She tapped at the door and went in, ducking her head below the crooked lintel. He was asleep, sprawled over the nets, his good woolen cape spread under him, his beautiful curling hair tumbled around his face. She observed his pallor, and the dark long sweep of his eyelashes, the sleeping strength of his body, his chest and arms and the length of his legs in the expensive riding boots. Nobody would take him for anything but a stranger, foreign to this impoverished island off the south coast of England. One glance would tell anyone that he was a nobleman. He was as out of place, sprawled on the stinking nets in the ramshackle shed, as she would have been among the silks and perfumes of the king’s court, in the old days, when the king had a court in London.

She thought it was disrespectful to wake him, but then the cooling bowl in her hand reminded her that if she left the gruel beside him and he woke to found it cold and congealed he would be nauseated. So she bent down, put the cup of ale on the floor, and gently shook the toe of his boot.

His eyelashes flickered at once and he opened his eyes and sprang to his feet in one movement. “Ah! Goodwife,” he said.

She held out the bowl and the mug of small ale. “Gruel,” she said. “I know it’s not good enough for you.”

“It comes from you, and it comes from God, and I am grateful,” he replied. He put the bowl and spoon and mug on the floor and he knelt down and spoke a long whispered grace in Latin. Alinor, not knowing what to do, bowed her head and whispered “Amen” as he finished, though she had been told by the minister—they had all been told—that God did not speak in Latin, that God spoke in English and should be addressed in English and that everything else was a sham and a heresy and a papist mockery of the truth of the Word.

He sat cross-legged on the nets as if they were not crawling with vermin, and he ate the gruel like a hungry man. He scraped the wooden bowl with the wooden spoon and drained the cup of small ale.

“I’m sorry, there’s no more,” she said awkwardly. “But I’ll bring you some fish soup if you’re here at dinnertime.”

“It was very good. I was hungry,” he said. “I am grateful to you for sharing your food. I hope that you did not go without to feed me?”

She thought with a brief pang of guilt of her boy, who would have eaten more at breakfast. “No,” she said. “And my daughter might bring home some meat for dinner.”

He narrowed his eyes as if he was trying to conjure a calendar and see if there was a holy day or a fast day that he should observe. He smiled. “It’s St. John’s Day. I shall be glad to dine well, but if there is only a little I beg that you take it for yourself and your children. You do a great service to me and for God by hiding me here. I don’t want you to go hungry. I am accustomed to it.”