I shrink back when I see it, and Richard puts a strong arm around my waist. ‘Don’t look at it,’ he advises me.

I look away. ‘What was it?’

‘It was a wax image of the king. It is supposed to have a little crown on its head and that golden thread is the sceptre and the little bead is the orb.’

The face is distorted, the feet are formless. I can see the outline of the cape and the dots to show the markings of ermine, but the head is almost melted away. ‘What have they done to it?’

‘They heated it before a fire so that it would melt and run away. It would make the king’s strength flow from him too. They meant to destroy him as the image melted away.’

I shudder. ‘Can’t we go now?’

‘No,’ he says. ‘We have to be here to show our revulsion at these crimes.’

‘I am revolted. I am so revolted I want to go.’

‘Keep your head up. Keep walking. You, of all people, have to be seen to be an enemy of this sort of work.’

‘Me of all people?’ I fire up. ‘This is so disgusting it makes me sick.’

‘They are saying that the Duchess Eleanor got her husband the duke to marry her with a love potion, so that he could not resist her. They are saying you did the same when you were a girl and my lord duke was a man broken-hearted at the loss of his wife Anne.’

I shudder, averting my eyes from the melted wax poppet. ‘Richard . . .’

‘I shall keep you safe,’ he swears. ‘You are my lady and my love. I shall keep you safe, Jacquetta. You will never look for me, and find me gone.’

* * *

We come back from the shaming of Bolingbroke to find the duchess’s rooms are empty, the door thrown open to her privy chamber, her clothes chests overturned, her cupboards ransacked, her jewellery boxes missing, and the woman vanished.

‘Where is the duchess?’ my husband demands of her maid in waiting.

She shakes her head, she is crying unstoppably. ‘Gone.’

‘Gone where?’

‘Gone,’ is all she can say.

‘God save us, the child is an idiot,’ Richard snaps. ‘You ask her.’

I take her by the shoulders. ‘Ellie, tell me, did they arr. Her Grace?’

She dips a curtsey. ‘She ran, Your Grace. She’s run into sanctuary. She says they will kill her to punish her husband, she says they will destroy him through her. She says it is a wicked plot against him that is going to be the ruin of her. She says Cardinal Beaufort will tear them both down.’

I turn to my husband. ‘Sanctuary?’

His face is grim. ‘Yes, but she is mistaken. That won’t save her.’

‘They can’t say she is a witch, if she is hiding on holy ground and claiming the safety of the Church.’

‘Then they’ll accuse her of being a heretic,’ he says. ‘A heretic can’t be protected by the Church. So if she’s claimed sanctuary they’ll charge her with heresy; it’s the only way to get her out. Before this they might have charged her with forecasting. Now they’ll accuse her of heresy. And heresy is a worse crime than forecasting. She’s put herself in a worse place.’