James’s mother rose from the table and looked out of the window again as if the little market square in the small provincial town had anything to interest her. “Don’t speak like that,” she said quietly. “Not while James is risking his life.”

“Has he escaped?” James asked his father very quietly. “I heard he was to ride away, that there was a ship waiting for him. Is he safe?”

His father shook his head. “It didn’t happen. The plot was discovered.”

“Hardly surprising,” James said sourly.

His mother turned back from the window. “Don’t be bitter,” she said quietly. “Don’t let these times spoil you.”

“They have spoiled me,” James confessed. “I have lost my faith. Lost my faith in the cause, and lost my faith in God, too. But I suppose you know that? I suppose Dr. Sean sent for you? That is why you are here?”

His father was too honest a man to lie to his only son. “They sent for us the moment you came in,” he said. “They said you had been brought very low. Is it your faith in the king and God that is troubling you? Or is there a woman in it too?”

James hesitated, as his mother came to the table and rested her white hand on it, the beautiful lace from her cuff reflected in the polished wood. “You can speak in front of me,” she said. “I’m very sure I have heard worse over the last few years. We have been in a ragtag court in exile, with the morals of stable cats for long enough for me to hear everything.”

“Are you spoiled?” James asked her with a crooked smile.

“I’m hardened,” she admitted. “You can’t tell me anything new.”

“There is a woman,” he confessed. “A workingwoman, not a lady, but she is very beautiful and very brave and very . . .” He tried to think of a description that would do justice to Alinor. “Interesting,” he said. “She’s interesting. She is a herbalist, but quite uneducated. She is a simple woman but she has her own mind, her own thoughts. She lives—” He broke off, thinking that he could not describe the hovel at the side of Foulmire, and the ferry-house and the army brother. “She lives very simply,” he said, avoiding a description of her poverty. “But she saved my life the night that she first met me, and took me into hiding.”

“Her family?” his mother prompted.

“She has two children: a boy and a girl.”

Her aghast face told him of his mistake.

“I didn’t mean that! I meant to ask: is she of a good family?”

“She has children? She’s a widow?” his father asked.

James answered his mother first. “She has a little standing in her village, with her neighbors. There’s gossip—but there’s always gossip in these poor little places, you know that! Her husband has gone. He’s probably dead. They are poor people.” He hesitated, looking from one to another. “I’m not explaining this well. They don’t have land, or a family, or a name.”