He caught me to him and held me close. ‘Don’t say that,’ he said. ‘Not even in rage with me when you would say anything to hurt me back. Not even when I deserve punishment. You know I waited for you and loved you and trusted you even when I thought you were in love with another man and might never come to me. Now you are here and we are married, and I thank God for it. And now you are here we shall make a life, however difficult it has been for us to be together. I shall be your husband and your lover and you will forgive me.’

I wrenched myself from his grip and faced him. I swear if I had had a sword I would have run him through. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I will never lie with you again. You are false, Daniel, and you called on me to trust you with lies in your mouth. You are no better than any man and I thought you were. You told me that you were.’

He would have interrupted me but the words were pouring out of my mouth like a shower of stones. ‘And I am Hannah on my own. I don’t belong in this town, I don’t belong with the People, I don’t belong with your mother or your family and you have showed me that I don’t belong with you. I deny you, Daniel. I deny your family, and I deny your people. I will belong to no-one and I will be alone.’

I turned on my heel and marched away from him, the tears running hot down my cold cheeks. I was expecting to hear him hurrying after me but he did not come. He let me go and I strode away as if I would walk home across the foam-crested grey waves to England, all the way to Robert Dudley, and tell him that I would be his mistress this very night if he desired it, since I had nothing left to lose. I had tried an honourable love and it had been nothing but lies and dishonesty: a hard road and paid with a false coin at the end.

* * *

I strode furiously along the walls until I had done a whole circuit of the town and found myself back overlooking the sea once more at the spot where we had quarrelled. Daniel had gone, I had not expected to find him where I had left him. He would have gone home to his supper, and appeared to his family as composed and in control of his feelings as always. Or perhaps he would have gone to dine with his other woman, the mother of his child, as his mother had told me he did, twice a week, in the evenings, when I had stood at the window to watch for him coming and felt sorry for him, working late.