She laughed at the great pile. “Read all of them?”

“Always read what you sign, my dear.” He laughingly allowed that the letters were all duplicates of each other, but made her read through the top copy. Then he fanned them out on the table. He watched her write her signature again and again and, as she did so, explained that he had thought it far too dangerous to invite Lady Margaret or the Reverend Perilly to give evidence as she had suggested. “This is not the time for avowed Royalists to be in London. You do understand?”

“I do.”

“But worry not! We will win, indeed we will!” Francis Lapthorne sanded her signatures, tipped the sand off and packed the papers away.

“Is that all?”

“You want more?” He laughed. “That’s all, my dear.”

He promised to return the next morning and Campion, cheered by his visits, watched him walk away across the footprints left by Archbishop Laud. He paused in the small archway, turned, smiled and gave her a bow. She waved.

An hour later, in a private room of the Bear Inn at the city end of London Bridge, Francis Lapthorne took the papers from the leather case. He burned all of them, except for two which bore Campion’s signature on otherwise blank sheets. Those two, with a flourish, he put before Ebenezer Slythe. “A deal of work, sir.”

“But well paid.”

“Indeed! Better than the theater!” Since the Puritans had closed the playhouses, actors like Francis Lapthorne had been short of work. “It’s always a pleasure doing business for Sir Grenville.”

Ebenezer looked at him sourly. “And doubtless a business when you provide him with pleasure.”

Lapthorne shrugged. “It’s an honor to be a friend of Sir Grenville,” he said defensively.

Ebenezer was not listening. He was staring at the signed sheets. “God in his heaven!”

“What?”

“Look!” Ebenezer pushed the sheets across the table. “Fool!”

“What?” Lapthorne did not understand. “You asked me to get two signatures, I got two signatures! What more did you want?”

Ebenezer turned one of the sheets round and read it aloud in a sarcastic voice, “Dorcas Campion Scammell. What the hell is that supposed to be?”

“Her name!”

“Campion? Her name’s not Campion!”

Lapthorne shrugged. “She told me it was. She said it was her middle name.”

“You’re a fool.”

The actor assumed an air of hurt dignity. “A person may assume whatever name they like, it’s not illegal. If she says that is her name, then that is her name. It will be quite sufficient for her confession.”

“Pray you never have to make a confession to me, fool.” Ebenezer took the two sheets. “And pray you’re right.” He put two coins on the table.

Lapthorne looked at them. Four had been promised, and even that was hardly a great amount for the deal of writing he had done, yet he did not care to argue with the intense, dangerous young man whose eyes were dark and fanatical. He smiled. “Pray give Sir Grenville my regards.”