Darkness has fallen by the time the next coach reaches The Hague. Anna follows the directions she has been sent and goes to wait for Catharina’s carriage near a water pump outside the town square. It’s freezing now, cold gusts shivering the surface of the water in the canals, nudging the lanterns strung from the trees. In their orb-like glow, she sees the Binnenhof’s Gothic turrets sketched against the purple sky. Home to the Princes of Orange for almost a century, the palace is like a church that has been reformed so many times its true religion has been lost. Additional wings, constructed whenever a new Stadholder took control, have given the palace an odd, mismatched quality, zigzagging bricks and timber frames built one on top of the other, the future crushed against the past.

A man wearing dark gloves looms out of the darkness. He is ancient, at least fifty, his grey hair flattened under a peaked cap.

‘You are the new dienstboten?’

She nods, her tongue stuck fast from nerves.

‘I’m Mr Hartog. My wife Susanna is the hoofd van het huishouden; the head of the household. We’ve been expecting you.’

‘The coach was delayed.’

‘It would be good if there were a direct way of travelling from Amsterdam to The Hague. Alas, the water.’

He makes a sweeping gesture, as if to suggest that the water is to blame for everything, good or ill, that shapes their lives.