第27章 THE COUNTESS AND THE COZENER(13)

In answer to the formal demand of the Clerk of Arraigns if she had anything to say why judgment of death should not be given against her the Countess made a barely audible plea for mercy, begging their lordships to intercede for her with the King.Then the Lord High Steward, expressing belief that the King would be moved to mercy, delivered judgment.She was to be taken thence to the Tower of London, thence to the place of execution, where she was to be hanged by the neck until she was dead-- and might the Lord have mercy on her soul.

The attendant women hastened to the side of the swaying woman.And now the halbardiers formed escort about her, the headsman in front, with the edge of his axe turned towards her in token of her conviction, and she was led away.

It is perfectly clear that the Countess of Somerset was led to confess on the promise of the King's mercy.It is equally clear that she did not know what she was confessing to.Whatever might have been her conspiracy with Anne Turner it is a practical certainty that it did not result in the death of Thomas Overbury.There is no record of her being allowed any legal advice in the seven months that had elapsed since she had first been made a virtual prisoner.She had been permitted no communication with her husband.For all she knew, Overbury might indeed have died from the poison which she had caused to be sent to the Tower in such quantity and variety.And she went to trial at Westminster guilty in conscience, her one idea being to take the blame for having brought about the murder of Overbury, thinking by that to absolve her husband of any share in the plot.She could not have known that her plea of guilty would weaken Somerset's defence.The woman who could go to such lengths in order to win her husband was unlikely to have done anything that might put him in jeopardy.One can well imagine with what fierceness she would have fought her case had she thought that by doing so she could have helped the man she loved.

But Frances Howard, no less than her accomplice Anne Turner, was the victim of a gross subversion of justice.That she was guilty of a cruel and determined attempt to poison Overbury is beyond question, and, being guilty of that, she was thoroughly deserving of the fate that overcame Anne Turner, but that at the last she was allowed to escape.Her confession, however, shackled Somerset at his trial.It put her at the King's mercy.Without endangering her life Somerset dared not come to the crux of his defence, which would have been to demand why Loubel had been allowed to go free, and why the King's physician, Mayerne, had not been examined.To prevent Somerset from asking those questions, which must have given the public a sufficient hint of King James's share in the murder of Overbury, two men stood behind the Earl all through his trial with cloaks over their arms, ready to muffle him.But, whatever may be said of Somerset, the prospect of the cloaks would not have stopped him from attempting those questions.He had sent word to KingJames that he was neither Gowrie nor Balmerino,'' those two earlier victims of James's treachery.The thing that muffled him was the threat to withdraw the promised mercy to his Countess.And so he kept silent, to be condemned to death as his wife had been, and to join her in the Tower.

Five weary years were the couple to eat their hearts out there, their death sentences remitted, before their ultimate banishment far from the Court to a life of impoverished obscurity in the country.Better for them, one would think, if they had died on Tower Green.It is hard to imagine that the dozen years or so which they were to spend together could contain anything of happiness for them--she the confessed would-be poisoner, and he haunted by the memory of that betrayal of friendship which had begun the process of their double ruin.Frances Howard died in 1632, her husband twenty-three years later.The longer lease of life could have been no blessing to the fallen favourite.

There is a portrait of Frances Howard in the National Portrait Gallery by an unknown artist.It is an odd little face which appears above the elaborate filigree of the stiff lace ruff and under the carefully dressed bush of dark brown hair.With her gay jacket of red gold-embroidered, and her gold-ornamented grey gown, cut low to show the valley between her young breasts, she looks like a child dressed up.If there is no great indication of the beauty which so many poets shed ink over there is less promise of the dire determination which was to pursue a man's life with cruel poisons over several months.It is, however, a narrow little face, and there is a tight-liddedness about the eyes which in an older woman might indicate the bigot.Bigot she proved herself to be, if it be bigotry in a woman to love a man with an intensity that will not stop at murder in order to win him.That is the one thing that may be said for Frances Howard.She did love Robert Carr.She loved him to his ruin.