“Everything will be all right. Mrs. Swan’s waiting for us in the Paris Garden. We’re going to Lazen.”

“Lazen?” She shook her head. “But your mother?”

“Don’t worry about her!” He began to laugh. He could be executed for this night’s work, and they still had to escape from the patrols about London. They would have a few hours’ start over their pursuers. “We’re going to Lazen! We’re going home!”

She seemed to be sobbing, but then Toby realized it was laughter. They were free.

Twelve

The best way to approach Lazen Castle was from the north, across the humped hills that were grazed by Lazen sheep, dipping into the shallow valleys where willow and alder grew beside Lazen streams, and over the final crest that revealed the Lazen valley with the castle at its center.

It was on this road that Toby brought Campion and Mrs. Swan in the first week of September. Mildred Swan had insisted on making the whole journey, caught up in the excitement of the escape. “There’s no saying what you two will get up to if there isn’t an older body with you,” she had declared, though Campion suspected that Mrs. Swan simply enjoyed travelling. Mrs. Swan had taken the truth of Campion’s predicament well, abandoning her long-held worries about the supposedly ill mother with good grace. “I suppose you couldn’t trust anyone, dear, and you’re quite right.”

The first two days had been the worst, escaping the tendrils of the London garrison, going west on minor tracks. Closer to Oxford their progress became faster. Toby had been given a Royalist passport, recognized by the first patrol that found them, and in Oxford Campion and Mrs. Swan took once more to a stage wagon going west. Toby bought a horse, using Campion’s money, and now, six days later, they stood and looked at Lazen from the north.

Mrs. Swan sniffed. “Not quite like Hampton Court is it, Mister Toby.”

“Not exactly, Mrs. Swan.” Toby smiled. Mildred Swan was a Londoner and nothing could match anything in London for her. She had been invited to stay on with them at Lazen, but had trenchantly refused. She would travel gladly, but only so that she could return, her prejudices confirmed, to Bull Inn Court.

From Campion’s view there were still signs that Lazen Castle had once been just that: a castle. To her left were the remains of a massive keep, square built on a small rise in the valley and used now, Toby said, as a storage place for Lazen’s farms. Closer to Campion, and straddling the road just a hundred yards from the foot of the hill, was the old gatehouse, now quite separate from the main house but still habitable. An empty flagstaff awaited Sir George’s return. There was a moat, too, that most proper decoration of a castle, but it now covered only the approaches from the south and west and, in truth, the water looked more like an ornamental lake than an instrument of defense.