“Don’t you know there’s a bell?” a voice demanded.

“A bell?”

“To your right.”

She had not seen it in the shadows, but now she saw an iron handle hanging from a chain. The irritation of the person behind the tiny shutter seemed to demand an apology, so she made one. The man was slightly mollified. “What do you want?”

“I want to see Sir Grenville Cony, sir.”

“To see Sir Grenville? Everyone wants that! Why don’t you watch him pass in his coach, or in his private barge? Isn’t that sight enough?”

She could not see the man to whom the petulant voice belonged, she could only make out the glitter of one eye and the half shape of a nose pressed against the iron grille that barred the small opening. “I have business with Sir Grenville, sir.”

“Business!” The man seemed never to have heard of the word. “Business! Put your petition here. Hurry!” The eye and nose were replaced with fingers reaching for her petition.

“I don’t have a petition!”

She thought the man had gone, for there was silence after the fingers disappeared, but then the glittering eye came back. “No petition?”

“No.”

“Does Mr. Cony know you?” The question was asked grudgingly.

“He knew my father, sir.”

“Wait!”

The shutter dropped with a smart click, leaving the house in silence again, and Campion walked back into the alley and stared down at the river. A heavy barge was crawling across her narrow view, propelled by long, wooden sweeps that were rowed by men standing on its decks. One by one, three heavy cannons came into view, lashed to the barge’s deck, a cargo going westward to war.

The shutter snapped up. “Girl!”

“Sir?”

“Name?”

“Dorcas Slythe.” This was no time for fanciful, self-adopted names. She could hear the scratch of quill on paper.

“Your business?”

She hesitated, provoking a tut from the grille. She had half expected, having been told to wait, that she would be invited into the house, and so she was not prepared with a message. She thought quickly. “The Covenant, sir.”

“The what?” There was no interest in his voice. “Covenant? Which one?”

She thought again. “St. Matthew, sir.”

The quill scratched beyond the door. “Sir Grenville’s not here, girl, so you can’t see him today, and Wednesday is the day for public business. Not this Wednesday, though, because he’s busy. Next Wednesday. Come at five o’clock. No. Six. In the afternoon,” he added grudgingly.

She nodded, appalled at the time she would have to wait for any answer. The man grunted. “Of course he may not want to see you, in which case your time will have been wasted.” He laughed. “Good day!” The shutter snapped down, abandoning her, and she turned back to the Strand and to Mrs. Swan.

In the house she had left, in a great comfortable room that overlooked the Thames, Sir Grenville Cony stared at the barge which lumbered away from him around the Lambeth bend. Guns for Parliament, guns bought with money that had probably been lent by Sir Grenville himself at twelve percent interest, but the thought gave him no pleasure. He felt his belly gingerly.