There was little to cheer anyone in the news-sheet. Campion began reading a vituperative article which listed those members of the Commons in London who had still not signed the new Oath of Loyalty that had been demanded in June. Only a handful had not signed and the anonymous writer claimed, “that tho it bee said sicknesse bee the cause of their ommission, yet it bee more likelie a sicknesse of the courage than of the bodie.”

“Can’t you find something interesting, dear?” Mrs. Swan asked, before biting a thread with her teeth. Campion said nothing. She was frowning at the ill-printed sheet so intently that Mrs. Swan’s curiosity was aroused. “What is it, dear?”

“Nothing. Really.”

Such an answer was a challenge to Mrs. Swan, who could extract from nothing enough material to fill three happy mornings in gossip. She insisted on an answer, but even she was surprised that the subject of Campion’s interest was merely that Sir George Lazender was one of the Members who had not signed the new oath. Then a thought suggested itself. “Do you know Sir George, dear?”

“I met his son once.”

The embroidery went down. “Did you now?”

Campion endured a relentless cross-examination, confessing to her one meeting, though not the circumstances, and ending by slyly admitting that she wanted to see Toby again.

“Why not, dear? So you should. Lazender, Lazender. Well-off, are they?”

“I think so.”

Mrs. Swan smelt a customer, if nothing else, and in the last evening light before the candles were lit she bullied Campion into borrowing paper, ink and a quill from Jacques Moreau. She wrote a simple message, merely saying that she was in London, staying with Mrs. Swan (“gentlewoman,” Mrs. Swan insisted on that, and made Campion trace out the letters one by one to her satisfaction), and that she was in the house with the blue door in Bull Inn Court to which Toby would be a welcome visitor. For a moment she wondered how to sign the letter, uncertain if he would remember the fanciful name he had given her by the stream, but then she found she could not write her true, ugly name. She signed herself Campion. The next morning they both walked to Westminster. Mrs. Swan took her to Parliament itself, pushing through the booksellers of Westminster Hall, past the crowded lawyers’ offices, to leave the message, care of Sir George, with a clerk of the Speaker. Then Campion was forced to wait with even more apprehension than she felt about Sir Grenville Cony and the mystery of St. Matthew’s seal.

Even the diversions of London could not erase the expectations from her heart. Mrs. Swan insisted on showing her the city, but every minute Campion was away from Bull Inn Court was a moment during which Toby might call, and she might miss him.

On the second evening after they had delivered the letter, they went to Jacques Moreau’s house where three households had gathered together for music. The French tailor played the viol, his wife the flute, and it should have been a happy evening, but Campion was racked with apprehension. Perhaps he would call this evening, when she was not in the house? Then she wondered if he would bother to call at all. Perhaps he would not remember her, or if he did he would dismiss the letter with a laugh, pitying her, and in those moments she wished she had not written to him. She convinced herself, listening to the music, that he would not come, so she tried to persuade herself that she did not want him to come. Then she wondered, if he did come, whether she would still like him. Perhaps it would all be a terrible, embarrassing mistake, and she tried once more to believe she was indifferent to his response. Yet every time there were footsteps in the Court she would look anxiously out of the window.