第18章 THE COUNTESS AND THE COZENER(4)

It had been better for young Essex to have agreed at once.He would have spared himself, ultimately, a great deal of humiliation through ridicule.But he tried to enforce his rights as a husband, a proceeding than which there is none more absurd should the wife prove obdurate.And prove obdurate his wife did.She was to be moved neither by threat nor by pleading.It was, you will notice, a comedy situation; husband not perhaps amorous so much as the thwarted possessor of the unpossessable-- wife frigid and a maid, as far, at least, as the husband was concerned, and her weeping eyes turned yearningly elsewhere.A comedy situation, yes,and at this distance almost farcical--but for certain elements in it approaching tragedy.

Badgered, not only by her husband but by her own relatives, scared no doubt, certainly unhappy, unable for politic reasons to appeal freely to her beloved Robin, to whom might Frances turn but the helpful Turner? And to whom, having turned to pretty Anne, was she likely to be led but again to the wizard of Lambeth?

Dr Forman had a heart for beauty in distress, but dissipating the ardency of an exigent husband was a difficult matter compared with attracting that of a negligent lover.It was also much more costly.A powder there was, indeed, which, administered secretly by small regular doses in the husband's food or drink, would soon cool his ardour, but the process of manufacture and the ingredients were enormously expensive.Frances got her powder.

The first dose was administered to Lord Essex just before his departure from a visit to his wife at Audley End.On his arrival back in London he was taken violently ill, so ill that in the weeks he lay in bed his life was despaired of.Only the intervention of the King's own physician, one Sir Theodore Mayerne, would appear to have saved him.

Her husband slowly convalescing, Lady Essex was summoned by her family back to London.In London, while Lord Essex mended in health, she was much in the company of her sweet Turner.'' In addition to the house in Paternoster Row the little widow had a pretty riverside cottage at Hammersmith, and both were at the disposal of Lady Essex and her lover for stolen meetings.Those meetings were put a stop to by the recovery of Lord Essex, and with his recovery his lordship exhibited a new mood of determination.Backed by her ladyship's family, he ordered her to accompany him to their country place of Chartley.Her ladyship had to obey.

The stages of the journey were marked by the nightly illness of his lordship.By the time they arrived at Chartley itself he was in a condition little if at all less dangerous than that from which he had been rescued by the King's physician.His illness lasted for weeks, and during this time her ladyship wrote many a letter to Anne Turner and to Dr Forman.Shewas afraid his lordship would live.She was afraid his lordship would die.She was afraid she would lose the love of Rochester.She begged Anne Turner and Forman to work their best magic for her aid.She was afraid that if his lordship recovered the spells might prove useless, that his attempts to assert his rights as a husband would begin again, and that there, in the heart of the country and so far from any refuge, they might take a form she would be unable to resistHis lordship did recover.His attempts to assert his rights as a husband did begin again.The struggle between them, Frances constant in her obduracy, lasted several months.Her obstinacy wore down his.At long last he let her go.

If the fate that overtook Frances Howard and Rochester, and with them Anne Turner and many another, is to be properly understood, a brief word on the political situation in England at this time will be needed--or, rather, a word on the political personages, with their antagonisms.

Next in closeness to the King's ear after Rochester, and perhaps more trusted as a counsellor by that wise fool,'' there had been Robert Cecil, Lord Salisbury, for a long time First Secretary of State.But about the time when Lady Essex finally parted with her husband Cecil died, depriving England of her keenest brain and the staunchest heart in her causes.If there had been no Rochester the likeliest man in the kingdom to succeed to the power and offices of Cecil would have been the Earl of Northampton, uncle of Lord Suffolk, who was the father of Lady Essex.Northampton, as stated, held the office of Lord Privy Seal.

The Howard family had done the State great service in the past.Its present representatives, Northampton and Suffolk, were anxious to do the State great service, as they conceived it, in the future.They were, however, Catholics in all but open acknowledgment, and as such were opposed by the Protestants, who had at their head Prince Henry.This was an opposition that they might have stomached.It was one that they might even have got over, for the Prince and his father, the King, were not the best of friends.The obstacle to their ambitions, and one they foundhard to stomach, was the upstart Rochester.And even Rochester would hardly have stood in their way had his power in the Council depended on his own ability.The brain that directed Robert Carr belonged to another man.This was Sir Thomas Overbury.

On the death of Cecil the real contenders for the vacant office of First Secretary of State--the highest office in the land--were not the wily Northampton and the relatively unintelligent Rochester, but the subtle Northampton and the quite as subtle, and perhaps more spacious-minded, Thomas Overbury.There was, it will be apprehended, a possible weakness on the Overbury side.The gemel-chain, like that of many links, is merely as strong as its weakest member.Overbury had no approach to the King save through the King's favourite.Rochester could have no real weight with the King, at least in affairs of State, except what he borrowed from Overbury.Divided, the two were powerless.No, more than that, there had to be no flaw in their linking.