Toby smiled. “You could be arrested for saying that.”

Mrs. Swan snorted in derision. “From what you say, Mister Toby, you could be arrested just for showing your nose in the street. I don’t know what the country’s coming to, I really don’t!”

Toby did not leave London on Sunday, nor on Monday. He would wait till Campion had seen Sir Grenville Cony, for Toby, like Campion, believed that in some way the lawyer would point her toward freedom. They speculated endlessly about the seal, the letter, even the pearled gloves, but in all their speculation they did not find a solution that convinced them. Sir Grenville Cony had the answer, if any man did, and Toby would not leave London till he had learned it. He would not, he said, leave Campion either. Together they planned their improbable, impossible future as if love could conquer everything.

Yet Toby was wanted. A description had been circulated to the watch, to the soldiers in the city, and Campion was appalled at the risks he took. He walked openly in the streets with her, his dark red curls obvious beneath his wide-brimmed hat, and on the Tuesday, the day before her appointment with Sir Grenville, he came close to being caught.

They were walking from St. Giles, both soberly dressed, though Toby insisted on having black satin beneath his slashed sleeves. He was laughing at some joke he had made when a burly man stepped into their path. The man raised a hand to Toby’s chest. “You.”

“Sir?”

The man’s face was twisted with anger and inner hatred. “You’re him, aren’t you? The Lazender scum!” He stepped back, raising his voice. “A traitor! A traitor!”

“Sir!” Toby’s voice was just as loud. People were watching, ready to side with the burly man, but Toby made them listen. He let go of Campion’s arm and pulled up his sleeve, pointing to a great white scar that ran ragged on his left forearm. “I took that wound, sir, last year on Edgehill field. Where were you, sir?” Toby stepped a pace forward, his right hand now dropping to his basket-hiked sword. “I drew this sword for the Lord, sir, and I did not have you at my side when the forces of evil surrounded me!” Toby shook his head sadly. “Praise the Lord, brothers and sisters, for He delivered me, Captain Scammell, from the Papist hordes of that man Charles. A traitor, am I? Then I am proud to be a traitor for my Lord and Savior! I have slain for the Lord, brethren, but was this man with me?”

Toby’s imitation of the Puritan rabble-rousers was so convincing that the small crowd were now all in sympathy with him. The burly man, taken aback by Toby’s pious vehemence, was eager to offer apologies and beseeched Brother Scammell to kneel in prayer with him. Toby, to Campion’s infinite relief, was magnanimous in victory, declining to pray, and pushing his way through the dispersing crowd with many expressions of piety. Once they were clear he grinned at her. “I got that scar two years ago, falling off a horse, but it comes in useful.”