“I want to talk,” Alinor said to her daughter, ending days of unhappy silence. They were preparing the little cottage for the night, shoveling the red embers of the fire under the earthenware pot guard, shooing the hens into their corner, undressing to their linen shifts and lastly tamping out the rushlights. The foul scent of tallow smoke breathed around the little room like rancid bacon. The cottage was gloomy, lit by bars of moonlight shining through the shutters.

“At last,” Alys said irritably. “I wondered how long it’d take before you spoke. D’you have any idea what you’re going to do?”

Alinor bowed her head. “Alys, all I can say is that I’m sorry. But I do have hopes.”

The young woman sat heavily on the bed. “Name one.”

“The father of my baby is a good man. He asked me to marry him, and when I can, I will.”

“You can’t, you’re married to my da.”

“I can say he’s dead, and six years from now I’ll be free to marry. It’s in the law. When a man has been missing for seven years.”

“Say he’s dead?” Alys was shocked. “Name our da as a dead man?”

“It’s not ill-wishing!” Alinor exclaimed.

“It is! That’s exactly what it is. You’ll tell everyone he’s dead—what? Drowned?—and name yourself as a widow?”

“Alys, your da’s never coming back,” Alinor said quietly. “He told Rob, he met him at Newport. He’s never coming home.”

“What? Rob saw him?”

“Your da ran from him, and missed the next meeting. He didn’t want to be found. He told the tutor that he wasn’t coming back.”

“And nobody told me?”

“No . . . You remember? You didn’t want to know. You wanted to go to the Stoneys’ farm without a lie in your mouth.”

“My da isn’t coming back? Ever?”

“No. He says not.”

Alys put her hand over her eyes. “Just like that? And nobody told me?”

“I’m sorry, Alys.” Alinor spread her work-worn hands. “There’s been so much—” She broke off when she saw her daughter was fiercely rubbing her eyes with her shawl. “I’m very sorry, Alys. He wasn’t a good father to you or to Rob. He wasn’t a good husband. He’s not a good man. You said you didn’t care. You said you didn’t want to know.” She paused. “Are you crying for him?”

The girl showed her a sulky face rubbed dry of any tears. “Not at all.”

Alinor pressed on. “So, you see, I don’t have to wait forever for him to come home.”

“Looks like you didn’t wait at all,” Alys said spitefully.

Alinor bowed her head against the accusation. “But in six years’ time I can marry the father of my child.”

“Who says you can do this?”

“It’s the law.”

“Who says so?”

Alinor’s eyes dropped from her daughter’s demanding glare. “Rob’s tutor told me so.”

“Does everyone know about this but me? Does Uncle Ned?”

“No! Only the tutor, because he met your da with Rob at Newport.”

“And the law says you can marry seven years from my da going?”

“Yes, and I will.”

Alys’s strained face showed no relief. “That’ll be a comfort for your six-year-old bastard. But we’ve still got to get through the six years.”

Alinor gritted her teeth. “That’s why I’ll say nothing, and nobody will know I’m with child until you’re safely married. Then, when you’re happy at Stoney Farm, I’ll go away.”

“Leave me,” the girl said flatly. “And Rob.”

Alinor’s face was as calm as a carved statue of a saint, but her eyes filled with tears. “To spare you both, yes,” she said. “Isn’t it what you want?”

The girl sighed and lifted her head. “No good can come from this,” she predicted. “If this is what comes when a woman is free to make her own choices then I don’t think very much of Uncle Ned’s new England.”

“It’s nothing to do with Uncle Ned,” Alinor said, startled. “Nothing to do with the new England.”

“He says that men and women can choose their destiny, that they shan’t be ruled by their betters. But all that’s happened is that you’ve chosen a terrible mistake and we’ll suffer worse than when you were a poor widow on the side of the sea with a wasteful landlord ruling you and a wicked king over him. Because nothing’s really changed. We might have got rid of the king but not of the rule of men. You’re still ruined and this man is free to come and go as he wants. What if he doesn’t come back for you, ever?”

Alinor shook her head as if to rid herself of the blank misery of her daughter’s face. “The man I love will come back to help me,” she promised. “He’ll marry me when he can. I’ll not be shamed and neither will you. We’ll get through your wedding, and when you’re safely married I’ll go away and have my child, and in six years I shall be safely married too.”

“There’s a lot of hoping in this,” Alys said bitterly. “And we’re not a family that’s done well on hope. If it were me, telling you this, you would beat me.”

For the first time, Alinor smiled at her beloved daughter. “I would never beat you.”

“You would be furiously angry with me.”

“Aren’t you furiously angry with me?”

Alys did not return the smile. She turned her head away.

DOUAI, FRANCE, NOVEMBER 1648

James tapped on the door of the guest room in Douai College and braced himself when he heard his mother’s voice call “Entrez!” and then correct herself: “Come! Come in!”

He went in as she was turning from the window that overlooked the market square outside, and she hurried towards him with her arms out. “My son!” she said warmly. “My son!”

James knelt for her blessing and felt her hand on his head, and then rose and kissed her on both cheeks. She smelled of perfume and clean silk. His father got up from his chair at the table, where he had been turning the pages of a beautiful illuminated manuscript, and James knelt to him too. He rose up and the three of them stood looking from one to another, as if they could hardly believe they were reunited.

“Hear you’ve been home?” his father said shortly, his piercing glance taking in his son’s bleak appearance: from his pale face to his sandals.

“Yes,” James said. Out of habit he glanced behind him to see that the door was closed. “To England . . . not . . . not to our own home.”

“I heard there were problems.”

The young man nodded, and his father seated himself at the head of the dark wood refectory table, and gestured that his son should sit. His mother took her place at the foot. James thought that it was three years since they had been seated at the head and foot of their great table in their own home, three years of living on what rents they could collect from their English estate, three years of living off the hand-to-mouth royal courts, three years of exile from home.