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by both families?’
    Ellyn’s answer was crisp.
    ‘Most certainly, if the man be not Godfrey Gilbert.’
    Her father threw up his hands in exasperation.
    ‘Then let him be Peryn Fownes!’ His face became redder. ‘But I wish you had made your preference plainer – ’twould have saved everyone much trouble.’
    ‘Nor Peryn Fownes!’ Ellyn retorted, bridling instantly. Why must it be either? A sudden recollection of the promise she had made her mother constrained her from further protest. She continued in a milder tone. ‘Dear Father, I have not yet decided . . .’
    ‘You must!’ he bellowed. Too late, Ellyn noticed his colour darkening and the fresh beads of sweat that appeared across his brow. His anger broke like a thunderstorm with violent noise.
    ‘Since you clearly cannot decide, then I will decide for you. A wedding
must
be arranged, and this dithering ended.’ He hurled his words at her. ‘You are twenty years of age and might by now have given me four grandchildren or more, if you had not been so obdurate.’
    ‘I ask only for a little time . . .’ Ellyn began to plead.
    ‘Your time has run out!’ Her father railed, his eyes started as he glared at her. ‘Do you suppose you will attract suitors for ever? A maid must be wed young if she is to bear a good crop, since not all her fruit will last a season, as you should know.’
    She gasped and clutched at arguments like collapsing steps, desperately and without forethought.
    ‘There may be others, better—’
    ‘What others?’
    ‘The Queen is not yet betrothed,’ she threw out, but instantly regretted the remark.
    His rage only worsened.
    ‘Might England go to war because of your choice?’
    She shrank from his shouting but he leaned over her.
    ‘Am I besieged by legions of wooers? No and
no
! You must know your place, your bounds and your duty.’
    She hung her head, though he only heaped more admonishment upon her.
    ‘You will wear Master Gilbert’s gift with pride, and await the day when good commerce persuades him to enter a commitment that is closer.’ Her father staggered to his feet, swaying while he leaned on his stick.
    Ellyn caught his arm, but he shrugged her away.
    ‘Say nothing more!’ He thumped his stick down. ‘
I have spoken
.’
    Aghast, Ellyn watched her father lumber to the door, banging into a cupboard before lurching and marching out, hose sagging around his swollen ankles. She was left in the company of abandoned trenchers and spilt salt, a dish from which a turbot head stared flatly back at her and the basin of water in which fingers had been washed. Its surface shone with a greasy film. She had not eaten but gulped at the sensation of something sticking in her throat. Awareness of the broken promise to her mother made her dejection more acute. Since she was a child, her father had never chastised her so forcibly. His censure stung deep, bursting the bubble of her pride, and reminding her of everything that constrained and oppressed her.
    She was chill with the realisation that she would
have
to wed Godfrey Gilbert, and, if not him, then Peryn Fownes. What silly daydreams had she entertained? Her reveries of a knightly courtship, of being wooed like a lady in a classic romance – even the most agreeable of her musings about Will Doonan – all these fancies had been crushed at a stroke. Her only hope of reprieve was if some calamity befell the
Swan
: fire, storm, or attack – a total loss at sea. But how could she wish for that if Will was as much at risk as the cloth on which Master Gilbert expected to increase his fortune?
    Ellyn gazed at her ringless hands, at her sleeves the colour of lush meadows and spring leaves: green for fertility and passion. Her cuffs were edged by the stitches her mother had sewn, neat and measured, each pulled perfectly tight – so passion was finished. How fitting.
    She shook her head. Her father was a tyrant and she hated him. Didn’t he care about how she felt? Surely he could