Chapter 58: The Queen’s Private Arithmetic

The royal barge cut the Thames water with the silence of a knife through velvet, and Edmund Ashworth, Earl of Morland, sat in the stern with his hands folded over his stomach, watching the wake spread like grey lace. The Queen had not spoken since they boarded. She sat beneath a canopy of cloth-of-gold, her face a mask of ivory and vermilion, and her fingers drummed a slow rhythm against the armrest—the only betrayal of the fear she had shown him in the garden.

Edmund’s head ached. He had not slept. The Falcon’s blade, his uncle’s blood on the chapel stones, the list in the satchel with Essex’s name upon it—all of it swirled in his mind like dregs in a cup. He wanted nothing more than to lie down in a dark room and pull the sheets over his head. Instead, he was being ferried to Richmond Palace, where the Queen kept her private chambers, and where, she had said, “we shall speak of Plymouth without ears beyond the river.”

“You are quiet, my lord,” Elizabeth said, not looking at him. “I had heard you were a master of idle conversation.”

“Your Majesty flatters me. I am a master of idle everything. Conversation merely follows the general decline.”

A corner of her mouth twitched. “You mock yourself to avoid being mocked by others. A courtier’s trick. But I am not a courtier, and I am not deceived.”

Edmund inclined his head. “Then you are the first.”

“No,” she said, turning to face him at last. “There is a woman who sees through you. Lady Cecily Thorne. I have heard her name attached to yours more often than propriety allows.”

His pulse quickened, but he kept his face placid. “Lady Thorne is a widow of considerable intelligence. She has been of great service to Sir Francis.”

“And to you.”

“She has kept me alive. Which I confess has become a habit I am loath to break.”

Elizabeth laughed—a short, sharp sound like a hawk’s cry. “You are a strange creature, Ashworth. You stumble into treason’s web, you unmask my cousin, you chase a spy who wears a grey cloak through my Tower, and yet you speak of yourself as though you were a piece of furniture.”

“Furniture is often more useful than it appears, Your Majesty. And it rarely gets stabbed.”

The barge slid beneath the shadow of Richmond’s walls, and servants hurried to secure the moorings. Elizabeth rose, and Edmund followed, his legs stiff from the journey. She led him not to the great hall but through a series of narrow passages, past tapestries that smelled of dust and lavender, until they reached a small chamber overlooking the river. A desk stood by the window, covered in papers weighted by a silver lion.

She closed the door. The latch clicked like a pistol’s hammer.

“I have not slept in three nights,” she said, turning to face him. “The Privy Council tells me the Spanish fleet is still in port, that Parma has not yet moved, that we have months before the invasion. They tell me this because they believe it. I tell you this so you understand: I do not.”

Edmund said nothing. He had learned that silence was often the safest answer.

“You have until the twentieth of August,” she continued, moving to the desk and placing her palm flat upon a chart of the Channel coast. “That is the date in your dead man’s ledger. That is the date beneath the word ‘Armada.’ Sir Francis believes the Spanish will sail before the autumn storms. I believe he is right. But I also believe there is something else—a plan within the plan—that no one has yet uncovered.”

She lifted the chart and revealed a smaller paper beneath it, creased and stained with candle wax. “This came to me by a channel I do not fully trust. It is a letter from a merchant in Lisbon, written in code that Thomas Phelippes himself could not break. But I have my own ways of reading.”

She slid the paper toward him. Edmund stepped forward, his eyes scanning the cramped script—a jumble of numbers and symbols that meant nothing to him.

“The Falcon is not the only hawk,” she said. “Whoever sleeps beside the Queen—whoever that phrase truly means—has made arrangements beyond England. This letter speaks of a harbour on the Irish coast, a place where Spanish ships may shelter before striking at Wales. If they land there, they will not come through Plymouth. They will come through the back door.”

Edmund felt the weight of the room press upon him. “Your Majesty—if Phelippes cannot break this code, and he is the finest cryptographer in Christendom, what hope have I?”

Elizabeth smiled, and it was not a warm smile. “You are not a cryptographer, my lord. You are a lazy earl who notices things other men overlook. That is why I am sending you to Plymouth not to read the Spanish plans, but to watch the men who guard them.”

She stepped closer, her voice dropping to a whisper. “There is a harbourmaster in Plymouth named Cuthbert Rowe. He has served the Crown for twenty years. His son is a captain in the Queen’s Navy. And last month, he requested a transfer to Ireland.”

Edmund’s stomach tightened. “A man with such loyal service does not ask for Ireland unless he has reason to flee England.”

“Or reason to go where the Spanish will land,” Elizabeth said. “I want you to find out which. But you must not approach him directly. He will know you are the Queen’s creature the moment you arrive.”

“Then how am I to—?”

“There is a tavern called the Anchor’s Bite, near the harbour. The widow who keeps it is a woman named Margaret Prowse. She was a servant in my mother’s household before she married. She will know who has been asking questions, who has been too curious about the shipping schedules, who has been seen with men who speak with foreign accents.”

Elizabeth pressed the letter into his hands. “Go to Plymouth. Find Margaret. Trust no one else—not even Walsingham’s men, for I do not know whose purse they truly serve. And when you have the truth, send word to me directly, by the hand of Lady Thorne.”

Edmund blinked. “Cecily? Your Majesty wishes her to travel with me?”

“I wish her to carry your message, because she is the only person in this realm whose loyalty to you I trust absolutely.” The Queen’s eyes glittered. “A woman does not risk her mother’s life for a man she does not intend to keep alive. Now go. I have a realm to govern, and you have a nap to postpone.”