“How did you come by these, woman?” asked Brant.
“The last I had from a priest who brought it from Spain. I met him at The Hague, and offered to deliver the letter, as he had no safe means of sending it to Leyden. The others and the pictures I stole out of Montalvo’s room.”
“Indeed, most honest merchant, and what might you have been doing in his Excellency’s room?”
“I will tell you,” she answered, “for, as he never gave me my pay, my tongue is loosed. He wished for evidence that the Heer Dirk van Goorl was a heretic, and employed me to find it.”
Brant’s face hardened, and he became more watchful.
“Why did he wish such evidence?”
“To use it to prevent the marriage of Jufvrouw Lysbeth with the Heer Dirk van Goorl.”
“How?”
Meg shrugged her shoulders. “By telling his secret to her so that she might dismiss him, I suppose, or more likely by threatening that, if she did not, he would hand her lover over to the Inquisitors.”
“I see. And did you get the evidence?”