Chapter 24: The Road to London

The warehouse burned behind them, a roaring beacon against the grey Dover sky. Edmund did not look back. He had seen enough fire for one lifetime, and his legs were beginning to remember the long ride ahead. Cecily walked beside him, her hand still resting on his arm, her stride steady despite the chaos they had just escaped.

“That man,” she said quietly. “The one with the pistol. He knew us by name.”

“He knew we were coming,” Edmund corrected. “That is worse. Someone in London told him we were sent to Dover. Someone who knew about Vos, and about the warehouse, and about the blue door.”

“Hunsdon.”

“Hunsdon is the traitor, yes. But he does not work alone. He has a network, Cecily. The man with the pistol was no Englishman. Spanish, or Italian trained. That means the Spanish know about us too.”

They reached the inn where their horses were stabled. Edmund’s gelding, a sturdy bay with a stubborn streak that matched its master, nickered at the sight of him. Edmund patted its neck with a weary hand.

“I am sorry,” he murmured. “I promised you a quiet life in the country. Instead, I have brought you to Dover to be shot at.”

The horse snorted, as if to say it had expected no better.

Cecily mounted her own horse, a sleek grey mare she had insisted on buying in Rye, and looked down at him with an expression he could not quite read. “You are speaking to your horse again.”

“He is the only creature in England who listens to me without argument.”

“I argue with you because you are often wrong.”

“And he does not argue because he is often wise.” Edmund swung into the saddle with a groan. “Let us ride. I want to be past Canterbury before nightfall.”

They rode hard, the autumn wind cutting across the marshes, the smell of salt and smoke fading behind them. Edmund’s mind churned as his body ached. The man with the pistol had been waiting. That meant the conspiracy was wider than Walsingham had feared, wider than Edmund himself had imagined. Hunsdon had the Queen’s ear, her trust, her blood. And he had accomplices who moved with Spanish precision.

“Cecily,” he said, as they slowed to let their horses drink at a stream outside Canterbury. “You have been remarkably quiet about the widow with the blue door.”

She did not meet his eyes. “I told you. She is a woman of business. She trades in information, not in loyalties. She will sell to whoever pays.”

“And you paid her.”

“I paid her for you. For your safety. That is all.”

Edmund studied her profile, the sharp line of her jaw, the way her hand rested on the reins with a certainty that belied her years of widowhood. “You know more about her than you have told me.”

“I know that she is dangerous. And that she has been watching you since the night you first knocked on her door. She sees something in you, Edmund. Something she thinks she can use.”

“What?”

Cecily finally looked at him, and there was a flicker of something—fear, or perhaps regret—in her eyes. “Your talent. You solve puzzles without meaning to. You see patterns where others see chaos. The widow collects such people. She sells their names to the highest bidder.”

Edmund felt a cold thread run down his spine. “And you? Are you one of her collectors?”

“No.” The word was sharp, almost angry. “I am the one who walked away. I was her apprentice once, years ago, before I married. I learned her trade, and I hated it. But I kept her contacts, her methods, her knowledge. That is how I knew about the blue door. That is how I knew to send you there.”

He said nothing for a long moment. The stream bubbled past, indifferent to the weight of her confession.

“Why did you walk away?” he asked finally.

“Because I saw what the trade did to the people who practised it. It ate them hollow. It made them see every man as a ledger entry, every friendship as a debt to be collected.” She lifted her chin. “I wanted to be more than that.”

“And are you?”

“I am trying.”

He held her gaze, and for once, he did not reach for a jest or a deflection. “So am I.”

They rode on, reaching Canterbury as the church bells rang for evening prayer. They found lodging at a modest inn near the cathedral, and Edmund paid for two rooms with the last of the coin Walsingham had given him. He ate a bowl of stew in silence, his thoughts heavy with the name he had carved into his memory: Hunsdon. And beyond Hunsdon, the widow. And beyond the widow, the Spanish.

He was asleep before his head touched the pillow, but his dreams were restless. He dreamed of the warehouse, of the pistol, of the man’s cold eyes. He dreamed of the Queen, her face pale beneath her crown, and of a blue door that opened onto a void.

He woke before dawn to Cecily’s knock. Her voice was urgent.

“Edmund. There is a rider. From London.”

He pulled on his boots and stumbled to the door. A boy in Walsingham’s livery stood in the yard, his horse lathered and trembling. The boy handed him a sealed letter, the wax bearing the spymaster’s mark.

Edmund broke the seal and read by the grey light of dawn.

The Queen had summoned him. She had heard of his work in Dover, of the warehouse, of the man with the pistol. She wanted to hear the truth from his own lips.

And beneath that, in Walsingham’s cramped hand, a single line: “She knows about the blue door. She knows about the widow. And she knows about you, Edmund. Do not disappoint her.”

Edmund folded the letter and looked at Cecily. Her face was pale, but her eyes were steady.

“Well,” he said, with a sigh that carried the weight of every nap he had ever sacrificed. “It seems I am to meet the Queen.”

He paused, then added, more quietly: “And I do not think she intends to thank me.”