‘Hannah!’ he said, and put out a hand to steady me.

‘Oh, Daniel.’

For a moment we stood, very close, our eyes meeting. In that second I felt a jolt of absolute desire and knew that I wanted him and that he wanted me, and then I stepped to one side and looked down and muttered: ‘Excuse me.’

‘No, stop,’ he said urgently. ‘Are you well? Is your father well?’

I looked up at that with an irrepressible giggle. Of course he knew the answers to both questions. With spies like his mother and sisters he probably knew, to the last letter, what pages I had on the press, what dinner we had in the cupboard.

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Both of us. Thank you.’

‘I have missed you sorely,’ he said, quickly trying to detain me. ‘I have been wanting to speak with you.’

‘I am sorry,’ I said coldly. ‘But I have nothing to say, Daniel, excuse me, please.’

I wanted to get away from him before he led me into talking, before he made me feel angry, or grieved, or jealous all over again. I did not want to feel anything for him, not desire, not resentment. I wanted to be cold to him, so I turned on my heel and started to walk away.

In two strides he was beside me, his hand on my arm. ‘Hannah, we cannot live apart like this. It is wrong.’

‘Daniel, we should never have married. It is that which was wrong; not our separation. Now let me go.’

His hand dropped to his side but he still held my gaze. ‘I shall come to your shop this afternoon at two,’ he said firmly. ‘And I shall talk with you in private. If you go out I shall wait for your return. I will not leave things like this, Hannah. I have the right to talk with you.’

There were people coming out of the church porch, and others waiting to enter. I did not want to attract any more attention than I had already earned by being the deserting bride of Calais.

‘At two o’clock, then,’ I said, and dipped him a tiny curtsey and went down the path. His mother and his sisters, coming into church behind him, drew their skirts back from the very paving slabs of the path where I was walking, as if they were afraid they would get the hems dirty by being brushed by me. I smiled at them, brazening it out. ‘Good morning, Miss Carpenters,’ I said cheerily. ‘Good morning, Mrs Carpenter.’ And when I was out of earshot I said: ‘And God rot the lot of you.’

* * *

Daniel came at two o’clock and I drew him out of the house and up the stone stairs beside our house that went up to the roof of the gateway of the city walls that overlooked the English Pale and then south towards France. In the lee of the city walls, just outside, were new houses, built to accommodate the growing English population. If the French were ever to come against us these new householders would have to abandon their hearths and skip inside the gates. But before the French could come close, there were the canals which would be flooded from the sea gates, the eight great forts, the earth ramparts, and a stubborn defence plan. If they could get through that, they would have to face the fortified town of Calais itself and everyone knew that it was impregnable. The English themselves had only won it, two centuries ago, after a siege lasting eleven months and then the Calais burghers had surrendered, starved out. The walls of this city had never been breached. They never would be breached, it was a citadel that was famous for being impossible to take either by land or sea.