A Crowning Mercy (45 page)

'Don't be frightened! Come, Dorcas! It is my pleasure to meet you.' The man smiled. 'At last.'

An old man moved towards her. He was thin and upright, his face made distinguished by white hair brushed back from a tanned, wrinkled skin. He had a small, neatly pointed white beard, and his clothes were of black velvet trimmed discreetly with white lace.

'My name is Mordecai Lopez. I own this house, and all that is in it is yours.' He smiled at his own flowery courtesy, then bowed to her with solemn grace. 'Will you sit with me in the window? The sunset over the bridge is the best sight in London, truly magnificent. I don't think Venice can offer anything as good. Please?'

His manner was gentle, his courtesy exquisite. He moved slowly, as if any sudden gesture might frighten her, and for some minutes he spoke of the house in which they sat. 'My people are not welcome in England. I used to live in London, but we were expelled, so I closed up my fine mansion in the city, but kept this house in secret.' He smiled. 'I can come here by boat and leave quickly by boat too.' The house was right on the river, the sound of the water slapping at piles easily audible to Campion. Mordecai Lopez offered her wine. 'Vavasour uses the house now. He hides his Royalist friends in it. I suppose one day it will be discovered and I'll come here to find nothing but destruction.' He handed her a beautifully cut crystal goblet. 'Did you like Vavasour?'

Marta had told Campion that 'Colonel Harries' was truly Vavasour Devorax. Campion was still nervous. She looked at the shrewd, kindly Jew. 'He seemed very frightening.'

Lopez laughed. 'He is, my dear, he is. Very frightening!'

'Who's frightening?' The voice was harsh, unexpected, coming from the door of the room. Campion turned, startled, and she saw the tall, grey-haired colonel. She would not have recognised him except for the voice. Devorax's beard was gone, the patch was gone, but his face was still brutally ugly, a merciless face. He looked at her as he approached. 'A sunset you never expected to see. Miss Slythe? Or should it be Mrs Scammell?'

She stammered her reply. 'Miss Slythe.' She felt threatened by Devorax.

'She speaks! A miracle.' He flourished a bottle at her, as if in a toast. 'You'd better thank me, Miss Slythe. I saved you from a scorching.'

Her heart was beating on her rib-cage. 'I thank you, sir.'

'And so you damn well should.' Vavasour Devorax slumped into a chair, his legs in filthy boots sprawled out on one of the rugs. He grinned at Lopez. 'I've been walking the streets of this once fair city. They say the devil rescued her! The devil!' He laughed, rubbing his chin that was paler than the rest of his face.

Lopez's voice was patient, even affectionate. 'Are you getting drunk, Vavasour?'

'Very drunk.' He said it savagely, then looked at Campion. 'If you ever wish a bottle emptied, Miss Slythe, a maiden rescued, or a cause betrayed, I am your most excellent servant.' He tipped the bottle. Two thin trickles of wine dripped on to his leather jerkin. The bottle went down and his hard, cold eyes looked at her. 'Do you think I make a good devil, Miss Slythe?'

'I don't know, sir.'

'"Sir", she calls me "sir"! What it is to be old, Mordecai.' He shook his head, then suddenly looked accusingly at Campion. 'That priest with you at the Tower -- stringy man with the twitch -- that was Faithful Unto Death Hervey?'

She nodded. 'Yes.'

'I wish I'd known then. God! I saw the bastard today, preaching at Paul's Cross, calling me the devil! Me! I should have dragged the bastard back here when I rescued you and gelded him with a rusty knife. If there's anything to geld, which I doubt.'

'Vavasour!' Lopez chided him. 'You're offending our guest.'

Devorax laughed silently. The cynical eyes looked at Campion. 'You see? I'm not frightening at all. I can be reprimanded by my master. No one who can be reprimanded can be frightening.' He looked at Lopez. 'I need money, master mine.'

'Of course. For food?'

'And wine, and women.'

Lopez smiled. 'You can eat with us, Vavasour.'

Campion hoped silently that the big soldier would refuse. To her relief, he shook his head. 'No, Mordecai. Tonight I buy my men pork. You never serve pork because of your weird religion. I need pork, drink and flesh, and a place where women are not offended by my common soldier's tongue.' He stood up. 'Money?'

Lopez stood, looked at Campion. 'I shall be one minute.'

She was left alone. She felt a wave of relief that Vavasour Devorax was gone. He might have rescued her, yet she felt unsafe in his presence. She calmed herself and stared out of the wide windows.

The sun setting behind the bridge was, as Lopez had said, magnificent. The eastern reach of the Thames was dark beneath the great bridge that was silhouetted against the crimson, dying light. The tide was ebbing so that the river water was forcing itself through the narrow arches, and the mixture of falling foam and slickness was gilded by the hidden sun so that it seemed as if the whole, great bridge was afloat upon a mass of molten gold that poured itself into the dark water. It seemed unreal that she was here, watching the magnificence, and she wished she could see Toby or Lady Margaret. She needed friends, not strangers.

'He frightens you a lot, doesn't he?'

She turned to see Mordecai Lopez in the doorway. He closed the door and walked towards her. 'You don't have to be frightened of him. He's my man, sworn to me, and I promise he will protect you.' He sat opposite her and looked at her with grave eyes. 'You think he's not kind? I think maybe he is, but he's very unhappy. He's close to fifty now and he's never found happiness. He's growing old, and he buys his contentment out of bottles and whores.'

Lopez smiled. 'Vavasour's a soldier, perhaps one of the best in Europe, but what does a soldier do when he's too old? Vavasour's like an old, experienced wolfhound who fears he can't keep up with the pack any more.' Campion liked that thought and she smiled. Lopez saw the smile and was pleased. 'Remember that once he was young and he had hopes and dreams and plans, but not any more.' He shook his head. 'He can be vilely rude, noisy and frightening, but that's because he doesn't want anyone to see what's inside him. So don't be frightened of him. Even an old wolfhound deserves a bone or two. Now!' He changed the subject abruptly. 'Marta's going to light more candles, we'll have a fire, and we shall eat supper.'

Campion wondered if she could feel sympathy for a man like Devorax, whatever Lopez said, but over the supper she forgot the soldier and warmed to the elegant, gentle old man who proved a wondrously sympathetic listener. He coaxed from her the story of her life, all of it, and she even told him, shyly, of Toby's name for her. He liked it.

'May I call you Campion?'

She nodded.

'Then I will. Thank you.' He gestured at her plate. 'The duck is from Holland, Campion. You must try it.'

When the supper was over, her story told, he took her back to the chairs by the window. It was black night beyond the panes, a darkness sparked by candlelit windows on the great bridge and by the poop lanterns of moored ships that streaked their yellow reflections on the water which slid like dark oil beneath them. Mordecai Lopez closed the curtains, shutting off the sound of water. 'You'd like Toby to know you're safe?'

She nodded. 'Please.'

'I'll have one of Vavasour's men go to Oxford. Lord Tallis, you said?'

She nodded again, remembering the note from the Reverend Perilly.

Lopez smiled at her. 'Of course he's Sir Toby now.'

She had never once thought of that. She laughed, an uncertain sound for it was unpractised. 'I suppose he is.'

'And you'll be Lady Lazender.'

'No!' The thought was ridiculous, not of marrying, but of a title.

'Oh yes! And rich.'

The word made her alert. Not once had Mordecai Lopez spoken to her of the seals, though he had listened closely as she talked of the efforts Sir Grenville Cony and her brother had made to obtain the Seal of St Matthew. Now, Campion knew, the moment had come, that moment she had innocently sought once in Sir Grenville Cony's house.

She had gone there in search of the secret of the seals, and had been trapped instead by the greed they engendered. Lopez had stood, had crossed to a bag he had placed on a table and she felt, as he returned to the windows, that she was on the brink of a great discovery. It frightened her.

Mordecai Lopez did not speak. Instead he put his hand down on the table beside her, glanced at her, then went back to his chair. He left something on the table.

She knew what it was without looking.

He smiled. 'It's yours to keep.'

The gold seemed to have an added lustre in the candlelight. She saw in the gold, jewel-banded cylinder the cause of all her misery. She hardly dared touch it. Samuel Scammell's throat had been cut for one of these, and she had been brought very close to the hideous flames, Lazen Castle had fallen, Sir George had been killed, and all for these seals.

She picked it up, almost holding her breath as she did so. Again she was surprised by the weight of the precious gold.

St Matthew had shown an axe, the instrument of that martyr's death, while St Mark had the proud symbol of the winged lion. This seal, St Luke, was similar. It showed a winged ox, head high and burly, the symbol of the third Evangelist.

She unscrewed the two halves and the small, silver statue inside made her smile. St Matthew had contained a crucifix, St Mark a naked woman arching in pleasure, while in St Luke was a little, silver pig.

'Each of the seals, Campion, contains a symbol of the thing the seal-bearer most fears.' Lopez's voice was quiet in the room. The moment seemed almost unnatural to Campion; the mystery unravelling. 'To Matthew Slythe went a crucifix. To Sir Grenville Cony went a naked woman, and I received a pig.' He smiled. 'I don't count that as much of an insult.'

She put the halves together and looked at the white-bearded old man. 'What's in the fourth seal?'

'I don't know. The man who had those seals made is the holder of St John. I would like very much to know what it is that he fears.'

She frowned, almost afraid to know what, for a year, she had longed to know. 'Is Christopher Aretine the man who has St John?'

'Yes.' Lopez was staring intently at her, his voice still quiet and gentle. 'It's time, Campion, that you knew it all.' He sipped some wine, listening to the damp river wood spit at the screen in front of the hearth. Every second seemed heavy to Campion. Lopez put his wine glass down, the movement delicate, then looked at her again.

'We shall begin with Christopher Aretine. My friend.' He stared at the seal in Campion's hands as if it was something strange, something forgotten. 'It was said that Kit Aretine was the handsomest man in Europe, and I think he truly was. He was also a scoundrel, a wit, a poet, a fighter, and the best company I ever knew.' Lopez smiled wistfully, then stood again. He talked as he crossed to the bookshelves. 'He was a great lover of women, Campion, though I think he was a dangerous man for women to love.' He reached to the topmost shelf, grunted, and brought down a book. 'There was a fine madness in Kit, I'm not sure even now I can describe it. I don't think he knew fear, and he had too much pride, too much anger, and he refused ever to bow the knee. I sometimes wonder if he was driven by hatred in search of love.' Lopez smiled at the thought as he sat again, the book on his knees.

'Kit Aretine could have had everything, Campion, everything. He could have been an earl! The old King offered him an earldom, and Kit threw it all away.'

He paused, sipped more wine, and Campion leaned forward. 'Threw it away?'

Lopez smiled. 'You have to understand, my dear, that King James was like Sir Grenville Cony. He preferred his, lovers to be men. I think he fell in love with Kit, but Kit would have none of it. None. The King offered him everything, and in return Kit gave him a poem.' Lopez smiled. 'It was printed anonymously, but everyone knew Kit Aretine was the author. He even boasted about it! He described the King in the poem as "that Scottish thistle of ungendered prick".' Lopez laughed, pleased to see the same from Campion. The old man shook his head ruefully. 'It was a bad poem, a bad idea, and it could only have one result. Kit ended up where you were, in the Tower. Everyone said he'd die, that the insult was too great and too public to go unavenged, but I managed to get him out.'

'You did?'

Lopez smiled. 'I owed Kit a great debt, and the King of England owed me a small one. I forgave the King his debt, and in return he gave me Kit Aretine. There was a condition. Kit Aretine was banished, never again to set foot in England.' Lopez picked the book up from his lap. 'He stopped being a poet then, if he ever had been one, and became a soldier instead. Here,' he held the book out, 'that's him.'

The book felt odd, as if the leather covers were too big for the pages. Campion understood when she opened it. Someone had ripped the pages from the spine, leaving only two behind. One was the title page. 'Poems, &c. Upon Severall Themes. By Mr Christopher Aretine.' On the opposite page was a woodcut, framed in a complex design, that showed the poet. It was a small, lifeless drawing, yet the artist had conveyed arrogant good looks. It was an imperious face, staring at a world it would conquer.

She turned the title page to find the empty space where the binding threads hung ragged. Something was written here in a bold, dashing hand. 'To my friend, Mordecai, this much Improved Booke. Kit.' Campion looked at Lopez.

'He tore the poems out?'

'Yes. And burned them. In that very fireplace.' Lopez chuckled at the memory, then shook his head sadly. 'I think he knew he could never be a great poet, so he decided to be no poet at all. Yet I don't think he ever knew what an extraordinary man he really was. Kit Aretine, my dear, was a terrible waste of enormous talent.' Mordecai Lopez sipped his wine. He was looking at the seal, but as he put the wine down he lifted his eyes to Campion and said the words which, somehow, were no surprise, yet which turned her soul inside out. 'He was also your father.'

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