‘No, Sir Joseph.’ The king slapped the table. ‘I tell you, no. I cannot make myself plainer. I will not cower. I never have and I never will. By God, ’tis not the Stuart way.’ ‘I only suggest it for a time, Majesty.’ The Under-Secretary of State took off his spectacles to pinch the deep red grooves at the bridge of his nose. ‘Just until these flames,’ he gestured to the papers spread on the table before him, ‘are snuffed out.’ ‘Flames? These are sparks alone, man, nothing more. If I was to take to my bed each time some bedlamite threatened me in misspelled prose or execrable verse, marry, I’d never leave its confines.’ He sniffed. ‘Now while that might please my Lady Castlemaine or my sweet Winifred, it would not me, especially when my inaction would be construed as cowardice.’ Charles turned, fixing the thief-taker with his unnerving stare, the one eye bright, the other dulled with a cast. ‘Do you not agree with me, Mr Pitman?’ It did not seem the right time to remind His Majesty that he went by ‘Pitman’ alone, he thought.
