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come by Chipping Campden in a few days, to find out how you’re bearing up. I could take you back to Oxford with me, to meet my brother-in-law.” Ingram propped himself up on one elbow and smiled at Laurence. “Are you a little nervous about going home?”
    “As the Pope is Catholic,” Laurence replied, laughing. “Goodbye, Ingram.”
    When he went to fetch his horse from the stables, the ostler could not praise it enough. “Never seen a crossbreed come out so nicely, sir! Tall, yet with the daintiness and sturdiness of a Barbary. Odd for it to be black, sir. Most beasts of that blood tend to white or grey. And the workmanship on this sword,” he added, handing it back to Laurence. “Spanish, I’d guess.”
    “That’s right,” Laurence said, thinking suddenly of Juana; how surprised she would be, if she knew how far the sword had travelled from its native land.
    On the ride northwards out of Newbury, he saw no signs of war. Crops flourished in the fields and the sheep grazed in their pasture undisturbed. Yet approaching the outskirts of Oxford he began to encounter groups of armed men on the road, so he took a longer, rarely travelled route around the prosperous market towns of Woodstock and Chipping Norton, into the Cotswold hills. It seemed to him as though he had never been away, as he recognised the old markers on his journey: the rising of church spires, the farmhouses, the copses and spinneys, the low dry-stone walls, and the River Evenlode gleaming between green banks.
    By early evening, he arrived at his father’s property. He chose to avoid the gatehouse, and went around to a lower part of the surrounding wall that his horse could jump easily. The sun still gave out surprising warmth, drying his mud-splattered clothes. He reined in, and looked over the expanse of the park. Some of the older trees hadbeen cut down or polled, and others that had been saplings when he left had matured and filled out their boughs. In the distance he could hear the cooing of wood pigeons, while the air around him was heavy with the monotonous chirrup of crickets.
    Gradually he was overwhelmed by a sickening apprehension: all this was his birthright. If he could not accept it, with the responsibilities it entailed, he should never have come back to England. He knew, far better than before, that he was no more suited to be his father’s heir than he was to military life, though not for the reasons he might have given six years ago. Then, his natural indolence and a blithe spirit of rebellion against authority had caused him to reject the world into which he was born. Now, he feared that he had witnessed too much to settle within its confines, and had done too many sordid things to be worthy of its respect. But he had to think of his father, whom he had missed terribly and often, in self-reproach after committing the basest of deeds, and in sorrow when he had been most lonely or miserable.
    Lord Beaumont’s mansion might have been unremarkable beside a Venetian canal or on some Umbrian slope, yet it obtruded amongst these English hills like an exotic beast at a country fair. It impressed Laurence as larger and more extravagant than he recalled, with stables and outbuildings grander than most other men’s dwellings. As he rode up the elegant, winding path that led to the courtyard, he saw liveried grooms unharnessing a pair of horses from the family coach, while a small boy vigorously polished the Beaumont coat of arms emblazoned on its door.
    The boy glimpsed Laurence first, and shouted, “Who’s he?”
    One of the men silenced him with a cuff on the ear. Then an old, dignified fellow emerged from the stables: Lord Beaumont’s Master of the Horse.
    “Why, it’s Master Beaumont, back from the wars!” he cried. “We never thought we’d see you again, sir. What a great day for us all, and a blessing for his lordship your father. Praise God you’re whole!”
    “And you too, Jacob,” Laurence said warmly, dismounting to