Go on, Njal, Hordle thought, willing them to notice nothing. Back to your nice cozy room and take a nap:

The Woburn Abbey garrison was a thirty-man platoon of the Special Icelandic Detachment-SID-First Heavy Infantry Battalion, according to report. King Charles didn't want regulars guarding a prisoner who'd been as popular with the troops as Sir Nigel Loring. That was why they'd moved him here, as well, rather than keeping the baronet under house arrest on his own commandery of Tilford Manor in Hampshire; too many of the folk there had been men of his own, or refugees he'd seen through the Dying Time on the Isle of Wight and led to settle their new lands. But Bedfordshire had only been colonized the last four years, and that, lightly; most of the dwellers were relocates from the Scottish islands and from Iceland and the Faeroes. They'd spent years working for others before they could accumulate tools and seed and stock to set up on their own, and they'd come this far north because the good land farther south was already claimed. And they were still much more likely to be unquestioning in their support of the royalist government than the native English.

Gratitude's a wonderful thing, Hordle thought sourly, as his chest moved in a slow, regular rhythm and his eyes flicked back and forth in a face darkened with burnt cork. Too bad Charlie didn't stay grateful to Sir Nigel for getting him out of Sandringham and down to Wight.

He'd been with the SAS-Special Air Service-detachment Nigel Loring took to rescue the heir to the crown from the Norfolk estate a week after the Change; the Household Cavalry had taken the queen out of London directly, in full Tin Bellies fig and using their sabers more than once on the mobs.

Perhaps if she'd lived Charles wouldn't have gotten so strange: Or if any of the politicians had made it: The last messenger out of London had said Blair was on his way, but he'd never arrived.