Alinor’s face was as calm as a carved statue of a saint, but her eyes filled with tears. “To spare you both, yes,” she said. “Isn’t it what you want?”

The girl sighed and lifted her head. “No good can come from this,” she predicted. “If this is what comes when a woman is free to make her own choices then I don’t think very much of Uncle Ned’s new England.”

“It’s nothing to do with Uncle Ned,” Alinor said, startled. “Nothing to do with the new England.”

“He says that men and women can choose their destiny, that they shan’t be ruled by their betters. But all that’s happened is that you’ve chosen a terrible mistake and we’ll suffer worse than when you were a poor widow on the side of the sea with a wasteful landlord ruling you and a wicked king over him. Because nothing’s really changed. We might have got rid of the king but not of the rule of men. You’re still ruined and this man is free to come and go as he wants. What if he doesn’t come back for you, ever?”

Alinor shook her head as if to rid herself of the blank misery of her daughter’s face. “The man I love will come back to help me,” she promised. “He’ll marry me when he can. I’ll not be shamed and neither will you. We’ll get through your wedding, and when you’re safely married I’ll go away and have my child, and in six years I shall be safely married too.”

“There’s a lot of hoping in this,” Alys said bitterly. “And we’re not a family that’s done well on hope. If it were me, telling you this, you would beat me.”

For the first time, Alinor smiled at her beloved daughter. “I would never beat you.”

“You would be furiously angry with me.”

“Aren’t you furiously angry with me?”

Alys did not return the smile. She turned her head away.

DOUAI, FRANCE, NOVEMBER 1648

James tapped on the door of the guest room in Douai College and braced himself when he heard his mother’s voice call “Entrez!” and then correct herself: “Come! Come in!”

He went in as she was turning from the window that overlooked the market square outside, and she hurried towards him with her arms out. “My son!” she said warmly. “My son!”

James knelt for her blessing and felt her hand on his head, and then rose and kissed her on both cheeks. She smelled of perfume and clean silk. His father got up from his chair at the table, where he had been turning the pages of a beautiful illuminated manuscript, and James knelt to him too. He rose up and the three of them stood looking from one to another, as if they could hardly believe they were reunited.

“Hear you’ve been home?” his father said shortly, his piercing glance taking in his son’s bleak appearance: from his pale face to his sandals.