The boys waited, craning their necks to look up at the overhanging window; the church bells of Newport started to chime all around the town for six o’clock. There was an excited murmur among the crowd, one side of the leaded window swung open, and the graying head of the King of England poked out. Charles looked down at the people waiting below, he smiled wearily, and raised one heavily ringed hand.

“Is that him?” Rob asked, the nephew of an army man, born and bred a roundhead, unable to keep the disappointment from his voice.

“It is,” James confirmed, pulling his hat from his head and looking upwards, hoping to feel a flush of loyalty, of passionate devotion, but experiencing nothing but anxiety.

“No crown?”

“Only when he’s on the throne, I think.”

“Then how can you be sure it’s him?” Rob persisted. “Without a crown? Could be anybody.”

James did not say that at his seminary the novices had been shown portrait after portrait of the dark tragic face of the king to assist in their prayers for his safety. He did not say that he had dreamed of the day when the complicated conspiracy would finally fall into place with loyalists on the island, the Prince of Wales’s fleet waiting offshore, and a loyal ship’s captain engaged to sail at midnight with a mystery passenger. “I suppose I just know,” was all he said. “Nobody else would wave from his window.”

“Hurrah!” Walter suddenly jumped up and down and waved. “Hurrah!”

The heavy-lidded eyes turned towards the sudden cheer and the king raised his hand again to acknowledge the boy’s fervent loyalty. Then he withdrew, the window was slammed shut, and the shutters closed.

“That’s it?” Rob asked.

“Same every day,” a woman beside them answered him. “God bless him. And I come every day to see his sainted face.”

“We’ll go to dinner,” James said, before the three of them attracted any attention. “Come on.”

They went back to the Old Bull on the Street, where James had reserved private rooms, and James ordered a hearty dinner for the two boys, allowing them each a glass of wine. “I’m going out while you eat,” he said. “I want to take a look around and find a ship to take us home tomorrow or the day after.”

“Can’t we come?” Walter asked. “I want to look around too.”

“I’ll come back for you,” James promised. “We can walk through the market and along the riverside before we go to bed.” He pulled his hat low over his face and went out.

The streets were still busy as he went down the narrow lanes to the harbor and looked at the boats bobbing at the quayside. The dull clatter of the cleats against the wooden masts reminded him of all the other quaysides, of the many ships in his young life of constant traveling. Every port had the same rattle of rigging, just as every town had an hourly carillon of church bells. He thought that one day he might have lived so long at peace that he would be able to hear it without knowing that it called him to secret dangerous work. He hoped that one day he might hear it without dread.