“He wouldn’t come? Not even for the password?” Sir William repeated incredulously.

James shook his head. “No, sir, he would not.”

“You warned him of what might be?”

“I warned him, and I told him that it was his wife’s own plan and his son was waiting in his ship offshore. I begged him. He wouldn’t come.”

“God save him, this is a damnable mistake.” Sir William held up his glass in a toast. James clinked glasses and sat back in his chair.

“Are you sick?” Sir William cocked an eye at the younger man’s pale face.

“Perhaps a little fever. Nothing important.”

“So d’you think there’s any chance he might be right? That parliament will come to an agreement with him?”

“Newport is filled with royalists who boast that it doesn’t matter what he signs. They say he will sign anything, and once he’s back in his palace he’ll avenge his advisors that parliament executed, restore the queen, and bring the royal family back to London. He’ll take back his power and destroy his enemies. Everyone says that it doesn’t matter what he signs now—he will restore himself.”

“I doubt it. I really doubt it. The parliament men aren’t fools. It has cost them dear to get here. They’ve lost sons and brothers, too. They won’t throw it away on an empty agreement when he has given them every reason never to trust him. My own ferry-man doesn’t trust him! Anything they offer would have to be binding. They’ll tie him down with oaths. They won’t just hand him the treasury and the army for a handful of promises.”

“I was told that he will consent to nothing less,” James said wearily.

“Impossible!” Sir William said scathingly. “Besides, it’s not his army anymore. This is the New Model Army, they’re all Cromwell’s men. They’ll never serve under a king; they have their own ideas! They’re a power to themselves, they think for themselves. Not even the parliament can control them—how ever would he?”

James clenched his hands on the carved arms of his chair, trying to master a wave of dizziness. “Yes, sir. But that’s the very reason that parliament will have to agree with him: to avoid the demands of the army. Some parliament men hate the army worse than they doubt the king. Some would rather have a tyrannical king than a tyrannical army—who wouldn’t? They’re divided among themselves, whereas he is determined . . .”

The older man nodded. “It’s a gamble,” he said. “A royal gamble. You have to admire him for taking it.”

James, very far from admiration, took a sip of brandy. “I don’t know where it leaves us,” he said. “I don’t know where it leaves me.”

“I’ll wait until I’m summoned again to serve him,” Sir William spoke for himself. “But I’ll never put my son in danger again. It’s hard to accept that he would let us come to his door before refusing. Did he not think of the danger to us? And what about you? Will you have to go back to your seminary for your orders?”

“I suppose so.” James put a hand to his forehead and found it was wet with sweat. “They’ll never understand how I failed. I was told to set loose a lion; I never thought it would stay in its cage. Of all the things that I feared might go wrong, I never thought of this. I’m at a loss. I was to see him safe on his son’s ship, and then go to London. I am ordered to report to London as soon as he was safely away. I suppose now I shall go back to them and say he has stayed, and I have failed. I will have to go to the queen and tell her that I have spent her fortune for nothing.”

“You’re very welcome to stay here. The chapel needs a chaplain. Walter needs a tutor. Nobody doubts you. You’re safe here.”

“I’d be glad to stay overnight, but I am under oath. Tomorrow I must ride to London.”

“You don’t look fit for it.”

James felt his very bones ache. “I have to report. There’ll be another plot. There’ll be more journeys along hidden ways. There will be another task for me: and I am sworn to obedience.”

“Well, please God they don’t ask more of you than to lie low and wait for better times. You’ve been living on the brink of danger for months, and you look as sick as a dog.”

“It’s been weary work,” James conceded.

“What if they send you back to him, to do it all over again?”

“I am sworn to serve,” James repeated, feeling the words sour in his mouth and his heart hammering. “I pray for peace.”

“So do we all,” his lordship said. “But always on our own terms. Shall we pray now?”

“Matins?” James offered, looking at the French clock that ticked on the stone chimney breast. It was past midnight.

“Yes,” Sir William said, getting to his feet. “And will you leave tomorrow?”

“At dawn,” James said, thinking of the two boys in his care, of his plans for them, which would not now happen, and of the woman that he had sworn he would never see again, and now he never would.

James, in his white shirt and riding breeches, but with his holy stole around his neck, went quietly around the private chapel lighting candles. Sir William knelt before his great chair, his eyes closed, his face buried in his hands. Turning his back on his congregation of one, James prepared the bread and the wine for the Mass at the old stone altar at the east end of the church and spoke the prayers in Latin, his voice never rising above a quiet monotone. Sir William did not need to hear clearly. He joined in the confession and the preparation of the host in Latin, knowing every word from his childhood in a family that had never surrendered their faith, not during the years of Elizabeth, not during the years of Edward, not during the years of Henry.

The sense of despair that James had felt when he realized that he had spent months preparing an escape for a king who would not leave drained from him as his hands moved deftly among the goblets and the pyx, turned the page, poured the wine, broke the bread. He turned to find Sir William kneeling on the chancel steps and gave him the holy bread and a sip of the sacred wine. He knew, without any doubt, that at that moment Jesus Christ, the risen Lord, was in the bread and in the wine, that it was His body and His blood, that James and Sir William had dined at the table of the last supper, and that they had defeated death itself. He knew himself to be a sinner and he knew himself to be mired in doubt; but still he knew that he was redeemed and saved.

He muttered the final prayer in Latin: “Abide with us, O Lord,” and heard Sir William whisper the response: “For it is toward evening and the day is far spent.”

“As the watchmen look for the morning . . .”

“So do we look for Thee, O Christ.”

“Come with the dawning of the day . . .”

“And make Thyself known in the breaking of bread.”

James had a sensation under his ribs, which he thought must be his heart breaking, just as Christ’s heart broke on the cross. He had given up the woman he loved for the king that he must save, and he had failed to save him and learned to doubt her. He would never see his king again; he would never see her. He would leave her in poverty and the king in imprisonment. He was only twenty-two and he had failed in everything his duty and his heart had prompted him to do. “God forgive me,” he said, and without another word, sank to the floor as his knees buckled beneath him, and he lost consciousness.