The Reverend Faithful Unto Death Hervey was pleased with his work. He had tied witchcraft to Catholicism and both to the Royalists, and in so doing he had ensured himself the lion’s share of the credit. The editor of Mercurius, sensing that the tale would prove popular with his readers, wrote his own comments on the story. He praised Faithful Unto Death and warned Protestant England that the Devil was indeed in the land, and then he spoke of Faithful Unto Death’s determination to grub out all witches who would destroy the purity of the kingdom of God. At Faithful Unto Death’s urging he added a further paragraph. Faithful Unto Death, he said, did not want women to live in fear. Any woman, be she poor or rich, could visit the Reverend Faithful Unto Death Hervey in Seething Lane, and there he would prayerfully examine her and issue, for a trifling sum, a certificate that bore witness to the absence of the devil. Thus armed, no woman needed to fear.

It was a stroke of genius. Within days of the Mercurius being distributed, Faithful Unto Death Hervey was besieged by women who sought his certificates. Fame was his overnight. He was asked to preach in the city, in Westminster, in parishes far from London, yet he could not accept all the invitations. He was busy, toiling day and night with the women who came to consult him; whose bodies he searched minutely for devilish protuberances. He worked faithfully in God’s vineyard, a happy man at last.

“Christ on his cross! Who did it? For God’s sake who?” Sir Grenville Cony, newly returned to London, was furious, more furious than Ebenezer had ever seen him. The small man thumped a fist down on the Mercurius. “Are there nothing but fools in this city? I go for two weeks, no more! And when I come back! This!” He sat, hands clutching his great belly. “For God’s sake! How, Ebenezer?”

Ebenezer shrugged. He stood staring across the river at the Lambeth marshes. “Hervey, I suppose.”

“Hervey! Damned Hervey. Wasn’t he warned?”

“Not in so many words.”

“Christ! Are words so damned expensive? Why wasn’t he warned?”

Ebenezer turned his expressionless gaze on Sir Grenville. “It was my fault.”

The confession of guilt seemed to mollify Sir Grenville. He picked up the Mercurius and stared at the crude woodcut. “You must always, always, know what your people are doing. God! Men are such fools! If you didn’t point it at the ground for them they’d piss up their nostrils. God’s bowels, Ebenezer!”

Ebenezer well understood Sir Grenville’s anger. The Mercurius Britanicus, as the most important news-sheet of the rebels, was distributed far from London. Copies went, fresh from the press, to the cities of Europe where money had been lent to the warring sides. The bankers of Florence, of the Low Countries, of Venice were desperately interested in the war’s progress. One battle could mean their loan was safe, a defeat could mean ruin. As Sir Grenville had shouted earlier, the Mercurius was available in Amsterdam before it reached the Parliamentary army in the north. He had shrieked a question at Ebenezer: “And who’s in Amsterdam?”