She stammered her reply, “Miss Slythe.” She felt threatened by Devorax.

“She speaks! A miracle.” He flourished a bottle at her, as if in a toast. “You’d better thank me, Miss Slythe. I saved you from a scorching.”

Her heart was beating on her rib-cage. “I thank you, sir.”

“And so you damn well should.” Vavasour Devorax slumped into a chair, his legs in filthy boots sprawled out on one of the rugs. He grinned at Lopez. “I’ve been walking the streets of this once fair city. They say the devil rescued her! The devil!” He laughed, rubbing his chin that was paler than the rest of his face.

Lopez’s voice was patient, even affectionate. “Are you getting drunk, Vavasour?”

“Very drunk.” He said it savagely, then looked at Campion. “If you ever wish a bottle emptied, Miss Slythe, a maiden rescued, or a cause betrayed, I am your most excellent servant.” He tipped the bottle. Two thin trickles of wine dripped on to his leather jerkin. The bottle went down and his hard, cold eyes looked at her. “Do you think I make a good devil, Miss Slythe?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“‘Sir,’ she calls me ‘sir’! What it is to be old, Mordecai.” He shook his head, then suddenly looked accusingly at Campion. “That priest with you at the Tower—stringy man with the twitch—that was Faithful Unto Death Hervey?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“I wish I’d known then. God! I saw the bastard today, preaching at Paul’s Cross, calling me the devil! Me! I should have dragged the bastard back here when I rescued you and gelded him with a rusty knife. If there’s anything to geld, which I doubt.”

“Vavasour!” Lopez chided him. “You’re offending our guest.”

Devorax laughed silently. The cynical eyes looked at Campion. “You see? I’m not frightening at all. I can be reprimanded by my master. No one who can be reprimanded can be frightening.” He looked at Lopez. “I need money, master mine.”

“Of course. For food?”

“And wine, and women.”

Lopez smiled. “You can eat with us, Vavasour.”

Campion hoped silently that the big soldier would refuse. To her relief, he shook his head. “No, Mordecai. Tonight I buy my men pork. You never serve pork because of your weird religion. I need pork, drink and flesh, and a place where women are not offended by my common soldier’s tongue.” He stood up. “Money?”

Lopez stood, looked at Campion. “I shall be one minute.”

She was left alone. She felt a wave of relief that Vavasour Devorax was gone. He might have rescued her, yet she felt unsafe in his presence. She calmed herself and stared out of the wide windows.

The sun setting behind the bridge was, as Lopez had said, magnificent. The eastern reach of the Thames was dark beneath the great bridge that was silhouetted against the crimson, dying light. The tide was ebbing so that the river water was forcing itself through the narrow arches, and the mixture of falling foam and slickness was gilded by the hidden sun so that it seemed as if the whole, great bridge was afloat upon a mass of molten gold that poured itself into the dark water. It seemed unreal that she was here, watching the magnificence, and she wished she could see Toby or Lady Margaret. She needed friends, not strangers.