His mother was blanched with horror. “A fisherwoman?” she repeated. “A midwife? Like a cunning woman?”

“Yes,” he said steadily. “She’s no grander than that.” He turned to his father. “But she saved me when I had nowhere to go. And then, later, she nursed me when I was near to death, when anyone else would have locked the doors and abandoned me, for fear of plague. But she chose to stay with me, and be locked up with me. And I have asked her to marry me.”

His mother gave a suppressed moan and put her hand over her mouth, closing her eyes.

His father’s face was dark. “This is not what we planned for you,” he said shortly.

“Sir, I know it. But we did not plan a world like this.”

“We are exiles and all but penniless. We’re defeated in this world, but we have not sunk so low that you can break your vows to the Church to marry a village midwife with a brace of lowborn children.”

“I am sorry, sir. I am sorry, Lady Mother.”

She shook her head, her hand shading her eyes, as if she could not bear to look at him.

“We allowed you to go to the Church,” his father said begrudgingly. “That was not easy for us. We gave up all hopes of grandchildren and a daughter-in-law then. That was your choice. You said you had a calling and we believed you. That was the hardest thing I ever did—to give up my only son to the Church. And now you tell us that was for nothing? And we are to give you up again? But this time, for something of no value at all? For a woman who—by your own description—is valueless?”

James heard the rising volume of his father’s anger. “I know. I know. You were good to let me go to the Church. I longed to be in the Church then. I was certain. But . . . going back to England, and seeing the defeat of everything that we believe and the king so—”

“The king so what?” His mother rounded on him in a cold fury. “Is all this—all this!—because you have discovered that the king is a fool? I could have told you that ten years ago!”

Her husband moved his hand to silence her but she went on. “No! I will speak. The boy should know. He knows already! Yes! The king is a fool and a cat’s-paw, and his son is two parts a villain. But still he is the king. That never changes! And you are a priest, and that never changes. Whether he is a good king or a bad one, that never changes. Whether you are a good priest or a bad one, that never changes! Just as your father is and always will be Sir Roger Avery of Northside Manor, Northallerton. It never changes. Whether we live there, in our house, or not, whether it is overrun with rabble or not, whether you live there or not. It is still our name, it is still our house. England never changes and neither will you.”

There was silence in the little room. Sir Roger looked from his son to his wife.

“Did the woman accept you?” he asked as if it were a matter of secondary interest.

“Whyever would she not?” Lady Avery demanded angrily. “D’you think she would prefer to stay where she is? In nowhere? Half drowned in the tidelands?”

James raised his head. “No, she did not. She said it was not fitting.”

“She’s right!”

“Did she really say that?” his father asked, interested.

James nodded. “Yes, I told you she was unusual. But I said that I would be released from my order, that I would ask you if we might pay the fine to parliament and return to Northside, and that I would ask your permission to marry her, and bring her to our home as my wife. She has to wait until she can be declared a widow.”

“Pay the fine to parliament and live beneath their rule? Deny our service to the king?”

“Yes,” James said steadily. “He does not want my service. I don’t want to offer it ever again.”

“Betray your oath of loyalty to him?”

“Break it.”

Lady Avery took an embroidered handkerchief from her lace-trimmed sleeve and put it to her eyes. Her husband looked steadily at the down-turned face of his son.

“Does she even know your name?” he asked.

The young man looked up and for the first time his father saw his boyish smile. “No,” he said. “She knows me as Father James. I pass as a tutor called Mr. Summer. She has risked everything for me and she doesn’t even know my name.”

TIDELANDS, NOVEMBER 1648

Alinor knocked on the door of the Mill Farm dairy and entered on Mrs. Miller’s irritated shout. Richard Stoney was carrying in extra pails of milk, the maid ahead of him with the yoke on her shoulder.

“I’ve come for two pails of milk, if you’ve any for sale,” Alinor said.

“We’ve more than we can use today,” Mrs. Miller said. “Bessy’s calf fell into the ditch and broke her neck. Bessy’s still in milk.”

“Oh, poor thing,” Alinor said. Mrs. Miller looked at her askance.

“Poor me,” she said. “I’ve lost a good calf. I’ll have to have it butchered for veal.”

“Yes,” Alinor agreed, who had never tasted the luxury meat in her life. “I thought I’d make cheese for Chichester market.”

“I’ll carry the milk to Ferry-house for you, Mrs. Reekie,” Richard said politely.

Mrs. Miller scowled at him. “She’s not your mother-in-law yet,” she said coldly. “And you work for me.”

The young man flushed. “I beg pardon,” he said shortly.

“I can manage, if I may borrow the yoke,” Alinor said. “Will you take it off Alys’s wages?”

“You’re asking for credit?” Mrs. Miller said nastily.

“I can pay you now, if you prefer,” Alinor said steadily.

“No, no, you can keep your ha’pennies. I’ll take it off her wages at the end of the week.

“Thank you.” Alinor smiled, and put the well-worn wooden yoke on her shoulders, lifted the two brimming pails, and set her shoulders to find her balance. Richard opened the dairy door for her.

“You get yourself into the mill,” Mrs. Miller ordered Richard. “He’s milling this morning and the tide won’t wait, not even for such as you.”

Richard ducked his head and trotted across the yard. As Alinor walked slowly with the yoke across her shoulders, watching the milk slopping in the pails, she heard the miller shout to Richard to open the sluice. She stood for a moment at the yard gate to watch the lad lightly running along the pond wall to turn the great iron key to open the sluice. The water from the pond poured into the millrace, and slowly, the mill wheel started to turn. There was a roar of creaking wood as the rush of waters forced the wheel round and round, and then the tumble of water on the other side of the tide-mill quay as the millrace gushed like a waterfall out into the harbor, bursting like a tide of green foam into the muddy rife. Alinor walked towards the wadeway, her head turned from the raging water of the millrace as the miller engaged the grinding stones inside the mill and there was a deafening rumble of stone against stone. Alinor crossed on the wet cobbles of the wadeway, stepping around the puddles of icy water, to the ferry-house on the other side.

Ned was felling an old apple tree in the garden at the rear of Ferry-house. The trunk was wide and knotted, and Ned had sharpened his axe and stripped to the waist to swing, and then hammer in the wedges so the spreading boughs fell away from the house. He raised his hand to Alinor as she came around the house and into the back door of the dairy.