‘Genoa?’

‘They are making a community of Jews there,’ he said, his voice very low. ‘They are allowing the People to settle there. They want the trade contacts and the gold and trustworthy credit that the People bring with them. We’ll go there. A doctor can always find work, and a bookseller can always sell books to the Jews.’

‘And your mother and sisters?’ I asked. I was hoping he would tell me that they would stay in Calais, that they had found husbands and homes in the town and we could visit them once every two years.

‘Mary and my mother will come with us,’ he said. ‘The other two have good posts and want to stay in Calais, whatever the risks to them. Sarah is courting with a Gentile and may marry him.’

‘Don’t you mind?’

Daniel shook his head. ‘When I was in Venice and Padua I learned much more than the new sciences,’ he said. ‘I changed my mind about our people. I think now that we are the yeast of Christendom. It is our task to go among the Christians and bring them our learning and our skills, our ability with trade and our honour. Perhaps some day we shall have a country of our own once more, Israel. Then we shall have to rule it kindly, we know what it is to be ruled with cruelty. But we were not born to be hidden and to be ashamed. We were born to be ourselves, and to be proud of being the chosen to lead. If my sister marries a Christian then she will bring her learning and her wisdom to her family and they will be the better Christians for it, even if they never know that she is a Jew.’

‘And shall we live as Jews or Gentiles?’ I asked.

His smile at me was infinitely warm. ‘We shall live as suits us,’ he said. ‘I won’t have the Christian rules that forbid my learning, I won’t have Jewish rules that forbid my life. I shall read books that ask if the sun goes around the earth or the earth around the sun, and I shall eat pork when it is well reared and properly killed and well cooked. I shall accept no prohibitions on my thoughts or my actions except those that make sense to me.’

‘And shall I?’ I asked, wondering where this independence would take us.

‘Yes,’ he said simply. ‘Your letters and everything you have ever said makes sense to me only if I see you as my partner in this venture. Yes. You shall find your own way and I hope we will agree. We shall find a new way to live and it will be one that honours our parents and their beliefs, but which gives us a chance to be ourselves, and not just their children.’

My father, seated a little away from us and carefully not listening to our conversation, enacted an unconvincing yawn. ‘I’m for sleep,’ he said. He put his hand on my head. ‘Bless you, child, it is good to have you with me once more.’ He wrapped his cape around himself and laid down on the cold deck.