“So be it! I say these crimes are the result of implacable malice, being the malice of a woman. Let us establish what manner of creature is this that stands before us. You who pretend to be goodwife, friend and mother but are truly a whore, a sorcerer, a witch, a bawd, a Papist, a felon and a murderer!”

The crowd erupted. What manner of man would address a gentlewoman in this fashion? I had no idea what he meant and could neither speak nor shake my head.

“Let us begin with ‘whore.’ Is it true that you were married to George Turner, medical doctor and member of the Royal College of Physicians, an honorable man by all accounts?” I nodded, relieved to have some good said of me. “Is it also true that you conducted an adulterous relationship with one Sir Arthur Waring during the last years of your marriage, without discretion, such that it was known to your husband, who was inveigled in his Will into leaving the sum of ten pounds to Sir Arthur, to buy a ring inscribed ‘Let Fate Unite the Lovers’?”

The crowd jeered and abused me; I heard it over the rushing of blood in my head. The Lord Chief Justice could not prove me a murderess, for there was no proof, but he could destroy my reputation and thereby damage Frankie and Robert Carr by their closeness to me. “Speak up, Mistress Turner. A goodwife or an adulteress? Did you have carnal relations with Sir Arthur Waring, over a period of several years, while married to your husband?”

I remained mute. There was no defense, except that many others, of every rank of society, did the same. To the crowd gathered here it was of no matter that I had loved my husband and that I had begun an adulterous liaison only with his blessing after George himself was incapacitated. They would think it all a very Catholic carry-on, and nothing could save me from that brand, “adulteress.”

The edifice of respectability that I carefully maintained, that was necessary and normal in the world, crumbled in the face of his next statement. “The Court has been informed that your three youngest children are the bastards of Sir Arthur Waring. Do you deny it?”

“My children are good and obedient. Why do you drag them into these proceedings?” I said, my voice shrill even to my own ears. The audience gasped so loudly that I felt sucked back, as if into a whale’s mouth. What sort of woman argued back to a judge? I pictured the faces of my youngest three. They knew only that Arthur came to see them from time to time, not that he was their father. Now the shame of illegitimacy would blight their lives. In that moment my hatred for him was even greater than my terror. If he had accepted responsibility for his own children, I would not now be on trial for my life.