“I am sure, dear boy, I am certain, I am filled with certainty and with sureness. Proceed!”

Ebenezer shrugged, then held the brittle, browned paper into the flame of the closest candle. The certificate flared up, curled, burned, and Ebenezer dropped it on to a silver plate where the flames died. Sir Grenville, chuckling, leaned over and pounded the ash into unrecognizable powder.

“Your sister has just been given her divorce.” He sat down again.

“Will you tell her?”

“Dear me, no. Nor him! Nor the world! They must think themselves married to the end of time itself, till eternity is old. Just you and I know, Ebenezer, just you and I. So!” He pointed with a blackened finger to the ash. “Your sister is no longer married to Brother Scammell, so who now is the guardian of the seal?”

Ebenezer smiled again, but said nothing.

“You are, Ebenezer, you are. Congratulations, you have become rich.”

Ebenezer raised his glass and sipped. He drank little, preferring to face the world sober.

Sir Grenville molded marzipans and almonds into a ball. “And your father’s will, moreover, says that if your sister should be so unfortunate as to die before she is twenty-five and without children, then the monies of the Covenant must be used for the spreading of the gospel. I think we could spread the gospel most effectively, don’t you, Ebenezer?”

Ebenezer Slythe smiled, nodded. “What about Scammell?”

“You tell me, dear boy.” The lawyer’s bulging eyes watched Ebenezer closely.

Ebenezer steepled his fingers. “He serves no purpose for you any more, if he ever did. He’s an inconvenient witness to a marriage you don’t now want. I think it is time Brother Scammell crossed the River Jordan.”

Sir Grenville laughed. “Indeed. Let him await the resurrection in the peace of his grave.”

In the last of the daylight a great raft of yellow-gray ice lurched in the river, lodged against more ice, then came to rest. The unfrozen stream, black in the near darkness, foamed briefly white, then settled. Far off Sir Grenville could see dim splinters of light from the miserable hamlet at Lambeth. “So, Brother Scammell must die, but at whose hand?”

The dark eyes showed no emotion. “Mine?”

“It would be a kindness to me, dear boy. There is, unfortunately, another witness to this now inconvenient marriage.”

Ebenezer shrugged. “Goodwife will say nothing.”

“I do not mean Goodwife.”

“Ah.” There was a flicker of a smile on Ebenezer’s face. “Dear Dorcas.”

“Dear Dorcas, who will be most inconvenient should she live to be twenty-five.”

Ebenezer stretched out his legs, the one long and thin, the other twisted and bent inward beneath his full-length purple robe. “It would also be inconvenient, surely, if your name or mine were connected with her death. You tell me Lopez could still be a nuisance.”

“So?”

Ebenezer again smiled, a smile of satisfaction, of cleverness. “We never spoke of the priest’s reward.”

“The Reverend Faithful Unto Death Hervey? He wants more than his twenty pounds?”