Chapter 31: The Price of the Hour

The fog had not lifted; it had merely thickened, curling around the cobbles like a cat seeking warmth. Edmund pulled his cloak tighter and walked briskly, Cecily at his side, her skirts hissing against the wet stone. The bell that had tolled the hour now seemed distant, swallowed by the grey.

“You are walking too fast,” Cecily said.

“I am walking at the speed of necessity.”

“You are walking at the speed of panic. It is unbecoming.”

He slowed, forcing a measured stride. “Better?”

“Marginally. You still look like a man who has swallowed a wasp.”

They turned down a narrow lane that ran between a cooper’s yard and a shuttered chandler’s shop. The smell of pitch and damp wood hung in the air. Walsingham’s instructions had been precise: a man named Quarles, a clerk in the Paymaster’s office, had been seen carrying a packet toward the river not an hour past. Quarles was a known associate of Hunsdon’s household, though he had kept his name off every list Edmund had seen. That omission, Walsingham had noted dryly, was precisely why he was dangerous.

“Quarles,” Edmund murmured. “It sounds like a man who would sell his mother for a shilling and call it fair trade.”

“It sounds like a man who would sell yours for sixpence and call it a bargain,” Cecily replied.

They reached the end of the lane. Before them lay the expanse of the Thames, flat and silver under the fog. A small wharf jutted into the water, and beside it, a wherryman sat in his boat, hunched against the cold. There was no sign of Quarles.

Edmund swore quietly. “We are late.”

“Or he is early.” Cecily’s eyes swept the waterfront. “There—the alehouse with the green sign. A man in a Paymaster’s livery would not be refused a private room.”

He followed her gaze. The Green Drake was a low, timbered building with smoke curling from its chimney. A pair of horses stood tied at the rail, their coats wet with fog. One of them, Edmund noted, was a grey gelding with a distinctive white blaze—the same horse he had seen galloping away from the blue door two days past.

His blood went cold.

“That horse,” he said.

Cecily’s hand tightened on his arm. “You are certain?”

“I memorised the blaze. It is the same.”

They crossed the muddied ground toward the alehouse, keeping to the shadows of stacked barrels and crates. Edmund’s heart was beating faster than he liked. He was a man who prized stillness, who had built his life around the careful conservation of energy, and yet here he was again, drawn into the whirlpool of other men’s ambitions.

The door of the Green Drake opened, and a man stepped out. He was tall, with the disciplined bearing of a soldier, though his clothes were those of a merchant. His face was narrow, his eyes the colour of slate. He did not look at Edmund or Cecily; he walked directly to the grey gelding, untied it, and swung into the saddle.

Edmund recognised him at once. It was the foreign agent from the eastern quay at Dover.

“Stay here,” he said to Cecily.

“I will not.”

“Then stay close and keep your head down.”

The rider kicked the gelding forward, heading east along the river road. Edmund looked about desperately. The wherryman still sat in his boat, but there was no horse for him, no means of pursuit. Then his eye caught a pair of lads hauling a cart of fish from the wharf, and among them, tethered to the cart’s rail, a sturdy bay mare.

He walked over, drew a coin from his purse, and pressed it into the older lad’s hand. “I need your horse.”

The lad blinked. “My da’ll have my hide.”

“Your da will have a gold angel and a story to tell. Which would you prefer?”

The lad looked at the coin, then at Edmund, then at the coin again. He untied the mare without another word.

Edmund mounted, ignoring the indignity of riding a fish-cart mare bareback. He reached down and pulled Cecily up behind him. She gripped his waist with surprising strength.

“If I fall,” she said, “I shall be very displeased.”

“Then hold on.”

They set off at a canter, the mare’s hooves thudding against the wet earth. The fog swallowed the rider ahead, but Edmund could follow the sound of the grey’s gait, a rhythm he had heard once before and now could not forget. They passed the wharves, the warehouses, the huddled houses of the poor. The river road curved, and ahead, through the grey, he saw the rider turn north, toward the fields beyond the city walls.

“He is heading for the road to Islington,” Cecily said.

“Islington? What is in Islington?”

“Open ground. A man could ride fast there, without witnesses.”

Edmund pressed the mare harder. She was a good animal, despite her occupation, and she responded with a burst of speed that surprised him. The grey was within sight now, perhaps fifty yards ahead. The rider glanced back, saw them, and drove his heels into the gelding’s flanks.

The chase stretched across the open fields, the fog thinning as the morning wore on. Edmund’s muscles ached; he was not built for this, not trained for it. But some stubborn part of him refused to let the man escape. He had seen the face of the enemy at Dover, had felt the blade of that discipline, and he knew that if Quarles’s packet reached its destination, the names inside would doom them all.

The grey began to slow, its rider struggling to control it on the uneven ground. Edmund closed the distance. He could see the packet now, a leather satchel slung across the rider’s shoulder.

“Quarles!” he shouted. “In the Queen’s name, halt!”

The rider did not halt. He drew a pistol from his belt, aimed over his shoulder, and fired. The ball whistled past Edmund’s ear, close enough that he felt the wind of it. Cecily gasped but held on.

Edmund urged the mare forward. The grey stumbled, and the rider pitched forward, struggling to stay mounted. Edmund reached out, grabbed the satchel’s strap, and pulled. The leather tore, the satchel came free in his hands, and the rider, thrown off balance, tumbled from the saddle into the mud.

Edmund reined in, breathing hard. The rider scrambled to his feet, his face twisted with rage. For a moment, they stared at each other across the wet field.

“You are a fool,” the rider said, in accented English. “You do not know what you hold.”

“I hold the truth,” Edmund said, “and I intend to deliver it to a man who will know what to do with it.”

The rider laughed, a harsh, mirthless sound. “Then you are a fool twice over.” He turned and ran, disappearing into the fog.

Edmund did not pursue. He looked down at the satchel in his hands. The leather was worn, the stitching frayed. He opened the flap and drew out a single sheet of paper, covered in a neat, precise hand.

It was a list of names. And among them, in a bold, unmistakable script, was the name of the Earl of Essex.

Edmund felt the world tilt. He looked at Cecily, whose face had gone pale.

“This,” he said slowly, “changes everything.”

Behind them, the fog rolled in, and the bell of St. Paul’s began to toll the hour.