A Crowning Mercy. Bernard Cornwell

so she was conscious of the glances men gave her and glad of the company of the tailor. Jacques was elderly and fine-mannered, helping her across the busy Strand, gracious in his words to her. ‘You will find yourself successfully home, Miss Slythe?’

      ‘You’ve been very kind.’

      ‘No, no, no. It is not every day that I walk the streets with such beauty. You have given me pleasure, Miss Slythe. This is it.’

      Cony’s house was not as large as some on the Strand, not to be compared with Northumberland or York House, but it was impressive nonetheless. It was built in dark brick, its storeys rising to a high, stone balustrade with carved beasts guarding the corners. The tall mullioned windows were masked by velvet curtains. The door to the house was guarded by an armed man, a pike at his side, who smirked at Campion and was rude to Jacques Moreau. ‘What do you want?’

      ‘The lady has business with Sir Grenville.’

      ‘Business, eh?’ He looked Campion up and down, taking his time. ‘What sort of business, eh?’

      She had come determined to be humble, a favour seeker, but the man’s attitude annoyed her. ‘Business Sir Grenville would not want discussed with you.’

      It was evidently the right answer, delivered in the right tone, for he sniffed, jerked his head towards the side of the building, and spoke with a little more respect. ‘Business is down the alley.’

      She said farewell to the tailor on the corner, then went into the narrow, high alleyway. It ran to the river, and she could see the sheen of the sun on the water and, beyond it, the dreariness of Lambeth Marsh.

      A small porchway was two-thirds of the way down the alley, close enough for her to smell the river, and she presumed this was the door where those with business visited Sir Grenville Cony. There was no guard here. She knocked.

      No one answered. She could hear voices from the Strand, the sound of wheels on stone, and once there was a splash from the river, but the house seemed to exude silence. She was nervous suddenly. She felt the seal beneath her dress, and the touch of the gold on her skin reminded her that this house might hold the secret of her future, the secret of the Covenant that might free her from her father’s stranglehold imposed by his will and marriage settlement. Emboldened, she knocked again.

      She waited. She was about to knock a third time, indeed was looking back into the alley for a loose cobblestone that could make more noise on the wooden door, when a tiny shutter banged up.

      ‘Don’t you know there’s a bell?’ a voice demanded.

      ‘A bell?’

      ‘To your right.’

      She had not seen it in the shadows, but now she saw an iron handle hanging from a chain. The irritation of the person behind the tiny shutter seemed to demand an apology, so she made one. The man was slightly mollified. ‘What do you want?’

      ‘I want to see Sir Grenville Cony, sir.’

      ‘To see Sir Grenville? Everyone wants that! Why don’t you watch him pass in his coach, or in his private barge? Isn’t that sight enough?’

      She could not see the man to whom the petulant voice belonged, she could only make out the glitter of one eye and the half shape of a nose pressed against the iron grille that barred the small opening. ‘I have business with Sir Grenville, sir.’

      ‘Business!’ The man seemed never to have heard of the word. ‘Business! Put your petition here. Hurry!’ The eye and nose were replaced with fingers reaching for her petition.

      ‘I don’t have a petition!’

      She thought the man had gone, for there was silence after the fingers disappeared, but then the glittering eye came back. ‘No petition?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Does Mr Cony know you?’ The question was asked grudgingly.

      ‘He knew my father, sir.’

      ‘Wait!’

      The shutter dropped with a smart click, leaving the house in silence again, and Campion walked back into the alley and stared down at the river. A heavy barge was crawling across her narrow view, propelled by long, wooden sweeps that were rowed by men standing on its decks. One by one, three heavy cannons came into view, lashed to the barge’s deck, a cargo going westward to war.

      The shutter snapped up. ‘Girl!’

      ‘Sir?’

      ‘Name?’

      ‘Dorcas Slythe.’ This was no time for fanciful, self-adopted names. She could hear the scratch of quill on paper.

      ‘Your business?’

      She hesitated, provoking a tut from the grille. She had half expected, having been told to wait, that she would be invited into the house, and so she was not prepared with a message. She thought quickly. ‘The Covenant, sir.’

      ‘The what?’ There was no interest in his voice. ‘Covenant? Which one?’

      She thought again. ‘St Matthew, sir.’

      The quill scratched beyond the door. ‘Sir Grenville’s not here, girl, so you can’t see him today, and Wednesday is the day for public business. Not this Wednesday, though, because he’s busy. Next Wednesday. Come at five o’clock. No. Six. In the afternoon,’ he added grudgingly.

      She nodded, appalled at the time she would have to wait for any answer. The man grunted. ‘Of course he may not want to see you, in which case your time will have been wasted.’ He laughed. ‘Good day!’ The shutter snapped down, abandoning her, and she turned back to the Strand and to Mrs Swan.

      In the house she had left, in a great comfortable room that overlooked the Thames, Sir Grenville Cony stared at the barge which lumbered away from him around the Lambeth bend. Guns for Parliament, guns bought with money that had probably been lent by Sir Grenville himself at twelve per cent interest, but the thought gave him no pleasure. He felt his belly gingerly.

      He had eaten too much. He pressed his huge belly again, wondering if the small pain in his right side was simple indigestion and his fat, white face flinched slightly as the pain increased. He would summon Dr Chandler to the house.

      He knew his secretary was at the House of Commons so he walked himself to the clerk’s room. One of the clerks, a weedy man named Bush, was coming through the far door. ‘Bush!’

      ‘Sir?’ Bush showed the fear that all the clerks felt of their master.

      ‘Why are you away from your desk? Did you seek permission to wander through the land on my time? Is it your bladder again? Your bowels? Answer me, you beast of Belial! Why?’

      Bush stuttered, ‘The door, sir. The door.’

      ‘The door! I heard no bell! Correct me, Sillers,’ he looked at the chief clerk, ‘but I heard no bell.’

      ‘They knocked, sir.’ Sillers dealt laconically with his master, yet never without respect.

      ‘Who knocked? Strangers at my door, dealt with by Bush. Bush! Who was this lucky man?’

      Bush stared in fear at the short, fat, grotesque man who stalked him. Sir Grenville Cony was grossly fat, his face had the appearance of a sly white frog. His hair, white after his fifty-seven years, was cherubically curly. He smiled on Bush, as he smiled on most of his victims.

      ‘It was not a man, sir. A girl.’

      ‘A girl!’ Sir Grenville feigned surprise. ‘You’d like that, Bush, wouldn’t you? A girl, eh? Have you ever had one? Know what they feel like, eh? Do you? Do you?’ He had backed Bush into a corner. ‘Who was this slut who has put you into such a fever, Bush?’

      The other clerks, fourteen of them, smiled secretly. Bush licked his lips and brought the paper up to his face. ‘A Dorcas Slythe, sir.’

      ‘Who?’ Cony’s