‘That’s easily done,’ he flared. ‘I release you, Hannah, and I hope that you never have cause to regret this decision.’ He turned on his heel and went to the stair. He paused. ‘But nonetheless, you will help your father,’ he said, still commanding me, I noticed. ‘And if you change your mind you may come with us. I would not be vengeful. You can come as his daughter and as a stranger to me.’

‘I shan’t change my mind,’ I said fiercely. ‘And I don’t need you to tell me to help my father. I am a good daughter to him and I would be a good wife to the right man.’

‘And who would the right man be?’ Daniel sneered. ‘A married man and a convicted traitor?’

‘Now, now,’ my father said gently. ‘You have agreed to part.’

‘I am sorry you think so badly of me,’ I said icily. ‘I shall care for my father and I will help him leave when you bring the wagon.’

Daniel clattered down the stairs and then we heard the shop door bang, and he was gone.

* * *

Over the next two days we worked in an almost unbroken silence. I helped my father tie his books together, the manuscripts we rolled into scrolls and packed in barrels, and pushed them behind the press in the printing room. He could take only the core of his library; the rest of the books would have to follow later.

‘I wish you would come too,’ he said earnestly. ‘You’re too young to be left here on your own.’

‘I’m under the protection of the queen,’ I said. ‘And hundreds of people at court are the same age as me.’

‘You are one of the chosen to bear witness,’ he said in a fierce whisper. ‘You should be with your people.’

‘Chosen to witness?’ I demanded bitterly. ‘More like chosen never to have a home. Chosen to be always packing our most precious things and leaving the rest behind? Chosen to be always one skip ahead of the fire or the hangman’s noose?’

‘Better one skip ahead,’ my father said wryly.

We worked all through the last night, and when he would not stop to eat, I knew that he was mourning for me as a daughter that he had lost. At dawn I heard the creaking of wheels in the street and I looked out of the downstairs window, and there was the dark shape of the wagon lumbering towards us with Daniel leading a stocky pair of horses.

‘Here they are,’ I said quietly to my father, and started to heave the boxes of books through the door. The wagon halted beside me and Daniel gently put me aside. ‘I’ll do that,’ he said. He lifted the boxes into the back of the cart, where I saw the glimpse of four pale faces: his mother and his three sisters. ‘Hello,’ I said awkwardly, and then went back to the shop.