“He frightens you a lot, doesn’t he?”

She turned to see Mordecai Lopez in the doorway. He closed the door and walked toward her. “You don’t have to be frightened of him. He’s my man, sworn to me, and I promise he will protect you.” He sat opposite her and looked at her with grave eyes. “You think he’s not kind? I think maybe he is, but he’s very unhappy. He’s close to fifty now and he’s never found happiness. He’s growing old, and he buys his contentment out of bottles and whores.”

Lopez smiled. “Vavasour’s a soldier, perhaps one of the best in Europe, but what does a soldier do when he’s too old? Vavasour’s like an old, experienced wolfhound who fears he can’t keep up with the pack any more.” Campion liked that thought and she smiled. Lopez saw the smile and was pleased. “Remember that once he was young and he had hopes and dreams and plans, but not any more.” He shook his head. “He can be vilely rude, noisy and frightening, but that’s because he doesn’t want anyone to see what’s inside him. So don’t be frightened of him. Even an old wolfhound deserves a bone or two. Now!” He changed the subject abruptly. “Marta’s going to light more candles, we’ll have a fire, and we shall eat supper.”

Campion wondered if she could feel sympathy for a man like Devorax, whatever Lopez said, but over the supper she forgot the soldier and warmed to the elegant, gentle old man who proved a wondrously sympathetic listener. He coaxed from her the story of her life, all of it, and she even told him, shyly, of Toby’s name for her. He liked it.

“May I call you Campion?”

She nodded.

“Then I will. Thank you.” He gestured at her plate. “The duck is from Holland, Campion. You must try it.”

When the supper was over, her story told, he took her back to the chairs by the window. It was black night beyond the panes, a darkness sparked by candlelit windows on the great bridge and by the poop lanterns of moored ships that streaked their yellow reflections on the water which slid like dark oil beneath them. Mordecai Lopez closed the curtains, shutting off the sound of water. “You’d like Toby to know you’re safe?”

She nodded. “Please.”

“I’ll have one of Vavasour’s men go to Oxford. Lord Tallis, you said?”

She nodded again, remembering the note from the Reverend Perilly.

Lopez smiled at her. “Of course he’s Sir Toby now.”

She had never once thought of that. She laughed, an uncertain sound for it was unpracticed. “I suppose he is.”

“And you’ll be Lady Lazender.”

“No!” The thought was ridiculous, not of marrying, but of a title.

“Oh yes! And rich.”

The word made her alert. Not once had Mordecai Lopez spoken to her of the seals, though he had listened closely as she talked of the efforts Sir Grenville Cony and her brother had made to obtain the Seal of St. Matthew. Now, Campion knew, the moment had come, that moment she had innocently sought once in Sir Grenville Cony’s house. She had gone there in search of the secret of the seals, and had been trapped instead by the greed they engendered. Lopez had stood, had crossed to a bag he had placed on a table and she felt, as he returned to the windows, that she was on the brink of a great discovery. It frightened her.