Colonel Washington lit a linstock from the bowl of his pipe and handed the fire-tipped wand to Lady Margaret. “Stand well clear of the wheels, Lady Margaret.”

She made a caustic comment to the effect that her father had been firing cannons when Colonel Washington was sucking milk, and then she walked with confidence to the ornate, square-breeched gun. She looked about her, at the soldiers, at Campion and Caroline and at her household servants. The linstock smoked. She poised it dramatically above the touch-hole. “For King Charles!” She lowered the fire.

Lady Margaret squealed in alarm, a squeal that, luckily for her, was drowned by the saker’s bellow. It hammered back on its heavy trail, its wheels bucking off the gravel, and Campion watched, appalled, as a cloud of filthy smoke billowed and rolled across the lily pads on the moat. The round shot landed in a water meadow, bounced in a silver haze of spray, bounced again, then slammed into a pollarded willow far down the valley.

“Magnificent!” Lady Margaret held the linstock like a scepter. “Let them come!”

“Give me more guns if they do.” Colonel Washington said the words quietly, but Campion heard him.

Lady Margaret stalked toward the colonel. “Is my technique right, Colonel? Another attempt, perhaps?”

Colonel Washington hastened to assure her Ladyship that her gunnery was magnificent, as fine as any he had seen, and that much as he would like to see her demonstrate her prowess again, he had to confess that powder and shot were both scarce and expensive. Lady Margaret gracefully accepted the title of Honorary Gunner to Lazen Castle, as she was already an Honorary Musketeer and Honorary Engineer. It had been only with the greatest difficulty that Colonel Washington had dissuaded her from hacking with a sword at the butts he had erected in the Glebe Field.

Two weeks later in April the war did come to Lazen, though in a manner surprising to Campion. It was all so different from her expectations.

Colonel Washington had led most of his men north, tempted by a convoy of powder wagons that was rumored to be going westward, and in his absence the Roundhead troops raided the Lazen valley. Lady Margaret, despite a parting admonition from Colonel Washington that she was to do nothing rash in his absence, rammed a ball into her musketoon.

Campion watched beside Lady Margaret from the long gallery. “They’re not doing very much.”

“They’re cowards, dear.”

The enemy, wary perhaps of the soldiers left behind by Colonel Washington, had come no closer to the castle than the outskirts of Lazen village. The villagers, possessions on their backs and household animals led by ropes, trooped miserably toward the safety of the castle.

For a long time it seemed as though the Roundheads would do nothing. They waited around the watermill, staring at the castle, and then, after a half hour or so, some of them cantered westward into the valley fields. They were dressed just like the Royalists: leather jerkins, some with a breastplate strapped on top and tall boots that were turned over above the knee. Their helmets had a flap at the back to protect their necks, and bars in front beneath the peak to stop a sword-cut to the eyes. The only difference Campion could see was that these men, the enemy, wore red or orange sashes about their waists, denoting their allegiance, while Lazen’s defenders wore sashes of white or blue. Captain Tugwell, left in command for the day, lined his musketeers along the moat, each man thrusting a forked musket-rest into the soft lawn on which they could support the heavy musket barrels.