I felt so wretched I could hardly carry the boxes from the rear of the printing shop out to the cart and hand them over to Daniel. My father did nothing. He stood with his forehead leaning against the wall of the house.

‘The press,’ he said quietly.

‘I will see that it is taken down, sheeted and stored safely,’ I promised. ‘Along with everything else. And when you decide to come back, it will be here for you and we can start again.’

‘We won’t come back,’ Daniel said. ‘This country is going to be a Spanish dominion. How can we be safe here? How can you be safe here? Do you think the Inquisition has no memory? Do you think your names are not on their records as heretics and runaways? They will be here in force, there will be courts in every city up and down the land. Do you think you and your father will escape? Newly arrived from Spain? Named Verde? Do you really think you will pass as an English girl called Hannah Green? With your speech, and your looks?’

I put my hands to my face, I nearly put them over my ears.

‘Daughter,’ my father said.

It was unbearable.

‘All right,’ I said furiously, in anger and despair. ‘Enough! All right! I’ll come.’

Daniel said nothing in his triumph, he did not even smile. My father muttered, ‘Praise God,’ and picked up a box as if he were a twenty-year-old porter and loaded it on the back of the wagon. Within minutes everything was done and I was locking the front door of the shop with the key.

‘We’ll pay the rent for the next year,’ Daniel decided. ‘Then we can fetch the rest of the stuff.’

‘You’ll carry a printing press across England, France and Italy?’ I asked nastily.

‘If I have to,’ he said. ‘Yes.’

My father climbed in the back of the wagon and held out his hand for me. I hesitated. The three white faces of Daniel’s sisters turned to me, blank with hostility. ‘Is she coming now?’ one of them asked.

‘You can help me with the horses,’ Daniel said quickly and I left the tailgate of the wagon and went to the head of the nearest horse.

We led them, slipping a little clumsily on the cobbles of the side street, until we came out to the solid track of Fleet Street and headed towards the city.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

‘To the docks,’ he said. ‘There is a ship waiting on the tide, I have booked our passage to France.’

‘I have money for my own passage,’ I said.

He threw me a dark smile. ‘I already paid for you. I knew you would come.’

I gritted my teeth at his arrogance and tugged on the reins of the big horse and said, ‘Come on then!’ as if the horse were to blame, and as it felt the even ground of the street under its hooves it started a steady walk and I swung up on to the driving box of the wagon. A few moments later and Daniel joined me.