“No, my lady, they do not seek engagement,” replied the keeper.

“A pity,” said Frankie, bending low to the animal. Carr followed her every gesture and Overbury watched him narrowly.

“When it is dead, I would like its skin,” Overbury said. Frankie’s face was still but I could guess her feelings.

“I had decided on the pelt myself,” said Lord Northampton, smiling at no one in particular. Carr looked to Overbury, who did nothing to break the awkward silence.

“My Lord Northampton, of course you must have the pelt,” said Carr. Overbury reddened but Lord Northampton smiled warmly at the young favorite. Robert Carr was the brightest star at Court and Lord Northampton a perceptive astronomer.

“They don’t last long in confinement,” said the keeper, clearly delighted at the profit he would make from the creature’s demise.

9

About four months after the baiting I was shown into Frankie’s parlor. Although a low, dark room, it was cooler here than outside, which was hot as a bread oven. Breezes from the river carried with them an eye-watering aroma of Thames mud. I had never known such heat and feared that fire would sweep the city and destroy the little I still had.

I had not seen Frankie since the bearbaiting for I had been unwell. Although I lived away from the pestilent courts and tenements near the Thames, where death stalks daily, we had such fevers and griping in the guts as I thought we had plague. My maid and Robert Weston nursed me until I was well enough to succor the children, who were afflicted each in turn. Simon Forman visited the very day I fell ill and every day thereafter until he was assured of our recovery. He brewed strong medicines for us and saved the lives of Mary and Henry, who would have been taken to God without his care. It therefore affected me very deeply that my old friend died suddenly during the period of our recuperation. I cried as if it were George dying again. I had lost a helpmeet whose love and care for me was that rare thing, disinterested.

There was, at least, no reason to leave the house that summer, no pretense to maintain. Frankie and Arthur were in the country. They sent medicinal herbs and food that helped us more than they can have realized. Arthur wanted to visit before he left but I forbade it, not wanting him among the miasmas that were rising from the evil-smelling streets and making us sick. My eldest, Thomas, did not call, nor offer us assistance. He had barged and screamed his way through childhood and altered little with the years.