leave the room.
‘Do stay if you will, Dr Turner,’ she said. Frankie wanted something from us, something more than I had already promised. I, who knew George’s face much better than my own, saw the dislike in it. It was not for Frankie herself, but for the Howards. He shuffled awkwardly through the clutter to perch on my low stool. At that point, three more of our children jostled their way in and stared at Frankie most rudely.
‘Please introduce us,’ she said. Neither George nor I really wanted her to meet them, I sensed it in us both. We had assiduously protected them all these years from every source of danger, humoral, accidental or divine, with tonics and medicines, watchful care, prayers and amulets of wolf’s tooth and coral. My children, though released from my belly, still fill me completely with love, for all the cares they bring with them. Nothing is more important to me than their safety, health and affection. Frankie’s arrival was like that of the Trojan horse; we did not yet know what she carried within her magnificent carapace.
‘Your ladyship,’ I said, as the last child crammed into the room, ‘may I present our eldest son, Thomas, fifteen summers old and with a head for business.’ I did not add that I wished he were our second son and not our heir, for he is a surly, argumentative slugabed. Our latest battle with him was over a sword. Even a simple rapier costs the same as a good horse. He wanted it so that he might run with other roaring boys, get into brawls and be called ‘gentleman’. As Thomas is clumsy, slow in wit but fast in temper, we were resisting his furious begging, but it was wearing. ‘Our second son, John, is fourteen and hopes to enter
Oxford,’ which words did no justice to this serious soul who made up for his brother’s unbalanced humours with consideration beyond his years. He worried too much about our good opinion of him and sometimes I hoped he would do something naughty. ‘Barbara is sixteen and exceeding excellent at stitching and tinctures.’ Frankie looked at her keenly. They were but two years apart, yet Frankie had been married for three already. ‘She is not yet betrothed,’ I said, in some vague hope that a connection with a noblewoman would bring about a better match. ‘Mary here is just five, Katherine is four and Henry will soon be three.’ The little ones, with reddish-brown hair where the elder were fair, had careful manners when not taken by surprise and all of them curtsied, even Henry. His sisters nudged him and he switched to a bow, his face steaming.
‘You bow graciously, Henry, your parents must be very proud of you,’ said Frankie. ‘I see you are also strong in limb. There is a sack outside the door, oblige me by fetching it.’
With an air of great importance, Henry pushed his way through his siblings and struggled back with the sack, hauling it over one shoulder. She reached down and pulled from it a smaller bag, which she gave to him. Henry tipped this up and out fell a red leather ball and nine wooden pins with carved faces. He looked at Frankie and then away, then threw himself at her and wrapped his arms around her neck, saying, ‘Fankye, fankye.’ She held him close for as long as he would let her. He kissed her repeatedly on the cheek until all but Thomas laughed, then jumped down and set to arranging the ninepins in fighting formation.
There were finest Italian marbles for Thomas, made not of clay but of coloured glass with what seemed to be cat’s eyes within. He looked intrigued until Frankie explained that they were an artifice and not real eyes. For Barbara, a bottle of curious shape filled with perfume. For John, Camden’s book of histories and proverbs. For Mary, a doll like her sister’s, only with different hair and clothes. She blushed and reached for it gingerly, as if Frankie might be a spirit. Mary is a polite and tender child; she only forgot to thank Frankie because she was overwhelmed by the gift. I did not remind her, as I would with the others, for her intentions are always of the best. She has a weak chest, is much prone to coughing, and I cared for her with minute attention.