‘I am sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t think you would be worried about me.’

‘Of course we were worried.’ Daniel’s mother came halfway down the stairs and leaned over the rail to scold me. ‘A young lady can’t go running around town at dusk. You should have come home at once.’

I shot her a thoughtful look, but I said nothing.

‘I am sorry,’ Daniel said, his mouth close to my ear. ‘Let me talk with you. Don’t be distressed, Hannah.’

I glanced up at him, his dark face was scowling with anxiety.

‘Are you all right?’ my father asked.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Of course I am.’

Daniel took his cape from his shoulders. ‘You say, “of course”,’ he complained. ‘But the town is full of the roughest of soldiers, and you are dressed as a woman now, you don’t have the protection of the queen and you don’t even know your way around.’

I disengaged myself from Daniel’s arms and pulled out a stool from the shop counter. ‘I survived crossing half of Christendom,’ I said mildly. ‘I should think I could manage for two hours in Calais.’

‘You’re a young lady now,’ my father reminded me. ‘Not a child passing as a boy. You shouldn’t even be out on your own in the evening.’

‘Shouldn’t be out at all except to go to market or church,’ Daniel’s mother supplemented robustly from her perch on the stairs.

‘Hush,’ Daniel said gently to her. ‘Hannah is safe, that’s the main thing. And hungry, I’m sure. What do we have left for her, Mother?’

‘It’s all gone,’ she said unhelpfully. ‘You had the last of the potage yourself, Daniel.’

‘I didn’t know that was all there was!’ he exclaimed. ‘Why didn’t we save some for Hannah?’

‘Well, who knew when she would come home?’ his mother asked limpidly. ‘Or whether she was dining out somewhere?’

‘Come on,’ Daniel said impatiently to me, pulling at my hand.

‘Where to?’ I asked, slipping from the stool.

‘I am taking you to the tavern to get dinner.’

‘I can find her some bread and a slice of beef,’ his mother offered at once at the prospect of the two of us going out alone together to dine.

‘No,’ Daniel said. ‘She’s to have a proper hot dinner and I’ll take a mug of ale. Don’t wait up for us, Mother, nor you, sir.’ He slung his cloak around my shoulders and swept me out of the door before his mother could suggest that she came too, and we were out in the street before his sisters had time to remark that I was not properly dressed for an evening out.

We walked in silence to the tavern at the end of the road. There was a tap room at the front of the building but a good parlour for travellers at the back. Daniel ordered some broth and some bread, a plate of meats and two mugs of small ale, and we sat down in one of the high-backed settles, and for the first time since I had come to Calais I felt that we might talk alone and uninterrupted for more than a snatched moment.