John Dee burst into a crack of laughter as if I had told him the most delightfully bawdy jest, and Bishop Bonner gave forth a great bellow.

‘She is priceless!’ the bishop shouted. ‘Anything else I can do for you, fool? Any complaints about your breakfast? About your bed?’

I looked from the red roaring face of the bishop to the twinkling smile of his clerk and shook my head. I bowed my head to the bishop, and to the man I had once been honoured to know, and I left them with their bloodstained hands to interrogate innocent people and send them out to be burned.

* * *

I did not see how to get back to the court at Greenwich. When they turned me roughly out into the dirty street I wandered around at the back of St Paul’s and stumbled blindly until I felt I had put a safe distance between the tower’s ominous reaching shadow and my frightened weaving steps. Then I slumped in a doorway like a vagrant and shook, as if I had the ague. A householder shouted at me to clear off and take the plague with me, and I moved on one doorway and collapsed again.

The bright sunshine burned into my face and showed me that it was past midday. After a long time on the cold step, I pushed myself up and walked a short way. I found I was crying like a baby and had to stop once more. Step by step I went on, pausing when my legs buckled underneath me until I found my way to our little shop off Fleet Street and hammered on our neighbour’s door.

‘Dear God, what has become of you?’

I managed a twisted smile. ‘I have a fever,’ I said. ‘I forgot my key, and lost my way. Would you let me in?’

He stepped back from me. In these times of hardship everyone was afraid of infection. ‘Do you need food?’

‘Yes,’ I said, too low for pride.

‘I will leave you something on the doorstep,’ he said. ‘Here’s the key.’

I took it wordlessly, and staggered to the shop. It turned in the lock and I stepped into the shuttered room. At once the precious scent of printers’ ink and dry paper surrounded me. I stood, inhaling it, the very perfume of heresy, the familiar beloved odour of home.

I heard the scrape and clink of a dish on the doorstep and went to fetch a pie and a little mug of ale. I ate sitting on the floor behind the counter, hidden from the shuttered windows, my back against the warm folios, smelling the perfume of the cured-leather binding.

As soon as I had eaten, I put the bowl back on the doorstep and locked the door. Then I went into my father’s print shop and store room and cleared the volumes from the bottom shelf. I did not want to sleep in my own little trestle bed. I did not even want to sleep in my father’s bed. I wanted to be closer to him than that. I had a superstitious terror that if I went to bed I would be dragged from sleep by Bishop Bonner again, but if I was in hiding with my father’s beloved books then they would keep me safe.