‘We should have your head upon there instead, aristocrat!’ came a shout from behind me.

‘That will be your head, traitor!’ cried a second man, whose bloodied coat sleeve dragged against mine.

With fear swelling within me, I pushed away, but the crowd surged towards me. In an act of desperation I shouted out over their heads, ‘Allenham!’ I cupped my hands about my mouth: ‘George Allenham! My Lord Allenham!’

Then something quite miraculous occurred. Almost as if it had been decreed by Fortuna herself, the sea before me parted.

At the end of this channel, he stood. Although his back was turned, I knew it to be him. I was as certain of it as I was of my own name.

‘Allenham!’ I cried again, his name flowing from me on an ebullient stream of incredulous laughter.

I observed him stop and make what seemed a cautious move of his head. I watched him slowly bring his gaze in the direction of my calls; those sharp eyes of aquamarine lifted and looked.

His expression was blank. He regarded me for no more than an instant, as if he had heard a strange sound but saw nothing more than a shadow.

‘Allenham!’ I cried once more, uncertain if he had spied me at all. But that was impossible, I reasoned, for he had stared directly at my face. I took several strides towards him, when, quite unexpectedly, he turned his shoulder to me and moved into the crowd. I could scarcely believe it. I might have stood there in shock for some time had I not felt myself suddenly shoved. A large brutish man shaped like a sack of corn pushed his chest into me.

‘Eh! Royalists! I shall cut out your hearts and roast them before this day is through!’ He jammed his finger in the direction of the two dissenting gentlemen. I had believed they were across the road, but started to find that in fact one of them stood beside me.

The well-attired man raised a disparaging eyebrow at his assailant.

‘This is what I make of your Revolution,’ he sneered and then, quite without warning, spat in the face of the beast against me.