‘I’ll help,’ Anne said and dived out of the room. The other two and I regarded each other with silent dislike.

‘Did you have a good crossing?’ Mary asked.

‘Yes, thank you.’ The tranced night on the deck and Daniel’s insistent touch seemed to be a long way away now.

‘And are you going to marry Daniel now?’

‘Mary! Really!’ her sister protested.

‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t ask. It’s been a long enough betrothal. And if she is to be our sister-in-law we have a right to know.’

‘It’s between her and Daniel.’

‘It’s a matter for all of us.’

‘Yes, I am,’ I said, to bring their wrangling to an end.

They turned their bright inquisitive faces towards me. ‘Indeed,’ said Mary. ‘You’ve left court then?’

‘Yes.’

‘And will you not go back?’ the other one, Sarah, asked.

‘No,’ I said, keeping the regret from my voice.

‘Won’t you find it awfully dull here, after living at court? Daniel said that you were the queen’s companion and spent all the day with her.’

‘I shall help my father in the shop, I expect,’ I said.

They both looked aghast as if the thought of working with books and the printing press was more daunting than marrying Daniel and living with them.

‘Where are you and Daniel going to sleep?’ Mary asked.

‘Mary! Really!’

‘Well, they can hardly bed down on the truckle bed,’ she pointed out reasonably. ‘And Mother can’t be asked to move. And we have always had the best back bedroom.’

‘Daniel and I will decide,’ I said with an edge to my voice. ‘And if there is not enough room for us here we will set up our own house.’

Mary gave a little scream of shock as her mother came up the stairs.

‘What is it, child?’ she demanded.

‘Hannah has not been in the house five minutes and already she says she and Daniel will live elsewhere!’ Mary exclaimed, halfway to tears. ‘Already she is taking Daniel away from us! Just as I knew she would! Just as I said—she will spoil everything!’ She leaped to her feet, tore open the door and ran up the stairs leading to her room, leaving the wooden door to bang behind her. We heard the creak of the rope bed as she flung herself on to it.

‘Oh, really!’ her mother exclaimed in indignation. ‘This is ridiculous!’

I was about to agree, and then I saw that she was looking accusingly at me.

‘How could you upset Mary on your very first day?’ she demanded. ‘Everyone knows that she is easily upset, and she loves her brother. You will have to learn to mind your tongue, Miss Hannah. You are living with a family now. You have not the right to speak out like a fool any more.’

For one stunned moment I said nothing to defend myself. Then: ‘I am sorry,’ I said through my teeth.

SUMMER 1556

It was a long hot summer, that first summer in Calais. I greeted the sunshine as if I were a pagan ready to worship it, and when Daniel told me he was persuaded by the new theory that the earth revolved around the sun in the great vastness of space, and not the other way around, I had to acknowledge that it made perfect sense to me too, as I felt myself unfold into the heat.