Until that moment, Carr had not known whether Frankie yearned for him or was indifferent. Now, she was flirting with the King’s favorite in front of her family, husband, the Court, the Howard haters and her rivals-in-love, the King and Sir Thomas Overbury. This was her plan? To provoke her family to action before she brought disgrace upon them all? For the first time, I feared that she was oblivious to consequences. Overbury’s fascination with their exchange confirmed my fears.

I was also aware of a deeper distress in myself that Frankie had not confided in me the depth of her feelings. I had thought Carr the subject of her pipe dreams, the man she would marry if Essex were killed while out hunting; but he had become more than that. She was putting him before herself, and before me.

“Viscount Rochester,” she said, his new title still lower than her own, “how have the Lords welcomed a Scot into their midst?”

“They’ve not written me an anthem.”

“And you are to be made a Garter knight, along with my cousin? At this rate, you will soon be an earl,” she finished, with a little laugh that revealed her teeth and attracted the attention of the few who were not already listening to every word, lapping at their flirtation like dogs at the butcher’s drain. The spectacle of the royal minion trifling with the unhappy wife of the Earl of Essex was more enjoyable than even the fiercest bearbaiting.

Sir Thomas Overbury turned to see whether the Earls of Northampton, Suffolk and Essex were as captivated by the performance as was he. They were. I saw in his narrow cockerel’s face that he was enjoying the sight of Frankie compromised.

A bear was tugged into the enclosure and chained to a post in the center of the yard. Its open mouth was full of stumps for all its teeth had been broken by the keepers.

“It murdered a child,” said Carr, noticing my distaste. His attention was touching; it was not difficult to understand why Frankie was caught by his charm. “The lion, King of Beasts, will kill it and restore justice,” he said, with less solemnity than the King might have expected, for this show of justice was his monarch’s idea.

“The child died through the negligence of its parents,” said Frankie. “To punish the death of one innocent with that of another is not justice.”