“I humbly suggest, my lord, that outward bravery will encourage inner sanguinity. This, in turn, may produce a general amelioration in health, which will allow her menses to flow more completely, unblocking those passages that…” He quickly held up a hand to stop me; I find that young men with no genuine interest in women dislike any mention of the practicalities of their fertility. Embarrassed by the turn the discussion had taken, he instructed me to keep hold of the dog’s collar and walked back to his wife, paying out the leash as he went. I was slightly ashamed, he was only just eighteen, but the feeling soon left me.

“Call the dog,” he ordered. Frankie obeyed. The puppy bounded forward as before but this time, when it grew distracted, the Earl jerked the leash. With a yelp, the dog stumbled and looked around, baffled. Frankie took a breath to call the puppy, but Essex again held up his hand for silence. When still the dog did not come, he jerked the leash harder. Whimpering, ears down, the puppy was dragged to Essex’s feet. Frankie bent to stroke the soft head but Essex stopped her.

“No praise until it does exactly as you command.”

The fripperers arrived at that moment, the wife and daughter of the pawn merchant whose services I had used since moving to Fetter Lane. They were both stout, well-dressed women, and I wondered who had surrendered the clothes they wore as we pointed them toward Frankie’s chamber. The Earl eyed them with obvious disdain.

“People listen more to their tailors these days than their soul-makers,” he said, loudly enough for the fripperers to glance back at him. “To gild and ornament yourself is an insult to Him who first fashioned you.” He glared at us in turn. “The Devil sews vanity and reaps discontent. Bare breasts and painted faces might please the Court, but you insult Our Lord.” The ardor of his speech was more alluring than his usual whining, yet his passion for obedience and prudery would not excite Frankie. He drew breath to sermonize further but was interrupted by a most unexpected visitor. Frankie looked at me with raised eyebrows when her steward announced his name.

Sir Thomas Overbury entered while still being announced and bowed to Lord Essex, more briefly than was proper. Frankie and me he entirely ignored. Overbury wore deepest black and Essex the plainest brown; there could be no less joy in their attire had they donned sacks and ashes.

“You are not expected,” stated Essex with his usual bluntness, although it seemed to me that Overbury’s arrival unnerved him. While greatly inferior in rank, Overbury was his senior by ten years and his reputation for combative arrogance preceded him. Frankie swayed in her skirts to force Overbury’s acknowledgment of her, but it was as if she were not present. Her husband, far from enforcing respect for his wife, indicated that Overbury could speak.