She laughed at the thought of Matthew Slythe caring for her happiness.

Lopez smiled.

“Truly it was not very subtle, it might even have worked, but there was one terrible mistake. Your father, Kit Aretine, had to interfere. We’d made a provision in the Covenant for changes to be made. Suppose that England went to war with Holland and the money could not be paid? In that case we’d need to transfer the control of the property somewhere else, and we’d decided, quite simply, that any three signatures from the four of us should be sufficient to change the arrangements. That seemed safe, after all neither I nor your father were ever likely to agree with Grenville Cony or Matthew Slythe, but then Kit had to complicate matters. What happens, he asked, if one of the four men dies? Wouldn’t it be simpler, he said, if every man had a seal and each man can hand the seal on to whomever he likes. The seal gives its owner one quarter of the authority over the Covenant and it authenticates the signature of anyone who writes to the Bank of Amsterdam about the Covenant. I said it was a dreadful idea, but I think Kit had already hatched the idea of sending Matthew Slythe a crucifix and Grenville Cony a woman, and so it was done.

“But now, you see,” Lopez leaned forward, “it was not three signatures that were needed, but three seals. Any man who could gather three seals would control the whole fortune. All of it. They could end the Covenant. If Sir Grenville, whom I very much suspect at this moment has two seals, can take a third, then he will simply go to the Bank and he will take all the property forever. All of it. You’ll have nothing.”

Campion frowned. “And if Sir Grenville has two seals then no one else can change the Covenant.”

“Exactly. And if he had succeeded in having you killed then you could not have taken the Covenant when you were twenty-five.”

Lopez lifted his wine and smiled at her over the rim of the glass. “What you have to do, young lady, is to collect those seals of Sir Grenville’s and take them, with the Seal of St. Luke to the Bank of Amsterdam. That’s what your father wanted, and that’s what I will help you do.”

Campion picked up the seal on the table. She understood now why Sir Grenville had hunted her and tried to kill her, she understood why Samuel Scammell had died so that Ebenezer could inherit control of one seal, she even understood why Matthew Slythe had lied to her when she had asked about the seal. She understood so much, though her mind would still have to go over and over the information, yet there was one thing she did not understand. She looked at Mordecai Lopez.

“Where’s the fourth seal?”

“I don’t know.” He sounded sad.

“Is my father alive?”

“I don’t know.”