Most of the ancient castle had disappeared. A brief length of battlemented wall joined the keep to the main house, but its chief purpose now was to provide support for the espaliered fruit trees in the kitchen garden. Another length of wall guarded the eastern approach, joining the keep to the huge stable-yard and sheltering the smithy, brewhouse, and a score of other buildings from the winter winds. The rest of the castle had gone, its stones used in the making of new buildings. Those buildings were beautiful.

Campion was in awe. She listened to Toby describing the castle, but the size of the place, its comfortable grandeur, reminded her that Lady Margaret Lazender waited within. She feared the confrontation and she knew, despite Toby’s protestations to the opposite, that he was by no means confident that his mother would welcome her.

Closest to the gatehouse, some seventy yards further south, was the Old House, built in the reign of Elizabeth and, despite its name, still less than a hundred years old. It was stone built, though its west front, that looked across formal gardens to the moat, had been faced with mock half-timber cladding. Its windows were high and wide, quite unsuited for defense, but marvellous for spilling evening light into the great hall.

Joined to the house, and so attached that the two buildings formed a large “L,” was the New House. This, Toby said, had been completed just ten years before and was his mother’s pride. It faced south, was stone-built throughout, and Toby spoke of an interior that was splendid with marble and plasterwork, tiles and polished oak. He pointed, as they went slowly down the slope, to the new kitchens, inconveniently distant from the great hall when Lady Margaret decided to entertain the county, and he spoke with pride of the new bedrooms, each room separate, that had replaced the old ones which had been arranged like a corridor, each room leading to the next, and in which curtained beds had been a necessity of modesty. The bedrooms shared the upper floor of the New House with the long gallery, the throne room of Lady Margaret, and it was toward the gallery that Toby led them.

They made slow progress. At the gatehouse a child erupted from a doorway and shouted a welcome to Toby, offering to take his horse, and the child’s shout brought more servants and retainers to see the cause of the commotion. Campion and Mrs. Swan, walking, hung back as servitors and footmen, maids and cooks, the families who served Lazen came to greet him. They doffed hats, skimped bows or curtseys, and then stretched out to touch his hand and give what news they had. Mrs. Swan shook her head. “God knows how they feed all these mouths, dear.”

The closer she went to Lady Margaret, the greater was Campion’s fear. Toby had spoken much of his mother, and though he spoke in terms of love and admiration, there was an unmistakable awe in his voice. She ruled Lazen: the castle, estate, village, church, the lives of tenants, servants, priest, family, and any other person who came within her wide purlieu. She was a formidable lady, a great lady even, and Lazen Castle was the setting for her considerable talents. She ran the estate, Toby said, far better than his father could have done, a fact recognized by Sir George, and within its bounds Lady Margaret’s word was law.