“They were, but a Mr. Palmer arrived just before the lid was shut. He knew my mother well and thought she would not like the waste. When Dr. Whiting came to bury her, he gave me the note with her final wishes. Mr. Palmer was right. I have kept them safe ever since, waiting for the right time to give them back.”

“I thank you for your kindness in coming here,” said Lady Anne, still rubbing the pearls with her thumb. “You have eased my heart and I hope that, for whatever time God grants us, we can be good friends.” She leaned forward and put the pearls over Barbara’s head. “My mother would want you to have these.” Then, quite unexpectedly, she embraced Barbara for a long time. Barbara could feel the movement of the child inside her belly.

The sounds of footsteps and laughter came to them and Prospero squawked, “Hail Mary!” The chamber door was thrown open and the Countess’s children burst in; two ran, one toddled, one crawled at speed and the smallest was carried by his nurse. Without suspicion or fear of Barbara, they clambered onto the laps of the two women seated side by side, seeking affection and asking questions.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

At the time of the “Overbury Scandal,” as the events detailed in this book are usually known, English women already had a reputation on the continent of being too independent of their husbands, drinking in taverns and frequenting theaters with no male chaperone. That two of them could have poisoned a courtier out of lust and venality fits the various tropes of female behavior widely held at the time and, seemingly, since. Mine is not an attempt to whitewash their actions but to give Anne and Frankie greater complexity of motive: to reclaim them from the limbo of misogynist stereotype where wraiths lament at how they are reduced. The furor provoked by Anne and Frankie was so great that they lost all individuality and became icons co-opted by various parties to prove the villainy of such women, the rottenness of the English Court, the immorality of the courtier and so on. My research has been more than an exercise in bringing to light, but of sifting through centuries of prejudice and assumption (interesting in its own way) to find something that feels truthful to the known facts and to human behavior. Of course, my job really begins where the facts end. This is a work of imagination within the bounds of possibility. Mistress Bowdlery and the beadles are fictional, but all other named characters are mentioned in letters, Wills and records of court cases. Anne’s lover was called Sir Arthur Mainwaring, not Waring, but for obvious reasons (if you watch Dad’s Army) I changed this slightly. I could not have Arthur Mainwaring appearing alongside Frankie Howard.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS