She was careful not to look at me, but we both knew that Lord Coke would not be intimidated by her. She would need to mobilize the most senior members of her family.

“Then I would have you take the utmost care of my greatest friend,” Frankie said. She embraced me and I felt like a child before her, she was so tall. “You will be home before nightfall,” she said, squeezing my cold hands. She had not abandoned me, although disobeying her husband would not endear either of us to him.

The beadles behaved like a guard of honor throughout our journey into the City. At the alderman’s house I was shown into a parlor, a comfortable room that reminded me of my home with George, and I all but expected the alderman to greet me with apologies and put me in his own carriage back to Whitehall.

Within a few minutes Lord Chief Justice Coke strode into the room, which I had not expected, and settled himself behind a trestle, his eyes slit thin in his rodent face. Beside him sat a man with writing materials and behind him stood an older man whom I took to be Alderman Smith. No introductions were made. There was no Frankie beside me compelling these men to show respect, and all three of them looked angry and fierce. I knew this was intended to frighten me and it did.

“You are Mistress Anne Turner, widow, previously of Paternoster Row and now residing in the household of the Countess of Somerset?” said the man with the quill. Before I could nod, Lord Coke addressed me in a thin voice.

“Widow Turner, why did you give Richard Weston poisons with which to murder Sir Thomas Overbury?”

My head was dizzy with terror but I did not falter.

“I have no idea of what you speak.”

“Come, Weston has confessed,” said the Chief Justice.

I said nothing, from fear that I might give myself away by accident. I did not believe him.

“Weston’s story that Sir Thomas Overbury died of a chill did not hold for long,” said Lord Coke, with a tiny smile. “On the second day of questioning he admitted to showing the Lieutenant of the Tower a vial of clear liquid with which you supplied him. On day three he admitted that you had told him to give it to the prisoner but not to partake of it himself.” Coke raised his eyebrows, as if that gesture might prompt me to confess all.