“Of course,” she said. “Offer him the position and another two hundred besides. I will find it somehow. And take these for the children,” she said, handing me a cone of sugared almonds. I stuffed them into my pocket, then, remembering what else was in there, quickly removed them. Frankie dropped the gold chain from her neck into my free hand. It was the one Robert Carr had given her and that she had worn every day since.

“We can never tell Robin about this.”

That was evident, but she said it for her own reassurance; if Carr discovered that we had poisoned his closest friend, we would have risked everything for nothing.

I left without a candle—I could find my way from Frankie’s rooms blindfolded—and closed the door on the dog’s whines.

At dawn, I trod the narrow streets. Every time someone opened a window or a child yelled for its morning slops, my skin prickled as if a ghost stood by my bed. I had barely slept, could not eat and was exhausted. When I reached the haberdasher’s where Weston’s son William worked, my throat was so dry that my voice came out as a croak.

“This is physick. Take it directly to your father at the Tower.”

“Is he sick?” William’s face creased with worry.

“He is the fittest of us all. The physick is for someone else.” I watched as he was swallowed by the dark interior of the shop. The vial was on its way.

Poison is a blunt instrument compared to a skillfully wielded blade. Where a head rolls or a body drops, with poison results are hard to predict. A person can die of another illness in the time it takes poison to work. Then a person can be accused of murder who has not, in fact, been the instrument of death. And what if someone else takes the poison by mistake? Or the cup in which it is administered is not properly washed? Or the empty vial is retrieved from some midden by a dust-picker, a little child Henry’s age, who puts it to his lips not knowing the danger … I scrabbled in my pocket for another flask from which I took a large sip of juice of dried lettuce mixed with chamomile, to calm my nerves and my bleeding, scabbed skin.

As I stoppered the flask, I talked quietly to myself, as if to a child awoken by nightmares. There is nothing to fear, no one is out there, no one is watching, no one wants to steal me away.