When his mother died, Ned felt sad and bereft and alone but, most of all, he felt angry. Alice Willard's last years should have been luxurious and triumphant. Instead, she had been ruined by a religious quarrel, and had died thinking herself a failure.

It was Easter 1570. By chance Barney was at home, in a short break between sea voyages. On Easter Monday the brothers celebrated the resurrection of the dead in Kingsbridge Cathedral, then the next day they stood side by side in the cemetery as their mother's coffin was lowered into the grave where their father already lay. There was hot resentment in Ned's stomach, bilious and sour, and he vowed again to spend his life making sure that men such as Bishop Julius would not have the power to destroy honest merchants like Alice Willard.

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