“Should these sins not be enough for any woman? Adultery, sorcery and witchcraft? To this let me add another. You are a bawd—as much of a bawd as any common brothel keeper, acting the pander between your great friend, the Lady Frances, and Robert Carr. We have depositions from the trial of your manservant Richard Weston, describing how you arranged for Robert Carr to meet the Countess of Essex at your house in Paternoster Row, in private, at night. At other times, you arranged for a farmhouse to be made available beyond the village of Hammersmith, where the Countess went to meet, for two hours at a time, the aforementioned Robert Carr. Weston has confessed to carrying letters between them, given to him by you. And for all this time the Countess was the wife of the Earl of Essex, and you did facilitate that terrible sin of fornication between her and her lover. What say you to this charge?”

The crowd could not restrain themselves in light of such revelations. I felt faint but there was no rail to hold, nor chair or stool on which to sit. To defend myself would, in the same breath, be to damn myself.

“Speak, madam, or we must take your silence for confession of guilt.”

“I am innocent of the crime of which I stand accused. I murdered no one.” To confess anything at all would be to condemn Frankie.

“Woman is born guilty of the sins of Eve and only in perfect purity and good conduct can she redeem herself. Once she has committed any sin, even that of vanity, her weak virtue is prey to all the evils natural to her sex. She who steps away from the path of duty, who puts herself beyond the guidance of husband, father or brother, is lost to wickedness. You have acted of and for yourself, which is itself against the proper bounds of womanhood. But how shameless is your conduct! An adulteress, a witch, a sorceress and a bawd, reveals herself capable of any crime, including that of murder.”

I shook my head.