They were quiet again. Edmund thought of his own older brother. The wagon rumbled on. It didn’t seem to be any nearer or further away. Then the first soldier spoke again. ‘Hear the guns?’
As Edmund stared, the soldier continued, ‘It’s the artillery. Thousands of them, they reckon, all firing at once. No wonder you can hear them all the way from France.’
More days passed. Even with the extra blanket, Edmund’s cell was almost unbearably cold. He coughed most of the time now. A couple of mornings as they marched him around the camp, he had to ask his escort to stop. ‘I need . . . to breathe,’ he wheezed. The soldiers who’d taken him out into the country had been replaced by others. Edmund hoped the first two hadn’t got into trouble.
He worried about William. The artillery rumbling – fifty?
