by Lucy Jago
‘Are you also in my chart?’
‘Yours too.’
‘Why? What else is in it? What of Arthur?’ But he held up his hand.
‘My dear, to be happy in uncertainty is a skill that stands us all in good stead,’ he told me, unhelpfully.
Now I held Frankie’s letter to the candle flame and let it burn to the tips of my fingers before throwing the curling ashes in the grate. The memory of my exchange with Forman frightened me, but I wrote Frankie a reply full of good cheer and gossip from Court. The following morning, I carried it downstairs with a phial of the new liquid and some buskins she had requested from her cordwainer that she might walk outside at Chartley where all was mud.
Richard Weston was in the kitchen and took the parcel. I had seen little of him since he had become the go-between for Frankie and myself. Sometimes Lord Northampton made use of him too and, I suspected, Robert Carr. I missed his company.
‘You look tired. Will you have some broth?’ I asked.
‘Gladly,’ Weston replied. I handed him a bowlful. George’s cat jumped on to my lap and turned around and around before settling down and rhythmically kneading her paws into my thigh. I stroked her velvet head.
‘You are wearing the doublet of a man,’ he said bluntly.
‘It was you who taught me how to make a doublet. Many women borrow the looks of men now that men are making full use of their womanish beauty.’
‘Some men,’ corrected Weston. ‘Not all of us grow our hair and pluck out our beards just as not all women wear a jaunty cap on their shorn heads. If my opinion is asked, it is unnatural, especially in a widow. If you married me, you could live a wholesome life again.’
This lonely old man wanted company and someone to make his dinner; he loved me, but not enough to see that he could never be a good match for me.
‘Thank you, Weston,’ I said, always forgetting to call him Richard, ‘but I am already promised to Sir Arthur, as you know.’
He turned on his stool to look straight into my face. In his countenance was a remnant of the handsome man he had been. ‘It is my opinion that Sir Arthur will not marry you.’ The warmth I had been feeling towards him vanished. I had a momentary vision of my blood pouring into brass letting bowls all around me.
‘He gave his word.’
‘He said he loved this family, which is not the same thing. I have lived many years and rubbed shoulders with the best and the worst of men. Sir Arthur will never come good.’
‘Sir Arthur knows what he promised,’ I said, sharply. Weston’s words would pollute the air and make his dread vision more likely to occur.
‘Why mention the ring in his Will if Dr Turner wasn’t forcing Sir Arthur’s hand?’ said Weston.
‘Sir Arthur is merely waiting for the period of mourning to end. He loves me, and my friendship with the Countess of Essex will bring him advantage, even if I myself have no fortune.’
Weston stood and put his empty bowl on the table. ‘Have you not already done enough for him? Other couples marry a few weeks after the death of a spouse, even Catholics. He is leading you a merry dance to which you are blind because he has a title.’
I pushed the cat off my knee and rose too. ‘I wait because I love him. What would you have me do? Sit on my step like Mistress Bowdlery until I can afford that no more and sit instead in the gutter? The children with me? If Arthur does not marry me, that is what life holds in store.’
‘If you marry me, and even if you do not, you can take up your needle and become a woman of trade,’ said Weston, shrugging on a leather jerkin as scuffed and lined as his face.
‘Go into trade? Should I send my children to be maids and water-carriers? And when I am sick and cannot work, what then?’
Weston picked up the parcel for Frankie. ‘It is an honest existence.’
‘It is hardly an existence at all. You are a man of the last century, Weston.’
‘Court ladies have no loyalty to you. They let you attire them so that they can hear gossip about the Countess of Essex. She is a dangerous friend,’ he said, turning away and walking into the dark passage.
As he opened the front door, sunlight lanced the vestibule, alive with dust motes. He looked at me. ‘Renounce sham gentility and take up a reputable calling. You live above your station.’
‘The Countess holds us up by the chin,’ I retorted. ‘And you are happy to run her errands and fill your pockets with Robert Carr’s money! You tell me to consort only with ladies of the middling sort and leave the fine ones alone while, thanks to my intercession, you spend your days trotting from one earl to the next?’
The sun lit Weston’s hair into a wiry halo, an unlikely saint. ‘What is right for me is not right for you,’ he said. ‘You and the Countess would do better to save your strength for those realms in which you can hold sway.’
‘Hold sway?’ I said, coughing out the words in my indignation. ‘And what realm is that? The realm of hungry, cold children? Can Frankie “hold sway” while she is barren? You count yourself a practical man, but what you say is twaddle.’
I shooed him out of the door and glared after him with arms crossed as he walked away. At the junction with Cheapside he turned and squinted into the sunlight. When he saw that I was still scowling after him, he raised his cap and bowed.
For five days in mid-November, the City was halted by snow. It felt to be an omen, but of what I could not say; the beauty and light of it augured well, but we were trapped, insignificant in the face of God’s command of all things. When finally it melted, Mistress Bowdlery came out to make lace on her step. She now trimmed most of the Countess’s cuffs and ruffs and Robert Carr’s also, and had been as forthright in her thanks to me as she had been in her warnings about the beadles on the day we met. My growing fondness for her had prompted stories of her past; before widowhood, she had been a woman of substance.
‘Is that for your daughter’s wedding?’ I said.
‘Betrothal’s off. Apparently we’re too unlucky a family to marry into. What they mean is, too poor.’
I was wondering if there would ever be good news when Sir Arthur turned into the Row. He was looking pleased with life. As he came towards us, I thought how much better we had come to love each other during this year and a half without physical love. He made it clear that he wanted to be in my bed, but never insisted. He had become regular in his habits, visiting us every Thursday when he was in town and after church on Sundays. He was Catholic, like Frankie and me, but too ambitious to own it.
When he had secured the horse and removed his outer clothes, I saw that he was carrying a small package wrapped in green velvet. It was too early for a New Year’s present and I wiped any hint of expectation from my face as I pictured Weston turning at the street corner and bowing. His warning had unnerved me; it would be exceedingly pleasurable, and a huge relief, to prove him wrong. Arthur was come to propose, five months before the end of mourning.
He followed me into the parlour and kissed me.
‘Wine?’ I asked. One glass was always ready, primed with Forman’s brew.
‘Are you sad?’ he asked, as I handed the glass to him. I was surprised that he noticed.
‘The betrothal of my neighbour’s daughter has been broken. Have you use for a maid?’ I said, feigning indifference to the parcel in his hand.
‘Is she in trouble?’ he asked, drinking the wine and putting the glass back on the board. ‘I can’t hire a whore.’ I hated to hear the word on his lips. ‘There’s nothing to be done once they’ve slipped,’ he finished, sitting down.
The ignorance and carelessness of his response made me too furious to speak. His own daughters would be on the streets if I could not work and he halted his stipend, and that was little enough.
‘What news?’ I said, fussing with the wine to hide the redness on my neck that came unbidden when I was angry.
‘The Prince has promoted me to Master of Arms,’ he said at once, unable to keep the news to himself a moment longer.
Despite my ire, I was pleased. It put him in a better position to marry. ‘To celebrate,’ he said, handing me the parcel.
I pulled at the ribbon slowly, to conceal my eagerness. Pray God this was a wedding ring. The velvet wrapping came undone easily and revealed a wooden box slightly too large for my liking. I opened it. Coiled inside was a gold chain, like the one Carr had given Frankie, only shorter and with fewer flowers and stones. My disappointment was so great I could no more have kept it at bay than I could force the Thames back to its source. I could not meet Arthur’s eye.
‘Does it not please you?’ he said, his lips pressed together in irritation. ‘Is it not as long or as bejewelled as the one the Countess sports?’
‘You think I am ungracious and spoilt?’
Arthur looked surprised. I had never been rude or combative towards him before.
‘What then?’ he said.
‘You need ask?’
I shut the box and placed it on the cupboard.
‘You are angry I cannot take on every whore and waif?’
The temptation to slap Arthur’s silly, handsome face was huge. ‘Am I a whore? Are your daughters? Is that why you do not “take us on”?’
‘Speak plainly,’ he said, running fingers through his hair, wounded that his moment of generosity had sparked not lust in me, but fury.
‘I will speak plainly, Arthur. More than a year and a half has passed since George died. As you demanded, I have observed strict mourning and done nothing but work and worry. I have stuck to my word, but have you? If we are to wed in spring, why have you not proposed? We stood over George’s bed and joined hands, witnessed by a notary. So why are we not married?’ I put my shaking hands over my mouth.
‘Do I not support you?’ said Arthur. ‘I gave you a ring. We must behave in seemly fashion, I have explained that.’
‘Not such that I am convinced. You gave me a ring, yes, paid for by my dead husband and unaccompanied by any proposal of marriage. I am not your concubine, to be satisfied with trifles,’ I said, struggling to get the lace over my head on which the ring was strung. I must have looked ridiculous. Arthur helped me disentangle it from my hair. I thrust it towards him but he refused it.
‘I will not take your baubles,’ I insisted, ‘for you are without honour.’
Arthur recoiled. ‘You can say that, to me?’
I turned away. I could hear him picking at the nails on George’s chair and moving about the room, but he did not come to me. When I could wait no more, I marched to the door and opened it. I knew I should stop up my mouth but could not. ‘What proof have you shown me that you are a man who stands by his word?’
Very slowly, as if wading through water, Arthur passed through the open door. He took his cloak and hat from the peg and opened the front door. He did not so much as glance at me as he put on his hat and shut the door quietly behind him.
I went to the window and watched him untether his horse and walk down the Row towards Ludgate. I thought he would look back, was sure he would search for my face in the window, but he did not. I shook with rage and my heart thumped as if I was pursued by baiting dogs, but there was a strange lightness in my spirits too. As I watched Arthur turn the corner, I understood that it came from speaking honestly to him for the first time. Now he knew, without a doubt, my expectations and my disappointment, and there was some satisfaction in that.
I know it is often the case that an adulterous entanglement changes in nature when a spouse dies. Marriage provides the comfort that comes from long living together. Once that is gone, the adulterous affair founders in its own shallows. But I loved Arthur and believed that he loved me and adored our children. With the right encouragement he would still marry me. Couples often have a tiff before the reluctant partner agrees to marry.
Still, the heaviness in my gut told me that I had just taken the biggest gamble of my life. If Arthur was not goaded to action, and Frankie remained exiled at Chartley, then I would soon be on the doorstep with Mistress Bowdlery, my sons at work as rakers and jakes farmers, keeping the streets and cesspits clean for the feet and noses of the better sort, to whom we would never again belong and who would not notice as we starved, fell ill and died.
I turned from the window and was about to leave the room when I remembered the chain and wondered whether Barbara would like it; it was a long time since she had been given anything pretty. I went to retrieve it but Arthur had taken the box with him.
11
Lord Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, the King’s closest adviser, lover of both Frankie’s mother and mother-in-law and powerful ally of the Howards, died in May. Soon afterwards, a message arrived from Frankie asking me to meet her at the sign of the Blue Lion on the Upper Floor of the New Exchange. Although we had written several times a week, it had been eight months since last we met, other than brief meetings at Christmas and New Year. Essex had declared that he would continue to drag her between the remote houses of his relations for the summer, so I was surprised that she was back.
‘The world runs on wheels for many whose parents were glad to go on foot,’ grumbled Richard Weston as he forced passage for me through the carts and carriages backed up the Strand. It was exceedingly warm and a strong wind whipped a rhythm of brown cloak and crimson skirt at my heels. I had expected clear passage in my bold outfit, inherited from Frankie, but I was pushed about like any goodwife. I had not told Weston of my argument with Arthur, not able to forbear any ‘told you so’ looks and besides I was still quietly confident that my lover would return, even though six months had passed since our argument and two since the second anniversary of George’s passing. He still sent our stipend and I had seen him lurking in Paternoster Row on several occasions, looking towards the house. One of us would break, and it would not be me; it was not pride that stayed me, but desperation.
‘You are dressed bravely today,’ said Weston, rocking along on bent legs, ‘expect a bit of shoving.’
‘For wearing red?’
He shrugged and looked down at his fingers, chafing patches of flaky skin where they joined the palm. I did not remember him shrugging so often in conversation with my husband. ‘There are many who want women to look like women, even in these modern times. It is only at Court they go about in hats with feathers.’
I could not stomach another sermon on that topic so held my tongue. We passed under an archway emblazoned with the coats of arms of the King and the recently deceased speculator who had developed the site, Lord Salisbury, whose arms were draped in black. Gulls gathered on the long roof, buffeted by strong gusts.
The gallery was, as always, a crush of traders, newsmongers, thieves and prostitutes, come to profit from the rich who, in turn, came to buy luxuries and compete with each other in looks, wit and rank or, failing those, in wealth. Lord Salisbury had tried to pass laws that would exclude the common and the criminal from his Pantheon of luxury, but had failed. I picked out those to avoid and those to greet as I passed along the colonnade, weaving through clouds of pipe-smoke, catching snippets of conversation. I heard talk of the colonies in America and war on the Continent, of Catholic fanaticism and hopes of finding the Northwest Passage; of who would marry Prince Henry and Princess Elizabeth, and who invest in the East India Company.
I bought from the sweetmeat-seller plump marchpane pigs with clove eyes for my youngest children. I could picture Katherine kissing the nose of her pig before nibbling delicately, hoping not to hurt its feelings. Henry would stuff his in his mouth at once and Mary would share hers with me. I handed the pigs to Weston, who smiled for the first time that day.
On the upper floor, occupying premises commodious enough for two or three to stand in, I entered the Blue Lion. The owner, an Ottoman of about my age, did not object as I ran my fingers over bolts of silks, damasks and velvets, imported from Italy, India and China. He brought me a stool and sweet wine in a glass of deep blue and green that nestled in my hand like a great jewel.
Frankie arrived late, accompanied by t
wo attendants who remained outside as she squeezed her skirts into the shop. When finally we pulled apart from our long embrace, we searched each other for signs of change, hoping for none. I thought Frankie looked a little tired and the skin on her face was closer to the bones beneath. She kissed me on the cheeks and kept hold of my hands.
‘There is no way to express how happy I am to see you,’ she said. We sat close together and the merchant bowing, deep and low, as if enjoying stretching out the muscles in his back, brought Frankie a glass like mine.
‘From Murano?’ she asked him.
‘Yes, my lady.’
‘I am learning, am I not?’ said Frankie to me. ‘Not from my husband, of course. If it was up to him, we would eat and drink from clay and wear nothing but chainmail.’ I experienced a rare stab of jealousy. I envied her sophistication and was perhaps resentful of her efforts to impress Robert Carr, even as she suffered in the hostile palaces of Essex and his relations.
She pulled a parcel from her purse and gave it to me. Inside was an emerald set in gold. ‘My great-uncle sent the ring to me at Chartley. As he is doing nothing to rescue me from my marriage, I am delighted to give it to you. Your letters kept me alive and what little hope I had came from them. I was certain I would lose Robin to Overbury’s spite or to a younger countess, but your letters told me he has remained loyal to me these long months.’
And yet I wished Robert Carr had married one of the fresh arrivals at Court. Frankie needed to find someone less precarious upon whom to pour her love.
‘How can I thank you?’ I said.
‘There are no bills of credit between us. You do more than enough for me.’ She was correct in that.
‘I did not expect your return until autumn.’
‘And nor would I be back, but the King demanded we attend Lord Salisbury’s funeral, at Robin’s suggestion,’ she said. Frankie seemed agitated and glanced around as if expecting an unwanted guest. ‘If we sat here two days I could not tell you all that is occurring at Court,’ she continued, speaking quickly and picking at the lace on her handkerchief. ‘Lord Salisbury’s death works like a holy sacrifice to raise the body of the Court from an obscure tomb. Men I have not clept eyes on my entire life stream from the shires to get a bite of the spoils, the hay still in their hair.’