“They can be used as bait. Fish appreciate them very much.”

Over the sniggering came a serious, female voice. It was Frankie’s. My skin prickled at her bravery.

“If the babies are boiled, how do butterflies emerge to make more?”

“A good question, my lady,” said Master Stallenge, a man keen to prove himself modern by not taking fright at a woman speaking in public. “Some of the cocoons are allowed to hatch into butterflies. The eggs they produce become the next batch of silkworms. And so it continues,” he said with a flourish.

At that moment a corpse arrived.

A tall, skeletal man of extreme pallor pushed his way to the front of the group. He seemed fit for the grave. His face was painted with a thick layer of lead that did not quite disguise the livid spots disfiguring his complexion. A straggly black beard showed very dark against his pallid cheeks. Frankie stepped backward, crushing my foot.

“Declare yourself, man!” said the King, rattled. He had too often been subject to kidnap and assassination plots to take such an appearance calmly. The figure bowed to him stiffly.

“Sire, I am Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex.”

This! This was Frankie’s husband?

I was astonished. I had last seen him at his wedding, exactly three years before, and had been surprised that the son of a handsome hero could have no notable features other than the thinness of his legs and the bitterness of his expression. He was but fourteen then, and I had expected time and travel in Europe to improve him. It had not. George had told me that the Earl’s nickname at Court was “Grumbling Essex,” which I found too mild a jibe for this pitted lad who whipped his wife. It was well known that his father had not written to him on the eve of his execution, an exceptional disregard that had left his ten-year-old son with the conviction that everyone around him was more fortunate than he. It seemed to me that the growth of his heart had been stunted at that moment, by the implacable hatred he felt toward those responsible for his father’s execution, namely Lord Salisbury and his allies, the Howards.

“Ye’re back then,” said the King, eyeing the Earl’s spots with alarm. “Ye’ve been ill?”

“I have, Sire, but I am recovered.”

The King looked doubtful. “Come to claim yer bonnie lassie?”

The Earl of Essex followed the King’s gaze. He looked blankly at Frankie until a start of recognition made him flush. His eyes traveled with increasing alarm over her high heels and exposed ankles, yellow ruffs and cuffs, the armature of clothing, her painted face, up to the pink feathers that made her much taller than him. Where was the bleeding, sniveling girl he had chastised that morning? He forgot, or refused, to bow to her. Frankie’s face was as blank as a new-plastered wall.