Chapter 66: The Widow’s Reckoning

Edmund Ashworth, Earl of Morland, discovered that fear had a peculiar taste—like stale ale and copper, mingled on the back of the tongue. The Falcon’s blade caught the torchlight, and Edmund’s hand drifted, of its own traitorous accord, toward the empty scabbard at his hip. He had come to the chapel unarmed, as his uncle’s letter had demanded. A decision that now seemed less chivalrous and more spectacularly foolish.

“I asked you a question, Lord Morland.” The Falcon took another step, the scar on his cheek pale against the shadow. “The woman. Her name.”

Edmund’s mind, that lazy engine he had spent a lifetime deliberately idling, roared to life. He saw the laundress’s ledger, the careful columns of names and payments. He saw the cipher, the phrase that had led him here. The one who sleeps beside the Queen. Not a lover. Not a favourite. He thought of the bedchamber at Greenwich, of the maids who turned down the sheets, who warmed the Queen’s nightgown, who knew the secrets whispered into pillows.

“You mistake me,” Edmund said, letting his shoulders slump into their most convincing posture of defeat. “I am a lazy man, sir. I have no head for names. I came here because my uncle asked me to, and I was too indolent to refuse.”

The Falcon’s lips twitched. “You are a poor liar.”

“I am an excellent liar,” Edmund countered, “but I am a terrible fighter. So let us strike a bargain. You let the widow live, and I will tell you everything I know. Which is, admittedly, very little, but I promise to make it sound impressive.”

He was buying time. For what, he did not know. Cecily was waiting at the inn, unaware that he had slipped away. The Falcon had chosen this ground, this chapel of unfinished hours, with its cold stone and its single, guttering candle before the altar. A place where no one would hear a scream.

“Your charm will not save you,” the Falcon said.

“It has saved me from countless duels, three husbands, and one particularly persistent debt collector. I am rather attached to it.”

The Falcon lunged.

Edmund, who had spent his life perfecting the art of not being where trouble expected him to be, stepped sideways. Not a heroic dodge—merely the instinct of a man who had avoided countless tedious obligations. The blade whispered past his ribs, slicing through his doublet but finding only air.

“You see?” Edmund said, backing toward the altar. “I am a moving target. It is my only talent.”

The Falcon advanced again, and this time Edmund was not quick enough. The flat of the blade caught him across the shoulder, sending him stumbling against the wooden rail. Pain flared, hot and sharp, and he tasted blood where he had bitten his cheek.

“Tell me,” the Falcon hissed, standing over him. “Or I will carve the name from your flesh.”

Edmund looked up at him, and for the first time, he saw something beneath the scar and the menace. A flicker of desperation. The Falcon was afraid. Not of Edmund—but of whoever had sent him. Of the one who slept beside the Queen, and what she would do if her name were spoken aloud.

“She will kill you,” Edmund said quietly. “Whoever she is. You know that, don’t you?”

The Falcon’s blade wavered.

And then the chapel door crashed open.

Cecily Thorne stood in the threshold, silhouetted against the night, a pistol in her hand and murder in her eyes. Behind her, the widow Alice held a lantern aloft, her face as hard as the stone walls.

“I told you,” Cecily said, her voice cold as the Thames in January, “that I would not let you discard me. Did you think I would let you die alone in a chapel, you insufferable man?”

The Falcon turned, and in that moment of distraction, Edmund moved. He seized the candle from the altar and hurled it at the assassin’s face. Wax and flame splashed across the scarred cheek, and the Falcon screamed, dropping his blade to claw at his eyes.

“Now,” Edmund said, with all the calm of a man requesting tea, “I do believe we have you.”

Cecily’s pistol did not waver. “Who is she? The woman who sleeps beside the Queen?”

The Falcon, still blinking through the burning wax, laughed. It was a terrible sound, raw and broken. “You think you have won? You have already lost. The letter is on its way. The twentieth of August will come, and England will burn.”

“The letter,” Edmund said, stepping forward. “To whom is it addressed?”

The Falcon’s laughter died. He looked at Edmund, and something shifted in his eyes—a recognition, perhaps, of the inevitable. “You are cleverer than you pretend, Lord Morland. But not clever enough to stop what is already in motion.”

He moved faster than Edmund could react. Not toward the door, but toward the altar. His hand closed on something hidden in the shadows—a second blade—and he turned, not to attack, but to fall upon it.

The sound was soft. Wet. Final.

Cecily lowered the pistol, her face pale. “God’s blood.”

Edmund knelt beside the fallen man, but there was nothing to be done. The Falcon’s eyes were already glassy, his breath a rattle in his throat. He clutched at Edmund’s sleeve with a dying hand.

“The… the widow,” he whispered. “Not the one you think. The other one.”

His hand fell away.

Edmund stared at the dead man, the words echoing in the cold chapel. The widow. Not the one you think. The other one. He looked up at Cecily, then at her mother, standing in the doorway with the lantern.

Alice’s face was unreadable.

“Mother,” Cecily said slowly, “what does he mean?”

But Alice did not answer. She merely lowered the lantern, casting her face into shadow, and said, “We must leave this place before the watch finds us. There is a boat at the quay. It will take us to London by morning.”

Edmund rose, his shoulder throbbing, his mind churning. The Falcon was dead, but the conspiracy was not. Somewhere in the darkness, a letter was making its way toward the woman who slept beside the Queen. And now, it seemed, there was more than one widow to account for.

He looked at Alice, and for the first time, he wondered if he had ever truly seen her at all.

“The boat,” he said, his voice steady despite the ache in his bones. “Yes. I believe we have much to discuss on the journey.”

Cecily caught his eye, and he saw the same suspicion mirrored there. They had trusted Alice because she was Cecily’s mother. But trust, Edmund was learning, was a currency that devalued rapidly in the world of spies and traitors.

As they slipped out of the chapel into the night, the Falcon’s body cooling on the stone floor behind them, Edmund could not shake the feeling that the game had only just begun. And that somewhere, in a palace he could not see, a woman was smiling in her sleep beside the Queen.