‘I did not mean to taunt you,’ he said stiffly. ‘I only meant that I knew you would do the right thing. You could not leave your father and your People, and choose to live among strangers forever.’

I shook my head. In the cold morning light with the fog curling off the Thames I could see the great palaces that faced out over the river, their pleasure gardens running down to the water’s edge. All of them were places I had enjoyed, a favoured guest in the queen’s train. We entered the city, just stirring to start the day, and I saw the smoke from the ovens uncurling from the bakers’ chimneys, past the church of St Paul’s scented once more with incense, and then we headed along the familiar route towards the Tower.

Daniel knew I was thinking of Robert Dudley as the shadow of the curtain wall fell over our little wagon. I looked up, past the wall to where the great white tower pointed like a raised fist shaken at the sky as if to say that whoever held the Tower, held London; and justice and mercy had nothing to do with it.

‘Perhaps he’ll slither free,’ Daniel said.

I turned my head away. ‘I’m leaving, aren’t I?’ I said inconsequentially. ‘That should be enough for you.’

There was a light at one of the windows, a little candle flame. I thought of Robert Dudley’s table drawn up to the window and his chair before it. I thought of him sleepless in the night, trying to prepare for his own death, mourning those he had brought to theirs, fearful for those who still waited, like the Princess Elizabeth, watching for the morning when they would be told that this was their last day. I wondered if he had any sense of me, out here in the darkness, driving away from him, longing to be with him, betraying him with every step of the big horses’ hooves.

‘Stay,’ Daniel said quietly, as if I had shifted in my seat. ‘There is nothing you can do.’

I subsided and looked dully at the thickness of the walls and the forbidding gated entrances as we skirted all around the breadth of the Tower and came back to the riverside at the last.

One of Daniel’s sisters poked her head up from the back of the wagon. ‘Are we nearly there?’ she asked, her voice sharp with fear.

‘Nearly,’ Daniel said gently. ‘Greet your new sister, Hannah. This is Mary.’

‘Hello, Mary,’ I said.

She nodded at me and stared as if I were some freak show at Bartholomew’s fair. She took in the richness of my cloak and the fine quality of my linen and then her eyes went down to the shine on my boots and my embroidered hose and breeches. Then without another word she turned and dropped down to the body of the wagon and whispered to her sisters and I heard their muffled laughter.

‘She’s shy,’ Daniel said. ‘She doesn’t mean to be rude.’