“His Majesty is being released to a private house at Newport, to meet the gentlemen from parliament and reach agreement with them,” Mr. Tudeley told her.

“And we’ll probably see him!” Rob added.

“I’d rather you didn’t go,” Alinor said urgently, putting her arm around Rob’s shoulders and turning him away from the circle around Sir William. “You know, your uncle Ned won’t like it at all!”

“I have to go with Walter,” Rob pointed out. “I’m his companion. I have to accompany him!”

“Yes, but—”

“And it’s not as if the king’s still at war. He’s in Newport to meet with the men from parliament. It’s all at peace now. They’re meeting him at Newport to make peace and he’ll be released. I’d like to see him, now it’s all over. Think of me, seeing the King of England!”

“I’d still rather you didn’t,” Alinor repeated.

Rob was suddenly attentive. He looked up at her pale face. “Why? What’s the matter? Is it the sight, Mam?” he asked quietly.

She shook her head. “No, nothing like that. It’s just that . . .”

“What?”

“Oh, poor Mrs. Whiting, and having to stand before the church . . .”

“That’s got nothing to do with us,” he rightly said.

“I know her, and yet I said nothing in her defense,” she said.

“There was nothing to say.” Alys came up quietly to the two of them. “Everyone would have turned on you, and on the three of us, if you’d spoken up for her. And besides, she did go behind the hedge. I saw her.”

“Yes, but—”

“How’s this got anything to do with me going to the Isle of Wight?” Rob demanded.

“It hasn’t!” Alinor owned. “You know how I feel, Rob . . . it’s just—”

“Is it the sea?” he guessed. “The deep water?”

“The sea,” she said, grasping at the word as if her fear of the ocean could explain the sense of dread that she felt at her son going to Newport to see the defeated king. Going to Newport in the company of his tutor—the king’s spy.

TIDELANDS, SEPTEMBER 1648

James Summer, Rob, and Walter took ship from the mill quay in a coastal trader bound for the Isle of Wight, Southampton, and westerly. Richard Stoney, Alys, and a couple of the mill girls watched them go. Rob waved as extravagantly as if he were leaving for the Americas and might never return as the two-masted ketch went slowly down the deep channel, with the crew on either side watching for sandbars and shouting the depth.

James went to starboard to look for the little cottage perched on the harbor bank, as ramshackle as if it had been washed there by a high tide. The door was standing open and he wondered if Alinor was watching the ship from the dark interior. He guessed that she was unhappy at Rob sailing to the island, but she had not asked him not to take the boy. She had not spoken to him at all. Not even after church when she made her curtsey to Sir William and rose up to find James’s brown eyes on her face. She had behaved—just as he had prayed that she would—with icy discretion. She had withdrawn from him as if she had never known him, as if she had never held him, as if she had never opened her lips to his demanding mouth. He had prayed to be released, and she had let him go at once, as if she had never whispered that she wanted to be with him, that she wanted to be with him alone. Even as she curtseyed to him, she looked beyond and away from him. He would have thought that he was nothing to her, that he had never been anything to her. He would have thought that he was unseen.