A Net for Small Fishes by Lucy Jago

Author:Lucy Jago [Jago, Lucy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781526616647
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2020-11-24T00:00:00+00:00

PART TWO

February 1613

15

After St Valentine’s Day, I was again summoned to Salisbury House, this time by Frankie. The place looked blind, with every window shuttered and snow unswept in the courtyard. I knocked on the main doors and an ancient custodian eventually opened them and led me to the same bed chamber I had been in before Christmas. Here at least the shutters were open and the furniture uncovered, but no fire or candles burnt and the room was cold and untidy.

‘In here,’ came Frankie’s voice from an adjacent cabinet that I had not noticed previously, the walls of which were covered in huge chevrons of garish colour. She sprawled in a chair beside a fire, at her elbow a nearly empty decanter, a glass, a cone of gilded sweetmeats and a heap of scrolls tied with ribbons of pale blue silk. More were scattered on the floor, untied and variously curling like wood shavings. Brutus was chewing on one.

‘At last,’ she said, although I was early. ‘It’s better if you sit,’ she said, observing me flinch at the sight of the walls.

‘I have never seen the like.’

‘Dornix. My sister claims it is the latest fashion in wall-coverings. It is giving me a headache.’ Frankie wore an unlaced house gown and her hair was tangled and dirty. She was a little drunk although it was early in the afternoon.

‘You are alone?’

‘There is no amusement to be had at Court since Prince Henry died so my family left after the wedding.’

‘Did it pass off well?’ Frankie’s great-uncle had led Princess Elizabeth down the aisle to marry the Elector Palatinate, past her brother’s effigy.

‘Nothing was more magnificent,’ said Frankie in a sing-song voice. This sarcasm was new and I did not like it. Her mood was capricious and destructive.

‘Have you received more poems?’ I asked, nodding towards the scrolls.

‘No, which is why I look at old ones. The King still keeps Robin by his side, day and night. I haven’t seen him for a fortnight with all the buttering up he has to do of foreign princes.’ Frankie tossed the scroll she was reading on to the floor.

‘My separation from Essex has led to nothing.’

‘It has only been six weeks!’ I said. Having been unable to penetrate Frankie when ordered into her bed at Christmas, Essex had finally admitted his sexual insufficiency to her family; this had, it seemed, been Lord Northampton’s plan. They had been allowed to separate; Essex moved to his grandmother’s palace on the Strand and Frankie continued in her grace-and-favour apartments.

‘Six weeks is an eternity at Court,’ said Frankie, kicking at the litter around her. ‘Other countesses, younger ones, are paraded before Robin while my family do nothing. My great-uncle will not even enquire whether an unconsummated marriage can be dissolved; Essex must ask him to do so first! My family say I will show myself disobedient and lustful if I do anything at all.’ With the care of someone who knows they are drunk, she placed her empty glass on the table.

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