‘The law of men always puts women in a bad place!’ I flare up in anger.

Richard says nothing.

‘Should we go away?’ I ask him very quietly. ‘Can we go home to Grafton?’ I look around the wreckage of the room. ‘I don’t feel safe here. Can we go?’

He grimaces. ‘We can’t go now. It looks like guilt if we go, just as she looks as if she admits guilt by hiding in sanctuary. I think we are better off staying here. At least we can get a ship to Flanders from here, if we need to.’

‘I can’t leave the children!’

He pays no attention. ‘I wish to God your father was still alive, you could have gone on a visit to him.’ He squeezes my hand. ‘You stay here. I shall go and see William de la Pole the Earl of Suffolk. He’ll tell me what’s going on in the council.’

‘And what shall I do?’

‘Wait here,’ he says grimly. ‘Open these rooms and treat them like your own. Behave as if nothing were wrong. You are the first lady of the kingdom now, the only royal duchess left. Order the ladies to tidy the place up and then have them sew with you, and get someone to read from the Bible. Go to chapel this evening. Parade your innocence.’

‘But I am innocent,’ I say.

His face is dark. ‘I don’t doubt that she will say the same.’

* * *

She does not say the same. They bring Roger Bolingbroke before her with the horoscope that she commanded he cast for her, with the magical instruments that were the tools of his trade as an explorer of the unknown realms, with the misshapen wax that they say is a melted image of the king, and she confesses to witchcraft and offences against the church. She admits that she has ‘long used witchcraft with the Witch of Eye’ and then they tell her that the Witch of Eye has been under arrest since the night of the witch’s wind.

‘Who is the Witch of Eye?’ I ask Richard in a hushed whisper, late at night with the curtains of the bed drawn around us.

‘Margery Jourdemayne,’ he says, his brow knitted with worry. ‘Some practising witch, who was taken up for her crimes once before now. Comes from the village of Eye. She is known to the Church as a witch, known to everyone as a witch.’

I gasp in horror.

He looks at me. ‘For the love of God, tell me that you don’t know her.’

‘Not as a witch.’

He closes his eyes briefly in horror. ‘What do you know of her?’

‘I never did anything with her but study the use of herbs, as my lord commanded, I swear to you, and I would swear to the court. I never did anything with her but study the use of herbs, and she did nothing at Penshurst but plan the herb garden with me, and tell me when the herbs should be cut and when they should be sown. I didn’t know she was a witch.’