‘Here,’ he said. ‘I’ll take the reins, you have your breakfast. And for the Lord’s sake pull your bonnet straight. Your curls are all blown out from under it.’

I handed him the reins and crammed the hat on my head, tying it more securely. It was an old one belonging to Mrs Greaves which she had offered me last night together with a demure brown cape. They were both too big for me and I looked like a little girl dressing up in a game to look like a farmer’s wife. But the skirts were the worst. Every time I took a stride I seemed to get my legs tangled up in the yards of fabric. Dandy had hooted with laughter and warned me that I had better take little ladylike steps at the fair or I would fall flat on my face.

Robert kept the reins as we trotted into Salisbury and drove accurately to the Black Bull near the horse market. The streets were full of people and everywhere the warm smell of hot horseflesh as string after string of every sort of animal trotted down the street. The pavements were crowded with pie-sellers and the muffin men rang their bells loudly. Flower girls were selling heather and bright-berried sprigs of holly, and everywhere I looked there were match girls and boot boys, porters and urchins, people selling horses and people looking at them, and on one corner a gypsy telling fortunes.

I glanced across at her. I was always drawn to my own people, though I could remember next to nothing of our language and our laws. But I had a dim memory of my mother’s dark-framed face and her smile, and her strange-tongued lullabies.

The Rom woman was selling clothes pegs and carved wood flowers and fairings out of a big withy basket at her side. Under her shawl she had a little mug and a well-wrapped bottle, and I noticed many men stop and give her a penny for a swig from the mug. She’d be selling smuggled rum or gin, I guessed. Strong spirits which respectable publicans would not touch but which would keep the cold out on a raw day such as this. She felt my eyes on her and she turned and stared frankly at me.

I would normally have drawn back to Robert Gower’s side at such a challenging stare. But I did not, I took a couple of steps forward. In my pocket I had six pennies dedicated until this moment for ribbons for Dandy and sweetmeats for myself, but I stepped forward and held out one of them to her.

‘Will you tell my fortune?’ I asked her.

She bent her head in its dirty red headscarf over my palm.

‘Give me another penny,’ she started. ‘I can’t see clear.’

‘Tell me a misty fortune for a penny, then,’ I said shrewdly. But she suddenly pushed my hand away and put my penny back into it.