Captain Bertram Sowerby

Captain of a county company that specialises in forest work, road clearing and village defence. His three green acorns are known in every market town in the south.

Sowerby was a yeoman farmer whose village was raided by something from the wood. He raised a company of neighbours to hunt it, and found when it was done that the county would pay him to do it again elsewhere.

The Green Acorn is a county company, not a London one, and proud of it. It does the work nobody in London wants, at prices villages can pay, and it has never broken a contract.

This year the company is clearing a forest road for the county. Sowerby is worried about the money and about his scout, who keeps finding things that the county did not mention.

In person

50. Stout and ruddy, with a broad weathered face, a thick grey moustache and shrewd blue eyes. He wears a brigandine studded with brass over a green tabard with three gold acorns, and carries a heavy mace.