Many of them were former sailors, men who had served with Bolitho in so many ships and in every part of the world where the flag had been hoisted. He had seen many of them at the church today, for Sir Richard Bolitho was one of them, and Falmouth ’s most famous son. Son of a sailor, from generations of sea officers, and this house below Pendennis Castle was a part of their history.

Across the yard he could see lights now in some of the rooms, and imagined the line of portraits, including the painting of Sir Richard as the young captain he had known. His wife Cheney had commissioned it while Bolitho had been away with the fleet. Bolitho had never seen his wife again; she had been killed with their unborn child when her carriage had shed a wheel and overturned. Ferguson himself had carried her, seeking help when it was already too late. He smiled sadly, reminiscently. And with only one arm.

The Church of King Charles the Martyr, where the lives and deaths of other Bolithos were commemorated, had been filled to capacity, servants from the house, farm workers, strangers and friends pressed close together to pray and to remember.

He allowed his mind to dwell on the family pew near the pulpit. Richard Bolitho’s younger sister Nancy, who had not yet come to terms with her own husband’s death. Roxby, “the King of Cornwall,” would not be an easy man to lay aside. Next to her Catherine, Lady Somervell, tall and very erect, all in black, her face covered by a veil, and only the diamond pendant shaped like an opened fan which Bolitho had given her moving on her breast to betray her emotion.

And, beside her, Adam Bolitho, his eyes upon the altar, his chin lifted. Defiant. Determined. And, like the moment when he had come to the house after his uncle’s death, and had read Catherine’s note and clipped on the old family sword, so like the young, vanished sea officer who had grown up here in Falmouth.