He pushed something over the table. For a moment she thought it was the Seal of St. Luke, but then she saw it was a piece of paper. Lopez shrugged. “That will be honored in Oxford.”

She shook her head. “I can’t!”

“Why not?” he laughed. “Marrying is an expensive business, Campion. You have to have a dress, you have to feed all those people, and you have to live somewhere.” He laughed at her. “Take it. I insist! You will repay me when the seals are gathered.”

He had given her one thousand pounds. She was embarrassed, for he had already paid for a wardrobe of new clothes, but he shrugged off her thanks. “You forget, Campion, that you are rich. The rich never find it difficult to borrow money, it’s only the poor who find that hard, and they need it most. Take it. There is one other thing.”

She looked at him. She would miss him, she thought, his wry sense and gentle kindness. “One other thing?”

“You must take it.” Like a conjurer he produced the seal.

She looked at it. “Why don’t you keep it?”

“Because it’s yours. You have to control part of your danger, Campion, you have to have that courage. You need it.” He smiled. “Give it to Toby to keep, if you like, but you must have something of your father’s.” He put it in the table’s center. “It’s yours. I give it to you.”

She picked it up, knowing that in so doing she had put herself back into danger. Lopez smiled. “You’ll keep it?”

“I’ll keep it.”

He nodded approval and raised his glass once more. “Well done.”

In the small hours, when the wind rippled the Thames and lifted the hair on the traitors’ heads pierced on pikes above the bridge gateway, Vavasour Devorax went to Campion’s room. He moved silently, like a great cat, and there was no sign that he had been drinking. He carried a lantern.

The door opened silently, greased by Devorax himself earlier in the day.

Campion slept, one hand curled, palm upward, on the pillow beside her face.

A board creaked beneath his foot. He froze. The girl licked her lips, stirred, then was still again. The light from the lantern was low, but enough to show the Seal of St. Luke beside her bed.

Vavasour Devorax picked it up.

He took it to the room which overlooked the Thames, to a table that he had prepared, and on the table was a small square of thick glass. He had smeared it with a little oil and now, using the candle from inside the lantern, he dripped sealing wax on to the glass. He pressed the seal home.

He did it again, then a third time.

The candle was put back into the lantern, and he wrapped the glass with its precious burden in a piece of muslin, then in wool, and finally put the whole into a small wooden box. It took him a minute, creeping on stockinged feet, to put the seal back by Campion’s bed, and another few moments to hide all traces of his activity on the table.