“You don’t know already, sir?” Ned demanded sharply. “When you’ve been away for weeks, and just came down the Chichester road yourself? Nobody mentioned it to you, on your way here, from wherever you have been? They didn’t know there? Whoever they were? Wherever it was?”

“No, I hadn’t heard anything,” James lied. He had been told the disastrous news of the Scots’ defeat at a safe house in Southampton. His host had been white with shock: “The Scots have turned back. They won’t save him. God save the king, God save the king, for now I think he is lost.”

James had cursed the bad luck of a king mustering such unreliable allies as the Scots, but failing to launch his own son’s fleet. Led by a competent general, this invasion could have turned the course of the war. But the best royalist generals were dead or dismissed, and the king was not on the field under his standard, but in prison, sending streams of contradictory orders.

“Actually, I came along the coast, not from London,” James said smoothly, hiding his chagrin. “I knew that the army had marched north to meet the Scots; but this victory is news to me.”

“And no reason that a gentleman should explain himself to the ferryman,” Mrs. Miller interrupted. “Mr. Summer, Your Honor, would you be so good as to carve the meat, sir?”

An enormous ham was placed in front of James, as the principal guest, and he took up the knife and carved it while the miller broke into a great game pie, Mrs. Miller spooned out chicken broth into the wooden bowls and passed them around, and Jane, her daughter, went to the dairy to fetch more butter.

“Not too thick,” Mrs. Miller instructed, keeping a jealous eye on the portions.

“It’s a good-sized ham,” he praised the meat.

“My own,” she said. “And I’ll have another four of them in the chimney this winter. I take great pride in my hams.”

James fought to keep his face straight. He did not dare to glance down the table to see if Alinor had heard this boast. “You have a very handsome farm,” he recovered, passing the platter with the slices cut thin.

“There are some that will taste meat this evening at my table that won’t have it again till Christmas,” she said complacently. “I believe in the old ways. Low wages but a well-spread board: that’s how you run a good farm.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” he agreed, knowing that the wages would be cut to the bone.

“Some of our neighbors—well, I don’t know how they get by,” she confided. “Scraping a living from the hedgerows, feasting like birds on berries and raw herbs.” Her envious gaze drifted down the table to Alinor and her daughter.

Around them everyone was helping themselves to food, passing bread, meat, the broth, cooked vegetables, and pouring the specially sweetened harvest ale.

“Hard times,” James said generally.

“Take Mrs. Reekie for one . . .”