A lantern held to his face showed which of the exiles in the weave of the waves was the one who had insulted the Queen. Their longboat had touched into the shingle and they jumped from her prow, wet to the hips, to hand out women and boxes and trunks with hummocked tops. They’d come across from Jersey in a fog, calling on a tin trumpet that had the one flat ugly note breaking into the music of the gannets and gulls, the bells of the buoys, and the ruckus of windwash rolling the ocean at half dawn.
It was a grand thing to see them all remove their hats and bow from the waist as the old one came from the boat. I had their names on a list from the constable: Bachelet, Dessaignes, Fruchard, Thomas, under proscription the lot, exiles living from pillar to post.
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