Cromwell halted the troop outside the gatehouse of Holyfen rectory. Edmund dismounted. “I won’t be long,” he said.

A sullen sky, a cold wind from the east, the earth washed in gray and damp. Soon it would be colder. Soon the Fens would freeze. And the men would don skates made of bone and race from Holyfen to Ely, Holyfen to St Ives, and back again. Father loved the races. Edmund loved that Father loved them. Specks on the horizon gathering mass and becoming men, churning arms and legs and ruddy faces venting steam and whisking across the finish. Casks of ale, joints on the spits, Father tall before the villagers in his general’s armor and his cloak trimmed with fur, clapping shoulders and bestowing prices, shouting how proud he was of the men of Holyfen – and winking at Edmund, saying, One day, this will be yours to do. Edmund’s joy and pride swelling his heart to the point of bursting. The land wreathed in white; a pure cold that gave vigor to blood: a different world from this grimness of fading autumn. Edmund was glad for his armor, the boiled leather of his buff-coat: they broke the wind, contained the chill.