‘If it comes we can get away to France,’ he said. ‘And we should have warning. Do you promise you will join us?’

‘Yes,’ I said, feeling my rage and my fear roll away from me. ‘Yes, I can promise I will come when it is over, when Elizabeth is safe or dead I will come to you.’

‘I shall come back for you when I hear that she is dead,’ he said. ‘And then we can fetch the printing press and the rest of the papers at the same time.’

My father took my hands in his. ‘You will come, querida?’ he asked gently. ‘You won’t fail?’

‘I love you, Father,’ I whispered. ‘Of course I will come to you. But I love Lady Elizabeth too, and she is afraid, and I promised to stay near her.’

‘You love her?’ he asked, surprised. ‘A Protestant princess?’

‘She is the bravest cleverest woman I have ever known, she is like a quick-witted lion,’ I said. ‘I love the queen, no-one could help loving the queen, but the princess is like a flame of fire, no-one could help wanting to be near her. And now she will be afraid, and facing death, and I must be with her.’

‘What is she doing now?’ one of Daniel’s sisters demanded in a delighted hiss from the rear of the wagon. Mary stepped up to the side, and I heard their scandalised whispers.

‘Give me my bag and let me go,’ I said shortly to Daniel. I stepped up to the rear of the wagon and said, ‘Goodbye,’ to the lot of them.

Daniel dropped my bag on the cobbles. ‘I will come for you,’ he reminded me.

‘Yes, I know,’ I said, with as little warmth in my voice as his.

My father kissed my forehead, and put his hand on my head to bless me, then he turned without another word and got back into the wagon. Daniel waited till he was seated inside, and then he reached for me. I would have pulled away, but he pulled me close and he kissed me fiercely on the mouth, a kiss so full of desire and anger that I flinched away from him and only realised, when he abruptly let me go and swung on to the driver’s box, that I wanted that kiss from him, and that I wanted more. But it was too late to say anything, too late to do anything. Daniel flicked the reins and the wagon rolled past me, and I was left in the cold London morning with nothing but a small bag at my feet, a hot bruised mouth, and a promised duty to a traitor.

* * *

Those days and then weeks in the Tower with the princess were the worst ones of my life in England, the worst days for Elizabeth too. She went into a sort of trance of unhappiness and fear which nothing could lift. She knew that she was going to die, and in the very same spot where they had beheaded her mother Anne Boleyn, her aunt Jane Rochford, her cousin Catherine Howard, and her cousin Jane Grey. There was a lot of family blood already soaked into that earth, and soon hers would join it. That spot, unmarked by any stone on the green inside the walls of the Tower, overshadowed by the White Tower, was the dying ground for the women of her family. She felt doomed the moment she came close to it, she was certain that her red-rimmed eyes were looking on the place of her death.