Inside the palace precinct I moved quickly. The soft night rain would be insufficient to sweeten the place. A bleary-eyed servant bowed as I entered. He took our damp outer clothes, led us to Frankie’s bedchamber, and quickly withdrew.

I entered first and told Franklin to wait. The room was well lit, although candles in the many stands were almost burned down. Frankie sat with her little dog on her lap, Prospero perched on the back of her chair, picking at his feet. The monkey, Caesar, had been given to Harry, for it had made life miserable for Brutus.

“Put on your mask,” I said, “he’s here.”

Frankie looked up at me, affronted despite the worry in her face. “Servants,” she swept the air with her hand as if indicating a large crowd, which I suppose it was, “may not feel much loyalty, but they cannot move against such as us. It is not those we need fear.”

Being more friendly with servants than Frankie, I doubted her assessment; they could not publicly condemn their masters, but gossip caused its own harm. There was no persuading Frankie, however, and so I showed Franklin into the room and moved away from the high-smelling man, indicating that he should stay put.

“This is Mr. James Franklin of the Parish of Paul’s Undercroft,” I announced.

Frankie stared, fascinated and horrified, as if he were a great toad discovered in her piss-pot. He crouched over in a bow and shuffled forward. From Frankie’s lap came a low snarl as Brutus bared his tiny teeth but, to my astonishment, Frankie placed her hand in the apothecary’s stained fingers and allowed him to kiss it.

“My lady, you are even more beauteous than is said on the streets of London, where you are known as the most beauteous of all the beauteous ladies at Court.”

“I don’t know how you can tell, all crouched over like that. Do stand up,” said Frankie.

“I humbly lay my credentials before you,” he continued as he rose upright, “for I can treat all manner of maladies of the body and mind and…” As James Franklin rattled off his fields of expertise, which I knew to be exaggerated, I whispered in Frankie’s ear.

“He poisoned his first wife … and has killed George’s cat.”

Frankie’s eyes grew wide as she looked up at me. “Innocents?”