The World

The Code

• The Seven Tenets

  The Code

  Seven principles, spoken once at a swearing and kept for a lifetime. Six may be discussed; the seventh is never spoken again.

• The Door

  Tenet I

  A principle of discretion. What is said in the company of keepers is kept by the company that held it.

• The Welcome

  Tenet II

  A principle of invitation. Entry to the Code is given, never asked for.

• The Cup

  Tenet III

  A principle of consent, and the one the Code keeps most rigorously of all.

• The Veil

  Tenet IV

  A principle of separation: a respectable life and the Code, held apart, kept whatever the hour.

• The Sign

  Tenet V

  A principle of recognition. The Mark is read by keepers and missed by everyone else.

• The Reckoning

  Tenet VI

  A principle of mutual holding. The Code holds those who hold it, and lets go of those who do not.

• The Spoken Once

  Tenet VII

  The tenet spoken once at the swearing and never again. A keeper may allude to it; a keeper may not say it.

• The Mark

  The Code

  The Code's single device: a low three-arched bridge in green and gold, invisible to outsiders, read at once by keepers.

• The Keeping

  The Code

  No court, no charter, no signature. Six quiet mechanisms by which the Code holds itself together.

• The Assembly

  The Code

  The whole body of keepers. It rarely gathers; when it does, the gathering is a sitting, and the word is never said in public.

Places in the world

The story moves through real Cotswold villages and market towns, in Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and over the borders into Worcestershire and Wiltshire. Each is set down here as it is by day and as it is once the coaches have gone: Stow-on-the-Wold, Bibury, Burford, the Slaughters, Bourton-on-the-Water, Chipping Campden, Broadway, Castle Combe and the rest of the country the Code is kept in.

• Stow-on-the-Wold

  Highest of the Cotswold wool towns, where eight roads meet on a market square that has kept its counsel for a thousand years. The visitors leave by dusk; what stays is quieter.

• Bibury

  The most beautiful village in England, said William Morris: Arlington Row, the Coln, the trout farm. The postcard, and the high-walled country it stands in front of.

• Coln St Aldwyns

  One of the three Colns, an estate village so quiet the quiet is the first thing you notice. The conversions at the edge keep their own counsel.

• Bourton-on-the-Water

  The Venice of the Cotswolds by day: the low bridges over the Windrush, the model village, the crowds. Climb out of the valley and the noise falls away within a field.

• Burford

  The gateway to the Cotswolds: a steep High Street of wool-money houses falling to a medieval bridge over the Windrush. The way in, and not where the road leads.

• Lower Slaughter

  One of the prettiest villages in England, and one of the most misread: the name means a muddy place, not a violent one. Footbridges, an old mill, the slow River Eye.

• Upper Slaughter

  The elder, quieter Slaughter: no shops, a ford, and a rare distinction as a doubly thankful village that lost no one in either world war.

• Kingham

  Once voted England's favourite village: a green, two good pubs, and a station ninety minutes from London that shaped it more than wool ever did.

• Northleach

  The wool town the coaches forget, with the cathedral of the Cotswolds at its heart: a great wool church and the merchant brasses that paid for it.

• Broadway

  The jewel of the northern Cotswolds: a broad chestnut-lined street, an old artists' colony, and Broadway Tower on the second-highest hill in the range.

• Chipping Norton

  The highest town in Oxfordshire, a working market town the locals call Chippy: a wool church, the domed Bliss Mill, and money that would rather not be discussed.

• Chipping Campden

  The loveliest high street in the Cotswolds: the 1627 Market Hall, a great wool church, the home of the Arts and Crafts guild, and the northern end of the Cotswold Way.

• Tetbury

  The antiques capital of the southern Cotswolds, with the pillared Market House of 1655 and the King's house at Highgrove a mile down the lane.

• Painswick

  The Queen of the Cotswolds, on a hilltop above the valleys of Stroud: the famous churchyard yews, the table tombs, and the only complete Rococo garden in the country.

• Castle Combe

  Often called the prettiest village in England, over the line in Wiltshire: a single street to the By Brook, a medieval market cross, and a film set with the public let in.

• Snowshill

  A high, quiet hilltop village above the Vale of Evesham: the manor of a great collector, and the lavender fields that turn the slope violet in midsummer.

• Daylesford

  Not a village but an estate, and the most famous farm shop in England: where the moneyed weekend comes to shop, at the centre of the glossy-magazine Cotswolds.