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Robert Feake coughed again. “You may have it for a crown,” he said slowly, “but it is not real gold, you know, and those are but Scottish diamonds - Edinburgh pebbles we call them. In fact, sir, I’m bound to tell you the whole brooch is of inferior workmanship, and none of
my
craft, I assure you.”

“Oh, but I like it!” cried Elizabeth thinking what a fuss-budget the man was, longing to possess such a showy piece of jewellery and delighted that they could afford it.

Her voice had been warm, vibrant, and subtly caressing as it always was when things pleased her, and it was then that the goldsmith really looked at her; at the rosy face, the beautiful hazel eyes, the dark curls, thick beneath the black hood. She gave him the feeling of a bounding health and vigour. He felt a curious flutter beneath his grey doublet, glanced quickly at Harry’s jaunty good looks, and said carefully, “If I might suggest, Miss - ”

“Madam,” interrupted Elizabeth, laughing with pride. “Mr. Henry Winthrop is my husband.”

“Ah, yes, forgive me - Madam - ” said Robert, conscious of dismay that went far deeper than this trivial encounter. Was she laughing at him? Jeering covertly? Yes, both these people were. The recent depression, laced with formless fears, settled over him again. He had been about to suggest other brooches of sound workmanship, had for a moment even thought of sacrificing all profit on a delicate silver and moonstone brooch which would suit her. But now he wished only to be rid of them. “This, then, is what you want,” he said plucking out their choice from the case. Harry pinned the brooch to the girl’s white collar and flung his money on the counter, and picked up the change from his sovereign. The young people went out laughing.

Robert Feake sank down on the great carved chair, which had belonged to his father - Master-Goldsmith James Feake - and Robert rested his head on his hands. The happy echo of Elizabeth’s laughter rippled afar off through a mist of futility and hopelessness. A state that had bedevilled him at times since his parents died. I must get away, he thought vaguely, London air is unhealthy for me. He thought of Wighton, his boyhood home in Norfolk but there was nobody close to him there now. They all had died. The old house stank of death. Of death and madness, for it was at Wighton they now kept the old, old woman, his Aunt Mary, who had been a lunatic since long before he was born. He would never return to Norfolk. He glanced at his Bible which lay on the shelf near the coffers. His long delicate hand groped out towards it, then dropped flaccid en the chair arm. His chin sank on his chest.

No customers came in and Robert sat on silently in the shop while the morning passed. Ralph, the apprentice, came back and, throwing his master an uneasy glance, began the vigorous polishing of a silver tankard. Master was in the dumps again; it had been like this before, two years agone, and worse, when Master took to talking to himself, and staring into corners like the Devil was hiding there.

And sleepwalking! Give you the creeps, Master would, during that time; in especial one night when Ralph had awakened in the loft to find Master bending over his pallet with his eyes closed and jabbering and weeping. Ralph had shoved, yelled, and run out of the house the whole length of Lombard Street before he found the courage to go back, and there was Master quiet again and in his own bed.

But this behaviour had passed, and since then you couldn’t call Mr. Feake a bad master. Hardly one at all, thought the apprentice with contempt. Soft, and wouldn’t say “Bo” to a goose, most of the time never noticing what a lad was up to, or what hours he kept, never on his toes to snatch an order for plate or a jewel from that sly, thieving goldsmith next door. And never a bit o’ fun or lolly-gagging with the lasses, not Master, for all he was only twenty-seven. It’s dull here, thought Ralph, whistling “The Merry Month of May” between his teeth. I’ll be glad when my time’s up.

And still Robert sat on staring at the floor until two panting messengers arrived at once bearing letters. One letter had been sent from Germany, and the boy brought it from a newly docked ship. It was from Robert’s sister, Alice Dixon, whose husband had moved to Germany on business. Robert glanced through it listlessly, skipping Alice’s accounts of little Judith and Tobias Feake, orphaned children of Robert’s brother James, whom the childless Dixons had adopted as their own. Robert was not now interested in his small niece and nephew, though at times he sent them gifts. He let Alice’s pages slide to the floor and opened the letter delivered by the other messenger. It was from John Winthrop and Emmanuel Downing. As he gathered its purport, his apathy lifted. He carried the letter to the shop window, reading the cautious phrases again with full attention. “Nay, nay - ” he said aloud, while the apprentice looked up nervously. “ ‘Tis too fantastic, too risky - at least
I
will never be parry to such a plan.” But after a while he put the letter In his doublet and began to pace the floor. The recurrent image of Elizabeth rescued him at last from an agony of indecision.

She would not dare laugh at a man whom her uncle and father-in-law consulted, whom they had actually sent for. He put. on his wide black hat and cloak, said to the apprentice, “I have an errand off Fleet Street,” and walked out of the door, thinking of Elizabeth, and amazed at his own audacity in wondering if he would ever see her again.

Harry and Elizabeth had no thoughts at all for the goldsmith, as they rode merrily on through the heart of the City to Aldgate and the Colchester Road, just outside the walls, Harry suddenly stopped before a tavern. “Oh, love,” protested Elizabeth, really disconcerted, “surely not more ale already, my head’s still buzzing from Uncle Downing’s stirrup cup!”

“I’ll drink when I please,” Harry retorted, though quite amiably. “You needn’t. But I’ve another reason for stopping here.” He raised his voice and shouted, “Peyto!”

At once the little gipsy trotted from the tavern courtyard and laid his forehead on Harry’s hand. “Here I be, Master!”

“Well, bring me out a tankard, then come on. You’ve some kind of mount?”

“To be sure, Master.” Peyto’s eyelids drooped over his black eyes; he grinned slyly, and led from the courtyard a plump, dark, well-saddled donkey. Harry laughed. “I know better than to ask where it came from! But what would you tell me?”

“That I found the poor little beastie a-straying and a-starving on the heath, Master, and that I knew at once ‘twas meant for Peyto, as shown in my tarot cards,”

Harry shrugged again, chuckling. “I’ve missed you, you Egyptian jackanapes.” Peyto had been dismissed as soon as John Winthrop took over direction of the Fones household after Thomas’s death. Winthrop had said that Harry could do without a manservant until his debts were paid, and that in any case this particular servant was impossible.

“He’ll liven up the Manor,” said Harry, grinning at Elizabeth over his tankard. She did not doubt that, but she knew another moment of disquiet. Should Harry so flout his father’s wishes? Would not the introduction of this unprincipled little knave at Groton end by distressing Margaret? But she said nothing, for she was fond of Peyto and knew now that he had virtually saved Harry’s life in Barbadoes. Soon the three of them were trotting between the flowery hedgerows of enclosures. Cuckoos called from thickets, the air was warm and scented, and presently they all sang a rollicking catch in imitation of the cuckoos. They laughed a great deal, Peyto contributing his queer throaty chuckle, and Elizabeth put aside her qualms. She entirely forgot them that night in Harry’s arms at a Witham inn.

On the morning that the bridal couple set out for Suffolk, a solemn group of five men were gathered around a table in Emmanuel Downing’s private parlour in his mansion off Fleet Street. They had had wine and pasties earlier, but now the servants had cleared up and gone and the men sat tensely waiting, while they eyed a long silk-wrapped roll in Matthew Cradock’s hand. Emmanuel Downing and John Winthrop, Sir Richard Saltonstall and Matthew Cradock were all men in their forties, but their fifth member, Isaac Johnson, was a fresh-faced eager young man of twenty-eight who looked younger. And it was he who burst out to Cradock, “You’ve really brought it, sir? That
is
the Charter, isn’t it? Oh, how I long to see it.”

Cradock smiled, “And so you shall, sir. Not only see it ... but - ” He paused, his shrewd little eyes slid over the faces of those around the table while he weighed each expression carefully. Downing he was sure of - a hearty man who would give backing without question, up to a point. Sir Richard, plump, blond, and elegant, would be moved by both his sympathies and self-interest - and it was gratifying to have secured a well-to-do knight to head the company list. Mr. Isaac Johnson, a very wealthy man, was already heart and soul in the project, as was his wife Arbella’s Lincolnshire family, and especially her brother, the Puritan Theophilus, Earl of Lincoln.

But this Mr. Winthrop, thought Matthew Cradock, was still something of an enigma. Winthrop sat a trifle apart from the others, spoke little, and appeared to brood, though his eyes also were fixed on the silk-covered roll from which Cradock with a flourish extracted a large parchment embellished by the King’s seal. He spread the parchment on the table.

“Here!” he cried. “The King’s own patent for the Massachusetts Bay Company. And I might say, gentlemen, that few know it to be in my possession.”

“But you’re Governor of the Company!” cried Johnson. “Have you not the right to it?”

“To be sure,” said Cradock, shrugging. “I dare say - but in any case ‘twere better that His Majesty forget its whereabouts at present, and indeed forgot its very existence. It was miracle enough that we got it.”

They all nodded, while Winthrop said quietly, “The hand of God.” In the .same week, scarcely over a month ago, in which the King had permanently dissolved Parliament, he had also signed a charter incorporating the Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England and granting it all territory between the Piscataqua River and Plymouth colony, and westward to the Pacific Ocean. Nobody was at all sure why Charles had thus favoured the Puritan sect he detested, and Emmanuel spoke thoughtfully after a moment.

“He meant, then, to get rid of those who do not think as he does, lure them to drowning or death in the wilderness? Or mayhap ‘twas but one of his whims.”

“I think not,” said Cradock, shaking his head. “I fear he means to keep that grasping, lustful hand of his on New England should any prosper there, and milk us of all that comes from it, as he is milking us at home.”

There was a silence, then John Winthrop stirred, raised his eyebrows and said in his low vibrant voice, “It would seem providential that the Charter is so accessible.” He touched it with his thin, blunt forefinger. “It might even seem desirable that it were
not
accessible in England later.”

The others did not at once grasp Winthrop’s meaning, but Cradock looked at him with hearty approval. “I see that you’re a man of my own kidney, sir! This very thought was mine too.”

Isaac jumped up, his blue eyes shining. “You mean to take it with us I Then indeed we’d be safe from His Majesty and the Lord Bishops. We could rule ourselves as we please, our lives, our lands, our spiritual welfare!”

“Soft, soft, young sir - ” said Winthrop, with a faint smile. “Except for the struggling little toehold at Naumkeag, there is no real plantation yet on Massachusetts Bay, nor means of making one. And if there were such a plantation it could not - as I see it - be ruled by
anyone’s
pleasure. Only by God’s word in the Scriptures, and by the terms of this patent, and by English common law.”

“To be sure,” answered Isaac, blushing and nodding. “I meant nothing else, sir.”

Cradock had scarcely listened to this, but he increasingly approved of Winthrop and interjected quickly, “Aye, the law. It would be of great help to our company, Mr. Winthrop, did it include an attorney of your standing amongst the leaders.” He looked at him hopefully and waited.

Winthrop’s mouth pulled to a thin groove; he glanced at his brother-in-law, to whom this would be a shock, and he said without emphasis, “My office at the Court of Wards is gone. I am nearly certain of it.”

“Good God, John!” Emmanuel started back, staring. “What does that mean?”

Winthrop’s thin shoulders sketched a shrug. “Doubtless that in some mysterious way I have come under unfavourable notice from - ” He lifted his hand in the direction of Whitehall, then let it drop.

“ ‘Tis yet another straw in the wind,” said Sir Richard Saltonstall heavily. “My dear sir, my deepest sympathies. You will then retire to your estates in Suffolk, I suppose?”

“My estates are much impoverished - my three elder sons must be provided for, and one of them - ” He stopped. “But my family afflictions have no bearing on the matter in hand.”

“We must move fast,” said Cradock, leaning forward and speaking low. “Everything points to that. Fast and - and cautiously. Or we may be hindered.”

“Come to Lincolnshire!” burst out Isaac Johnson. “My noble brother has authorized me to ask you. There at Sernpringham we may all confer in utmost secrecy. Lord Lincoln yearns to be of help in establishing a new kingdom to God’s glory and the Church’s good!”

Again Cradock glanced at the faces around the table, until his eyes rested on Winthrop, noting that the others unconsciously did the same. The man had strength and a powerful attraction, for all his brooding gravity.
“You
will go to Lincolnshire, Mr. Winthrop?”

John exchanged a look with Emmanuel, and slowly nodded. “Mr. Downing and I will be pleased to confer with the Earl of Lincoln and the others...”

“Ah, but you’ll
go
over
there
too - to the new land with us, sir, won’t you?” cried Isaac. “I saw your eye kindle when I spoke of it!”

“I’ve given the matter insufficient thought,” said Winthrop after a moment. “It seems unlikely, but it is a decision only God can make.”

They all bowed their heads, and Sir Richard said, “Amen.”

For the ensuing hour, they arranged matters preliminary to the Lincolnshire conference. They made lists of possible financial backers, and lists of the few men amongst these whom they felt it safe to sound out at this time. Robert Feake was one, and a message was dispatched to him. It was Emmanuel Downing and Cradock, both shrewd merchants and men of substance themselves, who led in this discussion, and though Winthrop listened and contributed at times, he also fell into long abstractions. In his heart was a great question, and his thoughts - despondent and elated by turns - could neither be marshalled nor quieted.