TIDELANDS, JANUARY 1649

At dawn, the late cold dawn of January, Alinor woke to hear the cracking of ice and the sound of horses splashing through the cold waters as a carriage skidded down the wadeway and forded the ebbing tide. She rubbed the frost flowers off the inside of her bedroom window and squinted to her left. In the half-light she could see the lumbering bulk of the Peachey carriage.

“Alys! The Peachey carriage is going over the wadeway,” she said to the girl still sleeping in the bed behind her.

“Doesn’t matter,” Alys replied, unmoving. “He doesn’t pay.”

“I wonder if Rob is with them. And where they’re going.”

“To London, I expect, chasing after the king, like everyone else.”

“They’ll have left Rob at the Priory then,” Alinor said. “Surely, they wouldn’t take him?”

The rattle of the front door answered her. “That’ll be him now!” Alinor said gladly. She called down the ladder stairs: “Is that you, Rob?”

“Aye, Mother,” he shouted cheerfully. “I’m to stay with you till Candlemas and then Mr. Tudeley is to take me to Chichester. I’m to go to Mr. Sharpe, the Chichester apothecary. My term starts with him then.”

Alinor tied her shawl around her thickening waist, and climbed down the stair. She hugged Rob and stepped back to admire him. “I swear you’ve grown again.”

“In the three weeks since Christmas Day?” he teased her.

“You’re becoming a man,” she said. “Think of you going as an apprentice!”

He dropped to his knee for her blessing and when he rose up he asked, “Have you breakfasted?”

“Of course not. Alys isn’t even up yet. Are you hungry?”

“Starving,” he said.

“Sit down then and I’ll light the fire.” Alinor pressed him into the fireside chair, lifted the cover off the embers, and put the kindling driftwood and twigs on the red glow.

“Is Sir William going to London about the king?” she asked.

“Yes, he’s called to be a judge. He’s taking Walter on to Cambridge.”

“Is there really to be a trial of the king?”

“Everyone says so, but I don’t think Sir William’ll attend the court. He’s going to see if he can be excused.”

“How will the king get a fair hearing if the only men who judge him are parliament men?” Alys asked, coming down the stairs.

“That’s it,” Rob said. “He won’t.”

“He won’t?” repeated Alinor.

“He won’t get a fair hearing,” Rob predicted. “That’s what Sir William says. If they can get him into trial at all, there’ll be no justice for him.”

“So the royalists won’t be there?” Alinor asked, thinking of James.

“They’ll stay away.”

LONDON, JANUARY 1649

James, reading the list of the men who had been called as judges, saw Sir William’s name, and went, his hat pulled low over his face, to the Golden Cross, at Charing Cross, the inn that the Sussex gentry favored on their trips to London. The landlord, rushed by the arrival of so many country gentlemen, shouted, “Yes! He’s upstairs in the private sitting room!” and went by without looking twice at James or asking for a name. James was able to go up the stairs and tap at the door without anyone noticing him.