“A diamond ring is too great a surety for services any fraud on the Southbank could purvey. What did she promise you?”

Frankie hesitated a long while. I hoped she was remembering my warnings not to talk to Mary Woods.

“To help me be free from Essex.” There was silence in the room, disturbed only when Frankie’s mother slumped into a chair beside the fire.

“She has accused you of asking for a poison that would lie in a man’s belly three days before killing him.”

“She is lying! She said she would talk to devils.”

“And yet you have lived separate from Essex since Christmas. There would be no need for some spell to keep him from your bed,” said the Earl in a restrained voice. “What else can the word ‘free’ imply other than to seek his death? In what other manner can one be free from a spouse?”

“The woman is a liar. She predicted that I would be free from my husband and, without asking any more of her, I requested that she do what she could to hurry this situation into being. There was no talk of poison or murder. How could she, a low woman, poison my lord in his great house in Chartley? It is a ridiculous claim.”

Northampton’s face resembled that on a funerary monument.

“You understand that Mary Woods is known throughout Norfolk as a cunning woman? By paying her you were meddling in witchcraft. Witches meet a most unpleasant death, a fact well known to you due to recent events in Pendle. Your own King has written at length against such practices. You have read ‘The Hammer of Witches’?”

Frankie shook her head and Lord Northampton looked at me; I shook mine as well.

“‘The Hammer.’ Does that imply forgiveness for those who give suck to the Devil and his minions? Yet you meet with a witch, pay her princely sums and allow her to tell all manner of ludicrous tales of husband murder. Whether Mary Woods speaks the truth or not, henceforth your own name will be forever linked with witchcraft and wickedness. Are you wishing to follow your illustrious forbears to the block?”

Lord Northampton rose from his chair and walked around the table, causing our eyes to water in the crisp light that pierced the windows behind him.