“Do I need his permission?”

She smiled. “You take his fish.”

He looked at her in astonishment. “You’re Slythe’s daughter?”

She nodded.

Toby laughed. “Dear God! Your mother must have been an angel!”

She laughed. Martha Slythe had been fat, vengeful and bitter. “No.”

“What’s your name?”

She looked at him, sadness in her. She hated her name and she did not want him to know it. She thought he would think less of her because of her name’s ugliness, and as she thought that, so the realization struck her that she would never be allowed to meet him again. Her name could never be Toby’s business.

He persisted. “Tell me?”

She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”

“But it does!” he exclaimed. “More than the sky, the stars, the heavens, more than my dinner tonight! Tell me.”

She laughed at his ridiculous ebullience. “You don’t want to know my name.”

“I do. Otherwise I shall just have to invent a name for you.”

She smiled as she stared over the stream. She was embarrassed. Perhaps the name he would invent would be worse than her real name. She could not look at him as she spoke it aloud. “My name’s Dorcas.”

She expected him to laugh, but there was silence, so she turned a defiant stare on him. “Dorcas Slythe.”

He shook his head slowly, looking serious. “I think we must find you a new name.”

She had known he would hate her name.

Toby smiled, then leaned over to her rush basket. He picked up one of the pink-red campion flowers and slowly twirled the blossom in front of his eyes. He stared at it. “I shall call you Campion.”

She liked it immediately, feeling as if all her life she had waited for this moment when someone would tell her who she was. Campion. She said the name over and over in her mind, Campion, and she savored it, liking it, and knowing it was a hopeless dream. “My name is Dorcas Slythe.”

He shook his head, slowly and deliberately. “You’re Campion. Now and forever.” He drew the flower toward his face, staring at her over the petals, then kissed it. He held it toward her. “Who are you?”

She reached for the flower. Her heart was beating as it did before she swam. Her fingers trembled as she took the stalk, shaking the petals, and her voice was low. “Campion.”

It seemed to her, that moment, as if nothing existed in all creation except herself, Toby, and the fragile, beautiful flower.

He looked at her, his own voice low. “I shall be here tomorrow afternoon.”

The hopelessness rushed in to spoil the moment. “I won’t,” she said. “I can’t.” The rushes were cut only once a week and she had no other excuse for visiting the stream. The thought reminded her that she was late, that she must hurry.

Toby still watched her. “When will you be here?”

“Next week.”

Toby sighed. “I’ll be in London.”

“London?”

He nodded. “My father’s sending me to learn some law. Not much, he says, just enough to know how to avoid all lawyers.” He looked up at the sky, gauging the time. “I’d rather be fighting.” He was twenty-four and men much younger were fighting.