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is God’s anointed.’
    â€˜Indeed. That is what he believes, but the argument so skilfully deployed is that Charles has betrayed God’s sacred charge – hence he has committed treason against his people.’
    â€˜But treason is punished by . . .’ she hesitated, as though to utter the word was a kind of blasphemy.
    â€˜Execution,’ he said with helpful casualness.
    â€˜They would not
dare
!’
    Faulkner laughed. ‘Sir Henry said the self-same thing. And why should they not dare? King Charles is in their hands and is a man. His head may be struck from his shoulders as readily as yours or mine.’
    â€˜And who will rule England?’ she asked as though the question put the King’s life beyond peradventure.
    He laughed again. ‘Why, that which is presently ruling it: Parliament. What is so difficult for you to understand? These people think the King has misruled them and that his father was not much better. Oh, you think the son will be a paragon of kingship, do you? Well, if his present desires indicate character he will at least be different. King Charles was no fornicating adulterer! Indeed, one might charge him with taking too much notice of his French and Catholic wife.’
    Katherine was silent and Faulkner went on, a pent-up anger now replacing his calm resolution. ‘Your Royal Prince could make you a queen now! Had you not better run to him and snuggle properly into the royal bed and make certain none other is there before you?’
    But she came back fighting, disbelieving him and snarling with a measure of contempt. ‘Where did you hear all this? You have not been to England – or have you? You know a great deal about it and seem to espouse these
Parliamentary
views with relish.’ She laced the word with heavy, sarcastic and accusatory emphasis.
    He smiled at her. ‘Of course you would think that. You not only have a woman’s brain, you have a Villiers’ brain.’ He put one foot on the chair and leaned forward, his right elbow on his knee, his right index finger wagging in her pale yet lovely face. ‘I learned it from some fishermen from Yarmouth . . .’
    â€˜Fishermen,’ she snarled dismissively. ‘Fishermen? What do fishermen know of these things?’
    â€˜They knew the Word of God when it called to them from the Galilean shore,’ Faulkner said sententiously, but she was the measure of him.
    â€˜God walked on Galilee, not Yarmouth beach,’ she said with a flick of her head that Faulkner did not like in the circumstances, though the evidence of spirit would have melted his loins a day ago. ‘If I have paid a Christian Prince too much attention, you have been reading Puritan tracts.’
    â€˜Those fishermen were informed folk,’ he said slowly, with measured emphasis. ‘You, and your like, mistake the common man if you consider he lacks intelligence. He might lack education, breeding, manners, money, land, titles, horses, silks, satins, slashed sleeves, gloves of morocco and boots of kid, but he breeds no more idiots than your Villiers clan and may possess the cleverness—’
    â€˜Of a Faulkner, no doubt,’ she interrupted.
    â€˜I was not about to say that,’ he rejoined coldly. ‘But there are men of intelligence in Parliament –’ he gave the word the same inflection as she had done, mocking her – ‘whose claim on wisdom outshines the King – and hence they have His Majesty arraigned before them on a perfectly reasoned charge, in their eyes, of treason.’
    She remained silent, her breast heaving; her world was falling about her ears and he thought her very beautiful in her distress. They had not eaten well these last months and her figure was slimmed by hunger, her face drawn with indigence and yet she seemed to shine in adversity. He could not blame the Prince for . . .
    He did not wish to think more of it. His anger was quelled. He