Gradually, as if wary she would bite him, he peeled his hand from her damp face. A fresh surge of agony accompanied his pulling out of her, but she could not cry out for he leaned his whole weight on her back, pressing her into the hard bench. In her ear he said, “Tomorrow you can have this again, and every day after, until you are obedient. Then I may give you a child.” He sat back on his seat, pushing his now limp member under cover.

As I listened to Frankie, her voice strangely flat, I was mute with fury and disgust. I had provided the aphrodisiac, but it encourages only what is already in a person.

Frankie explained how afterward the pain was too intense for her to move, she could only cover her face with her arms. Essex began to nudge her backside with the toe of his boot as if she were a lazy dog. Each time the nudge was sharper but Frankie stayed prostrate.

“Get up,” Essex snapped, but she was thinking only that she could no longer endure her marriage. As if dragging her sodden body from the river, she hauled herself onto the bench. The hatred she felt for her husband then could scarcely be contained; although she had not wanted him dead before, she did now. What other escape was there from this devil? This man who inflicted upon her his loathing of women and his fury toward those who sent his father to his death.

The rhythm of the oars changed as the barge neared the stairs at Richmond, each answering jolt of the vessel agony to her. As the boat slowed, Essex pulled back the curtains and jumped out. Milling along the bank was a noisy crowd of courtiers peering into arriving craft. With exaggerated gallantry, he held out a hand to his wife. Nearby, her mother and sisters were nodding at this unusual chivalry.

“Out,” he said. Now that he had discovered a way to punish her, Frankie saw that her husband had grown taller. She ignored his hand and clung to the pole of the canopy as she gingerly stepped ashore, feeling as she did so warm liquid running down her thighs.

“Stand straight, cow, or tonight I will come to you again,” said Essex. Frankie did not cry, not even with rage, for loathing had replaced self-pity.

“My lord…” she whispered, such that Essex was forced to lean in to hear “… if you visit me tonight, or any other night henceforth, I will report you for sodomy to the Court of Arches.” Essex heard her, for his eyes narrowed in loathing.

“Why would they believe a woman?”

“The evidence is writ upon my body.”

Frankie turned away and walked carefully toward her mother, more of his seed escaping with each step.