A Net for Small Fishes

by Lucy Jago

6

  George fell ill. It was the end of February and snowing, a little over a year after Frankie and I first met. The winter was unusually severe; the Thames froze solid, the water wheel with it. My husband asked me to bring Arthur to him, which frightened me.

  ‘Shall I fetch Dr Mayerne?’ said Arthur when he arrived, bashing snow from his hat and boots.

  ‘He will kill George with his foul mercuries. Sir William Paddy has been. He says George has a stone in his bladder.’ Arthur stopped shaking out his cloak and looked at me. We both knew several men who had died of the stone and few who had recovered. I hung up his outer clothes and he followed me upstairs. George lay in bed, our two elder sons by his side. John nodded at Arthur but Thomas ignored us.

  George opened his eyes and beckoned me over, whispering that I must call for the priest. I sobbed on his chest until Arthur gently prised me off.

  ‘Thomas,’ I said when I had composed myself, ‘go to my brother, he knows where to find the priest.’

  ‘He doesn’t need a priest. He’s getting better,’ said Thomas.

  The difficulties with our eldest son began as soon as he could talk, which he did at a later age than his brothers and sisters. Year upon year of misunderstandings had hardened into a decade of hurt, on both sides, that brooked no improvement. Always, somewhere in my mind, I was trying to find a way to help him believe he belonged to our family as much as did his siblings, for he never seemed convinced of it.

  ‘I’ll go,’ said John and left the room. I heard the outside door close quietly.

  Arthur bent down and George began to whisper to him with an urgency that could mean only one thing. Arthur cried; his shameless tears were one reason I had fallen in love with him.

  ‘… There is little coin but a property …’ said George, staring at Arthur to compensate for his weak voice.

  ‘Do not trouble yourself,’ said Arthur, placing a hand on George’s forehead.

  ‘Do not trouble yourself!’ shouted Thomas, stepping forward as if to strike the visitor.

  Arthur flinched but George appeared not to hear him, although people passing in the street must have done. My husband took my hand and placed it in Arthur’s, as if officiating at a wedding. Thomas wrenched them apart.

  George was too weak to shout but he held up a hand to his son who, with vile looks, took a step back, cursing us both. Arthur wrapped his fingers firmly around mine and relief confused my heart. If George died, I would not be left alone with the care of six children and a large household because Arthur would protect us; but I did not want my husband to die. I rarely lauded his part in my happiness; he was unnoticed but essential, like the foundations of a house. Love for this man completely filled my heart and I lifted his hand and bent to kiss it while not letting go of Arthur with the other.

  At that moment the notary entered, ushered in by Barbara. If he thought it strange that a dying man’s wife was holding hands with another, he did not say so. Richard Weston also appeared and George beckoned to him.

  ‘Look after them …’

  ‘I promise,’ said Weston, although I wondered how this low-born, pugnacious man could serve us.

  ‘Are the signatories present?’ the notary asked. Arthur and I nodded.

  ‘Why is he an executor? Why not me?’ said Thomas.

  George closed his eyes and I squeezed my hands together to stop them from slapping my son.

  ‘“As shall please my executors, I give to my eldest son Thomas Turner …”’ The notary read on for a while but I was too upset to comprehend the formal and complex language of the Will until Thomas shouted: ‘A ring? You give him money to buy a ring, so he can marry your wife?!’

  ‘“… engraved, ‘May Fate Unite the Lovers’,”’ the notary droned on.

  ‘You want the world to know you are a cuckold?!’ yelled Thomas.

  George tried to speak but could not be heard.

  ‘Leave, Thomas,’ I said, quietly, hiding from George the fury inside me. The notary, acting as if Thomas was not in the room, held out the Will for us to sign but Thomas pushed Arthur away.

  ‘Who are you to sign my father’s Will?’

  I grabbed my son’s arm but he shoved me against the wall and pressed his forearm against my neck. It was not the first time Thomas had attacked me, but it hurt my heart more than my body. It pained me that he could not love his family, nor anyone, it seemed. In an instant Richard Weston twisted Thomas’s free arm behind his back and marched him from the room, Thomas screaming in pain and abusing Weston, Arthur and myself with foul curses that we heard until he reached the end of the long garden and was thrown into the fields beyond with the gate locked behind him. Even then, he pounded upon it for far longer than most people would have done before giving up.

  Arthur signed the Will and kissed George. ‘God bless and keep you,’ he said.

  ‘I will make you a caudle,’ I said to Arthur, but he shook his head and kept vigil beside George until the priest arrived, disguised as a porter.

  The youngest children trooped into the room and stood around the bed, quiet with fright. I lifted them, so that they could put their small arms around George’s barely moving chest and kiss his stubbly face. He did his best to kiss them back and rub their heads, but trembled with the effort.

  ‘“May the Lord Jesus Christ protect you and lead you to eternal life …”’ the priest recited. When he had given George the final sacraments he left, Arthur following to ensure he went unmolested. The young children were led out by old Maggie, weeping. Barbara gave her father a final kiss. John held George’s hand, looking white-faced and lost. He kissed his father and then left us alone. I lay down carefully beside my husband and whispered in his ear. George moved his head slightly so that my lips brushed his cheek.

  ‘Do you remember the day you came to ask my father for my hand? At first I thought you were too old, but you talked to me of your travels through Europe, of your studies in Venice, of how the women there wore their hair, of the fine mirrors, paintings, waterways and doges.’ Gently I threaded my hand into the open neck of his nightshirt and laid it over his heart, which trembled like a baby bird tumbled from its nest. I willed it to regain strength.

  ‘After we married, you would run your fingers over my skin and name the organs beneath. You told me the humours by which each was governed, the places where the soul is hidden. I delighted in your words.’ His cleverness had averted my attention from his freckled body, his rounded belly, his back as bristly as a hog’s. The pause between each shallow breath was growing longer. I blew on his lips, to lend him my breath. ‘While I waited for a child to be upon me, you spoke of medicine and alchemy, prouder of my wits than I was myself. The agony of that wait! Do you remember? We formulated the yellow starch recipe together, though how far from your interests that must have been. You cared only to distract me from my fears. And when Thomas was born, his tiny face so like yours, I understood how very deeply I loved you. I have never stopped loving you. Look how fine a family we have built.’

  I spoke to him of my mother, whom he would soon meet. The Norton family shattered without her to hold us together, shards landing close and far away, never again to form a whole. I was close to my sister, Mary, and younger brother, but not to my two elder brothers, by reason of their own characters and that of their wives. But I did not say that. I asked him to tell her that our marriage had been contented and blessed with children. She had talked to my sister and me often about love, but what we felt most was shame that she had lost her family position and brought upon us the condescension of our relatives; I regret that she died before I felt proud of her. ‘Tell her I love her,’ I whispered. For my father I had no message. If George met him in heaven, he also would struggle to find a good word to say.

  I heard the household go to bed and fall silent. I listened to the ‘goodnights’ and closing doors that brought silence to the street. At midnight, the watch ceased his pacing. The bells stilled, until only one tolled the passing hours. I did not sleep;
I listened, remembered and loved.

  Just after the bell at four, the rattle and wheeze of George’s breath ceased and he went quietly into eternal stillness. The little bird had perished.

  I lay as motionless as my husband, but the room seemed to fall away, pulling the light with it. My heart dropped in my chest and I was suddenly cold and increasingly distressed that my shivering did not stir George. I held him tightly, perhaps I cried, I recall only the aching desire for him to wake. I clung to him until noises in the street warned me that the city was coming to life. With a final kiss I said, ‘Goodbye.’

  I rose stiffly and opened the window so that the angels could collect his soul for heaven, then I left him and checked on the sleeping children who were unaware that their father had just died. I went downstairs to feed his beloved cat, which had been forgotten in the strangeness of the previous day. I checked the fire in the parlour, even though my companion of almost twenty years would never sit beside it again, talking to me about his patients. It was incomprehensible to me that ordinary things should be done, and yet I did them. The foundations had crumbled; we teetered above, but a strong wind would knock us over. I felt the press of his body against me, but now I was alone.

  As custom and my grief demanded, I stayed home for a fortnight and did not venture beyond the parish for three months. George was buried with all due pomp, his coffin escorted by the men of our family and fellow physicians. My brother Eustace told me how it passed off and I was glad that so many of his clients and friends had paid their respects. Many visited us at home, but only once. I spent much time stroking George’s cat and staring into the flames of small fires. The dirt and cold of March gave way to spring, but I did not venture into it for fear of tainting beauty with sorrow. For the children I put on a smile and gave them enough love for George and me both, but I was shaken. It was not only grief for my husband, but for myself. Mistress Turner was dead, toppled into the grave as irrevocably as my husband’s body. Only thirty-four years old and still so much to give, but I was become a shadow, a ghost in black and grey. Widow Turner. Widows on the whole are a sorry lot, poorer than the cats on the street.

  In May, the King of France was fatally stabbed by a Catholic fanatic. In response, sentiment in the City of London against Papists grew as fierce as ever I had known it. Broadsheets were posted on every available surface, with woodcuts depicting the punishment meted out to the assassin. He was tied, by each limb, to four horses; the distressed animals were then walked away in different directions until the man was torn to pieces. I could not wipe this death from my thoughts and dreams. I could imagine the terror of those poor beasts, by instinct careful of life, how they must have been whipped and yanked to pull that man’s limbs from their sockets. The blood, the screaming of man and horse, the baying of the crowd – the horror of it woke me many nights and made me feel less safe in a City that was Puritan by inclination. Visiting foreigners disguised themselves as Englishmen, whether they hailed from Catholic countries or not, to avoid Londoners’ violent hatred of outsiders. Our King’s doublets were reinforced with yet another layer of canvas.

  It was unclear how my children and I would live until the mourning period was over and I could marry Arthur. George had seen death too often to want to face it himself, the consequence of such weakness being a rushed and inadequately considered Will. Arthur promised to execute it in a manner that would keep us respectable, but I had been left only the usual Widow’s Third in addition to the use of several rooms in the house for my lifetime and bequests of furniture, items of jewellery and so forth. George had been as generous as he could because he knew that Thomas would not be, but there were many debts to discharge. My eldest son insisted that the younger children and I quit all rooms in the house except for those specified in the Will. We crammed ourselves into three chambers while he filled the rest with paying lodgers. He banned Arthur’s visits and forbade me to work. Arthur went to court on my behalf, and I did nothing to annoy Thomas while waiting for the lawyers to pronounce my worth. I was not unduly worried; the Will barred Thomas from marriage until the age of thirty and what father would put this in writing unless he feared for his son’s state of mind? I had three young children to care for while Thomas had none. What judge would put such a son in authority over a good wife and mother?

  Frankie paid her respects as soon as she heard of George’s passing and became a regular visitor to Fetter Lane. My children were in love with her and her two dogs, although George’s cat made herself scarce. Even Thomas behaved when she was around. I would lend her a loose house jacket and she would open shutters and stoke fires and attend to all the tasks she was forbidden to do in her own apartments. I encouraged her to use her hands and together we sewed French Babies. It seemed Frankie was new to the pleasure of friendship between women, the comfort we bring each other when sharing labour and confidences. Her mother and sisters strictly upheld the rule of obedience to a husband, never complaining, never voicing their unhappiness. Other women at Court envied Frankie or were afraid of her boldness. In that strange time of grief, shuttered up with her and my children, she and I became as close as fish and the water in which they swim, no secret too intimate for us to share. These domestic moments rooted the profound sense of recognition we had felt in each other’s company from the start. I spoke of my grief and she of her mounting fears that the efforts to end her virginity had failed and that soon her husband would start to whip her again.

  ‘The two Roberts in my life could not be more different,’ she said on one occasion.

  I raised an eyebrow at the idea of Sir Robert Carr being ‘in her life’, but he was certainly in her dreams. ‘Your love is wasted on both,’ I said. ‘The one does not value it, the other cannot marry you for it.’ It was true, though perhaps bleak. She did not take offence. I think she was glad I understood the depth of her frustration; to be the most beautiful woman at Court and not to know love. I was a good enough friend to tell her things she did not want to hear.

  ‘My mother has affairs, why should I not?’

  ‘She has given your father fourteen children, ten of whom she has kept alive, and he is a very different man from your husband.’

  On later visits, I saw bruises on her arms.

  It was a strange spring, one moment brilliant with sunshine and empty blue skies, the next battered by tempest, the streets running with water in which floated ordure and the stiff bodies of small animals. They were months pregnant with the possibility of great advance or total destitution. I could marry Arthur and be higher in rank and fortune than even my mother had been before her marriage. Or fall entirely, bullied by my eldest son, lost to all society. I pitied myself, but I pitied Frankie more. My marriage, though arranged, had been a match of mutual respect and contentment. Frankie’s had been motivated by politics alone. She admitted that she would be delighted if her husband dropped dead. ‘Not delighted,’ she corrected herself, ‘but relief would soon triumph over grief.’

  As summer arrived, four months after George’s death, the lawyers decided for Thomas. The house was two-thirds his and he could rule in it as he wished within the bounds of law. I could not suffer his injunctions, and Arthur would not marry me so soon after George’s death, so I moved out. I am a proud woman, it is a trait Frankie and I share, and I would not beg from Thomas or Arthur. Anyway, begging never gets people what they want.

  I found lodgers for the three rooms in Fetter Lane and used the income to rent a cheap dwelling within the City walls that my younger brother Eustace helped me to find. The plague was bad that summer, as it had been the year before, so I chose as clean a street as I could afford in a well-run parish with a water conduit nearby.

  I could no longer entertain friends, go to the theatre or the Exchanges, replace worn-out clothes, have a maid to dress my hair, hire a chair or coach, go to Court or, indeed, go into any society that required smartness; I presumed that it would mean the end of my friendship with Frankie. The differences between us yawned too vast. T
he rich can never truly be friends with the poor. Arthur would marry me as soon as permitted by custom, but by then someone else would be holding her hand. I experienced a second wave of grief and postponed telling her for fear it would make it impossible for me to be brave for my children. She would find out soon enough, when she called at my door and only Thomas was in.

  A few days before the move, when I had sold or pawned everything I could and was standing in the parlour, bare of everything but George’s chair, his cat, a small table and a box of French Babies, an anonymous note was brought by a servant from Whitehall. It requested my urgent attendance upon the Countess of Essex, but it was not written in Frankie’s hand. I spent some of my little remaining money persuading a carter to take me there. All the way I pictured in my eye different scenes, but only one made sense. Frankie was ill or injured and close to death, for why else had she not written to me herself?

  At Whitehall no servant awaited me. A runner was sent to Frankie’s apartments and a maid soon arrived who would only shake her head at my questions such that I wanted to shake her. She let me into Frankie’s chamber but did not enter and closed the door softly behind me. The room was dim and tidy. Very afraid by then, I opened the bed curtains. It was an effort not to cry out. Frankie was lying on her back, her eyes open but her face entirely blank, as if dead. Only the high colour in her cheeks told me I was not looking at a corpse. I touched her forehead and she flinched. I looked under her shift, but her skin was unbroken. From the river came shouts. Someone drowning? Being drowned?

  I put a few drops of willow-bark decoction in some small beer, but she would not lift her head. I went to open a shutter and when I turned she was upending the entire contents of the vial into her mouth.

  ‘That amount will kill you!’

  She swallowed and turned away.

  I used every persuasion but she ignored my pleas for her to vomit. After that, I could not help myself. Each and every anguish of the past six months struck me like the stones of a collapsing wall until I was sobbing, holding her close. To lose Frankie, by my own medicine, was more than my wits could contain. How long we stayed that way I do not know, but it cannot have been long. Suddenly, she rolled away from me and pushed her fingers down her throat until her stomach was empty. She lay back, her face damp.