‘I don’t know. No, probably not.’

‘Then you see why I did not tell you.’

‘You cozened me and married me on a lie.’

‘I told you that you were the one great love of my life, and you are. I told you that I thought we should marry to provide for my mother and for your father, and I still think that we did the right thing. I told you that we should marry so that we might live together, as the Children of Israel, and I could keep you safe.’

‘Safe in a hovel!’ I burst out.

Daniel recoiled at that: the first time that I had told him directly that I despised his little house. ‘I am sorry that is what you think of your home. I told you that I hope to provide better for us later.’

‘You lied to me,’ I said again.

‘Yes,’ he said simply. ‘I had to.’

‘Do you love her?’ I asked. I could hear the pitiful note in my own voice and I pulled my hand from his arm, filled with resentment that love should have brought me so low that I was whimpering at betrayal. I took a step away from him so he could not wrap me close and console me. I did not want to be a girl in love any more.

‘No,’ he said bluntly. ‘But when we first came to Calais, I was lonely and she was pretty and warm and good company. If I had any sense I would not have gone with her, but I did.’

‘More than once?’ I asked, wounding myself.

‘More than once.’

‘And I suppose you didn’t make love to her with a hand over her mouth so your mother and sisters couldn’t hear?’

‘No,’ he said shortly.

‘And her son?’

His face warmed at once. ‘He is a baby of about five months old,’ he said. ‘Strong, and lusty.’

‘Does she take your name?’

‘No. She keeps her own.’

‘Does she live with her family?’

‘She is in service.’

‘They allow her to keep her child?’

‘They have a kindness for her, and they are old. They like to have a child around the house.’

‘They know that you are the father?’

He nodded his head.

I rocked with shock. ‘Everyone knows? Your sisters, the priest? Your neighbours? The people who came to our wedding feast and wished me well? Everyone?’

Daniel hesitated. ‘It’s a small town, Hannah. Yes, I should think everyone knows of it.’ He tried to smile. ‘And now I should think everyone knows that you are rightly angry with me, and that I am begging your pardon. You have to get used to being part of a family, part of a town, part of the People. You are not Hannah on her own any more. You are a daughter and a wife, and one day, I hope you will be a mother.’

‘Never!’ I said, the word wrung out of me by my anger and my disappointment in him. ‘Never.’