The housekeeper promised to send it to Greenwich by the carter who would pass by tomorrow, and I had to hope that it would find its destination and be read by the right man. Then I stepped into a little truckle bed that they had pulled out beside the kitchen fire and despite my exhaustion I lay sleepless in the slowly dimming firelight, wondering where I might find safety.

I woke painfully early, at five in the morning, to find the kitchen lad clattering pails of water and sacks of logs past my head. Lady Mary heard Mass in John Huddlestone’s chapel, as if it were not a forbidden ceremony, broke her fast, and was back in the saddle by seven in the morning, riding in the highest of spirits away from Sawston Hall with John Huddlestone at her side to show her the way.

I was riding at the back, the dozen or so horses clattering ahead of me, my little pony too tired to keep pace, when I smelled an old terrible scent on the air. I smelled burning, I smelled smoke. Not the appetising smoke of the roast beef on the spit, not the innocent seasonal smell of burning leaves. I could smell the scent of heresy, a fire lit with ill-will, burning up someone’s happiness, burning up someone’s faith, burning up someone’s house . . . I turned in the saddle and saw the glow on the horizon where the house we had just left, Sawston Hall, was being torched.

‘My lady!’ I called out. She heard me, and turned her head and then reined in her horse, John Huddlestone beside her.

‘Your house!’ I said simply to him.

He looked beyond me, he squinted his eyes to see. He couldn’t tell for sure, he could not smell the smoke as I had done. Lady Mary looked at me. ‘Are you sure, Hannah?’

I nodded. ‘I can smell it. I can smell smoke.’ I heard the quaver of fear in my voice. My hand was at my cheek brushing my face as if the smuts were falling on me. ‘I can smell smoke. Your house is being burned out, sir.’

He turned his horse as if he would ride straight home, then he remembered the woman whose visit had cost him his home and his fortune. ‘Forgive me, Lady Mary. I must go home . . . My wife . . .’

‘Go,’ she said gently. ‘And be very well assured that when I come into my own, you shall come into yours. I will give you another house, a bigger and richer house than this one you have lost for your loyalty to me. I shall not forget.’

He nodded, half-deaf with worry, and then set his horse at a gallop to where the blaze of his house glowed on the horizon. His groom rode up beside Lady Mary. ‘D’you want me to guide you, my lady?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘Can you take me to Bury St Edmunds?’