Lily’s mind was piecing things together—all the visitors. The men. The times when Barbara was away.

She looked at Barbara silently, and saw how Barbara’s face was set, the way someone might brace themselves against a coming blow.

“D’ye think less of me?” asked Barbara.

Lily shook her head, and without words reached out for Barbara’s warm embrace.

“All right, then,” Barbara said, and straightened. “Let’s go see your ships.”

* * *

The Catholic King James had fathered three sons by his first wife, and this new prince was his second by Queen Mary. All the others had been taken in their cradle or while young, so Lily prayed hard every evening that the new Prince James would have good health and grow in strength, and live a long and happy life.

But all around the country, as the summer turned to autumn, others prayed for just the opposite.

Among them, it was rumored, were the king’s two daughters—Princess Anne and Princess Mary, who had seen themselves displaced in line to the succession by this new male heir.

Many thought that Princess Mary’s stern Dutch husband, William, Prince of Orange, would make a much better and more satisfactory king, being a Protestant. In fact, some whispered he’d been thinking the same thing himself for some time, and had gathered an invasion fleet already this past spring and was waiting only for an invitation from the English parliament to come and seize the throne.

Still others claimed, when all the dust had settled, that it was the birth of the young prince that was the start of it—that those who were at first unsettled by the new religious freedoms of King James were pushed to breaking point to think this Catholic king might yet be followed by another one.

Whatever the true cause, the match was set alight that summer, and the bitterness and hate that had been building since King James had claimed his throne exploded, leaving only pieces of the world the way it had once been.

Early in November, William landed with his Dutch invasion force of ships and soldiers in the south of England. Many of King James’s troops began to join his side, and William steadfastly refused any negotiation for a peace.

Just as his father had been forced to do before him when the Covenanters threatened, King James sent his wife and newborn child across the sea to France to safety, and then followed when he could. But he did not stay long in France.

Three months afterward, in March, King James had landed with his army on the Irish coast, and raising troops among his loyal subjects there, prepared for battle.

Those men whose sharpest weapons were their words did try to say this was a peaceful revolution, glorious for lack of bloodshed, when the ground in truth would be soaked red with it in days to come.

By May, William and Mary as joint king and queen had accepted the crowns of both England and Scotland, and many rejoiced at their Protestant rule, but there were just as many who did not accept them—who still held James Stewart to be their true king.