I held out my arms and she gladly let me embrace her. “God bless your efforts, Frankie, go forth and multiply.” She laughed, a wonderful, deep chuckle that set me off too. There was some madness in our cackling, no doubt about it; we were wild with our own defiance.

I called for her cloak and showed her to the door. As she stepped up into her coach she asked, “Do you know a good place to buy a dog?”

4

“This?” asked Frankie a month later, holding up a sleeve of beige silk.

“It is worth nothing without its pair,” I said.

Frankie stood barefoot, as if in rising water, surrounded by the disarray of her chamber. It was clear that this was her first attempt to bring order to her belongings, or even to know what she had. She leaped, as if at an escaping pet, and dragged a sleeve from the pile of clothes half under the bed. Her little white dog barked and dashed about, enjoying the game, while the new puppy shivered in the corner where it had been put after chewing the heel off a shoe.

“A guinea?” she asked, dangling the matching sleeve.

“At least,” I said, laughing. Only with Frankie could sorting clothes be so entertaining. I thought how much my younger children and Barbara would have enjoyed playing among these riches, many items more valuable than all our vestments combined. Frankie had asked me to bring them, as often I did, but that day they were with my sister, Mary, who was staying with us while her husband was away on business.

Frankie’s mother had summoned me again to Whitehall when it became clear that her daughter intended to befriend me; she suggested, or rather ordered, a more modest style for her daughter, an entirely hypocritical campaign as she herself was the brashest woman at Court. I listened politely and ignored her; Frankie must be above the ordinary, only in that way could she inspire respect until such time as she had male children. The more she was noticed and admired, in particular by the King, the less freedom Essex would enjoy to abuse her. Frankie’s mother pretended not to notice our defiance, then told Essex to give her daughter less money, which was why Frankie and I were sorting through her clothes and trinkets, so as to pawn those she did not like.

As we were propping the pile against the bedstead, Frankie’s husband entered. In his hand was a whip and what looked like a long leash. Frankie’s shoulders hunched over. He looked first at his wife’s bare feet, then at me, then at the disorder in the room. He neither greeted us nor bowed, but nor was he scowling. He whistled at the puppy, who pattered obediently after him and we followed, Brutus yapping at our heels.