Chapter 64: The Name Beneath the Crown

Edmund found her in the stillroom of the Plymouth house, a place of lavender and rosemary and the sharp tang of distilled herbs. Lady Margaret Cheney was sixty if she was a day, with the kind of face that had been sharpened by a lifetime of watching rather than speaking. She looked up from her mortar and pestle as Edmund entered, and her expression did not change.

“My lord,” she said. “You are a long way from your estate.”

“And you are a long way from Court, Lady Margaret. Yet I am told you have been closer to the Queen than most women alive.”

She set down the pestle with a soft click. “I was one of her maids of honour in the first years. Before she learned to trust no one.”

“And since?”

“I have kept her linen, her jewels, her private correspondence. I have slept in the chamber adjoining hers for six years.” She smiled, and it was not a kind smile. “You have been asking about the woman who sleeps beside the Queen. I wondered when you would find me.”

Edmund felt the floor shift beneath him. He had expected denials, evasions, a careful dance of misdirection. Instead, she had simply opened the door and invited him in.

“You know why I am here.”

“The Falcon,” she said, as though naming a weather pattern. “Yes. I know.”

“How much do you know?”

Lady Margaret gestured to a stool beside the table. Edmund did not sit. She shrugged and returned to her grinding.

“I know that a man with a scarred face has been moving through England like a needle through cloth, pulling threads that should remain unbroken. I know that he serves someone who believes themselves worthy of the throne. And I know that I am the only person in the Queen’s household who has noticed that her favourite’s fleet is sailing toward a trap.”

Edmund’s breath caught. “Leicester’s ships.”

“You are quicker than you pretend to be, my lord. That is either a comfort or a danger. I have not yet decided which.”

“How do you know about the ships?”

She stopped grinding and looked at him directly. “Because I am the one who reads the Queen’s correspondence when she is too tired to do so herself. Because I am the one who burns the letters that would cause panic if they fell into the wrong hands. And because I am the one who has been quietly removing the Falcon’s informants from the bedchamber staff for the past three months.”

Edmund’s mind raced. “You have been working against him?”

“I have been working against everyone who would harm my Queen. That includes the Falcon. It includes his master. And it includes, should it become necessary, you.”

“Then why tell me this now?”

Lady Margaret set down the pestle and wiped her hands on her apron. “Because the twentieth of August is nine days away, and I have run out of people I can trust. The Falcon has killed two of my informants in the past fortnight. The third has fled to France. You are the only one left who has proven both capable and inconvenient enough to survive him.”

Edmund felt the weight of her words settle on him like a winter cloak. “You know who the Falcon’s master is.”

“I know who he believes his master to be.” She moved to a cabinet and withdrew a folded paper, yellowed with age. “Do you know the name Robert Dudley?”

“The Earl of Leicester. The Queen’s favourite.”

“Yes. And do you know what happened to his wife?”

Edmund paused. “She died. In 1560. A fall down a staircase, I was told.”

“She was found at the bottom of the stairs with a broken neck. Her maids said she had been in good spirits that morning. Leicester was at court. He claimed he had not seen her in days.” She held out the paper. “This is a letter from one of her maids, written to her sister in the north. It describes what she saw before she was silenced.”

Edmund took the paper but did not open it. “What does this have to do with the Falcon?”

“The Falcon’s master believes Leicester murdered his wife to clear the way for the Queen. He believes Leicester has been poisoning Elizabeth’s mind against the true succession. And he believes that if Leicester’s fleet is destroyed, the Queen will be forced to rely on him—and him alone.”

Edmund’s blood ran cold. “Who?”

Lady Margaret’s eyes met his, and for the first time, he saw something like fear in them. “The one who has been waiting in the shadows since the Northern Rebellion. The one who believes the throne of England belongs to him by right of blood and by right of grievance. The one who has spent twenty years building a network that reaches from the Scottish border to the Spanish court.”

She paused, and the name fell from her lips like a stone into still water.

“Edward Seymour. The Earl of Hertford.”

Edmund stared at her. “Hertford was imprisoned for marrying Lady Katherine Grey without the Queen’s consent. He has been in and out of the Tower for years. He is a broken man.”

“He is a patient man,” Lady Margaret corrected. “And he has a son. A son who carries the blood of Henry VIII’s sister in his veins. A son who, if Leicester’s fleet is destroyed and Essex’s ambition is exposed and the Queen’s guard is compromised, might be seen as the only viable heir.”

Edmund’s mouth went dry. “The Falcon’s ledger spoke of ‘the one who sleeps beside the Queen.’ I assumed it meant a woman.”

“It did.” Lady Margaret’s smile was thin. “His son has been a page in the royal household for the past two years. He sleeps in the chamber directly beside the Queen’s. His name is Edward Seymour, the younger. And he is seventeen years old, with his father’s patience and his mother’s ambition.”

Edmund felt the pieces click into place with terrible precision. The Falcon was not serving a single master. He was serving a family—a family that had been waiting for twenty years for the moment when England’s defences would be weak enough to strike.

“Why are you telling me this?” he asked. “If Hertford is your enemy, why not go to Walsingham?”

“Because Walsingham is dying,” she said bluntly. “And because I am not certain that Thomas Phelippes has not already sold this information to someone else. I have watched the codebreaker’s hands shake when he reads the Queen’s mail. I have seen him linger over letters that should have been burned. He is a man divided, and divided men are dangerous.”

She stepped closer, and her voice dropped to a whisper. “You have nine days, my lord. Nine days to prove that the Falcon’s master is not a broken recluse but a patient schemer with a son in the royal bedchamber. Nine days to save Leicester’s fleet before it sails into the trap. And nine days to do it without the Queen learning that the man she has trusted to guard her sleep has been grooming her replacement.”

Edmund looked down at the unopened letter in his hand. Somewhere in the distance, he heard the cry of gulls and the creak of ships in the harbour—ships that would sail on the twentieth of August, carrying English soldiers toward an ambush.

He had wanted a nap. He had wanted peace. He had wanted to be left alone with his lute and his hunting dogs and the comfortable tedium of an unremarkable life.

Instead, he had a name. A name that threatened to unravel the very fabric of the English court.

“Lady Margaret,” he said slowly, “if I am to stop this, I will need proof. Not suspicions. Not letters that might be forged. Proof that Hertford has been communicating with the Falcon and with Spain.”

She nodded, as though she had been waiting for him to ask. “There is one place where such proof might exist. A house in the north, near the Scottish border. Hertford’s private study. He keeps his most dangerous correspondence there, hidden behind a false panel in the fireplace.”

“And how am I supposed to reach it?”

Lady Margaret’s smile returned, sharper now. “You are the Earl of Morland. You are known for your laziness, your charm, and your complete lack of political ambition. You are the last man anyone would suspect of being a spy.”

She paused. “And you have an uncle who was rescued by a Spanish ship. A man who has spent years in the service of England’s enemies. A man who, before he was struck down, gave you something of value.”

Edmund’s hand went to his chest, where Thomas’s final gift lay hidden against his skin—a small key, worn smooth by years of use, its purpose still unknown.

“What does my uncle have to do with Hertford?”

Lady Margaret’s eyes glittered. “Because your uncle was not rescued by the Spanish,” she said. “He was rescued by the Seymours. And the key you carry opens the false panel in Hertford’s study.”

The world tilted. Edmund gripped the edge of the table to steady himself.

“You knew my uncle?”

“I knew of him. And I know that before he died, he gave you the means to finish what he could not.” She stepped back, her hands folding into her sleeves. “The question is whether you are brave enough to use it.”

Edmund stared at the key’s outline through his doublet. Thomas had been a traitor. Thomas had been a victim. Thomas had been both and neither, a man caught between loyalties who had tried to give his nephew something of value before the Falcon’s blade found him.

And now, nine days before the Armada’s deadline, Edmund held the key to everything.

He looked up at Lady Margaret. “Where is Hertford’s house?”

“In the marches, near Berwick. A fortress called Coldstream Hall.”

Edmund nodded slowly, his mind already mapping the journey. London was too far. The court was too dangerous. But the north—

“I will need horses,” he said. “And I will need to send word to Cecily.”

Lady Margaret’s expression flickered. “The widow Thorne?”

“She is my partner. And she will want to know where I am going.”

“She will want to stop you.”

“Then I will have to be very persuasive.” Edmund straightened, the weariness falling from his shoulders like a discarded cloak. “Tell me everything you know about Coldstream Hall. The guards, the layout, the habits of its master.”

Lady Margaret’s smile widened, and for the first time, Edmund saw something like respect in her eyes.

“I thought you were lazy, my lord.”

“I am,” he said. “But I am also very, very tired of being hunted. And I have discovered that the best way to stop running is to turn and face the hunter.”

He tucked the letter into his doublet and met her gaze.

“Now. Tell me about the house where my uncle’s ghost has been waiting for me.”