The Murder in the Tower: The Story of Frances, Countess of Essex

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.

She remembered the ritual; the burning of incense which filled the room with aromatic odors and vapors. She remembered how the wax male figure had been undressed until it was as naked as that of the woman. The two figures were then put together on a minute couch and made to go through the motions of making love while fresh heated pins were thrust into the wax figure of Essex.

At first Frances had been repelled but gradually she had become elated by these spectacles she was forced to witness.

She believed in the black magic, for had she not noticed a change in her lover since she had begun to partake in it? There was fresh power in his pen, for only a lover could write the letters he was now writing to her; nor did he wait until there was need to write; the letters came frequently, accompanied by poems in praise of her beauty and the joy their lovemaking brought to him.

From an upper window of the house at Lambeth a woman watched Lady Essex ride away accompanied by her maid.

“Quality this time,” said the woman to herself with a smirk. “I will say this for Simon, he knows how to get hold of the right people.”

She left the window and going to the head of the stairs peered down. All was silence. Where was he now? In that room where he received his clients? Handling the lewd images. Trust him.

What a man!

Jane Forman laughed and wondered how she herself had come to marry him. She had been glad to; there was something about Simon which made him different from every other man she had known. He was a witch.

Once she said to him: “What if I were to betray you to the finders, Simon?”

And he had looked at her in a way which had made her blood run cold. She knew that if she were foolish enough to do that he would make sure she suffered for it. As if she would! What? When he could make such a comfortable living for them!

She reckoned she had been a good wife to him; she had never grumbled when he had seduced the maids. He had told her he needed a variety of women; it was the command of his master that he should have no virgins under his roof because they would have come between him and his work, bringing a purity into the house, and that was not good when one worked with the devil.

She might have argued that Simon had soon sent virginity flying from his house, so that he need not have worked so hard in his master’s cause. But one did not argue with Simon. One was thankful for the good living he made and accepted him, his mistresses and his illegitimate children, of whom that haughty Anne Turner was doubtless one.

The two of them were closeted together for hours at a time. Making plans, he told her, for the treatment of this new client who was the richest that had ever fallen into their hands.

She slowly descended the stairs and made her way to the door of the receiving chamber.

“Simon,” she said, “did you call?”

There was no answer, so cautiously she opened the door and looked in. The smell of incense lingered, but the curtains had been drawn back now to let in a little daylight and the candles were out.

She shut the door quietly behind her and went to the table. There she stood looking round the room. She saw