The cook opened the top half of the door, smiled to see that it was Alinor, and said: “I need nothing today, Goodwife. His lordship isn’t home till tomorrow and I don’t make eel pie for anyone else.”

“I came to see Mr. Tudeley,” Alinor said. “It’s about my boy.”

“There’s no work,” the cook said bluntly, lifting the lid on a giant stewpot and stirring the contents. “Not with the world as it is, and nobody knowing what will happen next, and no good coming to anyone, with the king missing, and parliament up in arms, and our own lord up and down to London every day of the week, trying to talk some sense into them, and nobody listening to anyone but the devil himself.”

“I know,” Alinor said, following her into the hot kitchen. “But still, I have to speak with him.” She felt a pang of hunger bite in her belly at the waft of beef broth. She pursed her lips against the rush of water in her mouth. The cook raised her head from her work, mopped her sweating face with her apron, and shouted to someone inside the house to see if Mr. Tudeley would see Goodwife Reekie. Alinor waited by the door, and heard the servants ask if she was to be admitted, and then a footman put his head in the kitchen and said: “You’re to come in, Goodwife.”

Alinor followed the lad along the corridor past the storerooms to the paneled door of the steward’s room. The footman swung it open and Alinor went in. Mr. Tudeley was sitting at the rent table, papers spread before him. “Goodwife Reekie,” he said, barely glancing up. “You wanted to see me?”

Alinor bobbed a curtsey. “Good day, sir,” she said. “I did. I do.”

The boy went out, closing the door behind him, and the steward waited, expecting that she would ask to be excused her rent for a quarter. Everyone knew that the Reekie woman and her children were hand-to-mouth; nobody had much sympathy for the deserted wife of a drunkard.

“I was at church last night and I met a man who told me his name was James,” she said in a frightened rush. “Father James. I’ve brought him here. He’s waiting by the haystack in Seaward Meadow.”

“You brought him for me to arrest, a recusant priest?” Mr. Tudeley asked her coldly, looking over his steepled fingers.

Alinor swallowed, her mouth dry, her face frozen. “As you wish, sir. I don’t know the rights and wrongs of these things. He said he wanted to be brought here, and so I brought him, with no one the wiser. If he’s a friend of his lordship then I have to obey him; if he’s an enemy then I’m reporting him to you.”

Mr. Tudeley smiled at her white-faced anxiety. “You’re not acting on principle then? Not joined your brother’s party, Goody Reekie? Become one of these prophesying preaching women? D’you want to see him burned for heresy? D’you want to see him hanged and drawn for treason?”