The passage outside was empty but a single candle burned on a highly polished chest. Its flame flickered and ducked in the draught that blew from the kitchen passage. Isabel was doubled up suddenly with home-sickness because life at Oakshott was so confusing, worse than home. She thought of her mother, Lady Thomasina Stanhope, who though aloof and sometimes cutting was at least constant in her love for Isabel. Here you could be floating in a bubble of piety one moment only to have it burst by a cold-eyed glance or wounding reprimand the next.

Isabel picked up the candle and went upstairs. The house, though very quiet, must be full of secret movement as people got ready for bed. She saw herself in the light of the trembling candle, small, plainly dressed and full of anguish, a martyr in fact. No Isabel, you have to earn martyrdom. Think of grandmother, eighteen years a widow, twelve times a prisoner in York for sheltering priests or refusing to attend Anglican services and still unwavering in her faith. She had made the Spiritual Exercises with Edmund Campion and then been named by him when his nails were torn out one by one to make him betray his friends. And Anne Winshawe was one of the women who had converted Margaret Clitherow and been present at her execution. Proof of this was the dreadful relic kept by Anne in a locked chest near her bed, Margaret's right hand cut off by her friends after death. The brownish little hand with its thin, dried-out fingers sat in Isabel's memory as a reminder both of Protestant evil and of the importance of Anne Winshawe in the Catholic scheme of things.

The staircase and passages on the first floor were unlit. Tonight the starkness of the house and her isolation within it seemed pitiless to Isabel. Sometimes, when the oval face of one of her ancestors loomed out of a portrait she glanced up with a half smile for fear of being impolite. Guided by a thin rail she tiptoed up another flight of steps and came at last to the room she shared with cousin Susannah.

This Susannah, like her mother and brothers, was a permanent fixture at Oakshott. She was thirteen, over two years older than Isabel, a big girl with dark skin and protruding eyes. Daily contact with Susannah who never looked in a mirror and kept her eyes shut when dressing had convinced Isabel that good looks were a disadvantage. And Susannah also had the upper hand when it came to family background. Her parents were such loyal Catholics that the penalties imposed had made them destitute and her father had died of grief. Isabel's father, on the other hand, paid the occasional fine on behalf of his recusant wife but still managed to be a very important figure at court where his genius with figures had made him famous. And although Isabel's brother Robin had spent a couple of years at school abroad there was no question of the priesthood for him. He was too fond of the sword.

Susannah was of course at prayer. She would never stoop to ask why Isabel had been kept back, though the downward tilt of her head suggested that she was more than usually angry .

After they were both in bed and Susannah had snuffed out her candle the room went absolutely black for a moment. Then one or two stars glittered behind the lattice. A breeze was rushing in the trees beyond the lawns but no sound came from inside the house.

'Susannah. Susannah: She couldn't possibly be asleep already. 'Susannah:

'What?' Susannah pretended to be startled.

'Grandmother wanted to tell the priest who I was. That's why she asked me to stay behind:

'Did you stay behind? I never noticed:

'Have you seen him before?'

'Who?' At its most exasperating, Susannah's voice became silky smooth.

'The priest:

Susannah turned her fat backside to Isabel, shoving her to the edge of the mattress. 'Can't this wait till morning? I'm so tired:

'He seems different to the others:

'He is. Of course: A long pause. 'He's a Jesuit: She gave a deep sigh and thereby closed the discussion.

Isabel lay on her back with her arms crossed on her chest.  She should have known straight away. He had the look of one who as Christ's foot-soldier had travelled from far countries, read a thousand books and spent night after night in meditation. Of all priests, the Jesuits were hounded the most.