Lowler Hedges on the Huntingdon-Cambridge Road; Edmund Holyfen on a bay shirehorse, drumming gloved fingers on the hilt of his sword as he watched his uncle march musketeers hand-picked from the shire’s Trained-Bands past the Castle, over the Cam and east into the town toward King’s College, where the University’s plate was said gathered and waiting transport North to the army King Charles was mustering against the Parliament of England. To Edmund’s left, along the hedgerow, his own little troop: three men from Holyfen village, muskets trained on the college spires: Magdalen, St John’s, Trinity. It was near noon, rain-grey clouds scudding along the great dome of sky that commanded the low earth, the great fen of East Anglia.

A horse, galloping. Edmund wheeled the bay, half-drew one of pistols from the saddle-holster; released it slowly on recognizing the rider: his cousin James Hathaway, dispatched earlier to spy out the byways east of Cambridge, over which the plate of St John’s had escaped sometime in the night.