He looked at his mother, as if willing her to see the mire as he saw it, a place of eerie beauty, and Alinor as a woman of the place, strange and beautiful too. “They are not people like us,” he tried to explain.

“But she did at least have a husband? She was married once? She’s not a—”

“No! Her parents are dead but she has a brother. He’s a good man.”

“Did her husband die in the war?” his mother asked. “On our side?”

“Er, no . . .” James said awkwardly. “He’s just missing.”

“She’s a deserted wife?” his mother asked. “Abandoned?”

“Yeoman stock?” his father asked hopefully. “This brother? Has he got his own land? Or is he a tenant farmer?”

James shook his head, forcing himself to be honest. “He keeps the ferry. They have the tenancy to the ferry and the ferry-house, and they grow vegetables and trees and keep hens in an acre behind the house. They sell ale out of the window. They’re poor people, sir, on poor land, on the very edge of England as it turns into sea. It’s marshland, tidelands, neither one thing nor another. And it’s true to say, she owns almost nothing. She was given a few shillings for bringing me to safety and she used it to buy a boat.”

He did not know that he was smiling at the thought of the boat and the courage of the woman he loved. “It meant everything to her. She fishes from the boat, and sells her catch. She said—” He broke off as he realized that he could not tell them of her joke that saving him was of the same value as catching a fat salmon. “She grows herbs and makes physic. She’s a healer and a midwife in the little village. It’s a little fishing village, very poor.”

His mother was blanched with horror. “A fisherwoman?” she repeated. “A midwife? Like a cunning woman?”

“Yes,” he said steadily. “She’s no grander than that.” He turned to his father. “But she saved me when I had nowhere to go. And then, later, she nursed me when I was near to death, when anyone else would have locked the doors and abandoned me, for fear of plague. But she chose to stay with me, and be locked up with me. And I have asked her to marry me.”

His mother gave a suppressed moan and put her hand over her mouth, closing her eyes.

His father’s face was dark. “This is not what we planned for you,” he said shortly.

“Sir, I know it. But we did not plan a world like this.”

“We are exiles and all but penniless. We’re defeated in this world, but we have not sunk so low that you can break your vows to the Church to marry a village midwife with a brace of lowborn children.”

“I am sorry, sir. I am sorry, Lady Mother.”

She shook her head, her hand shading her eyes, as if she could not bear to look at him.