To teach thee, I am naked first, why then

What needest thou have more covering than a man?

Lady Margaret smiled through the window. “Very nice, dear. You read it tolerably well.” She sighed. “Dear Jack. He was the kind of man who kept his boots on.”

“He what, Lady Margaret?”

“Never mind, dear, some things should not be told to the young.”

Yet Lady Margaret knew this girl was not so young. Campion was twenty-one now, well past the age when most girls were married, and she was still innocent. Yet she learned. Lady Margaret taught her, opening the mind, filling it, and Lady Margaret enjoyed the occupation.

There was laughter in the castle, conversation and endless excitements. Campion was forced to help Lady Margaret with her warlike preparations, which, after the completion of her “fortifications,” took the form of musketoon practice across the moat. One November morning, after Campion had erected the target and walked back across the rickety plank bridge, Lady Margaret waved a paper at her. “A new letter from Toby. Don’t worry, there’s one for you.” Campion could see the carrier being given ale in the castle yard. Letters arrived when the carriers came, though some letters took weeks if the carrier decided that business demanded a long detour. Lady Margaret looked down her Roman nose at the letter. “Ha! He’s killed a man. Good!”

“Killed?”

“He says he went on a chevauchée, whatever that is. Ah, I see, a raid. Why doesn’t he call it a raid in the first place? They met some lobsters in a village and he shot one with his pistol. Good for him!” Campion knew enough now to know that a “lobster” was a heavily armored Roundhead cavalryman.

“Is he well?” She asked anxiously.

“No, dear, he’s dead. Toby killed him.”

“I mean Toby.”

“Of course he’s well! He couldn’t have written otherwise! There are times, Campion, when I fear you might be quite as stupid as my own girls. Ah! Good Lord!”

“Lady Margaret?”

“Be patient, child. I’m reading.” She finished the letter, then handed it, with its enclosure, to Campion. The news that had provoked the surprise from Lady Margaret was ominous. The fight in the village where Toby had shot his lobster had resulted in the capture of a Roundhead messenger and, among the papers found in his pouch, was a Commission of Array addressed to “Oure Loyal Servant Samuel Scammell.” Scammell was ordered to raise a troop of men, raising it presumably with money that came from the Covenant. Toby went on to say that it was thought that Parliament wished to scour the Royalists from Dorset, releasing the next year’s rich harvest for their own armies. Campion looked at Lady Margaret. “They’ll be very close to us.”

“I should like to see your husband come, dear.” Lady Margaret liked referring to Scammell as Campion’s husband. She put a wealth of scorn into the word. She sniffed, and raised the musketoon to her shoulder. “Let him come!” The target, a man-sized piece of sacking suspended from a pole, stirred in the small breeze. Lady Margaret squinted down the barrel, only half charged with powder, flinched, then pulled the trigger. The gun coughed, belched filthy smoke, and the ball went far wide of the untouched sacking. Lady Margaret frowned. “There’s something wrong with this gun. It’s most perverse.”