A Net for Small Fishes

by Lucy Jago

  A knock at the door startles me. The alderman enters and a gush of bile rushes into my throat to see him dressed entirely in black: for my death.

  ‘Will I be cut down with dignity? Do not let my body tumble, my children could not bear that! Who will lay me in my coffin? Do I have a coffin? Who has bought the coffin? Is there money for it?’ The questions mist the air between us in the freezing cell. He puts his arm around my shoulders and holds me firmly within the dark folds of his cloak, perfumed by the sprig of rosemary pinned to it. The pressure calms me. I pray oblivion will be as comforting.

  I give him the letter I have written for my children and as he takes it, I see a fresh yellow collar and bands in his hand, of greater ostentation than I ever wore.

  ‘Lord Coke orders you to wear these,’ he says. I could picture Coke’s narrow lips spitting the words, knowing what a good spectacle I would make, tricked out in the yellow I introduced to the Court, too busy following fashion to follow the Ten Commandments.

  ‘Can he?’

  ‘I have never heard of it,’ my gaoler replies with the faintest shrug. I take the cuffs from him, automatically rubbing my thumb across the weave to feel its quality, and throw them from the window. The wind snatches and tosses them high before they skitter down to float on the dark face of the Thames. I look at the stiff, waxy lace and wonder why I once cared for it so much.

  I turn to Alderman Smith, who is looking at me in surprise.

  ‘What can he do, hang me?’ I say.

  He laughs shortly, not at my feeble quip, but to honour my courage. Handing me a large sprig of rosemary, he helps me on with my thin cloak and gently steers me from the cell and through the great hall.

  The sight of the tumbril is as fearful as expected and I climb up quickly, before my legs fail me. There are no seats, so I stand as we trundle from the City through St Giles and along Oxford Street to Tyburn village. People stare, they hiss and jeer, but I keep my head low and concentrate on my hands gripping the rail as I sway and jolt. The rosemary is crushed against my palms and I am grateful for the scent that distracts me a little from my terror. I whisper the prayers Dr Whiting has taught me. God is waiting for me.

  After an hour or more the tumbril slows, a huge crowd blocking the way. For a wild moment I think some incident has occurred and the hanging will be postponed; in that time, could Frankie find a way to have me pardoned? Even under arrest, I expect miracles of her. I raise my eyes and with a great jolt see the monstrous Tyburn Tree rearing up ahead; the shock of it floods me, my ears ring and my vision grows dark at the edges. The crowd will not stop my execution; they are here to see it.

  It takes time for the tumbril to force a way through the spectators and the many carriages carrying courtiers, wealthy merchants and, for sure, the Lord Chief Justice. I do not look to see if Arthur is amongst them. The tumbril finally halts beside a cart carrying my coffin. It is very cheap.

  The tumbril is unlocked and the back lowered. Dr Whiting climbs up beside me.

  ‘Someone wishes you God speed,’ he whispers, nodding towards a meagre figure at the front of the crowd. It is Mistress Bowdlery with Eustace beside her. When the lace-maker spots me looking at her, she cries out: ‘God sees your kind acts. He will have mercy!’

  Those around Mistress Bowdlery stare at her in surprise. The words start a new possibility in the crowd; the potential for good will towards this sinner. In my simple black dress and veil, with my thin white face and praying hands, I do not look like the malicious, spiteful, greedy whore they expect. I lift the hand in which I grip her handkerchief. Mistress Bowdlery vigorously nods encouragement and keeps calling out, ‘God bless you, God bless you!’

  Mr Palmer is not in the crowd. Horror of public hangings was another sentiment we shared, and I am glad he will not see me die. To my brother I give just one look, long and final, in which I try to make my love for him clear. I dare not do more, for I must not cry. I do not look for my children. Dr Whiting has written to Eustace with my final wish that they not witness my end but remember me as their loving mother, all of them forever in my heart. My other request was that I not be hanged alongside Franklin.

  A noise makes me look up. Above me, three men are straddling one great beam of the triangular gallows, adjusting the rope that will hang me. Twenty-four felons can be hanged at a time here; I thank God I have it all to myself. The crowd falls silent and I stare out at the faces staring back; it is like seeing the sea for the first time.

  ‘Are you ready to give your speech?’ says Dr Whiting.

  For a moment panic empties my head and I can remember nothing. Dr Whiting takes my hand briefly and reminds me of the start. I clear my throat and speak, slowly and calmly, as he has taught me. I am contrite and modest, announcing with gratitude that I have taken Protestant communion. The mood of the crowd, already softened by Mistress Bowdlery’s cries, warms; some nod, others smile encouragement. I speak of my conviction of the good judgement of my King, I repent sincerely of my sins, especially those of vanity and pride, and ask all gathered to pray for my soul. Some in the crowd shout back, ‘God rest your Soul, sister!’, ‘God be with you!’, others bow their heads and pray silently for me. Although I am terrified of the rope swinging above me, I am also euphoric. I think of the pity of those around me, and of those I love who are already dead and waiting for me. I think of my guarding angel, who is nearby, waiting.

  My voice catches only once, when I ask the Lord to show mercy upon my six children. I hear sobbing in the crowd and can see what I will become; in these few minutes of beseeching remorse and repentance, dressed with the simplicity and modesty of a Protestant martyr, I am become a paragon of reform, the lamb returned by the Good Shepherd to God. My death will remind the crowd of their compassion and mercy. It will make them good, for a few hours at least. I will be spoken of with kindness and my children will not need to hang their heads at my memory.

  What I do not say, but feel, is loyalty to the greatest friend of my life. She will be pardoned for the King is fond of her and her actions have allowed him release from Carr’s bitterness. The great love she holds for Robin will bear fruit. The risks we took will lead others to want what she has: freedom from cruel husbands and a say in whom they marry. Beneath the dread I feel a core of heat: it is joy at the actions we took, the chaos we created, the possibilities we saw, the lives we led; it is love.

  A man on the beam shouts down, telling me to put the noose around my neck. I turn and take the rope in my shaking hands. It is rough and heavy. From the crowd come shouts of ‘God bless you’, as I put it over my head. It weighs down my shoulders. Dr Whiting pulls the black veil over my face and I feel someone attempt to take my arms and tie my hands behind my back. Dr Whiting wishes me God-speed and promises to carry out my instructions, but I barely hear him. I wrench my hand free and press my handkerchief into his hand. He tucks it into his sleeve.

  ‘May you stand forever in God’s love,’ he says softly. Suddenly I grip on to him. When he leaves, I will die. How can he leave?

  He pries my icy hand from his chest and holds it to his mouth, blowing warmth on to it. I cannot let him go, cannot die without fighting to live.

  ‘It is not for yourself but your children you must be brave,’ he reminds me.

  An image of Barbara comes to me, choosing the clothes in which I will die. I thank my eldest daughter for her courage, and for sending sleeves wide enough for me to bend my arms and feel my own heartbeat. It is fluttering as if winged but, while I still have life, I will do what I can for my children.

  I am so cold.

  Dr Whiting climbs down from the tumbril and leaves me to face my last moments alone. Again, someone takes my arms and this time I allow them to tie my hands behind me. The rope is heavy, there are so many faces. I am greedy for the light in my eyes. A shout, and the horse slowly pulls forward. I tiptoe along the carriage floor as it moves.

  I must not fall.

  EPILOGUE

  Summer 1650

 
Ricocheting along the hard-rutted lanes, Barbara repeated and reworked the words, over and over, until meaning fled and only fear remained.

  ‘My mother’s final request was … My mother asked that I … My mother humbly requested …’

  It had been a long journey but still she had not perfected her opening address. In the broiling and crowded coach from London to St Albans she had thought to start by introducing herself. As the horses were changed and she had eaten, she had decided to begin by presenting the gift she had in her pocket. As the coach continued to Luton, she wondered if it were safer to say nothing and wait to be asked questions. In Luton, it took so long to find someone to carry her to Woburn that she was forced to stay at an inn, sharing a bed with fleas, lice and a much younger but fatter woman, who snored and shifted all night.

  In the morning she set off alone in a hired coach, more of a roofed cart, its driver seemingly delighted to be released from his normal duties of conveying straw for the making of hats.

  The journey to Woburn Abbey was not long and within an hour they turned in at a gatehouse, where the ground became smoother. The driver ceased whistling as the weight of grandeur fell upon them. The drive, a mile long at least, passed through woods, hay meadows, kitchen gardens and around large ponds to another gate that led into a paved courtyard. Standing at the foot of what appeared to be a recently added façade, Barbara wondered if she should have used the tradesmen’s entrance. She yanked on the iron bell-pull before she could change her mind. Although only a few years off sixty, she looked a decade younger and was well enough dressed not to be taken for a servant. She was shown into a large parlour and asked to wait.

  She had only time to look through the windows when the rustle of silk announced Lady Anne, Countess of Bedford. She was perhaps more beautiful than her mother had been, with the same dark eyes, but a more reserved air. Her pale hair was her father’s, but the red-brown of her mother’s lay just beneath. Thirty-four years of age, she was born days after Barbara’s mother died. Recently Lady Anne’s husband had been fighting in the wars between King and Parliament, switching sides more than once, and the strain of it showed in her face. Judging by the size of her belly, she was also pregnant and soon to give birth. Barbara curtsied but before either woman could speak, a loud screech made her jump.

  A green parrot sat on a perch in one corner of the room. Barbara stared at it for some moments.

  ‘Prospero? Can it be?’ she said.

  ‘He thinks I am my mother,’ said Lady Anne, picking up the bird, ‘so he is friendly to me; but he chases the dogs and savages strangers.’ Gingerly, she placed the parrot on Barbara’s forearm. Prospero placidly sidestepped upwards until he came to rest on her shoulder, whereat he tweaked her ear gently with his beak.

  ‘He remembers you,’ said the Countess.

  ‘We spent a lot of time with him.’ Emotion threatened to overcome Barbara then. Noticing this, Lady Anne replaced the bird on his perch and sat, inviting her visitor to do likewise.

  Barbara had written to request an audience; it had been granted by return. Now she was surprised to see that the Countess appeared as anxious about their meeting as she was herself. Anne Russell, Countess of Bedford, born Anne Carr, had a famously happy marriage, five children, a sixth on the way and time for more to come, high titles and many houses; and yet she was unsettled by Barbara’s presence.

  ‘I am very pleased you have come,’ she said, a glimmer of her mother’s warmth behind her guarded expression.

  Anne Turner’s final wish had been to tell Frankie that she never betrayed her, nor stopped loving her; but Barbara had blamed Frankie for her mother’s death. The anguish and grief that lingered long after the hanging, had made it impossible to visit her. So, she had come to see her child.

  ‘More than three decades have passed since events drew our mothers together,’ said Lady Anne.

  ‘This visit is prompted by the knowledge that I will soon meet my mother again,’ Barbara said. As trained to secrecy and discretion as any courtier, Lady Anne gazed impassively at her guest, but Barbara knew she would be working hard to understand the full meaning of these words: that Barbara was ill and saw death ahead of her; that she believed her mother had been admitted to heaven and would not see Frankie there. The Countess got to her feet and Barbara regretted her choice of words, but Lady Anne did not quit the chamber. Instead, she sat beside her visitor and opened the locket that hung on a long chain around her neck, so that Barbara might see the miniatures it held.

  ‘Taken from a portrait of my mother by Larkin. The original is lost.’

  Lost? thought Barbara. Frankie had been called ‘the rotten branch that must be lopped from the noble tree’ at her trial after Anne’s death. Events occurred soon afterwards that brought down her family. Hers was not a portrait to hang in the long gallery but to throw on a bonfire. How could it have been for Anne, growing up in the shadow of so infamous a mother?

  ‘It is a good likeness,’ said Barbara, politely. Facing it was a miniature of Robert Carr, Lady Anne’s father, who had died a few years previously. Anne closed the locket and pulled from her sleeve a letter, much crumpled. ‘This, from my mother, says all I find it hard to.’

  16th of August, 1632, Chiswick

  Dearest beloved Anne,

  This letter I leave in the safe-keeping of my legal secretary to give to you after my death. Although it is not my hand that writes – I can no longer hold a pen – these are my words, the last you will receive from me.

  You will have been told that you were given your name to please the late Queen, Anna of Denmark, but this is a falsehood. I had always thought to call my first daughter Margaret, after my little sister who was taken to God at a tender age. But I named you Anne in memory of my dearest friend. You have heard little about her, except perhaps some false slander that came to your ears whilst unprotected by me. She was my truest friend, accused of many things, and hanged. The three youngest of her orphaned children were taken in by her sister and the eldest three managed as best they could. What little money I have, I send to them, but none will visit me.

  Anne was bold, her wits were quick and leant towards originality; she was courageous and loyal to the end. Although it is true that we attempted to kill a man who tried to destroy my honour and keep me from your father, we failed. Her manservant, Richard Weston, and the Lieutenant of the Tower, threw away our poisons. They both confessed this, before they were hanged, but only that which suited Lord Coke came out at the trials. He relied on the prattling of James Franklin, apothecary, who said anything to spin out his own life a little longer. Franklin was executed on the day you were born. What bitter pleasure I felt when Lord Coke fell from the King’s grace soon after Anne’s trial, for his cruel and inflexible methods and the arrogance of his self-belief.

  I kept silent when I was arrested, in the hope that Anne could be saved. After she was hanged, I confessed to take blame away from your father, for at the time I did not care whether I lived or died. The King sought your father’s downfall and through me he achieved it.

  My only joy since Anne’s death has been in you, and I wish you to hold to your heart what I now write, for this lesson I learnt the hardest way.

  Refuse to marry until you are old enough to know your own mind and heart. I advise you to wait until you are at least twenty or more, for which you will be condemned as an old maid but heed not the jibes. Learn your likes and dislikes. I have always encouraged this in you and your father has allowed you an education. Never gamble with your life or those of others.

  Cast your net wisely. Know that I love you and will do so beyond death.

  Your ever-loving mama,

  Frances Carr

  ‘The poisons were thrown away?’ said Barbara, very quietly. Her eyes had suddenly filled with tears although she had not cried for her mother in a decade.

  ‘It seems so, although my mother wanted to die nonetheless; she felt responsible for the deaths of four people, including your own mother. Sh
e often said she was dead whilst living. She loved me but was sometimes so melancholy she could not show it.’

  ‘She married the man she loved,’ said Barbara, but the Countess turned away and stared through the window. After a long silence she looked again at Barbara.

  ‘My father refused to speak to her after their trials. The King pardoned her quickly for her apparent contrition, but she stayed with my father in the Tower for six years, until he was also released. He blamed his fall on her and they were never reconciled. The only thing in her life of which she was proud was me, and of the fact that her annulment did a little to change the opinions of some on the matter of arranged marriages, despite the outrage it caused then and still does.’ The Countess laughed despite her tears, and her visitor saw in her the same defiance that had been evident in her mother.

  Barbara hesitated to mention the Earl of Essex, in case Lady Anne found the subject distasteful, but she was intrigued to hear how Frankie had received the news of his second marriage. It had taken seventeen years for him to consider it; so great and vociferous was his prejudice against women.

  ‘My mother tried to warn Elizabeth Pawlett against marrying him, but my father forbade her. I am not happy that Essex’s second marriage ended as disastrously as his first, but my mother had some satisfaction in their separation after only one year, for it proved his inability to make a wife happy.’

  The newsmongers had made the whole country aware that Elizabeth Pawlett had conceived a child six years after her wedding and that her husband accused her of infidelity and said he would disown the baby unless it was born by a certain date. It was, and he grudgingly acknowledged his only child, a son and heir. The boy died a month later, along with the last vestiges of the marriage. After Essex’s death, his widow remarried and bore two healthy daughters.

  ‘You, at least, have married a man you love?’

  ‘When William and I fell in love, his father would point at me in a room full of people and cry out, “This one was born in the Tower!” He was a harsh Puritan and friend to Essex; he opposed my mother’s annulment and sat in judgement during her trial. Even so, she encouraged me to wait for William when his father sent him to Madrid to forget me. Only the huge dowry my father scraped together changed his mind and even after we were married, my father-in-law never lost an opportunity to speak badly of my mother. She has been blamed for bringing about these strange times of Regicide and brother fighting brother, all order turned on its head; yet I believe your mother, and mine, were women of courage,’ said Lady Anne.