“You know nothing about her, you know nothing about this!” I flared up. “I know her. This is not a young woman who is easily frightened, and more than that, her fear does not lead her to tears. If she is afraid she will fight like a bated cat. She is not a girl who gives up and weeps.”

“She is a woman,” he said again. “And she is enmeshed with Dudley and Dee and Wyatt and the rest of them. I warned you of this. I told you that if you played a double game at court you would bring danger on yourself and danger to us all, and now you have led danger to our door.”

I was breathless with rage. “What door?” I demanded. “We have no door. We have the open road, we have the sea between us and France and then we have to cross France like a family of beggars because you, like a coward, are afraid of your own shadow.”

For a moment I thought Daniel would strike me. His hand flew up and then he froze. “I am sorry you call me a coward before your father’s face.” He spat out the words. “I am sorry you think so lowly of me, your husband-to-be, and the man trying to save you and your father from a traitor’s death. But whatever you think of me, I am commanding you to help your father pack and be ready.”

I took a breath, my heart still hammering with rage. “I am not coming,” I said flatly.

“Daughter!” my father started.

I turned to him. “You go, Father, if you wish. But I am not running away from a danger that I don’t see. I am a favorite at the palace with the queen and I am in no danger from her, and too small a person to attract the attention of the council. I don’t believe you are in any danger either. Please don’t throw away what we have started here. Please don’t make us run away again.”

My father took me into his arms and held my head against his shoulder. I felt myself rest against him and for a moment I longed to be the little girl who went to him for help, who had known that his judgment was always right. “You said we would stay here,” I whispered. “You told me this was to be my home.”

“Querida, we have to go,” he said quietly. “I truly believe they will come: first for the rebels, and then for the Protestants, and then for us.”

I lifted my head and I stepped back from him. “Father, I cannot spend my life running away. I want a home.”

“My daughter, we are the people who have no home.”

There was a silence. “I don’t want to be one of the people without a home,” I said. “I have a home at court, and friends at court, and my place there. I don’t want to go to France and then Italy.”

He paused. “I was afraid you would say that. I don’t want to force you. You are free to take your own decision, my daughter. But it is my wish that you come with me.”

Daniel walked the few paces to the attic window, then he turned and looked at me. “Hannah Verde, you are my betrothed wife and I order you to come with me.”

I drew myself up and faced him. “I will not come.”

“Then our betrothal will be ended.”

My father raised a hand in dissent, but he said nothing.

“So be it,” I said. I felt cold.

“It is your wish that our betrothal is ended?” he asked again, as if he could not believe that I would reject him. That hint of arrogance helped me to my decision.

“It is my wish that our betrothal is ended,” I said, my voice as steady as his own. “I release you from your promise to me, and I ask you to release me.”

“That’s easily done,” he flared. “I release you, Hannah, and I hope that you never have cause to regret this decision.” He turned on his heel and went to the stair. He paused. “But nonetheless, you will help your father,” he said, still commanding me, I noticed. “And if you change your mind you may come with us. I would not be vengeful. You can come as his daughter and as a stranger to me.”

“I shan’t change my mind,” I said fiercely. “And I don’t need you to tell me to help my father. I am a good daughter to him and I would be a good wife to the right man.”

“And who would the right man be?” Daniel sneered. “A married man and a convicted traitor?”

“Now, now,” my father said gently. “You have agreed to part.”

“I am sorry you think so badly of me,” I said icily. “I shall care for my father and I will help him leave when you bring the wagon.”

Daniel clattered down the stairs and then we heard the shop door bang, and he was gone.

Over the next two days we worked in an almost unbroken silence. I helped my father tie his books together, the manuscripts we rolled into scrolls and packed in barrels, and pushed them behind the press in the printing room. He could take only the core of his library; the rest of the books would have to follow later.

“I wish you would come too,” he said earnestly. “You’re too young to be left here on your own.”

“I’m under the protection of the queen,” I said. “And hundreds of people at court are the same age as me.”

“You are one of the chosen to bear witness,” he said in a fierce whisper. “You should be with your people.”

“Chosen to witness?” I demanded bitterly. “More like chosen never to have a home. Chosen to be always packing our most precious things and leaving the rest behind? Chosen to be always one skip ahead of the fire or the hangman’s noose?”

“Better one skip ahead,” my father said wryly.

We worked all through the last night, and when he would not stop to eat, I knew that he was mourning for me as a daughter that he had lost. At dawn I heard the creaking of wheels in the street and I looked out of the downstairs window, and there was the dark shape of the wagon lumbering toward us with Daniel leading a stocky pair of horses.

“Here they are,” I said quietly to my father, and started to heave the boxes of books through the door. The wagon halted beside me and Daniel gently put me aside. “I’ll do that,” he said. He lifted the boxes into the back of the cart, where I saw the glimpse of four pale faces: his mother and his three sisters. “Hello,” I said awkwardly, and then went back to the shop.

I felt so wretched I could hardly carry the boxes from the rear of the printing shop out to the cart and hand them over to Daniel. My father did nothing. He stood with his forehead leaning against the wall of the house.

“The press,” he said quietly.

“I will see that it is taken down, sheeted and stored safely,” I promised. “Along with everything else. And when you decide to come back, it will be here for you and we can start again.”

“We won’t come back,” Daniel said. “This country is going to be a Spanish dominion. How can we be safe here? How can you be safe here? Do you think the Inquisition has no memory? Do you think your names are not on their records as heretics and runaways? They will be here in force, there will be courts in every city up and down the land. Do you think you and your father will escape? Newly arrived from Spain? Named Verde? Do you really think you will pass as an English girl called Hannah Green? With your speech, and your looks?”

I put my hands to my face, I nearly put them over my ears.

“Daughter,” my father said.

It was unbearable.

“All right,” I said furiously, in anger and despair. “Enough! All right! I’ll come.”

Daniel said nothing in his triumph, he did not even smile. My father muttered, “Praise God,” and picked up a box as if he were a twenty-year-old porter and loaded it on the back of the wagon. Within minutes everything was done and I was locking the front door of the shop with the key.

“We’ll pay the rent for the next year,” Daniel decided. “Then we can fetch the rest of the stuff.”

“You’ll carry a printing press across England, France and Italy?” I asked nastily.

“If I have to,” he said. “Yes.”

My father climbed in the back of the wagon and held out his hand for me. I hesitated. The three white faces of Daniel’s sisters turned to me, blank with hostility. “Is she coming now?” one of them asked.