The problem was the Seal of St. John. That had belonged to Christopher Aretine, the begetter of the Covenant and a man whom Sir Grenville hated more than he had believed it possible to hate. Damned Kit Aretine, failed poet, wit, soldier, and the holder of St. John. Aretine was dead. Sir Grenville would have liked to be utterly certain of Aretine’s death. He would like to dance on the rotting remains of his enemy’s body, but failing that he had to believe the sea captain who had sailed back from the American settlement of Maryland and swore on a Bible to Sir Grenville that he had seen the headstone of Aretine’s grave. Aretine, then, was dead. But where was his seal?

The thought haunted Sir Grenville as he edged his awkward bulk along the benches of the Commons. Where was the Seal of St. John? Was it lurking somewhere, ready to take away his control of the Covenant?

He sat down and stared into the dust that drifted in the sunlight above the Speaker’s chair. He thought suddenly of Ebenezer Slythe, and the thought brought some comfort to the lawyer. Sir Grenville had told Ebenezer almost everything, all the details of the Covenant except for the amount of the income, and he had watched the greed work on the bitter mind inside the crippled body. A bitter mind, Sir Grenville thought, but a clever one. Ebenezer was intelligent, ambitious, and utterly without scruples. He would have made, Sir Grenville thought, an excellent lawyer, but Sir Grenville had another profession in mind for Ebenezer, a profession that would link his piety with his talent for cruelty. Sir Grenville would keep Ebenezer content until he needed his help to secure the Covenant.

He listened for a moment to some doddering fool who suggested that captured Royalist land should be distributed among the poor of the nearest parishes. The poor! What would they do with it? Except to manure it with their own dung and fill it with their sour whining! Sir Grenville dutifully applauded as the member sat down.

Sir Grenville would not allow himself to think of defeat. The escape of the girl had been a setback, a dreadful setback, but he would find her, and he would destroy her with Ebenezer’s help. He could yet win, and no damned Jew, no dead poet, and no foul bitch of an empty-headed girl would thwart him. Sir Grenville growled on his bench. He would win.

Thirteen

Campion thought sometimes of the stream where she had first met Toby, beside which she had sat in the days after her father’s death, and she remembered her desire, in those unhappy days, to go with the stream’s current away from Werlatton and discover where the waters would take her. It seemed to her now that she had done just that. The death of Matthew Slythe had pushed her into a great, dark stream, its current fast between banks she could dimly discern, and her visit to London had whirled her into a raging, dangerous rapid that had done its best to drown her. Now, at Lazen, the stream had carried her into a calm, sunlit stretch of water. She had prayed so often and so hard for happiness, and now, at last, it seemed the prayers were answered.