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It means the right of the firstborn.”
    “Billy said Tom softly.
    “Yes. Billy,” Hal agreed frankly.
    “In accordance with the law of England, he follows directly in my footsteps. He takes precedence over all his younger brothers.”
    “Us,” said Tom, with a touch of bitterness.
    “Yes, you,” Hal agreed.
    “When I am gone, everything is his.”
    “When you are dead, you mean,” Dorian bored in, with indisputable logic.
    “That’s right, Dorry, when I am dead.”
    “I don’t want you to die,” Dorian wailed, his voice still hoarse from the damage to his throat.
    “Promise me you won’t ever die, Father.”
    “I wish I could, lad, but I can’t. We’re all going to die one day.” Dorian was silent for a moment.
    “But not tomorrow?” Hal chuckled softly.
    “Not tomorrow. Not for many a long day, if I can help it. But one day it will happen. It always does.” He forestalled the next question.
    “And when it does, Billy will be Sir William,” Tom said.
    “That’s what you’re trying to tell us.”
    “Yes. William will have the baronetcy, but that’s not all. He will have everything else as well.”
    “Everything? I don’t understand,” said Tom, lifting his head from his father’s back.
    “Do you mean High Weald?
    The house and the land?”
    “Yes. It will all belong to Billy. The estate, the land, the house, the money.”
    “That not fair,” Dorian expostulated.
    “Why can’t Tom and Guy not have some? They’re much nicer than Billy.
    It’s not fair.”
    “Perhaps it isn’t fair, but that’s the law of England.”
    “It isn’t fair,” Dorian persisted.
    “Billy’s cruel and horrible.”
    “If you go through life expecting it to be fair, then you will have many sad disappointments, my boy,” Hal said softly, and hugged his baby. I wish I could make it different for you, he thought.
    “When you’re dead, Billy won’t let us stay here at High Weald.
    He’ll send us away.”
    “You can’t be sure of that,” Hal protested.
    “Yes, I can,” Tom said, with conviction.
    “He told me so, and he meant it.”
    “You’ll make your own way, Tom. That’s why you have to be clever and tough. That’s why I’m hard on you sometimes, harder than I ever was on William. You must learn to fend for yourselves after I am gone.” He paused.
    Could he explain this to them, when they were still so young? He had to try. He owed them that.
    “The law of primogeniture has served to make England great. If every time somebody died his land was split between his surviving children, then soon the whole country would be divided into tiny, useless parcels, unable to feed a single family, and we would become a nation of peasants and paupers.”
    “So what will we do?” Tom asked.
    “Those of us who are driven out.”
    “The army, the navy and the Church are open to you.
    You might go out into the world as traders or colonists and come back from its far corners, from the ends of the oceans, with treasures and wealth even greater than William will inherit when I die.” They thought about that in silence for a long while.
    “I’ll be a sailor, like you, Father. I’ll sail to the ends of the oceans like you did,” said Tom, at last.
    “And I will go with you, Tom,” said Dorian.
    it ting in the front pew of the family chapel, Hal Courtney had every reason to feel pleased with himself and the world around him. He watched his eldest son waiting at the altar, while organ music filled the small building with joyous sound. William was strikingly handsome and dashing in the costume he had chosen for his wedding. For once he had eschewed his sombre black attire. His collar was of the finest Flemish lace, and his ” waistcoat of green velvet embroidered with golden stags.
    The pommel of his sword was encrusted with camelians and lapis-lazuli. Most of the women in the congregation were watching him also, and the younger ones were giggling and discussing him in whispers.
    “I could ask