The older man nodded. “It’s a gamble,” he said. “A royal gamble. You have to admire him for taking it.”
James, very far from admiration, took a sip of brandy. “I don’t know where it leaves us,” he said. “I don’t know where it leaves me.”
“I’ll wait until I’m summoned again to serve him,” Sir William spoke for himself. “But I’ll never put my son in danger again. It’s hard to accept that he would let us come to his door before refusing. Did he not think of the danger to us? And what about you? Will you have to go back to your seminary for your orders?”
“I suppose so.” James put a hand to his forehead and found it was wet with sweat. “They’ll never understand how I failed. I was told to set loose a lion; I never thought it would stay in its cage. Of all the things that I feared might go wrong, I never thought of this. I’m at a loss. I was to see him safe on his son’s ship, and then go to London. I am ordered to report to London as soon as he was safely away. I suppose now I shall go back to them and say he has stayed, and I have failed. I will have to go to the queen and tell her that I have spent her fortune for nothing.”
“You’re very welcome to stay here. The chapel needs a chaplain. Walter needs a tutor. Nobody doubts you. You’re safe here.”
“I’d be glad to stay overnight, but I am under oath. Tomorrow I must ride to London.”
“You don’t look fit for it.”
James felt his very bones ache. “I have to report. There’ll be another plot. There’ll be more journeys along hidden ways. There will be another task for me: and I am sworn to obedience.”
“Well, please God they don’t ask more of you than to lie low and wait for better times. You’ve been living on the brink of danger for months, and you look as sick as a dog.”
“It’s been weary work,” James conceded.
“What if they send you back to him, to do it all over again?”
“I am sworn to serve,” James repeated, feeling the words sour in his mouth and his heart hammering. “I pray for peace.”
“So do we all,” his lordship said. “But always on our own terms. Shall we pray now?”
“Matins?” James offered, looking at the French clock that ticked on the stone chimney breast. It was past midnight.
“Yes,” Sir William said, getting to his feet. “And will you leave tomorrow?”
“At dawn,” James said, thinking of the two boys in his care, of his plans for them, which would not now happen, and of the woman that he had sworn he would never see again, and now he never would.
James, in his white shirt and riding breeches, but with his holy stole around his neck, went quietly around the private chapel lighting candles. Sir William knelt before his great chair, his eyes closed, his face buried in his hands. Turning his back on his congregation of one, James prepared the bread and the wine for the Mass at the old stone altar at the east end of the church and spoke the prayers in Latin, his voice never rising above a quiet monotone. Sir William did not need to hear clearly. He joined in the confession and the preparation of the host in Latin, knowing every word from his childhood in a family that had never surrendered their faith, not during the years of Elizabeth, not during the years of Edward, not during the years of Henry.
The sense of despair that James had felt when he realized that he had spent months preparing an escape for a king who would not leave drained from him as his hands moved deftly among the goblets and the pyx, turned the page, poured the wine, broke the bread. He turned to find Sir William kneeling on the chancel steps and gave him the holy bread and a sip of the sacred wine. He knew, without any doubt, that at that moment Jesus Christ, the risen Lord, was in the bread and in the wine, that it was His body and His blood, that James and Sir William had dined at the table of the last supper, and that they had defeated death itself. He knew himself to be a sinner and he knew himself to be mired in doubt; but still he knew that he was redeemed and saved.
He muttered the final prayer in Latin: “Abide with us, O Lord,” and heard Sir William whisper the response: “For it is toward evening and the day is far spent.”
“As the watchmen look for the morning . . .”
“So do we look for Thee, O Christ.”
“Come with the dawning of the day . . .”
“And make Thyself known in the breaking of bread.”
James had a sensation under his ribs, which he thought must be his heart breaking, just as Christ’s heart broke on the cross. He had given up the woman he loved for the king that he must save, and he had failed to save him and learned to doubt her. He would never see his king again; he would never see her. He would leave her in poverty and the king in imprisonment. He was only twenty-two and he had failed in everything his duty and his heart had prompted him to do. “God forgive me,” he said, and without another word, sank to the floor as his knees buckled beneath him, and he lost consciousness.
They sent Stuart the footman to fetch Alinor, three miles round by road, as he did not know the tracks across the harbor and was fearful of the tide coming in and drowning him, and of the ghosts of drowned men swimming after him. But when he hammered on the door of the cottage he found Alinor and Rob in the half-light of the smoldering fire, hours after good Christians should have been in bed. He recoiled in fear at the sight of the wisewoman, waking in the dark hours, with her son beside her.
“Not abed?” he asked fearfully. “Up all night?”
Alinor rose. “Is someone sick?”
“It’s the tutor,” he replied. “Sir William said to come at once.”
Rob handed Alinor her physic basket, already stocked with oils and herbs, pulled on his cap and jacket, and led the way across the mire to the Priory, by shore and bank and hidden path, lit by the half-moon gleaming on the rising water. They were at the Priory sea meadow as the moon came from behind a bank of cloud to make the eastern waters of the harbor shine, and they crossed the kitchen garden in the eerie light.
The chapel was closed and quiet, all the gold and candles hidden away by Mr. Tudeley and his lordship. They had dragged James back into the library, stripped him of his stole, and left him on the rug before the fire, fearful of lifting him up the stairs.
“Did he say anything before he fainted?” Alinor could not look at him, so deathly pale; sprawled on the hearthrug, just as he had sprawled in her net shed, when he had slept beneath her roof and she had thought him as beautiful as a fallen angel.
“He said, ‘God forgive me,’ ” Sir William said. “But he could not be possessed by devils. He is a godly man and he was in . . . in a state of grace.”
One swift glance from her gray eyes told him that she understood what he and the exhausted priest were doing at midnight. “Did he complain of fever or chills?” she asked, putting her warm rough hand on his cold sweating face.
“Yes, and he was weary,” Sir William said. “And melancholy.”
She had a very good idea why he was tired and sad. “May I use the goods from your stillroom?”
“Of course. Take whatever you need. You know what’s there. But, Mrs. Reekie: you don’t think it is the plague?”
It was the one question that Alinor dreaded, worse than whether a baby might be breech or malformed. If it was the plague it was almost certain to be fatal for everyone in the room, for half the household, for most of the village. Their death sentence had already been written and could not be recalled. There was nothing she could do against plague. She was likely to be the first to die. That was how it was. Everyone knew it.
“I can’t tell,” she said. “Not till I search his body for the marks.”
“But could it be?” Sir William demanded. He had retreated behind his chair. “He was at Newport. Dear God, he took my son, Walter, to Newport and to Cowes.”