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or else engaged in various activities in the outhouses. Brother Moses, sweeping leaves from the porch, hears them approach and watches the cart as it enters the gateway and trundles up the pathway to the main door. He notices the passenger, not the first nor the last to find his way to sanctuary and the humble offer of a warm bed and a hearty meal. Brother Paul jumps down and with a bow and a sweeping gesture of his hand invites Zakora to a first view of his new home.
    â€˜Ever the showman,’ says Brother Moses with a smile.
    Zakora, still weak and now lying on the bench seat of the cart, looks up at the imposing building. It is nothing like anything he has seen before. So tall, so solid. So majestic. From its walls he senses the chants of ages; from the chapel that he has yet to see, he hears lingering refrains of praise and songs of adoration. Later that night, with his strength restored, in the dark and alone, he will put his hands on the walls, press his cheek to the rough stone. He will feel, he will touch, smell and hear: a kinship, a connection, a deep comfort, even all these hundreds of miles away from home. And when he is ushered to the Great Hall to share an evening meal with the monks he will be as surprised by the uniformity of their brown habits as the monks will be by the colour of his skin. But the Brothers are schooled in compassion and acceptance, and many a strange and bizarre traveller has sat at their table. Zakora will be warmly introduced to one and all and soon the breaking of bread and the sharing of jokes and asides will make him feel welcome and at ease.

    It’s been five years since Mrs April watched the galleon take Oscar Flowers away to sea. Now, standing on the jetty, the faintly familiar feeling of aloneness wafting over her, she remembers the mast disappearing over the horizon. She shields her eye against the glare and shimmer. There’s the line, the empty space, where sky meets sea. She recalls that day as the prow of the boat carved through the waves, set on course to quit these shores. Oscar, the young boy, the son she never had, off to faraway lands.
    As she watches the waves part at the jetty she remembers another goodbye from this pier. A lifetime ago, it seems. Kissing her sailor husband, holding him as tight and close as could be. Away to the war he went, never to be seen or kissed again. Deep and smothered at the bottom of a foreign ocean, down with his ship, captain, cook, sailor boys and all. ‘One more last kiss,’ she pleads in a whisper at the memory, ‘please before I let you go, but one last kiss nevertheless.’
    Two seaward departures. The first a man, the other a boy. Two losses. Lost thoughts. Lost loves.
    The wind is cold and unfriendly. The sky is sad and grey.
    Looking out from the snug of The Sailor’s Arms, Midshipman Hawkins swills his beer and puffs on his pipe. Through the window he sees the woman he recognises as Mrs April walking slowly back along the jetty.
    â€˜The surprise is she’s stayed on in this town. What can there be for her now?’ he says, nudging his companion in the ribs, pointing to the solitary figure, ‘No work or place in this town for her these days and just the monks for company.’
    John Delaney, the harbour master, shifts on his bar stool and grunts.
    â€˜My wife says she would have been burnt at the stake in her mother’s time.’
    â€˜For less.’
    â€˜For far less.’
    â€˜She may not have done the deed, but evil enough were her actions.’
    â€˜As good as a murderess herself. An adulteress for sure. The mistress of the murdered man, and not, so my wife tells me, her first time playing that role. Full of guilt, she is.’
    â€˜As if she had lit the fire.’
    â€˜And taken her lover’s life with her own hands.’
    â€˜With the knife, you mean?’
    â€˜There was a knife?’
    â€˜Oh, yes, indeed there was a knife. It all came out in the