“And he attacked me thinking I was Chlodovald?”

“He said so. You were kneeling on the chair by the port-hole, wrapped in your gown and with your hair loose down your back, so he took you for the child standing there to look out. He clapped a hand over your mouth to prevent you from calling out, and dragged you back to stab you. And found you were no child, but a young woman. Then the boy woke, and shouted out. And the rest you know.”

“Not quite. The man’s dead, I suppose?”

“Yes.”

She was silent for a moment, head bent as she smoothed a hand along the polished ship’s rail. “Did Chlodovald kill him?”

“No, no. That first wild stroke was a lucky one; it cut through the sinews in the fellow’s wrist, and made him drop his dagger. Then once the first scare was over, and the boy knew what had happened and where he was – and that he was safe on the queen’s ship – he was content to leave things to the master and to me. Except for –”

“Yes, Father?”

“Except for insisting that the man should be confessed and shriven before he died,” said the duke.

“It was Chlodovald who insisted?”

“Yes.”

“Ah.” It was more a sigh than a sound. Then she looked up. “Well, let’s hope it’s over, and the man was telling the truth. If he was really acting for himself, and wasn’t sent by Lothar or the other uncles –”

“We can take it as true. He made that part of his confession openly.”

She sighed again, this time with relief. “So they don’t know where Chlodovald is. Thank God for that! It’s really over, he’s safe, and we’ll soon be home … I wonder how he’ll settle there, poor boy, after what’s happened? Has Jeshua told you about it?”

“As much as he knows. He was with the queen’s household when the boys were sent for by Childebert and Lothar, to be made ready, they said, for the coronation. The next they knew was when one of Lothar’s creatures, a man called Arcadius, came to tell the queen that the boys had been seized, separated from their tutors and their own servants, and locked up separately until they would renounce their claim to their father’s lands.”

“How did Chlodovald escape?”

“He’d already been smuggled away into hiding. His tutor suspected what might happen, and he and another servant hustled the child away. They didn’t dare take him back to Queen Clotilda, but the servant went to tell her, and she sent Jeshua to bring him south to the Merwing, and see him safely into my care. They came a roundabout way, but they met with no trouble, and the tutor has ridden back to tell her the child is safe.”

“So she’ll soon know that he’s with you, and on his way to Britain?”

“Yes. And she begged me to see him established there in some house of religion. It appears – this was from Jeshua – that she has always had hopes that the youngest of the boys would turn to the holy life, and now this does seem to be his only choice.”