James took a shuddering breath against these horrors, casually asserted. “Stop this slander. It means nothing to me. I don’t know these people, and I don’t care about them. We are here to make an agreement: that you will sail for me.”

“You’re here for an agreement. I’m here for drink.”

James nodded over his shoulder to the landlord to pour another draft. “Will you sail for me or not?” he demanded, his voice very low.

“I will.”

“And if I agree to tell her that you will never return, do you swear that you will not?”

“Willingly. Didn’t you hear me? I’ll never go back to her.”

Zachary stuck out a dirty hand. Reluctantly, James shook it. When the warm palm with the old scars pressed against his own, he was reminded with a shock of Alinor’s skin.

“Ah, you’ve touched her,” Zachary guessed with spiteful satisfaction as James blanched. “You’ve touched her and she’s got your soul in thrall too.”

James walked back to the Old Bull inn and up the rickety stairs to the boys’ low-ceilinged room. They were in their nightshifts in the big bed together.

“I prayed for my father,” Rob confided.

“That was good,” James said. “We’ll see him again tomorrow. He’ll come here for breakfast. You go to sleep now.”

He watched them: Walter sprawled out to sleep, arms across the bed, feet to each corner, and Rob hunched into a ball. Then James quietly went from the room, downstairs to the private dining room.

Two men were seated on either side of the fire. As James came in, they rose up and clasped his hand, but no names were mentioned.

“You’ve seen him?”

“I have. I told him it’s to be midnight. And I’ve met the boatman, and agreed a price,” James confirmed. “You’ve bribed the guard?”

“Easily done,” the other said. “He’s not guarded as he was at Carisbrooke. That was the agreement with parliament, and they are true to it. They offered that he should be free to come and go here, limited only by his parole. They think an agreement is his only hope: fools.”

“If I am caught at the Hopkins house don’t wait for me. Get him away at all speed. The ship is the Jessie, by the quay and ready to sail.”

“I thought it was the Marie?” the second man demurred.

“He failed me. It is the Jessie.”

“Have you paid him?”

“Twenty crowns to go, twenty when we are safely home.”

“I’m going with him to France,” the first man said, “if he will allow me. I’m not coming back.”

“I have to return with the boatman to finish my mission here,” James said. He felt in his pocket and gave the second man a heavy purse. “But you can hold this for me. Be on the quay to pay the Jessie when it returns.”

“You won’t carry it?”

James shook his head.

“You don’t trust him not to steal it and throw you overboard?” The man was appalled. “What kind of comrade is this? On a venture like this?”