‘They are packing now,’ he said.

‘When do we leave?’

‘In two days’ time, at dawn. Palm Sunday.’

‘Why so soon?’ I gasped.

‘Because they have come asking questions already.’

I stared at Daniel, unable to take in the words, but already filled with horror as my worst fears started to take shape. ‘They came for my father?’

‘They came to my shop looking for John Dee,’ my father said quietly. ‘They knew that he sent books to Lord Robert. They knew that he had seen the princess. They knew that he had foretold the young king’s death, and that is treason. They wanted to see the books that he asked me to store here.’

I was twisting my hands together. ‘Books? What books? Are they hidden?’

‘I have them safe in the cellar,’ he said. ‘But they will find them if they take up the floorboards.’

‘Why are you storing forbidden books?’ I cried out in frustrated anger. ‘Why store John Dee’s books for him?’

His face was gentle. ‘Because all books are forbidden when a country turns to terror. The scaffolds on the corners, the list of things you may not read. These things always go together. John Dee and Lord Robert and even Daniel here and I, even you, my child, are all scholars steeped in knowledge that has suddenly become against the law. To stop us reading forbidden books they will have to burn every manuscript. But to stop us thinking forbidden thoughts they will have to cut off our heads.’

‘We are not guilty of treason,’ I said stubbornly. ‘Lord Robert is still alive, John Dee too. And the charges are treason, not heretical thinking. The queen is merciful . . .’

‘And what happens when Elizabeth confesses?’ Daniel snapped at me. ‘When she names her fellow traitors, not just Thomas Wyatt but Robert Dudley, John Dee, perhaps even you. Have you never taken a message or run an errand for her? Could you swear to it?’

I hesitated. ‘She would never confess. She knows the price of confession.’

‘She is a woman.’ He dismissed her. ‘They will frighten her and then promise her forgiveness, and she will confess to anything.’

‘You know nothing about her, you know nothing about this!’ I flared up. ‘I know her. This is not a young woman who is easily frightened, and more than that, her fear does not lead her to tears. If she is afraid she will fight like a bated cat. She is not a girl who gives up and weeps.’

‘She is a woman,’ he said again. ‘And she is enmeshed with Dudley and Dee and Wyatt and the rest of them. I warned you of this. I told you that if you played a double game at court you would bring danger on yourself and danger to us all, and now you have led danger to our door.’

I was breathless with rage. ‘What door?’ I demanded. ‘We have no door. We have the open road, we have the sea between us and France and then we have to cross France like a family of beggars because you, like a coward, are afraid of your own shadow.’