"We'll stop for a pint, how's that suit you, Cony?" Lewrie promised. "Then on to the Chiswicks."

"Pint'd suit me right down t'me toes, i't'would, sir," Will Cony agreed, kneeing his mare to match his master's quicker pace.

Anglesgreen was a quiet community, sited in a small, winding dell along the banks of a sluggish but clear-watered stream, with banks and bed flowing with rushes and grass. The village was surmounted to north and south, and at the far western end, with low and gently rolling hills, some forested, some asweep with velvety swaths of rippling, growing grain. And those hills from the summit of the nearest seemed to topple, to roll on forever like a delightful verdant sea-north toward Glandon Park and the Thames, south all the way to the Channel at Portsmouth.

There were three curving streets to Anglesgreen, two on the north bank, and one on the south bank, with two narrow stone bridges, one at either end of the village. There were shops on the High Street, Georgian-bricked fronts and bay windows for display, spreading to either side of a much older Tudor-timbered public house called the Ploughman. Behind the High Street, the homes were cottages with thatched roofs, while on the opposite bank the houses were newer, some Georgian or semi-Palladian, roofed with slate, and looked upon with some suspicion as being a bit too grand and uppity.All three streets curved to match the bend in the stream. At the east end, by the oldest bridge, there was St. George's Church, a high and narrow stone pile dating to the Norman Conquest with a topsy-turvy cemetery nearby that sheltered headstones and monuments green with moss, some from the ancient Anglo-Saxon clan which had erected the now-fallen castle and bailey which brooded half a mile to the north of the first bridge, now lost in scrubby woods and brambles, that marked the edge of the local squire's lands.