They had murdered her husband, she was sure. She should have been with him to protect him. She was deeply touched to hear that he had been on his way to the Parliament to try to secure a pardon for her.

Sometimes at night she fancied she heard the screams of Margery Jourdemayne and the moans of agony which must have come from Roger Bolingbroke in his last moments.

And Humphrey … the mystery of his death would haunt her for the rest of her life, and she would ask herself as many people throughout the country were asking and would continue to ask for years to come: Did he die naturally? He had been ill; he was prematurely aged though he had lived fifty-six years and often riotously. Or did some assassin steal into his room on that fateful day?

She could not be sure. Only his murderers – if murderers there had been – would know.

All she could do was look ahead to the weary years which awaited her, and to contemplate how different her life might have been if she had been contented with what she had and had not attempted to stretch out to snatch a golden crown.

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