“Ah,” he said, his anger leaving him at the sight of her tears. “Ah, you pray for peace, you’re right. And there’s nothing for you to fear. Colonel Hammond will have the king safely mewed up at Carisbrooke. Parliament and the army will agree what must be done with the king, and even if parliament are such fools as to come to an agreement with him, they won’t let him raise troops to shed our blood again. We’ve won against the king, and we’ve probably won against the Scots, too, and even now the news of the battle is coming south as we sit here. It might be all over already, and it’s me who is a fool, pining to march north, thinking I could return to the days when I was among my comrades, led by Cromwell and commanded by God. It’s probably all done already.”

“Yes,” she said. “I can pray that it’s over.”

Alys was slow to wake, her arms and back aching. The two women had the rest of the white loaf for breakfast with Ned’s cheese.

“So delicious.” Alys dabbed up every crumb. “I think I shall marry the miller and eat wheat loaf every day of my life.”

“You’ll have to get rid of Mrs. Miller,” her mother pointed out. “And I think you’ll find that she won’t make way for you.”

“How I’d love to be rid of her!” Alys remarked. “I should throw the two of them—her and her helpless husband—off the quay, and marry their son, and inherit the mill.”

The miller’s son was a little boy of six years old named Peter. Alinor had delivered him herself. “And Jane could be your sister-in-law,” Alinor smiled. “That’d be a happy house.”

“I’d marry her off somewhere,” Alys asserted. “But nobody’d have her.”

“Oh, the poor girl,” Alinor said. “Don’t be unkind, Alys. Anyway, have they nearly finished the harvest?”

“Nearly, just one field to go. I was binding and stacking all day. Will you come this afternoon for gleaning?”

“Yes, I’ll bring your dinner,” Alinor promised.

Alys bowed her head in a prayer of thanks and rose from the table. “It’s funny Rob not being here,” she remarked. “Aren’t you lonely all the day?”

“I’m so busy I don’t have time to be lonely.”

“Because you look as if you’re listening for something.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know. A footstep?”

Ashamed of herself, Alinor remembered watching James run along the sea-bank path, jumping the wet puddles like a boy running to his lover. “I’m not listening for anyone,” she lied.

“I didn’t say for anyone, I said for something.”

“I know.”

“I didn’t think that you missed my da anymore?” the girl asked gently. “We don’t—Rob and me. You needn’t worry for us.”

“I don’t,” Alinor said shortly.

“D’you just wish sometimes that everything was different? Aren’t you sick of everything? Not the king and the parliament—because I just don’t care for either of them—but something different for us. Something real, not preaching.”