‘Papa, we couldn’t save her,’ I said, comforting him with the same words that he had used to me when I had cried that we should have stayed and died beside her.

‘Old times,’ Mrs Carpenter said briskly. ‘And they won’t come here. Not the Holy Inquisition, not in England.’

‘Oh yes, they will,’ Daniel asserted.

It was as if he had said a foul word. A silence fell at once; his mother and my father both turned to look at him.

‘A Spanish prince, a half-Spanish queen, she must be determined to restore the church. How better to do it than to bring in the Inquisition to root out heresy? And Prince Philip has long been an enthusiast for the Inquisition.’

‘She’s too merciful to do it,’ I said. ‘She has not even executed Lady Jane, though all her advisors say that she should. Lady Elizabeth drags her feet to Mass and misses it whenever she can and no-one says anything. If the Inquisition were to be called in to judge then Elizabeth would be found guilty a dozen times over. But the queen believes that the truth of Holy Writ will become apparent, of its own accord. She will never burn heretics. She knows what it is like to be afraid for her life. She knows what it is like to be wrongly accused.

‘She will marry Philip of Spain but she will not hand over the country to him. She will never be his cipher. She wants to be a good queen, as her mother was. I think she will restore this country to the true faith by gentle means; already, half the country is glad to return to the Mass, the others will follow later.’

‘I hope so,’ Daniel said. ‘But I say again—we should be prepared. I don’t want to hear a knock on the door one night and know that we are too late to save ourselves. I won’t be taken unawares, I won’t go without a fight.’

‘Why, where would we go?’ I asked. I could feel that old feeling of terror in the pit of my belly, the feeling that nowhere would ever be safe for me, that forever I would be waiting for the noise of feet on the stairs, and smelling smoke on the air.

‘First Amsterdam, and then Italy,’ he said firmly. ‘You and I will marry as soon as we get to Amsterdam and then continue overland. We will travel all together. Your father and my mother and my sisters with us. I can complete my training as a physician in Italy and there are Italian cities that are tolerant of Jews, where we could live openly in our faith. Your father can sell his books, and my sisters could find work. We will live as a family.’

‘See how he plans ahead,’ Mrs Carpenter said in an approving whisper to my father. He too was smiling at Daniel as if this young man was the answer to every question.