Chapter 51: The Price of Blood

Edmund did not stop running until the chapel bells of St. Dunstan’s had faded to a memory and his lungs burned with the fire of a man who had spent too many years avoiding exertion. He leaned against the damp stone of a brewer’s wall, gasping, the stench of hops and malt filling his nostrils. The alley was dark, the city’s evening clamor muffled by the high walls on either side.

His uncle's final words echoed in his skull. *Think not of what was taken, but of what I gave.*

He had given nothing but riddles. And his life.

Edmund pushed off the wall and forced himself to walk. His legs trembled beneath him, and not merely from the chase. The Falcon was out there, somewhere, perhaps already melting into the shadows with a fresh stain on his blade. Edmund had no weapon save a small dagger he had never once used in anger, and no ally save a widow who was likely pacing a trench into the floor of their safe house.

He found Cecily where he knew she would be—in the back room of the chandler’s shop, near the river stairs, a place Walsingham had secured for them after the blue door had become too dangerous. She stood as he entered, her grey eyes sweeping over him with a practiced scrutiny that missed nothing.

“You are bleeding.”

Edmund looked down. A dark stain had spread across the sleeve of his doublet, just above the elbow. He had not felt the wound. Now that she named it, the pain arrived like an unwelcome guest.

“A parting gift,” he said, sinking onto a stool. “From the Falcon.”

Cecily moved with quiet efficiency, fetching a basin of water and a length of clean linen. She knelt before him and cut away the torn fabric with a small knife she produced from her sleeve. He watched her hands—steady, sure, the hands of a woman who had learned to tend wounds long before she learned to dance at court.

“Your uncle?” she asked, though her tone suggested she already knew.

“Dead.” Edmund winced as she pressed the cloth to the gash. “He pushed me toward the side chapel. The Falcon came through the door like winter itself. I heard steel. I heard him fall.”

“Did he say anything before—before the Falcon arrived?”

Edmund closed his eyes. The candlelight of the chapel flickered behind his lids. Thomas Ashworth’s face, gaunt and worn, had held a strange peace in those final moments.

“He said he gave something of value. That when I think of him, I should think not of what was taken, but of what he gave.” Edmund opened his eyes. “He was talking about more than the warning, Cecily. I am certain of it.”

She finished binding his arm and sat back on her heels, studying him with that unnerving intensity she possessed. “What else did he say? Every word, Edmund. Leave nothing out.”

He forced himself to reconstruct the conversation. The chapel had been cold, the air thick with dust and the scent of old incense. Thomas had spoken of the Spanish ship that had rescued him from the Channel’s cold embrace, of the years spent as their creature, of the ledger of debts he had accrued.

“He said he had been waiting for me,” Edmund said slowly. “That he had watched me from afar. He spoke of my father—how alike we were.”

“And what did he give you?”

Edmund frowned. “His warning. That the Falcon was close. That I must flee.”

Cecily shook her head. “He was a dead man the moment the Falcon found him. He must have known that. Why would he meet you at all, if not to give you something of value beyond a warning?”

Edmund’s hand went to his chest, where the folds of his doublet concealed a small leather pouch he had carried since Cambridge. He had forgotten it in the chaos—the mapmaker’s receipt, the chandler’s testimony, the fragments of a puzzle that had grown more tangled with each turn.

But there was something else. A stiffness in the lining of his sleeve that he had not noticed before.

He stood abruptly, drawing Cecily’s gaze. He stripped off his doublet and ran his fingers along the inner seam. There—a ridge, carefully stitched into the fabric. He worked the threads loose with his dagger and pulled free a folded square of parchment, yellowed with age and creased from years of concealment.

“What is it?” Cecily rose, moving to his side.

Edmund unfolded it. The script was faded but legible—a list of names, written in a hand he recognized from his childhood. His uncle’s hand.

“It is a confession,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Or perhaps an accounting. Thomas Ashworth’s ledger of sins.”

Cecily read over his shoulder. The names meant little to her—old Catholic families, mostly, their titles and lands diminished by generations of recusancy. But at the bottom of the page, written in a different ink, fresher than the rest, was a single line:

*The one who sleeps beside the Queen is not content to sleep forever.*

Edmund’s blood ran cold.

“He knew,” he breathed. “My uncle knew the identity of the Falcon’s master. He carried it with him all these years.”

“Then why did he not tell you outright?” Cecily’s voice was sharp with frustration. “Why speak in riddles and leave you to stumble through the dark?”

Edmund looked at her, and for the first time since the chapel, a wry smile touched his lips. “Because he was an Ashworth. We do not give gifts freely. We make the recipient work for them.”

He turned the parchment over. On the reverse, in the same fresher ink, was a sketch—rough but recognizable. A bed, its curtains drawn. And beside it, a crown.

“He means for me to solve it,” Edmund said. “To look at the Queen’s own household and see what everyone else has missed.”

Cecily’s expression grew troubled. “The Queen’s ladies are the most scrutinized women in England. If one of them were a traitor, Walsingham would know.”

“Would he?” Edmund folded the parchment carefully and tucked it into his shirt, against his skin. “He did not know Phelippes was a traitor. He did not know Hunsdon was a traitor. The spider’s web has holes large enough to sail a galleon through.”

He moved toward the door, then paused, his hand on the latch. The wound in his arm throbbed, a dull reminder of the Falcon’s presence.

“I must see the Queen,” he said. “Before Leicester does. Before the Falcon decides that his master’s secret is worth another death.”

Cecily stepped forward, her hand closing over his. “Then you will not go alone.”

He looked at her—at the fire in her grey eyes, the stubborn set of her jaw. She had seen him at his worst, his most reluctant, his most foolish. And still she stood beside him.

“No,” he said softly. “I will not go alone.”

Outside, the city bells began to toll the hour. Nine o’clock. The Queen would be preparing for bed, her ladies attending her, the candles burning low in the privy chamber.

Somewhere in that gilded nest, a traitor slept beside the throne.

And Edmund Ashworth, the laziest earl in England, was going to wake him.