‘I am not! I am not!’ I burst into tears. ‘You know I am not. You know I do nothing. Don’t say such things, Richard. Don’t you accuse me. You of all people!’

He loses his anger at my tears, and comes quickly across the room, sits beside me and gathers me against his shoulder. ‘I don’t accuse you, my love. I know. I know you would never do anything to harm anyone. Hush, I am sorry. And you are not to blame.’

‘I can’t help it that I foresee.’

‘I know you can’t help it.’

‘And you of all people know that my lord put me before the scrying mirror day after day and all I could see was a battle in snow and a queen . . . a queen . . . with horseshoes reversed. He said it was useless. He said I could not foresee for him. I failed him. I failed him.’

‘I know. I know you don’t conjure. Be still, my love.’

‘I did take herbs to get Elizabeth, but that was all. I would never conjure a child. Never.’

‘I know, my love. Be still.’

I am silent and as I dry my eyes on the sheet he asks me, ‘Jacquetta, does anyone know of this recipe that she gave you but you and her? Did anyone see her with you at Penshurst? Any of the court know that she was there?’

‘No. Just servants, and her boy.’

‘Then we will have to pray that she keeps her mouth shut about you, even if they take her to the stake.’

‘The stake?’ I say stupidly.

He nods in silence and then gets back into bed beside me. Together we watch the fire burning down in the grate. ‘They will burn her for a witch,’ he says flatly. ‘And the duchess too.’

WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON,

OCTOBER 1441

The hed the witch come before the court charged together with both witchcraft and treason. The duchess claims that she only visited Mrs Jourdemayne for herbs for fertility, and the herbalist gave her a drink, and said that it would make her conceive a child. I sit at the back of the room behind the avid spectators and know that I did exactly the same.

Margery has been charged with witchcraft before, and so they ask her why she continued to practise her arts: the herbs, the incantations, the foreseeing. She looks at the Archbishop of Canterbury, Henry Chichele, as if he might understand her. ‘If you have eyes, you can’t help but see,’ she says. ‘The herbs grow for me, the veil sometimes parts for me. It is a gift, I thought it was given by God.’

He gestures at the wax doll that sits before him on the desk. ‘This is a most unholy curse, an attempted murder of an anointed king. How could it come from God?’

‘It was a poppet to make a child,’ she says wearily. ‘It was a poppet in the shape of a great lord. See his ermine and his sword. It was a little doll to make a beautiful and talented child who would be an ornament to his country and a treasure to his family.’