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By Root 3978 0

would see Gideon and his men marching proudly off to Finsbury Field or the Artillery Ground outside Moorgate where the city’s trained bands would gather. Then the rattle of musketry and the bangs of cannon might go on a whole afternoon. Sometimes great columns of Roundhead troops would depart, returning again, dusty and bandaged, a few weeks later. But most of the time the city was subdued. Half the stalls in Cheapside market were gone. The Royal Exchange was often deserted. With West Country cloth supplies cut off by the Royalists, and little market for luxury imports, the merchants were mostly lying low. Some, suspected as Royalists, had gone to ground entirely. Sir Julius Ducket, it was said, had been completely ruined. As for ordinary folk like herself, though there was food enough, there had been some miserably cold months when the Royalists had stopped the Newcastle coal supply; and the demands, every month, for taxes to pay the troops had sharply depleted her income. Yet, strange to say, she rather enjoyed it. The threatened attack never came and after a while she was sure it never would. Life might be hard, but at least it was different. And then, of course, there was Dogget.

Why hadn’t he gone to Massachusetts? It was funny how there had always been some excuse. The first year or two it had been the business; then two of Gideon’s children had been sick. “Don’t you think you should join your wife?” she had sometimes urged. But he never had. And then, when the Civil War began and Gideon was off soldiering, Dogget really was needed to keep the business going and provide for Gideon’s family.

It happened on a September afternoon, just months after the ramparts had been completed. Dogget and Jane had walked out of the old city for a stroll on Moorfields. The sun was shining. It was quiet. In the middle distance, nearly a mile away, she could see the sentries up on the rampart at Shoreditch, like so many little dots against the open blue sky; and it had just occurred to her that, within the great enclosure – she could not say why, but it was so – it was as if they were inhabiting some unreal, timeless place that had somehow separated itself from the rest of the world, when, catching her thought, he half turned to her and remarked:

“It makes you feel young, out here.”

Yes, she thought, she did feel young. She smiled.

“You haven’t changed much, anyway,” she remarked. He was grizzled now, his face lined, but otherwise he was the same John Dogget who had once shown her King Harry’s barge.

He nodded. He was looking at her.

“What is it?”

He did not reply. He was still looking at her, smiling.

“Oh.” She looked down, and thought for a little as they walked towards the ramparts. Then, after a little while, she had taken his hand and gently squeezed. Neither of them spoke. They had just walked back to the house together, in the huge, afternoon light. And so, in that strange, silent space created by the ramparts of war, their affair had begun: two lovers in their sixties, linked by their past and by long affection, finding comfort, companionship and even excitement, both a little surprised that such things were still possible.

They had been discreet. Only Meredith, clever Meredith, had guessed: and him, she knew, she could trust. Not that it really mattered much anyway. If they brought each other happiness, who cared?

But that had been five years ago, before the great change in events that had brought England to the threshold of the present, awesome crisis. And now, as she looked fondly at the sleeping form beside her, she heard the urgent words that Meredith had spoken to her just days before.

“Soon you will be in danger. Perhaps great danger.” He had looked at her earnestly. “Who exactly knows?”

“You.” She had considered. “I’m not really sure. People may suspect. But why is it so important?”

He had shaken his head impatiently.

“You don’t understand.” Then he had looked thoughtful. “Tell me one thing – this is important. Does Gideon know?”

Gideon picked up his quill pen. The letter to Martha lay before him, but for