As I passed Northampton House, an appalling sense of foreboding hit me, such that I hid in a doorway, struggling to breathe. Cold stone at my back, I saw the little things—a boy being painted, a debt unpaid, an old man dead—that would lead everything to slip away from me.

23

It was as green and fresh in Suffolk as London was filthy with coal smoke and effluent. When I returned to Frankie, I said nothing of Weston’s disgruntlement, nor of George Villiers. Her menses had ceased to flow and I was anxious not to alarm her. She had been married only since Christmas and her husband was already away on progress with the King.

At the end of July she bled heavily and the child was lost. To ease her sadness, we decided to join Robin. Under the red August sun, veiled with dust from a burning mountain across the seas, I traveled with her. We met with the King’s party at Apethorpe Hall in Northamptonshire, Sir Anthony Mildmay’s house.

Mildmay was a blustering, old-fashioned man, at least sixty years old or more, who hated foreigners, especially the Scots, French, and all Catholics. So he was no friend to Robert Carr or the Howards, and suffered the King’s visit purely out of duty to the Crown. He put on a hunt, inviting the local gentry and a young man of low degree but great beauty. The King’s eyes were out on stalks when this youth rode by and he was invited to dine that day, although his low birth should have barred him. Carr was occupied with state business and I was not invited, but Frankie could not stop talking about the unexpected guest while she undressed that night; how he danced with supreme elegance, how he made everyone laugh, how he was more beautiful than any woman she had ever seen.

“‘George!’ they cried. ‘George!’” she told me. “‘Villain,’ was it? Not a very English name.”

“Villiers,” I said. “George Villiers.”

“How do you know?”

“I saw him at Larkin’s studio.”

“In London? But he is just a local boy. Whose page is he?”

“He is not a page. His portrait was commissioned by the Earl of Essex.”

Frankie stopped wiping the makeup from her face and stared at me.

A few days later, the King’s delight in George Villiers became known to Robert Carr. The King suggested Carr meet with Villiers, befriend him, guide and rule over him, but Carr flew into a rage such as I had never seen in him. He refused to summon Villiers, no matter our efforts to persuade him of the benefits of this course. I was in the chamber with Frankie when Villiers, with impeccable manners and sensible of his lower rank, called on Carr instead.