Higbed laughed. “Sir Grenville says you’re a rising young man, Mr. Slythe, and not bereft of intelligence. Think of a way! You’ll find one! And have her cleaned up! That way we’ll be sure!”

Caleb Higbed bade Ebenezer farewell, and walked back through the city, beaming greetings at old acquaintances. It was none of his business why a brother should want a sister destroyed, nor were such family quarrels so unusual. He doubted, personally, whether witchcraft existed, but lawyers were not paid for their beliefs, only their skill in making other people believe. He would prosecute, and he had no doubt that he would win, and it would be a small favor to Sir Grenville Cony who was a fount of patronage and success. He nodded cheerfully to the guards at Ludgate. “A fine day, my men, a fine day!”

God was in his heaven, the King had lost at Marston Moor and all was well in a Protestant world.

In her cell, rocking in seeming madness, Campion sang a line over and over, her voice wavering in the chill dankness. “‘Teach me to hear mermaids singing, teach me to hear mermaids singing.’” She was doomed.

Twenty-one

All was not well with Faithful Unto Death Hervey. Ambition is a hard master, not satisfied with small gains, wanting only complete success, and that complete success eluded Faithful Unto Death. He could not complain too loudly, for Ebenezer had provided him with an ample house in Seething Lane, a house that was magnificently kept by Goodwife, yet comfort in London was not enough. Fame still eluded him.

He could console himself with the first small signs of fame. Three ministers had called on him, two to learn from him the art of detecting witches. He had sent them away to pray that God would armor them against the devil. He had received one invitation to preach, but that Sunday it had rained torrentially and few parishioners turned up at St. Mary’s Overie. Besides, St. Mary’s was across the river in Southwark, and Faithful Unto Death dreamed of filling the preaching house that was once St. Paul’s with his impassioned oratory.

The case of Dorcas Scammell had attracted attention, but the news of war, of the success in the north, gave London a greater subject for talk. A Royalist witch, locked in the Tower, was not so fascinating as tales of a beaten army and stories of good Protestants slaying the King’s troops. Dorcas Scammell’s execution would be popular, drawing the crowds to Tower Hill, but Faithful Unto Death knew too that a Roman Catholic priest had been discovered in Bedford and tried, and his execution would come first. Nothing cheered London so much as the sight of a burning Papist. It even made the shortages in the shops seem momentarily worthwhile.

Fame was eluding Faithful Unto Death. He fretted over the problem, prayed about it, and paced long hours in his comfortable, upper chamber. The answer to his prayers, when it came, was astonishingly simple. It was late one night, the candles bright on his desk, when he was reading the newest Mercurius Britanicus London’s chief news-sheet, and he scanned the latest account of Parliament’s siege of York. It was going well, the commanders of the army winning the renown denied to Faithful Unto Death, when suddenly his hands shook with excitement. Of course! His melancholy torpor was over, he seized paper and ink and sharpened a goose-quill with fervent expectation. For two hours he wrote. He corrected, amended, and it was well past three in the morning when he leaned back, tired but happy, sure that he was at last to be rewarded.