Frances clenched her hands together.
“Would to God I need never see his face again.”
“The doctor will help you.” Anne Turner leaned forward and touched Frances’s hand. “Never forget,” she repeated softly, “with the doctor all things are possible.”
At a table in the private apartments of my Lord Rochester, Thomas Overbury was sitting writing; there was a satisfied smile on his face, and no sound in the room but the scratch of his pen. Thomas read through what he had written and his smile grew smug. He was always delighted with his work.
Seated in a window seat, staring out on the palace grounds, was Robert, his handsome face set in thoughtful lines.
“Listen to this, Robert,” cried Thomas, and read out what he had written.
“Excellent … as always,” said Robert, when he had finished.
“Ah, my dear feallow, what would you do without me?”
“Bless you, Tom, where would either of us be without the other?”
Thomas was thoughtful for a second or so. “That’s true enough,” he said at length. But a doubt had entered his mind. In the Mermaid Club he dined with writers, among them Ben Jonson, and they treated him as one of them; there he could hold his own as a literary man; he was someone in his own right, not merely a ghost, a shadow of someone else. He imagined Robert Carr in such company. He would not know what they were talking about. Yet, without Robert, where would he be? What would his writing bring him in? Enough to starve in a garret?
He sighed and repeated: “It’s true enough.”
Robert did not notice the slight discontentment in his friend’s expression because he was occupied with a problem of his own.
“Tom,” he said, “here’s something else for you to do.”
Thomas waited expectantly, but Robert hesitated.
“I want you to write to a lady for me. Tell her I shall not be able to see her as I arranged. The King has commanded me to wait on him.”
Thomas took up his pen again.
“Shall I be very regretful? Is the lady becoming an encumbrance?”
“Oh no, no! Be most regretful. I would I could be with her. Say I am sorry.”
Overbury nodded. “Tell me what she looks like and I will write an ode to her beauty.”
Robert described her so accurately that Thomas said, “Could this paragon of beauty be the Countess of Essex?”
“Why, Tom, how did you guess?”
“You have made it clear to me. That is well. Now I know to whom I am writing I shall produce a finer specimen of my talents.”
“Fairest of the fair,” he wrote, “I am overcome by desolation….”
Robert watched him while his pen ran on without faltering. How clever to have such a gift of words! If he were only as clever as Overbury, he would be able to write his own letters, work out his own ideas, in fact he would be as clever as the late Salisbury. With brains and beauty he could have stood completely alone, sufficient unto himself.
He wondered why the thought had come to him at that moment as he watched his clever friend smiling over his work.
The notion disappeared as quickly as it had come; Robert had never been one to analyze his feelings.
Tom laid down his pen and began to read.
In the letter were the longings of a lover, delicately yet fervently expressed. The poetic strain was there.
Frances would be astonished; yet she would be pleased.
Dr. Forman sat at one side of the table, Frances at the other. He leaned forward on his elbows and moved his expressive hands as he talked; and his eyes, bright with lecherous speculation, never left the beautiful eager face opposite him.
In the darkened room the candles flickered.
He was a witch, of course. Frances had guessed this. She believed that he had made his pact with the devil, and should the witch finders suddenly break into the room and examine him they would doubtless find the devil’s marks on his body.
She did not care. She knew only an unswerving desire.
She wanted Robert Carr to remain her faithful lover; she wanted to inspire in him a fanatic passion to match her own; and she wanted Essex out of the way.
It was for that reason that she made these dangerous journeys to Lambeth. For the sake of what she so urgently needed she was ready to dabble in witchcraft, although she knew that the cult of witchcraft was a crime; the King believed in the power of witches to do evil and he was anxious to drive them out of his kingdom. Death by strangulation or burning was the penalty. Never mind, Frances told herself; she was ready to run any risk for the sake of binding Carr to her irrevocably and ridding herself of her husband.
Forman’s voice was silky with insinuation.
“Dear lady, you must tell me all that happened … spare no detail. Tell me how fervent the lord is in his lovemaking.”
Frances hesitated; but she knew that she must obey this man, for it was only if she told him everything that he could help her.
So she talked and answered the questions which were thrust at her; she saw her interrogator lick his lips with pleasure as though he were partaking in the exercise himself. At first she was embarrassed; then she ceased to be so; she talked with eagerness, and it seemed to her that the special powers of this man enabled her to live again the ecstasy she had enjoyed.
When it was over, the doctor bade her rise; he placed his hands on her shoulders and she imagined some of his strength flowed into her. He waved his hands before her eyes and she dreamed once more that she was with Robert in some dark chamber.
Dr. Forman drew back curtains in one dark corner of the room to disclose among the shadows what appeared to be the head of a horned goat; he repeated incantations and although Frances could not understand the words he used she believed in their powers.
At length the doctor turned to her. “What you ask shall be yours … in time,” he promised her.
She must visit him more frequently and in secrecy, he went on to explain. He wished to make images of the three characters in the drama. “The one of whom we wish to be rid; the one whose affections must increase; and the woman. This will be a costly matter.”
“All that you ask shall be given if you do this for me.”
The doctor bowed his head.
“I will set some of my servants to procure what you will need. They too must be paid for their services.”
“I understand.”
“Call me Father—your sweet father, because that is what I am to you, dear Daughter.”
“Yes, sweet Father,” answered Frances dutifully.
She was now receiving frequent letters from Robert. Their passion astonished her, and it was so poetically expressed that she read them until she knew them by heart.
“Only a lover could write thus,” she assured Jennet. “Do you know, he is changing. He is beginning to feel as deeply as I do. Oh yes, he has changed of late.”
“Does he seem more urgent in his passion?” asked Jennet.
“When we are together he is no more loving than he used to be, but it is his letters in which he betrays his true feelings. How beautiful they are! It is due to the doctor and dear Turner. They are making him dream of me, and my image is for ever in his thoughts.”
She thought of the wax images the doctor had made of the three of them. The figure of Essex had been pierced with pins that had been made hot in the flame of candles; and while this operation was in progress, the doctor in his black robe decorated by the cabalistic signs had muttered weird incantations. The figure of Robert had been dressed elaborately in satin and brocade, and that of Frances was naked. The doctor had asked that she serve as a model for it because it was essential that it should be perfect in every detail. She trusted him completely now; she looked upon him as her dear father so that after the first embarrassment she had posed while the image was made.