Chapter 67: The Ledger of the Sleeping Woman

The inn at Plymouth was called the Anchor’s Rest, a name Edmund found bitterly ironic, for he had not rested since he had arrived. He sat at a scarred oak table in a private parlour, a half-eaten plate of mutton congealing before him, and stared at the laundress’s ledger as though it might confess its secrets out of sheer intimidation.

Cecily stood by the window, watching the street below. The grey light of late afternoon softened the sharp angles of her face, but her eyes were as keen as ever. “You have been staring at that book for two hours,” she said without turning. “It will not yield to glowering.”

“It yielded a name,” Edmund said, tapping the page. “Or rather, it yielded a riddle wrapped in a woman’s laundry list. ‘The Lady of the White Rose’—that is what the laundress called her. But she would not speak the woman’s true name. Said she feared the shadows that walked the corridors of court.”

Cecily turned, one brow arched. “The Lady of the White Rose. A pretty cipher. The white rose is the badge of York. But there is no Yorkist claimant who sleeps beside Elizabeth.”

Edmund leaned back, rubbing his eyes. “Perhaps it is not a badge but a flower. Perhaps a garden. Perhaps a tapestry. The laundress was precise in her ledgers but maddeningly vague in her allegories.” He sighed. “She said the woman pays her in silver marked with a strange stamp—a bird with spread wings. I have seen such a stamp before.”

Cecily’s expression sharpened. “Where?”

“On the Falcon’s purse. When I searched his body in the chapel, I found coins bearing that mark. I thought nothing of it then—a mercenary’s wages. But now…” He trailed off.

“Now you think the Falcon was paid by the woman who sleeps beside the Queen.”

“Or by the one who commands her.” Edmund pushed the ledger aside. “The Falcon served ‘the one who sleeps beside the Queen.’ But what if that phrase was never meant literally? What if it refers to someone who holds the Queen’s ear so closely that she might as well share her bed?”

Cecily crossed the room and sat across from him, her gaze intent. “You are thinking of Leicester.”

“I am thinking of everyone,” Edmund said wearily. “Leicester, Essex, Walsingham, even the Queen’s ladies. But the laundress was specific: she said ‘she.’ A woman. And she said this woman sleeps in the royal bedchamber, not merely beside the Queen’s favour.”

“Then it is one of the bedchamber women,” Cecily said. “There are but a handful who hold such privilege. The Countess of Warwick. Lady Stafford. Lady Howard.” She paused. “And Lady Mary Sidney, though she is often at court.”

Edmund’s mind churned. He had met them all, fleetingly, in the gilded anterooms of Whitehall. They had seemed like painted birds, chirping pleasantries and curtsying with practiced grace. But one of them had paid a laundress in Falcon-marked silver to keep a ledger of linens and, perhaps, far more dangerous secrets.

“We need the laundress again,” he said. “She knows more than she told me. She was afraid, but fear can be overcome with the right inducement.”

“Or the right threat,” Cecily said dryly. “You are better at the former. I am better at the latter.”

Edmund almost smiled. “Then we shall make a fine pair. You threaten, I cajole.”

They found the laundress at the edge of the town, in a cramped cottage that smelled of lye and lavender. Her name was Goody Marsh, a woman with rheumy eyes and hands cracked from years of scrubbing. She looked up at their arrival with the wariness of a creature that had learned to expect the worst.

“I told the gentleman all I know,” she said, clutching a bundle of cloth to her chest. “I want no more trouble.”

Edmund adopted his most languid, harmless air. “Goody Marsh, we are not here to bring trouble. We are here to prevent it. The woman who pays you in silver marked with a bird—she may be in grave danger. You would not want her to come to harm, would you?”

The laundress’s eyes flickered. “She is a good mistress. She pays well and asks few questions.”

“What does she ask?” Cecily said, her voice softer than Edmund had ever heard it. “What does she require of you, beyond the washing?”

Goody Marsh hesitated. Then, lowering her voice, she said, “She has me launder her shifts, but she also has me carry letters. Not often—once a month, perhaps. She seals them in a pouch and bids me leave them at a certain shop in the town. A chandler’s, near the quay. I never read them. I never ask.”

Edmund’s heart quickened. “And this chandler—does he have a name?”

“Master Finch,” the laundress said. “But he is not there anymore. He vanished three days ago. The shop is shuttered.”

Edmund exchanged a glance with Cecily. Finch. The name was familiar—a chandler in London had spoken of Edmund’s uncle, Thomas Ashworth. Could it be the same man, or merely a coincidence?

“When did you last carry a letter?” Cecily asked.

“A week past,” Goody Marsh said. “She gave me a pouch and bid me hurry. She seemed agitated, more than usual.”

“What did she look like?” Edmund asked. “This mistress of yours—describe her.”

The laundress frowned. “I never seen her face. She receives me in a darkened chamber, always behind a screen. But I knows her voice—soft, with a lilt. Like she was not born in England.” She paused. “And I knows her hands. She wears a ring on her left forefinger—a ruby, set in gold. I seen it when she passed me the coins.”

Edmund’s blood ran cold. A ruby ring. A soft, lilting voice. A woman who hid her face behind a screen and paid in Falcon-marked silver.

He knew such a woman. He had seen her at court, gliding through the Presence Chamber with the grace of a swan. The Countess of Lennox—no, she was dead. But her daughter-in-law, the Countess of Arundel? She was imprisoned. And yet there was another, a woman who had once been close to Mary of Scots, who had somehow survived the purges and remained in the Queen’s orbit.

“We must return to London,” he said, his voice tight. “I have a name, but I must confirm it. And I must do so before the twentieth of August.”

Cecily nodded, her hand moving to the dagger at her belt. “Then we ride tonight. The Armada will not wait, and neither will the woman who sleeps beside the Queen.”

As they left the laundress’s cottage, the sun dipped below the horizon, casting long shadows across the cobbled streets. Edmund felt the weight of the hour pressing down on him, but for the first time in days, he had a thread to pull.

And he would follow it, even if it led him to the very heart of the Queen’s bedchamber—and to the woman who smiled in her sleep, dreaming of a throne that was not hers.