James was silent for a moment. “I don’t trust anyone,” he answered, hearing the ring of truth in his own words. “I don’t trust anyone, in this land which is sea, in these harbors that are not havens, in these ebbing tidelands.”

“What?”

“Anyway, if I don’t get down to the quay, get the person we have come for safely aboard, and pay the boatman.”

“What d’you mean, if you don’t get down to the quay?”

“If I’m caught,” James said flatly. “If I’m dead.”

At five minutes before midnight the three men pulled on their tall hats and wrapped their thick cloaks around their shoulders. James assumed that it was the damp air that made him shiver and long to stay by the fire for one minute, just one minute more.

“I’ll go ahead,” he said. “You come behind me and wait below his window, and you wait on the quay.”

“As agreed,” the first man said, irritable with fear. “For God’s sake, can we get on?”

All the windows were dark at the Hopkins house. There were no guards to be seen, but James had a suspicion that the commander of Carisbrooke Castle, an experienced army man, would have posted men to watch the doors, whatever promises the parliament might have made about the king’s freedom. The Hopkinses’ porter on their front door had been bribed to look away at midnight, but there was no way of knowing if there were spies hidden in the dark doorways or leaning against the dark walls. James peeled off from the main road and entered with assumed confidence through the garden door, walked around the vegetable and herb beds to the kitchen door. It was unlocked for early deliveries. James turned the handle and stepped into the quiet kitchen.

The spit boy rose up from his truckle bed by the fireside. “Who’s there?”

“Sssh, it’s me,” James said familiarly. “I didn’t know if anyone had remembered his sops in wine?”

“What?”

“The king. He takes bread and wine at midnight. Has anyone taken it up?”

“No!” the boy exclaimed. “Lord! This is always happening. And his servers have gone to the inn, and the cook gone to bed.”

“I’ll do it,” grumbled James. “I do everything.”

“D’you have the key to the cellar? Shall I wake the groom of the servery: Mr. Wilson?”

“No. The king doesn’t drink from your cellar. He has his own wine, in his own room. I have the key. You go back to sleep. I’ll serve him.”

He took a glass and a decanter from the cupboard in the hall and walked up the stairs. The door to the king’s room was locked on the inside, but as he approached it across the creaking floorboards of the landing he heard the clock on St. Thomas’s Church strike midnight, and at the same time the sound of an oiled bolt sliding back. He felt a sense of complete elation. He was on the threshold of the king’s bedchamber, the king was opening the door, the boat was waiting. “This is triumph,” James thought. “This is what it feels like to win.”