“Praise bee for this!” began one page, and Campion saw that he had been working from the book of Revelation where the number of the beast, the anti-Christ, the Pope of Rome, was given as 666. He had tried to divide it by twelve and, because it was impossible, he was pleased. Twelve, it seemed, was a godly number, indeed the fourteenth chapter of Revelation said that 144,000 people would stand on Mount Zion and her father had excitedly divided that number by twelve (the “apostles and tribes of God”) and received the answer 12,000. For some reason that seemed to be significant for he had underscored the number twelve times, and then listed further subdivisions. By three, the number of the Trinity, by four “for that bee the corners of this world,” and by six, described merely as “halfe twelve.”

Yet for each such success, there were horrid failures. The book of Daniel foretold the world’s end, the abomination, as being 2,990 days after the “end of sacrifice.” Matthew Slythe had struggled with that number and it had yielded nothing, its secret intact, and in desperation he had copied a verse from the same chapter of Daniel that expressed his disillusion: “for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.”

Sealed. She shrugged and smiled at the word. It had not been important to her father, instead he had underlined the words “closed up.” Closed up. She frowned, the paper forgotten, because something tugged at her memory, something she could not place, and she said the words aloud. “Closed up. Closed up.” She felt as she knew Toby Lazender must feel when his fingers felt the pressure in the cold water and he knew that a fish was between his hands, but she could still not place the words. Closed up.

Cony, Covenant, closed up.

She rubbed her temples and tried to take from the words their hidden meaning, just as her father had struggled with the Bible’s numbers. Yet the more she thought, the more elusive was the answer. Closed up? Why had that triggered her?

She stood up, pulled the curtain back, and opened one of the two windows. The lawn was pale in the moonlight, the hedge dark, and she could see the smear of stars above her. Closed up. It was quiet now, the whole household asleep, but then the owl sounded again, hunting the beeches on the ridge. Cony, Covenant, closed up.

She thought suddenly of Toby Lazender and had a sudden, clear vision of his face, a vision that had eluded her for weeks. She smiled into the darkness, for she was intent now on running away, and she thought that he would be the person she would run to. Perhaps he would remember her, but even if not, surely he would help her for he had been kind, generous and a friend if only for one afternoon. Then she felt the hopelessness of it. How could she reach London without money?