“Thank you,” he said looking up into her worn face framed with gray hair pinned back under her cap. “Is Master Clare at home?”

“I’ll fetch him,” she said. “He’s in his workshop.”

James climbed back up the stairs, she dropped the hatch, and together they pulled back the table. James saw that she was dressed very plainly in a gray gown with a rough apron, not at all like the wealthy cavalier supporters who had hidden him in the past.

“A cup of ale?” she offered him.

“I’d be glad of one.”

She poured the ale from a jug on the sideboard and then put her shawl around her head. “I’ll fetch the master,” she said. “You wait here.”

James sat at the table, feeling the odd sensation of the floor moving under his feet, as if he were still riding the horse to the coast, still rising and falling on the waves of the sea. It was only travel sickness, but he thought that it would last forever: never again would the ground be firm beneath his feet. Then the door opened and a slight man came in, dressed in the neat modest clothes of a London tradesman. He shook James’s hand with a steady grip.

“You won’t be staying long.” It was a statement rather than a question.

“I won’t,” James promised him. “I’m grateful to you for the refuge.”

The man nodded.

“You’re not of the old faith?” James asked tentatively.

“No,” the man said. “I’m a Presbyterian, though I think, as Cromwell does, that a man should be free to worship in his own way. But unlike the radicals, I think the country is best ruled by a king and lords. I can’t see that a man can be a plowman by day and a lawmaker by night. We each have our trade, we should stick to it.”

“Was the king a good brother in the guild of monarchy?” James asked him, smiling slightly.

“Not the best,” the man said frankly. “But if my goldsmith does faulty work I make a complaint and ask him to do it again. I don’t put my baker in his place.”

“Are there many who think like you in London?”

“A few,” the man said. “Not enough for your purposes.”

“My purpose is to get information for the queen and prince and a letter to their friends,” James said cautiously. “That’s all.”

“That’s only half the job. Your purpose should be to get him back to his throne and you back to your own home, wherever that is. All of us in the place we were born to. All of us doing the trade we were brought up to.”

James nodded. “In the end, of course.” Briefly he thought of his home and his mother’s herb garden, and of his dream of Alinor standing at the gate. “I have hopes,” he admitted. “But for now, I have to know what is happening.”

“I’ll take you to Westminster,” his host said. “You can see for yourself. A wonder I never thought I’d see. The army holding the gate of the houses of parliament and the king commanded to answer to them.”