The widow’s house was one of the older buildings inside the crisscrossing streets of the old town. The houses were packed in under the sheltering bulk of the castle, all the little alleyways overshadowed by the jutting first storeys of the houses that lined them, running north and south and intersected by the next road going east—west.

‘When we first came here, I thought I would never find my way round,’ he said, making conversation. ‘And then I learned the names of the taverns. This has been an English town for two hundred years, remember. Every street corner has a “Bush” or a “Pig and Whistle” or a “Travellers Rest”. This street has a tavern called “The Hollybush”. There it is.’ He pointed to the building with a battered sign swinging outside it.

‘I’ll only be a moment.’ He turned to a narrow doorway and tapped on the door.

‘Ah, Dr Daniel!’ came a woman’s croaking voice from within. ‘Come in, come in!’

‘Ma’am, I cannot,’ he said with his easy smile. ‘My wife is waiting for me and I will walk home with her.’

There was a laugh from inside the house and a remark that she was a lucky girl to have him, and then Daniel emerged, pocketing a coin.

‘Now,’ he said. ‘Shall I walk you home around the city walls, m’lady? Get a breath of sea air?’

I tried to smile at him but I was too heartsore. I let him lead me to the end of the street and then along a lane. At the very end of the lane was the towering wall of the town, shallow stone steps running up the inside. We climbed them, up and up, until we got to the ramparts and could look northwards towards the horizon where England lay. England, the queen, the princess, my lord: they all seemed a long way away. It seemed to me in that moment that I had known a better life as a fool to a queen than I had being a fool to Daniel and to his stone-hearted mother and his poisonous sisters.

‘Now,’ he said, matching his steps to mine as we walked along the wall, seagulls crying over our heads and the waves slapping at the stones. ‘What is the matter, Hannah?’

I did not turn the conversation round and round like a woman would do. I went straight to the heart of it, as if I were still a troubled pageboy and not a betrayed wife. ‘Your mother tells me that you have got a Calais woman with child,’ I said bluntly. ‘And that you see her and her child three times a week.’

I could feel his stride falter, and when I looked up at him he had lost the colour from his cheeks. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s true.’

‘You should have told me.’

He nodded, marshalling his thoughts. ‘I suppose I should have done. But if I had told you, would you have married me and come to live with me here?’