Light was flooding the cornfields, touching gray silver on the bend in the stream far to the north, and Campion held the seal up to the dawn light from her window.

The rim of the seal was chased with an ornate design. In the center was an axe, short handled and wide bladed, and on either side of the axe’s handle were small letters in mirror-writing: “St. Matt.”

This was the Seal of St. Matthew, showing the axe which legend said had cut off the disciple’s head.

She fingered the heavy gold, wondering at it, looking at it in her hands when, just as the skirting board had moved, so now the seal seemed to give in her fingers. She frowned, tried to repeat what she had just done, and realized that the seal was in two halves, the joint concealed cunningly by one band of the precious stones. She unscrewed the two halves.

The half of the cylinder which bore the seal of St. Matthew fell away in her right hand. She lifted the other half into the light. The jewel, on its long golden chain, held a secret.

There was a tiny carving inside the cylinder, a carving that had been made with exquisite skill and cast in silver so that the gold cylinder enclosed a tiny silver statue. The statue shocked her. It was a symbol of such ancient power, a symbol of all that she had been taught to hate, and it had been in this house. Her father would have abominated this, yet he had kept it, and Campion stared at it, fascinated and repelled. It was a crucifix.

A crucifix of silver in a cylinder of gold, a seal made into a jewel, the key to great wealth. She looked at the letter again, noting once more the urgent appeal for Matthew Slythe to mark the seal. She lifted the jewel into the light and saw that her father had scratched a line across the face of the axe-blade. To stop counterfeiting, the letter said, but who was the man to whom the impression had to be sent? Who was Aretine? Lopez? Her discovery of the seal had uncovered new mysteries and she knew the answers did not lie in Werlatton.

The answers would be in London. The letter was signed Grenville Cony, and beneath his signature he had written, simply, “London.”

London. She had never seen a town, let alone a city. She was not even sure which was the road that led from Werlatton toward London.

Grenville Cony was in London, whoever he was, and Toby Lazender was certainly in London, and Campion looked at her table and saw the heavy, leather purse with her father’s hoard of gold. That could take her to London! She gripped the jewel in her hands, stared at the flooding of the summer light into the valley, and she felt the excitement rise within her. She would run away, away from Ebenezer and Scammell, from Goodwife and Werlatton, from all the people who wanted to crush her and make her into what she was not. She would go to London.