I ducked from the doorway and started to run, anywhere to get away from the smell of a man burning. I wanted to find Daniel. He seemed like the only safe haven in a world turned into a nightmare. I knew I would have to fight my way through the chaotic streets, filled with frightened people rushing to the harbour, with soldiers pounding in the opposite direction to the ramparts, and somehow get through the cavalry, their horses wheeling and pushing in the narrow streets, waiting to charge out of the gates and push back the French army.

I pressed myself back against the walls of the houses as a company of horse mustered in the street. The big haunches of the animals pushed one against the other and I shrank back into the doorways, fearing that they would knock me over and I would be crushed.

I waited for my chance to get by, watching other people darting among the big hooves of the horses, seeing Daniel’s street at the other side of the square, hearing the men shout and the horses neigh and the bugler blasting out the call to arms, and I thought, not of my mother—who had faced death like a saint, but of the queen—who had faced death like a fighter. The queen—who had got her own horse and ridden out in the darkness to stand up for her own. And thinking of her, I found the courage to plunge out of the doorway and dart around the dangerous heels of the big horses and duck into a refuge further down the street when a great charge of horsemen came thundering by. Then I looked up and saw the standard they were carrying before them, smirched with mud and bloodied by an earlier battle, and I saw the bear and staff embroidered on the bright ground and I called out: ‘Robert Dudley!’

A man looked over at me. ‘At the head, where he always is.’

I pushed my way back, afraid of nothing now, turning horses’ heads to one side, sliding between their big flanks. ‘Let me by, let me by, sir. I am going to Robert Dudley.’

It became like a dream. The great horses with the men mounted as high as centaurs above me. Their great heavy armour shining in the sunshine, clashing when they brushed one against another, sounding like cymbals when they hammered their halberds on their shields, hearing their great raw bellow above the clatter of the horses on the cobbles, louder than a storm.

I found myself at the head of the square and there was his standard bearer, and beside him . . .

‘My lord!’ I yelled.

Slowly, the helmeted head turned towards me, the visor down so he could not see me. I pulled off the cap from my head, and my hair tumbled down and I lifted my face up towards the dark knight, high on his great horse.

‘My lord! It’s me! Hannah the Fool.’