Chapter 61: The Ledger’s Name

The horse was a raw-boned chestnut with a temper to match the road, and Edmund Ashworth, Earl of Morland, regretted the acquaintance within the first mile. The beast threw its head against the bit, fought the reins, and seemed to take personal offence at every puddle it was forced to splash through. By the time they reached the outskirts of Tavistock, Edmund’s back ached, his thighs burned, and he had developed a profound sympathy for saddles, which bore such indignities without complaint.

The laundress had provided the horse and a leather satchel of bread, cheese, and a flask of small beer. She had also provided a name, whispered with the reluctance of a woman who had already risked too much: *Blanche.* Not a surname. A Christian name, the Christian name of the woman who served the Queen’s bedchamber and who, according to the ledger, slept beside her.

Blanche. It was a name that conjured images of whiteness, purity, innocence. In Edmund’s experience, such names were invariably attached to the most dangerous of women. He had known a Blanche once, years ago, who had stolen his favourite lute and sold it to a Flemish merchant for a fraction of its worth. He had never recovered the instrument, and he had never fully trusted a woman named Blanche since.

The road to London was a blur of hedgerows and muddy fields, of villages that passed like beads on a rosary. Edmund pushed the chestnut hard, stopping only to water the beast and himself, and to ask at each inn whether a messenger had passed through with letters for the Earl of Morland. None had. Cecily’s promised dispatches had not yet caught up with him, and Edmund found himself glancing over his shoulder more often than was strictly prudent.

By the second evening, he had reached Salisbury, the cathedral’s spire rising against a bruised violet sky like a finger pointing heavenward in accusation. He took a room at an inn near the market square, paid the ostler to rub down the chestnut, and sat in the common room with a bowl of mutton stew that tasted of nothing and a cup of ale that tasted of less.

He unfolded the laundress’s ledger again, though he had memorised its contents by now. The entry was simple, written in a neat, unhurried hand: *Blanche, bedchamber, sleeps beside the Queen. Received: forty crowns. Service: to be named.* The service was left blank, which Edmund found deeply unsettling. What service could a woman in the Queen’s bedchamber perform that required forty crowns and a blank space in a ledger?

He thought of the Falcon, of his scarred face and his easy violence, and of the bargain he had offered. The list of ships bound for Dutch ports, marked with the name *Leicester*, had been genuine—Walsingham had confirmed it through his own channels, though the confirmation had arrived too late to save the ships. Three vessels had been lost to Spanish privateers off the coast of Flanders, and the Queen’s fury had been a thing of terrible beauty to behold.

Edmund had been spared the worst of it, largely because he had delivered the intelligence before the ships had sailed, and the Privy Council had been too busy assigning blame to settle on a convenient scapegoat. But the reprieve was temporary. The twentieth of August approached with the relentlessness of a tide, and Edmund still did not know the full shape of the Spanish plan, nor the identity of the Falcon’s true master, nor the meaning of the phrase *the one who sleeps beside the Queen*.

He finished his stew, drained his ale, and climbed the narrow stairs to his room. The bed was lumpy, the sheets were damp, and the window rattled in the wind. Edmund lay awake for a long time, staring at the ceiling, and thought of Cecily.

She was somewhere on the road between London and Plymouth, carrying his messages to the Queen. He had promised her he would not discard her, and she had promised to hold him to it. The promises had felt weighty at the time, almost ceremonial, like vows exchanged in a chapel. Now, in the dark of an inn room in Salisbury, they felt like chains.

He slept badly and woke before dawn, his mind already racing ahead to London. He paid the ostler, saddled the chestnut, and set out on the final leg of the journey, the horse’s hooves beating a rhythm against the packed earth of the road. By mid-morning, he had passed Andover. By early afternoon, he was riding through the outskirts of Basingstoke, and by evening, the first rooftops of London were visible against the hazy horizon.

He did not go to his townhouse. He did not go to Walsingham’s offices at Barn Elms, nor to the Court at Whitehall. Instead, he rode directly to the narrow street where the blue door stood, the door that belonged to Mistress Alice, the widow who was Cecily’s mother, and who knew more about the shadows of England than she had ever revealed.

The door opened before he could knock. Mistress Alice stood in the threshold, her grey hair pinned beneath a simple cap, her eyes sharp and knowing. She looked at him for a long moment, then stepped aside.

“You have the look of a man who has ridden too far and learned too little,” she said.

Edmund stepped inside, the warmth of the small house washing over him. “I have learned a name,” he said. “Blanche. The woman who sleeps beside the Queen.”

Mistress Alice’s expression did not change, but her hand tightened on the edge of the door.

“Blanche,” she repeated. “I had hoped she was dead.”

Edmund felt the floor shift beneath him. “You know her.”

“I knew her when she was a girl, in the household of the Duke of Norfolk. She was a maid then, quiet and clever, with a gift for remembering things that were never said aloud. When Norfolk fell, she vanished. I assumed she had died in the Tower, or been sold to a French brothel. I did not think she had risen so far.”

“She sleeps beside the Queen,” Edmund said. “She has access. She has opportunity.”

Mistress Alice shook her head slowly. “You do not understand, my lord. Blanche does not need opportunity. She has patience. She has waited twenty years for this moment. And when she moves, she will not miss.”