Lopez half smiled. “You saw the painting?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“I never did, but I often wondered how good a likeness it was. Cony hired a Dutch painter to sketch your father in an ale-house.”

“He made him look like a god.”

“Then it sounds a good likeness. Strange it should come out of hatred.” Lopez shrugged. “Mind you, it didn’t make our task any easier.” He left the subject of the painting and went back to the Covenant. “You see, I’d already bought a great deal of property with the money. You own land in Italy, Holland, France, England, and Spain.” He smiled. “You’re very, very rich. All that land, Campion, produces money, some in rent, some in crops, but a very, very great deal of money. I doubt if there are twenty people in England richer than you. We proposed, quite simply, that we kept control of the land, but passed the profits of the land to Matthew Slythe. When you were twenty-one you would take the profits for yourself. But that wouldn’t do.

“Master Cony said that if we controlled the land then one day we might simply dam the golden stream. That it gave Matthew Slythe, indeed yourself, an uncertain future.” Lopez shook his head ruefully. “You have no idea, Campion, how hard we tried to give that money to you, and how difficult it was. So, we drew up a different scheme, a little more subtle. We agreed to give up control of the properties on the condition that it all went to you when you were twenty-one. You would take control of the land, the profits, everything, but Matthew Slythe wouldn’t accept that. He believed that if you became rich too quickly then you would slide back into the pagan ways of your real parents. He wanted more years to save your soul, so we agreed, in the end, that you would inherit at twenty-five.

“We’d agreed, remember, to give up the control of the properties, but not to Grenville Cony and Matthew Slythe. Instead we all decided that the Bank of Amsterdam would administer all the land. Even Grenville Cony agreed to that, because it’s the one bank everyone trusts. It doesn’t belong to one family, but to the whole nation, and it hardly ever cheats anyone. To this day, Campion, they administer your wealth.”

Lopez’s references to “her” wealth seemed strange. She did not feel wealthy, or even fortunate. She was a Puritan girl, struggling for freedom, far from the man she loved.

Lopez looked at the ceiling. “The bank administers your property. They receive the profits from all the agents throughout Europe. The agents, of course, deduct their fees and I’ve no doubt that every single one is cheating you. The bank takes its own fee for its trouble, and I’m sure they sometimes add the sums wrong in their own favor, and then the money goes each month by draft of hand to Sir Grenville Cony. And he, my dear, undoubtedly takes an enormous fee. The remainder of the money was sent to your father, and the Covenant, which is the agreement between the four of us and the bank, says that the money must be used for your comfort, education, and happiness.”