Frankie laughed. “With the wife of the Bishop of Bath! The Bishop wrote a book on alchemy and now she considers herself capable of turning toothache into gold. I don’t have toothache, at least. My mother is almost tender to me. She thought the arrival of my monthly bleed meant that I had lost a child.”

“Why did you not tell her what Lord Essex did?”

“For fear she would not mind. To her, it is unthinkable to take a husband to court, whatever illegal thing they have done.” Then she pulled a note from her pocket and handed it to me.

O, nature too unkind,

That made no medicine for a love-sick mind.

Thus wishing you in all your desires remedy, I rest,

Your true servant.

The pamphlet carries a sole name. She only is the remedy for your love-sick mind.

“That means me,” said Frankie, leaning forward to point at the last line. “I am the remedy for a love-sick mind.”

I suddenly felt my age. I doubted a poem could work such magic upon me if Eros himself wrote it; there is no leisure for giddy obsession once children arrive.

“Who sent it?” I asked, already guessing. Sir Robert Carr was perhaps the most handsome man at Court but he was not the brightest; someone else must have written the poem for him.

“This morning, in the Privy Garden, Sir Robert bent to pick up a handkerchief as our paths crossed, though I had not dropped one. When he handed it to me, I felt the note hidden inside. My sisters were only two paces behind, but they suspected nothing.”

“Was Sir Thomas Overbury with him? He has more of a reputation for poetry.”

“Yes, but these will be Sir Robert’s sentiments.”

I handed the note back to her. “You are flattered that he is too busy to compose verses himself?”

“You are too harsh! He is probably shy of his talents as a writer,” said Frankie, retying the scroll.

“Sir Thomas Overbury takes great pains to write his friend’s love letters, despite his disdain for your family.” For the first time I saw danger in what I had thought a benign distraction.

We were close to the south bank of the river by then. Fishermen at the edge of the marshes pulled their catches into boats, the gills of the thrashing fish catching more firmly in the nets as they struggled. At Lambeth Stairs, Weston pushed aside moored boats as Frankie and I put on our masks.

“Why do you hire a man so old?” she whispered.

“He is loyal and strong and distinguished in his own way. He was caught counterfeiting sixpences and would have hanged had any witnesses testified against him but none would, and not because he threatened them.”

“I know nothing about my servants,” said Frankie, clearly surprised at the length of my answer to her question. “There’s no point, it is impossible to keep them.”