Frankie beckoned me over and I dragged a reluctant Purkoy with me. She turned her back on the visitor as if to speak to me, but her attention was fixed on their conversation. Overbury was offering some manner of aid, though I could not fathom how a recently made knight could assist an earl of ancient lineage. The conversation was punctuated at frequent intervals by Overbury wiping his nose on a plain handkerchief. Many nobles were spoken of and Robert Carr’s name passed Overbury’s lips like a prayer; each mention clearly annoyed the Earl, but Overbury was oblivious or unconcerned. Members of Frankie’s family were also discussed. It was wondrous to me that neither the Earl, nor Overbury, felt it necessary to move away; they treated Frankie and me like children whose wits were too few to understand what they heard.

At the close of the conversation, the visitor gave the shallowest of bows and left before he was given permission. Perhaps irritated by Overbury’s presumption, or maybe his own failure to correct it, Essex was short-tempered on resuming Purkoy’s training. He snapped instructions at the three of us until we were exhausted. When finally he left, we trooped gladly back into the bed chamber. The fripperers were nearly finished sorting clothes into separate piles. Frankie lay on the bed with Purkoy in her arms, feeding him small biscuits.

“If you spoil him, he will feel his training all the harder,” I said.

She looked at me. “You don’t mean that.”

I sat beside Frankie and stroked the puppy’s fine coat, enjoying the smile on his face. When Brutus emerged from under the bed, I lifted him up to join us.

The women offered a price, about what I expected, and I was minded to accept on Frankie’s behalf when she sat up and refused the sum. She proved a fierce and unashamed negotiator, bolder than I, and I am not shy. The women, resentful of being bettered, arranged to collect the clothes on the morrow and left.

The moment the door closed behind them Frankie turned to me. “What thought you of Overbury’s diplomacy?”

I was amazed anew by her ability to hide her feelings in front of others.

“Very rude.”

“Rude? Did you follow his meaning?”

“I heard ill,” I lied, unwilling to admit my ignorance of Court affairs.

“He called my family ‘ungodly.’ He was offering the services of Robert Carr to voice to the King the discontent of our enemies: those who hate Catholic countries and Catholics in this country, those who blame us for Raleigh’s fall, old, armored families for whom we are overly fashioned milksop upstarts. All this in front of me!”

“He thinks women and servants have no ears. Did you see how often he wiped his nose?”

“And never a sneeze.”

“George calls his sort ‘hypochondriak’. It is a form of melancholy.”