A Crowning Mercy - Bernard Cornwell

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its folds crackling and stiff, and she feared that the paper might break as she opened it. It was a letter, written in an ornate and bold hand, and she sat on her window-seat to read it.

      ‘You have been sent the Jewell by the Jewe, tell mee if this bee not so. Thou knowest its importance. I have long worked for this, and its power bee in your disposall at least till the girl be of twenty-five years. The Covenant is secure if the jewell bee secure.

      ‘It is important that you sende an impression of the Seale to the name I furnished you with, and I doe earnestlie require that you Marke the Seale in a Privatt way that wee bee not undone by counterfeiting. Wee have not seen the Seales of Aretine and Lopez, though they have seen oures, and this device of a Secrett Marke I have made a parte of oure Agreement. Doe not fail mee in this.

      ‘Guard the Jewell well. It is the key to great Wealth, and though the Other Seales are needed too, you may bee sure that One Day this Jewell will bee much sought.

      ‘The Gloves are of the Prescott Girl. You may have them.

      ‘Guard the Jewell.’

      It was signed Grenville Cony.

      Cony, Covenant. She read the letter again. ‘Till the girl be of twenty-five years’ must, she knew, refer to herself. Isaac Blood had said that the monies of the Covenant would be hers at twenty-five, unless she was married. ‘The Prescott Girl’ had to be her own mother, Martha Slythe, whose maiden name had been Prescott, but Campion could not imagine her fat, bitter mother ever owning lace gloves. She picked up one of the gloves, seeing the pearls hanging at its wrist, and she wondered by what mystery her mother had owned them.

      The letter raised more mysteries than it solved. ‘Aretine and Lopez’, whoever they were, were names that meant nothing to Campion. ‘You may bee sure that One Day this Jewell will be much sought.’ That had come true. Ebenezer and Scammell had ransacked the house, the strange man had come from London and thrust his leg between hers, and all for the last object in the packet.

      Grenville Cony, in his letter, had described the seal as a jewel. She lifted it, marvelling at its weight. The jewel was made of gold, suspended from a gold chain so it could be worn as a necklace, and Campion, brought up in the rigours of her father’s religion, had never seen an object so beautiful.

      It was a cylinder of gold, banded by tiny, glowing stones that were white like stars and red like fire. The whole pendant was the size of her thumb.

      On its base was the seal, duller than the gold of its setting, and she guessed it was made of steel. It had been cut by a craftsman who had made the seal into a work of art, as beautiful as the gold jewel itself.

      Light was flooding the cornfields, touching grey silver on the bend in the stream far to the north, and Campion held the seal up to the dawn light from her window.

      The rim of the seal was chased with an ornate design. In the centre was an axe, short handled and wide bladed, and on either side of the axe’s handle were small letters in mirror-writing: ‘St Matt’.

      This was the Seal of St Matthew, showing the axe which legend said had cut off the disciple’s head.

      She fingered the heavy gold, wondering at it, looking at it in her hands when, just as the skirting board had moved, so now the seal seemed to give in her fingers. She frowned, tried to repeat what she had just done, and realised that the seal was in two halves, the joint concealed cunningly by one band of the precious stones. She unscrewed the two halves.

      The half of the cylinder which bore the Seal of St Matthew fell away in her right hand. She lifted the other half into the light. The jewel, on its long golden chain, held a secret.

      There was a tiny carving inside the cylinder, a carving that had been made with exquisite skill and cast in silver so that the gold cylinder enclosed a tiny silver statue. The statue shocked her. It was a symbol of such ancient power, a symbol of all that she had been taught to hate, and it had been in this house. Her father would have abominated this, yet he had kept it, and Campion stared at it, fascinated and repelled. It was a crucifix.

      A crucifix of silver in a cylinder of gold, a seal made into a jewel, the key to great wealth. She looked at the letter again, noting once more the urgent appeal for Matthew Slythe to mark the seal. She lifted the jewel into the light and saw that her father had scratched a line across the face of the axe-blade. To stop counterfeiting, the letter said, but who was the man to whom the impression had to be sent? Who was Aretine? Lopez? Her discovery of the seal had uncovered new mysteries and she knew the answers did not lie in Werlatton.

      The answers would be in London. The letter was signed Grenville Cony, and beneath his signature he had written, simply, ‘London’.

      London. She had never seen a town, let alone a city. She was not even sure which was the road that led from Werlatton towards London.

      Grenville Cony was in London, whoever he was, and Toby Lazender was certainly in London, and Campion looked at her table and saw the heavy, leather purse with her father’s hoard of gold. That could take her to London! She gripped the jewel in her hands, stared at the flooding of the summer light into the valley, and she felt the excitement rise within her. She would run away, away from Ebenezer and Scammell, from Goodwife and Werlatton, from all the people who wanted to crush her and make her into what she was not. She would go to London.

       The Seal of St Mark

      Sir George Lazender, Toby’s father, was a worried man.

      He had friends who thought him always worried, gnawing at problems when the meat was long gone from the bone, but, as August ended in 1643, Sir George had real reasons for concern.

      He had hoped to forget his worries for a morning. He had taken a boat from the Privy Stairs and landed in the city. Now he was in the precincts of St Paul’s Cathedral indulging his passion for books, yet his heart was not in it.

      ‘Sir George!’ It was the bookseller, coming crabwise behind his stall. ‘A fine day, Sir George!’

      Sir George, ever courteous, touched the brim of his hat in response to the bookseller’s greeting. ‘Mr Bird. You’re well, I hope?’

      ‘I am, sir, though trade is bad, indeed it is, Sir George. Very bad.’

      Sir George picked a random book from the table. He could not face a long discussion of the new taxes which Parliament had imposed and for which, as a member of the House of Commons, he was partly to blame. Yet it would be discourteous to ignore the bookseller, so he waved at the cloudless sky. ‘The weather is on your side, Mr Bird.’

      ‘I thank God it’s not raining, Sir George.’ Bird had not even needed to bring out the canvas shelters for his tables. ‘Bad news from Bristol, Sir George.’

      ‘Yes.’ Sir George opened the book and stared, unseeing, at the pages. Even less than he wished to discuss trade did he wish to discuss the war. It was the war which was his chief worry.

      ‘I shall let you read, Sir George.’ Mr Bird, thankfully, had taken the hint. ‘That copy is a little foxed, Sir George, but still worth a crown, I think.’

      ‘Good! Good!’ Sir George said absent-mindedly. He found he was reading Harington’s translation of Orlando Furioso, a book he had owned for twenty years, yet by burying his nose in the poetry he might escape the greetings of his many friends and acquaintances who used the bookstalls at St Paul’s.

      The King had taken Bristol and that, in a very strange way, worried Sir George. It worried him because it suggested that the Royalists might be gaining the upper hand in the Civil War, and if Sir George changed sides now, then there were many men who would say he did it out of fear, deserting Parliament

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