Cunning and more than a little luck. She had waited one more day, then left the house well before dawn. She was dressed in her sober best and carrying a bundle of food, coins and one spare dress. The seal was about her neck, hidden beneath her bodice, while the pearled gloves and the letter were in her bundle.

She had walked east, toward the dawn, and for a time she had been exhilarated. Two hours later, as the sun flooded the fields and woods, the exhilaration had ended. She was walking into a sheltered valley where the road crossed a stream when a filthy beggar erupted from a ditch. He had possibly meant her no harm, but the bearded face, the grunting sounds, and the single, reaching, clawing hand had terrified her and she had run, easily outstripping him, and thereafter she had walked cautiously and warily, fearing the dangers that this strange world contained.

An hour later, when she was already tired and dispirited, a farmer’s wife who drove a wagon offered her a ride. The wagon was heavy with flax, the stalks rustling as the horses dragged it, and even though the flax was going southeast Campion accepted the ride because the woman’s company was a protection against danger. Campion told the woman that she was being sent to London to work for her uncle, and when the woman asked scornfully why she was travelling alone, Campion invented a story: her mother had suddenly been evicted from her cottage, Campion was the only hope of raising money and her mother had begged her to accept her uncle’s offer of employment. Her mother, Campion said, was sick. She told the story well and the farmer’s wife sympathized, and did not abandon Campion when the wagon reached its destination at Winter-borne Zelston.

A carrier was in the village, going to Southampton with a string of mules, and the farmer’s wife arranged for Campion to go with the man and his wife. The carrier, like so many travelling people, was a Puritan and Campion was glad of it. She might find their religion oppressive and cruel, but she knew they would also be honest and trustworthy. The carrier’s wife clucked as she heard Campion’s story. “You poor thing, dear. You’d best come to Southampton, then on to London. It’s safer that way nowadays.”

She slept that first night in the public room of an inn, sharing the room with a dozen women, and there were times in the reaches of the night when she wished she was back home in Werlatton. She had launched herself on the stream, and its current was already taking her to strange, frightening places where she did not know how to behave. Yet the thought of Scammell, of his flabby, heavy desire of her, of being forced to mother his children, made her determined to endure.

In the cold dawn she paid for her lodgings with a gold coin, causing raised eyebrows, and she had to trust that she was given the correct coins in change. The womens’ privy was an empty pigsty, open to the sky. It was all so strange. The broadsheets pasted on to the wall of the tavern told of Puritan victories against the King, for this was an area loyal to Parliament.