“I don’t have it.”

He raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. “You mean this was all in vain?” His right hand was behind his back now. “We went through this siege for nothing? Those men died for nothing?” His right hand moved again, once more with snake-like speed, and Campion saw the flash of light on a long, thin dagger, and then there was the chill of steel against her cheek. “Where is it, sister?”

She dared not move. She could feel the point of the knife on her skin. Ebenezer smiled. “Where is it, sister?”

Still she said nothing. She was terrified of him. The cruelty of Matthew Slythe had been handed to his son, but mixed with a cold-blooded detachment. She knew of no way to appeal to him.

His left hand moved, startling her. She gasped because the knife had gone from her cheek and she felt the cat in her arms, suddenly protest. Ebenezer had grasped the cat by the neck, had put the knife on her fur.

“Tell me, sister.”

“No!” She tried to pull Mildred away from him. “No!”

The knife sliced at the base of her thumb, a quick surprise of pain. She gasped, blood dripped, and then Ebenezer was holding the cat by the scruff of her neck and the knife point was at the cat’s throat. He held it at her face. “Where is it, sister?”

“Ebenezer! No!”

The cat squealed, twisted, tried to claw the man who held the knife point at her throat. Campion grasped at Ebenezer’s wrist, blood running from her cut hand, but Ebenezer jerked the knife. “You want the cat to die?”

“Ebenezer!” She shook her head. “Please!”

“I’ll kill it, Dorcas. You’ve seen me do it before. I’ll kill it. And then I’ll start on you, sister dear.” He laughed. “If Brother Scammell’s not willing, then I’ve a dozen men who’d like to have you, sister. One by one, one after the other. Do you want that, sister? Do you?”

“Ebenezer!”

Scammell watched, appalled. He did not move.

Ebenezer smiled. He ignored the cat that twisted frantically to avoid the dagger’s point. “Where is the seal, sister?”

“I have it! I have it! I don’t want it.”

A look of triumph twisted on Ebenezer’s face, and then he screwed with his right hand, glee in his eyes, forcing Mildred on to the knife and twisting the body so that the cat’s dying spurt of blood sprayed on to Campion’s face. He jerked the blood-matted body off the knife point and laughed at her. “So you do have it. Where?”

The dagger was coming toward her face again.

She fumbled inside her dress, but the seal had slipped down to her waist and she could not reach it. She watched the knife, smelling the blood of the cat on her face. “I’ll get it for you!”

He took the neckline in his left hand, pulled and sawed down with the knife. The point drew blood from the skin over her breastbone, ripped on through the dress, and she shrank back, screaming, the dress falling away where he had cut it down close to her waist. The seal’s chain fell out and Ebenezer reached for it, pulled, and held the jewel up to the growing light. He glanced uninterestedly at her breasts, smiled as she pulled the dress up to cover her nakedness, then stepped away from her.