“He uses all his ingenuity to meet and he wrote me another love poem,” she said, pointing to a little scroll in a secret drawer. “We have kissed,” she whispered, her face momentarily full of wonder and earnestness, as if she were the first person in the world to experience a kiss and unsure how to convey the thrill of it to me. I was appalled. “He sent this too,” she said, lifting on her finger the new chain that I had noticed around her neck the moment I saw her.

“What does your husband say?” I asked.

“He thinks the gifts came from Lord Northampton.”

“But will he not ask Lord Northampton about them?”

“It was my great-uncle who told me to say that.”

My wits felt dulled, unable to keep up with the changes that had occurred in my brief absence. I could almost hear the thoughts in my head clanking and groaning like Inigo Jones’s mechanical scenery, never quite setting one scene before the next was called for. It scared me to know that Frankie was meeting Carr; I feared he would replace me in her affections, or perhaps I did not want to be tainted by the scandal that would result if they began an affair and were discovered in it.

“Robin saw bruises on my wrists and complained to the King about them,” she said. “My husband is with Lord Salisbury now, being reminded of his duties to a wife; he was Salisbury’s ward, so it is not the first lecture he has received from that quarter.”

Given that Frankie’s own parents did not chastise Essex, it was hard to see what Lord Salisbury could do. “He must feel remorseful, having arranged the marriage.”

Frankie clicked her tongue. “Never has love, nor charity, nor remorse interfered with his pursuit of self-interest.”

“Do you hate him?” I asked. She had spoken no more of Lord Salisbury than she had of God. His was an all-powerful presence from which flowed both punishment and preferment.

“If he can make my husband stop hurting me, I shall be glad, but I bear no love for him. He is little, crooked, lacking good ancestry and ruthless, but I wager he is the greatest bedswerver among the King’s nobles. He is rumored to be the lover of my mother-in-law as well as my mother. He will not understand my husband’s reluctance.”

“Are you not afraid Lord Salisbury will goad him to greater effort?”

“I will never have my husband in my bed again.”

“That will limit other possibilities.”

“Neither Lord Salisbury nor Lord Northampton know that I am still a maid,” said Frankie, “nor do they know about the worst that Essex has done. But I will tell them if he attempts to enter my bed. As you told me once, things always change.” I could not help feeling that I was being left out of a secret.