“Do you like it?” he asked. “The King ordered it. It’s wee but it’s not a bad likeness.” The bed-hangings were closed but I could see their bodies in silhouette. I guessed Carr had given Frankie a miniature of himself but, unbidden, the image of Judith severing Holofernes’s head came to my mind, the blood hot and strong-smelling, the maid wincing as the still twitching head dropped into her sack. I sat up, revolted by my own thoughts.

Frankie opened the bed curtain but I continued to watch; it was too dark for her to know whether I slept or not. She walked naked to the mantel, picked up a candlestick and returned to bed without closing the curtains. The sanctum brightened as if angels slept there. She held the pendant close to the flames and I wondered how it was for Frankie to hold in her palm a tiny painted image of the man, gorgeous in jeweled silk, who now lay damply naked beside her.

“It is perfect,” she said.

Robin knelt up and put the chain, on which the miniature was threaded, over her head. I should have looked away from their nakedness, but I did not. “Now my head is always between your breasts. Did you know that miniatures are stuck to playing cards? Guess which suit I chose.”

“Hearts,” said Frankie, putting the candlestick on a table.

“I didn’t think of that,” said Robin, sounding surprised. “It’s diamonds!” he laughed, keeling onto his side and pulling her down with him. “I have a lot to learn about love. But do you see how thin I am? My life is all work.”

Frankie stroked his chest and I was moved by the simple gesture. Many times she had listed to me the features in Carr that she most loved: his eyes with their dancing lights, so unlike the dark, ever-narrowed gaze of her suspicious husband; his golden beauty and love of adornment equal to hers; his neat, white teeth. She was astonished by the way he loved to kiss and stroke her; his smell, with no hint of horse; his hands, keen to discover every inch of her; his loud and eager laugh; a mind that struggled with politics and law but reveled in her.

There was only one thing about Carr that disquieted her: his need to be loved by everyone, the English and the Scots, the Queen and the King, Essex, Overbury and her family, a craving for acceptance that could never be fulfilled in a riven Court.

“I had to visit the worms with the King today,” Robin said. “You know he’s appointed a groom of the chamber to take some with us whenever we travel?”

“Would I were a worm, I might see you more. Are they thriving?”