My father appeared beside Daniel. “Could you walk if we both helped you?” he asked. “Or shall I fetch a litter?”

“I can walk,” I said. “I am not ill.”

The two of them helped me to my feet and we went down the narrow path to the lane that led to the city gate and our shop. At the corner I saw a knot of women waiting, Daniel’s mother, his three sisters, and the woman with a baby on her hip. She was staring at me just as I stared at her, each of us measuring the other, examining, judging, comparing. She was a broad-hipped pink milk-fed young woman, ripe as a peach, with pink smiling lips and fair hair, a broad face which denied deception, blue slightly protruding eyes. She gave me a smile, a shy smile, half apologetic, half hopeful. The baby she held against her was a true Jewish boy, dark-haired, dark-eyed, solemn-faced, with sweet olive skin. I would have known him for Daniel’s child the moment I had seen him, even if Mrs. Carpenter had not betrayed the secret.

As I looked at her I saw a shadow behind her, a shadow that was gone as quickly as I turned my gaze to it. I had seen something like a horseman, riding behind her, bending low toward her. I blinked, there was nothing there but this young woman, her baby held close, and Daniel’s womenfolk looking at me, looking at them.

“Come on, Father,” I said, very weary. “Get me home.”

Winter 1556-1557

Of course within days the word was out that I had fainted in church because I was pregnant, and for the next weeks I had women coming into the printing shop and asking for volumes which were stored on high shelves so that I would have to come out from behind the counter and stretch up, so that they could see my belly.

By winter they had to acknowledge that they were wrong and that the bookseller’s daughter, the odd changeling woman, had not yet received her comeuppance. By Christmas it was all but forgotten and by the long cold spring I was almost accepted as yet another eccentric in this town of runaways, vagabonds, ex-pirates, camp followers and chancers.

Besides, there were greater interests for the most inveterate gossips that year. King Philip’s long desire to drag his wife’s country into war against France had finally triumphed over her better sense, and England and France were declared enemies. Even sheltered as we were behind the stout walls of Calais it was terrifying to think that the French army could ride up to the bastions which encircled the Pale. The opinion of our customers was divided between those who thought the queen a fool ruled by her husband and mad to take on the might of France, and those who thought that this was a great chance for England and Spain to defeat the French as they had done once before, and this time to divide the spoils.

The spring storms kept ships in port and made news from England late and unreliable. I was not the only person who waited every day on the quayside and called to incoming ships: “What’s the news? What’s the news in England?” The spring gales threw rain and saltwater against the tiles and windows of the house and chilled my father to his very bones. Some days he was too cold and weary to get out of bed at all and I would kindle a little fire in the grate in his bedroom and sit by his bed and read to him from the precious scraps of our Bible. On our own, and quietly, lit only by candlelight, I would read to him in the rolling sonorous language of our race. I read to him in Hebrew and he lay back on his pillows and smiled to hear the old words that promised the land to the People, and safety at last. I hid from him as best as I could the news that the country we had chosen for our refuge was now at war with one of the strongest kingdoms in Christendom, and when he asked I emphasized that at least we were inside the town walls and that whatever might happen elsewhere to the English in France, or to the Spanish just down the road at Gravelines, at least we knew that Calais would never fall.

In March, as the town went mad for King Philip who traveled through the port on his way to Gravesend, I paid little attention to the rumors of his plans for war and his intentions toward the Princess Elizabeth. I was growing very anxious for my father, who did not seem to be getting any stronger. After two weeks of worry, I swallowed my pride and sent for the newly licensed Dr. Daniel Carpenter, who had set up an independent practice at a little shop on the far side of the quay. He came the moment that the street urchin delivered my message, and he came very quietly and gently as if he did not want to disturb me.

“How long has he been ill?” he asked me, shaking the sea fret off his thick dark cape.

“He is not really ill. He seems tired more than anything else,” I said, taking the cape from him and spreading it before the little fire to dry. “He doesn’t eat much, he will take soup and dried fruit but nothing else. He sleeps by day and night.”

“His urine?” Daniel asked.

I fetched the flask that I had kept for his diagnosis and he took it to the window and looked at the color in the daylight.

“Is he upstairs?”

“In the back bedroom,” I said and followed on my lost husband’s heels up the stairs.

I waited outside while Daniel took my father’s pulses and laid his cool hands on my father’s forehead, and asked him gently how he did. I heard their low-voiced exchange, the rumble of male communion, saying everything by speaking words which said nothing, a code which women can never understand.

Then Daniel came out, his face grave and tender. He ushered me downstairs and did not speak until we were in the shop once more, with the wooden door to the staircase closed behind us.

“Hannah, I could cup him, and physic him, and torment him a dozen different ways but I don’t think I, or any other doctor, could cure him.”

“Cure him?” I repeated stupidly. “He’s just tired.”

“He is dying,” my husband said gently.

For a moment I could not take it in. “But Daniel, that’s not possible! There’s nothing wrong with him!”

“He has a growth in his belly which is pressing against his lungs and his heart,” Daniel said quietly. “He can feel it himself, he knows it.”

“He is just tired,” I protested.

“And if he feels any worse than tired, if he feels pain, then we will give him physic to take the pain away,” Daniel assured me. “Thank God he feels nothing but tired now.”

I went to the shop door and opened it, as if I wanted a customer. What I wanted was to run away from these awful words, to run from this grief which was unfolding steadily before me. The rain, dripping from the eaves of all the houses down the streets, was running through the cobbles to the gutter in little rivulets of mud. “I thought he was just tired,” I said again, stupidly.

“I know,” Daniel said.

I closed the door and came back into the shop. “How long d’you think?”

I thought he would say months, perhaps a year.

“Days,” he said quietly. “Perhaps weeks. But no more, I don’t think.”

“Days?” I said uncomprehendingly. “How can it be days?”

He shook his head, his eyes compassionate. “I am sorry, Hannah. It will not be long.”

“Should I ask someone else to look at him?” I demanded. “Perhaps your tutor?”

He took no offense. “If you wish. But anyone would say the same thing. You can feel the lump in his belly, Hannah, this is no mystery. It is pressing against his belly, his heart and his lungs. It is squeezing the life out of him.”

I threw up my hands. “Stop,” I said unhappily. “Stop.”

He checked at once. “I am sorry,” he said. “But he is in no pain. And he is not afraid. He is prepared for his death. He knows it is coming. He is only anxious about you.”