“Would you?”

He sat up. “It will be a dull place if the Puritans take over.”

She nodded. She knew. The Puritans already controlled her life. She pinned her hair up. “I’ll be in church on Sunday.”

He looked at her. “I’ll pretend I’m a Puritan.” He made a grim, glum face and she laughed.

He had to go. He had come to the next village to buy a horse and the horse was being shod for him. It was a long journey back to Lazen Castle, but he would do it swiftly with a dream in his head of a girl he had met by a stream.

“Till Sunday, Campion.”

She nodded. Even talking to him was a sin, or so her father would say, but she wanted to see him again. She was in love, a hopeless, romantic, helpless love because there was nothing she could do about it. She was her father’s daughter, at his command, and she was Dorcas Slythe.

Yet she yearned, now, to be Campion.

Toby cut the rushes for her, making it all a game, and then he left. She watched him walk north along the stream and she wished she was going with him. She wished she was anywhere but at Werlatton.

She carried the rushes home, hiding the campion flowers in her apron while, unknown to her, her brother, Ebenezer, who had watched all afternoon from the shadows under the great beeches, limped to the Dorchester road and waited for their father.

She was Dorcas and she wanted to be Campion.

Two

The leather belt cracked on to her back.

Matthew Slythe’s shadow was monstrous on her bedroom wall. He had brought candles to her room, unbuckled his belt and his big, heavy face was burdened with God’s anger.

“Whore!” Again his arm descended, again the leather slammed down. Goodwife Baggerlie whose hands were in her hair, was pulling Campion across the bed so that Matthew Slythe could whip her back.

“Harlot!” He was a huge man, bigger than any man who worked for him, and he felt a thick fury within him. His daughter naked in a stream! Naked! And then talking to a young man. “Who was he?”

“I don’t know!” Her voice came in sobs.

“Who was he?”

“I don’t know!”

“Liar!” He brought the belt down again, she screamed with the pain and then his anger took over. He thrashed her, shouting that she was a sinner. He was in a blind fury. The leather tip of the belt lashed on the wall and ceiling and still he drove his arm so that her screams stopped and all he could hear were her hopeless sobs as she lay curled at the pillow end of the bed. Her wrist was bloody where the belt had caught it. Goodwife Baggerlie, her hands still tangled in Campion’s hair, looked at her master. “More, sir?”

Matthew Slythe, his short dark hair dishevelled, his big, red face distorted in anger, gasped great lungfuls of air. The fury was still on him. “Whore! Harlot! You have no shame!”