“Does anyone know you’re here?”

He shook his head. “I went to the house where I was told to go, the safe house, and it was all dark and locked up. I was told to tap a special knock on a garden door, but no one came. I saw the bell tower over the top of the trees, so I came here to wait, in the hope that if they are asleep now, they will answer later. I didn’t know where else I might go. I don’t know this place. I came in by ship on the high tide, and it looked like a wasteland of sea and mud for mile on mile. I’ve not even got a map!”

“Oh, there’s no map,” she told him.

He looked aghast. “No map? Why has it not been mapped?”

“It’s the tidelands,” she told him. “The shingle bar before the harbor, and the harbor itself changes with every storm. The Chichester people call it ‘Wandering Haven.’ The sea breaks into the fields and takes back the land. The ditches flood and make new lakes. It never stays the same for long enough to be measured. These are the tidelands: half tide, half land, good for nothing, all the way west to the New Forest, all the way east till the white cliffs.”

“Is the minister of this church one of the new men?”

“He’s been here for years and he does as he’s told, now he takes his orders from the new parliament. He’s not whitewashed the walls or broken the windows yet. But he took down the statues, he keeps the altar at the crossway of the church and prays in English. He said that good King Henry set us free from Rome a hundred years ago, and this King Charles wants to take us back, but he can’t. He’s defeated. He’s ruined, and parliament has won the war against the king.”

The stranger’s face grew dark with anger. “They’ve not won,” he insisted. “They’ll never win. They can’t win. It’s not over yet.”

She was silent. She thought that it was long over for the king, who was imprisoned, his wife fled to France, leaving two little children behind, and his son, the prince, gone to the Netherlands. “Yes, sir.”

“Would he denounce me, this minister?”

“I think he’d have to.”

“Is there anyone here of the old faith? In hiding? On this island?”

She spread her hands as if to show him her ignorance. He saw that her palms were scratched and scarred from the shells of lobsters and crabs and the rough twine of the fishing nets.

“I don’t know what people hold in their hearts,” she said. “There were many for the king in Chichester, some of them papists; but they’re killed or run away. I know no one except one or two old ladies who remember the old faith. Most people are like my brother: godly men. My brother fought in the New Army under the general. General Cromwell is his name. You’ll have heard of him?”

“Yes, I’ve heard of him,” he said grimly. He paused, thinking hard. “Can I get to Chichester tonight?”

She shook her head. “The tide’s coming in now, and it’s high tonight for midsummer. You can’t cross the wadeway to the Chichester road till morning, and then you’d be seen. Won’t your boat come back for you?”

“No.”

“Then you’ll have to hide till low tide tomorrow evening, and go across the wadeway at dusk. You can’t take the ferry. My brother’s the ferryman, and he’d arrest you on sight.”

“How would he know me for a cavalier?”

Her smile lit up her face. “Sir, no one looks like you on Sealsea Island! Not even Sir William is as fine.”

He flushed. “Well, if I have to stay on the island, where can I hide?”

She thought for a moment. “You can lie in my husband’s shed till tomorrow evening,” she offered. “That’s the only place I can think of. It’s not fit. He kept his nets there, and his pots. But he’s been missing for months and nobody ever goes there now. I can bring you food and water in the morning. And when it’s light, perhaps you can go to the Priory, just over there. You could go in the morning privately and ask to see the steward. His lordship’s away from home, but the steward might take you in. I don’t know. I can’t say what they believe. I don’t know.”

He bowed his head in a thanksgiving. “God bless you,” he said. “I think God must have sent you to be my savior.”

“I’ll show you the net shed first, before you bless me for letting you sleep there,” she said. “It’s not for the likes of you. It stinks of old fish.”

“I have nowhere else,” he said simply. “You are my savior. Shall we pray together?”

“No,” she said bluntly. “We’d do best to get you into hiding. I don’t think anyone else will come here at this time of night, but you never know. Some like to think themselves very godly. They might come to pray at dawn.”

“You came here to pray,” he reminded her. “Are you godly? Are you one of the godly believers?”

She flushed at her own lie. “I didn’t really,” she admitted.

“Then for what?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

He ignored her embarrassment, assuming that she had come to meet a lover in some sordid village affair. “Where is the net shed, and your home?”

“At the top of the harbor, near the ferry-house, across the rife from the mill.”

“The rife?”

“Broad Rife,” she said. “The river that flows into the head of the harbor. It moves with the tide, ebbs and flows, but it never runs dry. It’s high now. It’s been such a wet summer, the wadeway’s not been dry for weeks.”

“Your brother’s ferry crosses the rife when the tide is full?”

“And there’s a wadeway at low tide for people to walk across.”

“I would not put you in danger. I can find my own way if you tell me the direction. You don’t need to lead me.”

“You can’t. The harbor’s like a maze of paths and there are deep pools and channels,” she explained. “The sea comes in faster than a trotting horse, and spreads across the land quicker than a man can run. You can get stuck in the mud or cut off on a path, or trapped by water. There are quicksands that you can’t see till your foot sinks beneath you and you can’t draw it out. Only us who were born and bred here ever cross the mire. I’ll have to take you.”

He nodded. “God will bless you for this. He must have sent you to guide me.”

She looked doubtful, as if God had not been generous with his blessings in her life. “Shall we go now? It’ll take us a while to get across.”

“We’ll go,” he decided. “What shall I call you? I am Father James.”

She recoiled from the priestly title. “I can’t call you that! I might as well go to the justices and get arrested at once! What’s your real name?”

“You can call me James.”

She gave a little shrug as if she was offended by his discretion. “I bear my husband’s name,” she replied. “They call me Goody Reekie.”

“What shall I call you?”

“Call me that,” she said pertly. “Since you don’t tell me your true name why should I tell you mine?”

She turned from his surprised face and led the way out of the church, waiting patiently as he bowed low to the altar, kneeling on one knee and putting his hand to the ground. She heard him whisper a prayer for his safety and hers, and for all those serving the true faith in England tonight, for the king in his cruel captivity, and the prince abroad.

“My husband’s missing,” she remarked, as he joined her at the door. “He’s been gone for more than half a year.”

“God bless him, and keep you,” he said, making the sign of the cross over her head. She had never seen the gesture before, and she did not know to bow her head and cross herself. Nobody had publicly crossed themselves in England for nearly a hundred years. The people had lost the habit, and those who were still Roman Catholic were careful to keep their faith hidden.

“Thank you,” she said awkwardly.

“Do you have children?”

She opened the heavy door to the porch, looked out to see that the graveyard was deserted, and then beckoned him to follow her. They walked in single file between graves where the stones were so thick with old moss and lichen that only a few letters could be seen.

“Two still living,” she said over her shoulder. “I thank God for them. My daughter is thirteen and my son is twelve.”

“And does your boy fish in his father’s place?”

“The boat’s missing too,” she said, as if that were the greatest loss. “So we can only fish with a line from the shore.”

“Our Lord called a fisherman before he called anyone else,” he said gently.

“Yes,” she said. “But at least he left the boat.”

A laugh broke from him at her irreverence, and she turned and laughed with him and he saw, again, the bright warmth of her smile. It was so powerful and so illuminating he wanted to catch her hand and keep her smiling at him.

“The boat matters so much, you see.”

“I do see,” he said, taking hold of the shoulder straps of his pack, keeping his hands away from temptation. “How do you manage without boat or husband?”

“Poorly,” she said shortly.

At the low wall of rough stone flints at the edge of the graveyard she hitched up her brown skirt and hemp apron and swung her legs over the stile, as lithe as a boy. He climbed after her and found himself on the shore, on a little path no wider than a sheep track, with quickthorn hedges closing in on both sides and meeting over the top, so that the two of them were hidden in a tunnel of thick leaves and twisted spiky boughs. Walking ahead of him, she bent her head and wrapped her elbows in her shawl, striding out in her wooden pattens, following the erratic course of the narrow path. The sound of the sea grew a little louder as she scrambled down a bank, and then they were suddenly in the open, lit by the fitful moon in the pale sky, on a beach of a white shingle. Behind them the bank was topped by a big oak tree, its roots snaking through the mud, its down-swinging branches bending low to the beach. Ahead of them was the marsh: standing water, sandbanks, tidal pools, mud, reed islands, and a wide winding channel of water with branching silted streams swelling and lapping over the mud, flowing in little waves that broke at their feet.