“Your orders are to rescue him,” James insisted. “Whatever the case. You can decode and read them; but they’re as I say. I have to take a reply. What am I to tell them when I report back?”

“Tell them I’ll try,” the man said miserably. “But I won’t send a message to you, to tell you when. I won’t fix a date. The fewer men who know, the better.”

“You’re never going to risk him at sea, without the protection of the fleet?”

“What protection? What fleet? Who’s to say the prince’s sailors wouldn’t kidnap him, and sail right back to London to claim the ransom money? They changed their tune once; they’ll do it again, won’t they?”

James recoiled from the man’s bitter cynicism. “You don’t trust the royal fleet? Under the command of the Prince of Wales?”

“D’you think you are the only man in England who has lost faith?”

“I never said I had lost my faith!”

“It’s in your face and in every step you take,” the man said with contempt. “You look like we all do—whipped.”

TIDELANDS, DECEMBER 1648

Alys and Alinor walked along the harbor bank to church on Christmas Day, a hard frost turning the inland water meadows white as snow on their right hand, the harbor frozen like iron on the other. They were dressed in layer upon layer of winter clothes but they had no special ribbons or favors pinned to their capes. The new parliament had ruled that Christmas was not to be marked with any feasting or merrymaking, but must be a day like any day. Red trotted ahead of them and then circled back, the only joyful one.

Alinor looked at the winter sun, casting shadows that underlined every bank and puddle and reedbed on the wet harbor. She wondered if James was with his family, if he were thinking of her. She hoped he was somewhere warm and merry. She loved him so much, she even wished him happiness without her.

The church was cold and plain and bare, and there was no singing and no Christmas carols. The minister preached a sermon announcing that it was the birth of Jesus Christ and that the day should be filled with quiet reflection, that wassailing and Christmas ales and special puddings and roast dinners were nothing but worldly show and greed. The birth of our Lord should be considered reverently and thoughtfully. Godly work could and should be done; it was not a holiday for visiting and dancing and carousing. How would the birth of God be served by people sinning? How should the Lord be greeted, if not by quiet reflection and steady labor?

The prayers for parishioners who were sick or dying went on for long minutes; the cold weather was always hard on the poor of Sealsea Island. Alinor bowed her head and thanked God that she and Alys were well housed in the ferry-house and Rob lived in luxury at the Priory. The minister prayed for the soul of old Mrs. Hebden, buried in frost-hard ground, and invoked God’s aid for other men and women who would not survive the cold season and were going hungry to save their winter stores. The church was freezing, the service dragged on and on, longer than ever, and when the congregation was finally released and spilled out of the porch, it started to snow.