A Crowning Mercy (24 page)

She did, she had come to Lazen, and Campion, again, was happy.

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Sir Grenville Cony had still not forgotten the horror of hearing of his faithful Grimmett's death. Dead! And the girl fled, rescued by some man who had cut down Sir Grenville's servant. The lawyer had howled with anger at the news, howled like a hurt animal, and within hours he had been assailed by a pain in his vast belly. The pain felt like a great snake that heaved and coiled inside him, rending him with poisonous fangs, and the diet of goat's milk and pigeon-flesh that Dr Chandler had prescribed had done nothing to relieve the pain.

Now there was more bad news. He had been summoned from a debate in the Commons, a turgid session in which the members debated changes to the present arrangements for the disposal of captured Royalist property. Sir Grenville knew there would be no changes -- he had made sure of that -- but it was necessary to give the canting fools the impression that their self-important maunderings carried some weight in the councils of the state. His secretary waited at the door of Westminster Hall. 'Sir Grenville?'

'What is it?'

'This, sir. From Cottjens.'

Sir Grenville seized the letter. His secretary had already opened it, read it, and judged it necessary to bring it immediately to Westminster. Sir Grenville read it through once, twice, and then seemed to growl. The growl turned into audible words. 'The bastard. The Jewish bastard. The filthy, Jewish bastard!'

Julius Cottjens was a merchant on the Amsterdam Exchange, a dealer in cloth and fine spices who also dealt with a select clientele for another commodity; information. Cottjens charged highly for his privately gathered news, and men met his prices, for he was accurate and trustworthy in a world subject to strange rumours. Julius Cottjens was a listener of genius, a man of unbounded curiosity and seeming discretion, and endowed with a prodigious memory, yet the news he had just despatched to Sir Grenville Cony had required none of those qualities. Sir Grenville had long been a client of Cottjens's, and there was a standing instruction that the Dutchman was to send to Sir Grenville any information, however trivial, concerning Mordecai Lopez. For two years there had been nothing, and now this. Lopez had returned to Amsterdam. The Jew had opened up his old, opulent house, while his ship, the
Wanderer,
was tied to an Amsterdam wharf. He had brought, Cottjens said, ten crates of belongings from Venice, and there was no evidence that he planned to move on for some while. The
Wanderer
had been stripped of her masts and was undergoing a thorough repair.

Sir Grenville Cony led his secretary towards a quiet space by the old Jewel Tower. 'Why? Why? Why does that Jewish bastard come now?' Sir Grenville turned his back on a beggar who was hauling his crippled legs over the grass. The man claimed he had been wounded in Parliament's service.

Dear God! Sir Grenville did not need this news now. First the girl disappears into a burning London night, Grimmett, faithful Grimmett, is killed, and now this! To add insult to injury, that fat fool Scammell had not even bedded the bitch before she fled. At least the wedding certificate, valid till proved otherwise, had survived in Scammell's unburned, brick house. The only joy Sir Grenville had taken in the whole affair was to watch Scammell cringe as he was tongue-lashed.

Now this! Lopez had come north to Amsterdam. Sir Grenville kicked the beggar who had pulled at the lawyer's coat, then kicked him again. 'He knows, John! He knows!'

The secretary shrugged. 'You think so, Sir Grenville?'

'Of course! Why the hell else does he come? The girl must have got a message to him. Christ and damnation! God! She has the seal, John. She has the seal!' He had been pacing up and down the patch of grass, but on these final words the small, fat man whirled round and pointed a finger accusingly at his secretary, as though John Morse was responsible.

The secretary kept his voice mild. 'We don't know that, sir.'

'We don't know that there'll be a Second Coming! Of course he knows! Why else would he be here?' Cony shut his bulging eyes as if in pain. 'God damn, God damn, God damn! She had it all along! She had it! She tricked me! God damn!' He snarled, then seemed to freeze.

When he moved again, eyes opening slowly, he was quite calm. Morse was used to this metamorphosis. The anger was over, now would come the calm, efficient plan that would attempt to retrieve the damage. 'Which of our people would recognise the girl?'

Morse thought. 'Myself, sir. The boat crew.'

Sir Grenville snapped his fingers. 'The boat crew. Who's the best man?'

'Taylor, Sir Grenville.'

'Send Taylor to Amsterdam. Two of our guards to go with him. If the girl is seen going to the Jew's house, seize her. One hundred pounds apiece if they're successful.'

The secretary raised his eyebrows, but said nothing. Sir Grenville frowned for a second. 'She's got to be found, John, she's got to be. Who's at Werlatton?'

'Davis, sir.'

Sir Grenville had sent one of his guards to Werlatton, to make sure that the chastened Samuel Scammell pulled the house apart in his efforts to find the seal. 'Send a message to Davis; can he read?'

'No, Sir Grenville.'

'Damn. Send a messenger. Twenty pounds if anyone spots the girl.'

'At Werlatton, sir?' Morse was surprised.

'Don't be a bigger fool than God made you. She only knows Werlatton, where the hell else would she have made friends to rescue her?' Sir Grenville was thinking swiftly. 'Lopez may send men to her, rather than expect her to make the journey. I want her found. I'll pay twenty pounds for a sighting, understand? Get Scammell's servants out looking, but find her! Find her!'

It was not much, Sir Grenville knew, but it was all he could do at this time. He had always known this moment would come, the gathering of the seals, and he did not intend to lose the battle that was imminent.

There were four seals: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Sir Grenville's enemies were seeking to assemble any three of the seals. It did not matter which three. Three seals controlled the Covenant and victory would go to the man who gathered them first.

He thought about it as he walked back to the Commons. He had thought these thoughts for years, since the Covenant had first been made and the permutations surrounding the seals were old in his mind.

Lopez would never succeed in laying his hands on the Seal of St Mark. That was in Cony's keeping, and Sir Grenville guarded it well. St Mark was safe.

On the other hand Sir Grenville knew that he would never gain possession of the Seal of St Luke. That was in Lopez's keeping and the Jew guarded it as carefully as Sir Grenville guarded St Mark.

That left two seals. St Matthew, he was now sure, was in Dorcas Slythe's hands. If it reached Lopez, then the game was almost certainly lost, the battle won by the enemy. The thought hurt.

The problem was the Seal of St John. That had belonged to Christopher Aretine, the begetter of the Covenant and a man whom Sir Grenville hated more than he had believed it possible to hate. Damned Kit Aretine, failed poet, wit, soldier, and the holder of St John. Aretine was dead. Sir Grenville would have liked to be utterly certain of Aretine's death. He would like to dance on the rotting remains of his enemy's body, but, failing that, he had to believe the sea captain who had sailed back from the American settlement of Maryland and swore on a Bible to Sir Grenville that he had seen the headstone of Aretine's grave. Aretine, then, was dead. But where was his seal?

The thought haunted Sir Grenville as he edged his awkward bulk along the benches of the Commons. Where was the Seal of St John? Was it lurking somewhere, ready to take away his control of the Covenant?

He sat down and stared into the dust that drifted in the sunlight above the Speaker's chair. He thought suddenly of Ebenezer Slythe, and the thought brought some comfort to the lawyer. Sir Grenville had told Ebenezer almost everything, all the details of the Covenant except for the amount of the income, and he had watched the greed work on the bitter mind inside the crippled body. A bitter mind, Sir Grenville thought, but a clever one. Ebenezer was intelligent, ambitious, and utterly without scruples. He would have made, Sir Grenville thought, an excellent lawyer, but Sir Grenville had another profession in mind for Ebenezer, a profession that would link his piety with his talent for cruelty. Sir Grenville would keep Ebenezer content until he needed his help to secure the Covenant.

He listened for a moment to some doddering fool who suggested that captured Royalist land should be distributed among the poor of the nearest parishes. The poor! What would they do with it? Except to manure it with their own dung and fill it with their sour whining! Sir Grenville dutifully applauded as the member sat down.

Sir Grenville would not allow himself to think of defeat. The escape of the girl had been a setback, a dreadful setback, but he would find her, and he would destroy her with Ebenezer's help. He could yet win, and no damned Jew, no dead poet, and no foul bitch of an empty-headed girl would thwart him. Sir Grenville growled on his bench. He would win.

13

Campion thought sometimes of the stream where she had first met Toby, beside which she had sat in the days after her father's death, and she remembered her desire, in those unhappy days, to go with the stream's current away from Werlatton and discover where the waters would take her. It seemed to her now that she had done just that. The death of Matthew Slythe had pushed her into a great, dark stream, its current fast between banks she could dimly discern, and her visit to London had whirled her into a raging, dangerous rapid that had done its best to drown her. Now, at Lazen, the stream had carried her into a calm, sunlit stretch of water. She had prayed so often and so hard for happiness, and now, at last, it seemed the prayers were answered.

The autumn and winter of 1643 were happy months for Campion, shadowed only by Toby's absence and by the unanswered mysteries surrounding the seal.

Toby was now what he had long wished to be; a soldier of King Charles. His father's eminence had assured him an immediate captaincy, yet, even so, his first letters home were cheerful confessions of ignorance. He had to learn his trade, and he was determined to be worthy of the name 'Cavalier'. The nickname had been given to the King's soldiers by the Puritans and was intended to be a deadly insult. The
caballeros
of Spain were the notorious enemies of true Protestantism, and the English adaptation, 'Cavalier', was supposed to tarnish the Royalists with Roman Catholic foulness. Yet the Cavaliers, like the Roundheads, had enthusiastically adopted their enemy's insult and invested it with pride. Toby would be a Cavalier.

Campion missed Toby, yet his letters, funny and affectionate, kept alive the promise of the future they had so intemperately planned in London. At the same time the Seal of St Matthew, constantly about her neck, was a reminder of the threat to that future. Lady Margaret had been for immediate action. Sir Grenville Cony must be bearded, must be forced to divulge his secrets, but Sir George Lazender, home at last, forbade any such foolishness.

'Sir Grenville is not a man we can force! What means do we have of forcing him? Force, indeed!'

Lady Margaret frowned. 'Then what do we do?'

'Nothing, of course. There's nothing to be done.'

Inaction was like gall to Lady Margaret. 'Nothing! Something must be done. What about Lopez? Why do we not make enquiries of Lopez?'

Sir George had sighed. 'In the first place, my dear, we do not know which Lopez the letter refers to. Suppose we did? So what then? For all we know he's just as unscrupulous as Cony. If Campion falls into his hands she might suffer quite as much, if not more. No. Let the waters settle and we shall see what we shall see.'

Sir George's prudence, natural to him, was reinforced by a desire not to become deeply involved in Campion's affairs. He had been surprised, irritated and disappointed to find, on his return, that Lady Margaret had so wholeheartedly embraced Campion.

'She's unsuitable, Margaret. Quite unsuitable.'

'You haven't met her, George.'

Most of his objections to her presence in the castle evaporated when she was introduced. She had curtseyed prettily and Lady Margaret had watched, amused, as her husband responded to the girl's extraordinary beauty.

As the days passed Lady Margaret noticed Sir George enjoying Campion's company more and more. Sir George, for his part, was happy now that she should be in his household. He accepted her as his wife's companion, yet he still had reservations about her as a possible daughter-in-law. The seal, the strange Covenant, these were not certainties. It was best, Sir George thought, to give the girl time and see whether Toby's passion would abate with the passing of the months.

Lady Margaret acquiesced. Nothing could be done, but that did not stop her constantly speculating on the Covenant. She brought to bear on Campion's few facts her vast knowledge of England's families. 'Aretine, dear. How very extraordinary.'

Campion put down her needlework. 'Sir George says he only knows one Aretine.'

'George would, dear. He was thinking of Kit, I suppose?'

'Yes.'

'Sweet Lord, no. England's positively awash with Aretines. Let me think now. There was an archdeacon at Lincoln. Percy. He preached a very dull sermon and he married a most unsuitable woman. Her parents must have been very pleased. They had eight children who were all quite unbearable. Then there was an Aretine in Salisbury, a lawyer. He went mad, dear, and thought he was the Holy Ghost.'

'And Kit Aretine, Lady Margaret?'

'That's different. He was an exceptionally handsome being. Poor man.'

'Poor man?'

'Kit must be dead. It's always the best that go, child.'

Lady Margaret was frustrated in the autumn. She had abandoned the painting of miniatures to take up the art of warfare, convinced that her husband's almost imperceptible change of allegiance would result in the storming of Lazen Castle by Parliamentary hordes. Work on the estate suffered as she insisted on labourers digging new defences that connected the gatehouse to the Old House on one side, and to the northern tip of the moat on the other. Behind the ditches she made earthen banks and then compared her achievements with the diagrams in her book of military fortifications. Somehow her own ramparts looked more like untidy farm ditches and she fretted over it.