Gently he detached himself from her embrace. “Of course. You’ll see me within the week.”

“Are you ready to go?” she asked him, half hoping he would say no and they would have more time together.

“I’ll get my sack,” he said.

He ran up the ladder to his loft bedroom and came down again carrying his little sack with some clean linen, his spoon, his cup, his knife, a change of hose and—a gift from Sir William—a notebook with blank pages for him to start his own book of recipes and remedies that he would learn from the apothecary. He had his own pen, a knife to trim it, and a small pot of ink from the Priory schoolroom.

“Everything?” Alinor asked him.

“Yes.”

“Well, if you need something, you can always send a message.”

They went out of the house, closing the door carefully behind them. Ned was rehanging the horseshoe that served as a chiming bell on the far side of the mire, but when he saw them he pulled the ferry over and held it steady as Alinor got on board.

“All ready?” he asked Rob. “You’re the first of us Ferrymans to have an apprenticeship. The first to be headed to clean work. The first to work indoors.”

“I’m ready,” Rob said.

“Our mother would have died of pride,” Ned said to Alinor. “Just shows you what study can do . . . and favor,” he added.

“Rob was always bright, even as a baby,” Alinor said. “Mother saw that in him, though she would never have dreamed of today. And he’s earned the favor of the Peacheys, fair and square. He learned enough at school to be able to study alongside Master Walter. And they made friends, real friends.”

“Born to be a lord?” Ned teased her, as he made the ferry fast and took her hand to help her out.

“Of course not,” she said. “But it tells you something that he and Master Walter were studying side by side and now Walter is fit to be a lawyer, or at any rate a gentleman.”

“It tells you that there are always places for placemen, and nothing changes,” Ned said.

“Everything is changing,” Rob said surprisingly, leaping from ferry to pier and helping Alinor to dry land. “Everything is changing. We have a parliament instead of a king. We can speak to our masters on our own two feet, we don’t have to kneel. I am going to earn a wage, not be paid in pennies. We’re never going to go hungry again.” He turned to his uncle and the two men embraced. “Thank you, Uncle Ned,” Rob said. “I’ll be back on Sunday.”

“Have this in the meantime,” his uncle said, pressing a sixpence into his hand. “Take it, you might need it. They might not feed you well and then you can buy yourself a pie or a loaf of bread. And if they don’t treat you well, you must tell us, you know. You’re right: we aren’t so poor that anyone can do anything to us. And we don’t take a beating from anyone.”