‘Here,’ I said. ‘They cost me two shillings.’

She found the coins in her purse. ‘No boots.’

‘Please wear your own boots,’ I said fervently. ‘I’ve run away before, I know what it’s like. You’ll never get anywhere in borrowed boots.’

She smiled at that. ‘Hurry,’ was all she said.

I ran back upstairs with the two shillings and then I found Tom, John Huddlestone’s groom, and sent him down to the stables to get the horses ready. I crept down to the bakery just outside the kitchen door, and found, as I had hoped, a batch of bread rolls baked in the warmth of the oven last night. I stuffed my breeches pockets and my jacket pockets with half a dozen of them so that I looked like a donkey with panniers, and then I went back to the hall.

Lady Mary was there, dressed as a serving maid, her hood pulled over her face. The porter was arguing, reluctant to open the door to the stable-yard for a maidservant. She turned with relief when she heard me approach light-footed on the stone flags.

‘Come on,’ I said reasonably to the man. ‘She is a servant of John Huddlestone, his groom is waiting. He told us to leave at first light. We’re to go back to Sawston Hall and we shall be whipped if we are late.’

He complained about visitors in the night disturbing a Christian household’s sleep, and then people leaving early; but he opened the door and Lady Mary and I slipped through. Tom was in the yard, holding one big hunter with a pillion saddle on its back and a smaller horse for me. I would have to leave my little pony behind, this was going to be a hard ride.

He got into the saddle and took the hunter to the mounting block. I helped the Lady Mary scramble up behind him, she took a tight grip around his waist and kept her hood pulled forward to hide her face. I had to take my horse to the mounting block too, the stirrup was too high for me to mount without help. When I was up on him, the ground seemed a long way away, he sidestepped nervously and I jerked on the reins too tightly and made him toss his head and sidle. I had never ridden such a big horse before, and I was frightened of him; but no smaller animal could manage the hard ride we must make today.

Tom turned his horse’s head and led the way out of the yard. I turned after him and heard my heart pounding and knew that I was on the run, once again, and afraid, once again, and that this time I was perhaps in a worse case than I had been when we had run from Spain, or when we had run from Portugal, even when we had run from France. Because this time I was running with the pretender to the throne of England, with Lord Robert Dudley and his army in pursuit, and I was his vassal sworn; her trusted servant, and a Jew; but a practising Christian, serving a Papist princess in a country sworn to be Protestant. Little wonder that my heart was in my mouth and beating louder than the clopping of the hooves of the big horses as we went down the road to the east, pushing them into a canter towards the rising sun.