A few days before the move, when I had sold or pawned everything I could and was standing in the parlor, bare of everything but George’s chair, his cat, a small table and a box of French Babies, an anonymous note was brought by a servant from Whitehall. It requested my urgent attendance upon the Countess of Essex, but it was not written in Frankie’s hand. I spent some of my little remaining money persuading a carter to take me there. All the way I pictured in my eye different scenes, but only one made sense. Frankie was ill or injured and close to death, for why else had she not written to me herself?

At Whitehall no servant awaited me. A runner was sent to Frankie’s apartments and a maid soon arrived who would only shake her head at my questions such that I wanted to shake her. She let me into Frankie’s chamber but did not enter and closed the door softly behind me. The room was dim and tidy. Very afraid by then, I opened the bed curtains. It was an effort not to cry out. Frankie was lying on her back, her eyes open but her face entirely blank, as if dead. Only the high color in her cheeks told me I was not looking at a corpse. I touched her forehead and she flinched. I looked under her shift, but her skin was unbroken. From the river came shouts. Someone drowning? Being drowned?

I put a few drops of willow-bark decoction in some small beer, but she would not lift her head. I went to open a shutter and when I turned she was upending the entire contents of the vial into her mouth.

“That amount will kill you!”

She swallowed and turned away.

I used every persuasion but she ignored my pleas for her to vomit. After that, I could not help myself. Each and every anguish of the past six months struck me like the stones of a collapsing wall until I was sobbing, holding her close. To lose Frankie, by my own medicine, was more than my wits could contain. How long we stayed that way I do not know, but it cannot have been long. Suddenly, she rolled away from me and pushed her fingers down her throat until her stomach was empty. She lay back, her face damp.

“How are you here?” she said eventually, her voice thick from the acid in her throat.

“An unsigned note.”

“Someone must care.”

I did not ask questions. I simply held her. After some time she spoke, conjuring in my mind’s eye the events that had brought her so low.