Woburn Abbey/Aspley Wood/Rasta Bob's Farm

Bedfordshire/Buckinghamshire, England August 12th, 2006 AD-Change Year Eight

I've been here before, John Hordle suddenly realized, his thumb moving over the leather that covered the grip of his bow.

The moon was up, and it glittered on the ruffled surface of the water to his left, where swans and ducks slept or swam lazily. But there was still little light under the three tall yews and the big oak; the night around him was still save for night birds, the whoo-whit of tawny owls and the screech of the barn type. Seven armed men lay grimly silent behind brush and waist-high grass, watching the great country house a quarter mile to the northeast. Candles and lantern lights flickered and blinked out behind the windows as the servants and garrison sought their beds. The pale limestone of it still glowed in the light of moon and stars.

When was that? Before the Change, of course, but when? In summer, I think.

Woburn Abbey was old; it began as a great Cistercian monastery, in the year when the first Plantagenet was crowned King of England. Henry VIII hung the last abbot from an oak tree on the monastery grounds when he broke with Rome and declared himself head of the Church, and granted the estate to a favorite of his named John Russell. The fortunes of the Russell family waxed and waned with those of the English aristocracy and England herself. In the palmy years of the eighteenth century the fifth duke rebuilt the country house in Palladian magnificence and surrounded it with a pleasance-deer park and gardens covering five square miles-very convenient with London only thirty miles to the south. In 1953 the eleventh duke had opened it to the paying public, complete with golf course, pub, guided tours and antique shop-and avoided the forced sales which so many of his peers suffered after the Second World War.