The Roundheads were either camped to the north or else living in the deserted houses of the village, though their guardposts and patrols encircled the whole castle. They outnumbered the garrison by at least three to one, but it seemed to Campion that Colonel Washington treated his enemies with contempt, not caring about the odds. In the first week of May he led a sally against the main battery, his men debouching from the new walls by the gatehouse at dusk, charging the guns and throwing themselves into the Parliamentary works. Campion watched with Lady Margaret from the keep and she saw the Lazender banner planted on the enemy battery, heard the cheer of the Royalists, and even, clear in the twilight, the hammering as Washington’s men drove nails into the touch-holes of the enemy cannon. She saw the sparkle of musket fire in the falling darkness, watched the spread of smoke like winter fog, and listened to the war shout of the castle’s defenders: “King Charles! King Charles!”

“Back! Back!” Colonel Washington, mounted on his horse, waved at his men. A last musket volley splintered light toward the enemy who tried to counterattack, and then the Royalists were leaping over the remains of the timber palisade that they had pulled down and were streaming back toward the castle. Campion could see Toby, his sword drawn, shepherding his own men away from the battery, and then it seemed that the whole northern sky was filled with sheet lightning, a great spread of red flame that lit the horizon, boiled smoke over the battery, and was followed, seconds later, by the huge thunder of the enemy’s powder magazine exploding. “King Charles! King Charles!”

The enemy did not fire their guns again for ten days, their battery was rebuilt further back, and in the meantime they suffered a further reverse, this entirely of their own making. The moat at Lazen was fed by a spring that rose northeast of the castle, and the enemy damned the spring despite the fire from the sakers that Colonel Washington poured among the laboring soldiers who shovelled earth and carried stones to divert the water. Their success seemed to presage a parliamentary victory, for the water sank swiftly in the next three days. The moat drained at the southwestern corner and, by the fourth day, the northern branch of the moat that was normally thick with lily pads was nothing more than a ditch of stinking slime. It was still a formidable obstacle, but the thick mud would dry and Colonel Washington was forced to take defenders from the northern and western walls to guard the moat-banks. On the fifth day the fish in the main stretch of moat were flapping frantically, their water reduced to a shallow strip in the center of the littered mud, and that night the defenders dug pits in the lawn from which they could fire at an attack across the drained moat.

Yet the water, diverted from its normal course, had seeped into the low ground at the foot of the northern hills where the enemy were building their new battery. Their own earthworks became waterlogged, the mortar sank through its plank base into sodden slime and the ready powder was ruined by damp. The new battery was a quagmire, useless for guns, and in desperation Lord Atheldene ordered the dam removed so that the water again flowed fast and clear through its underground conduit to the moat. The fish were freed from their shrinking death, the defenders breathed relief, and the ditch of slime was again filled with fresh water.