“Amen and amen,” said Matthew Slythe.

“Praise His name,” said Ebenezer.

“And wickedness is being uprooted!” Scammell raised his eyebrows to emphasize his words. He told of two Roman Catholic priests discovered, men who had stolen into London from the Continent to minister to the tiny, secret community of Catholics. They had been tortured, then hanged. “A good crowd of Saints watched!”

“Amen!” said Matthew Slythe.

“Indeed and indeed.” Samuel Scammell nodded his head ponderously. “And I too was an instrument in uprooting wickedness.”

He waited for some interest. Ebenezer asked the required question and Scammell again addressed the answer to Campion. “It was the wife of one of my own workmen. A slatternly woman, a washer of clothes, and I had cause to visit the house and what do you think I found?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“A portrait of William Laud!” Scammell said it dramatically. Ebenezer tutted. William Laud was the imprisoned Archbishop of Canterbury, hated by the Puritans for the beauty with which he decorated churches and his devotion to the high ritual which they said aped Rome. Scammell said the portrait had been lit by two candles. He had asked her if she knew who the picture represented, and she did, and what is more had declared Laud to be a good man!

“What did you do, brother?” Ebenezer asked.

“Her tongue was bored with a red hot iron and she was put in the stocks for a day.”

“Praise the Lord,” Ebenezer said.

Goodwife entered and put a great dish on the table. “Apple pie, master!”

“Ah! Apple pie.” Matthew Slythe smiled at Goodwife.

“Apple pie!” Samuel Scammell linked his hands, smiled, then cracked his knuckles. “I like apple pie, indeed and indeed!”

“Dorcas?” Her father indicated that she should serve. She gave herself a tiny sliver that brought a sniff of disapproval from Goodwife, who was bringing lit candles to the table.

Samuel Scammell made short work of two helpings, gobbling the food as though he had not eaten in a week, and swilling it down with the small beer that was served this night. Matthew Slythe never served strong drink, only water or diluted ale.

The pie was finished without further talk and then, as Campion expected, the conversation was of religion. The Puritans were divided into a multiplicity of sects, disagreeing on fine points of theology and offering men like her father and Brother Scammell a splendid battleground for anger and condemnation. Ebenezer joined in. He had been studying Presbyterianism, the religion of Scotland and much of England’s Parliament, and he attacked it splenetically. He leaned into the candlelight and Campion thought there was something fanatical in his thin, shadowed face. He was speaking to Samuel Scammell. “They would deny our Lord Jesus Christ’s saving grace, brother! They would dispute it, but what other conclusion can we draw?”

Scammell nodded. “Indeed and indeed.”

The sky had gone ink black beyond the windows. Moths flickered at the panes.

Samuel Scammell smiled at Dorcas. “Your brother is strong in the Lord, Miss Slythe.”