Chapter 72: The Twenty Years' Patience

The corridor stretched before him like a vein in a dying man, narrow and dim and smelling of tallow and old stone. Edmund ran, his boots striking the flags in a rhythm that seemed to mock him—too loud, too slow, too late. He knew these passages now, had memorised them in the weeks since the Queen had first summoned him to her shadow, and he knew that the privy chamber lay beyond the next turning, past the guards who would not know his face, past the doors that would not open for a man who had no business being there.

He was the Earl of Morland. He had hunted boar in the marshes of Essex and composed lute music that made grown men weep. He had solved puzzles that baffled the Privy Council and unmasked traitors with nothing but a lazy smile and a well-timed yawn. But he had never run so fast in his life, and he knew, with a certainty that sat cold in his chest, that he would not be fast enough.

The girl had said an hour. An hour since Blanche had been summoned to the Queen's bedside. An hour since the woman with twenty years of patience had begun her final vigil.

Edmund rounded the corner and found his way blocked by two guards in the Queen's livery, their halberds crossed. He did not slow. He did not stop. He drew himself up to his full height and fixed them with the stare that had made his tenants tremble and his enemies underestimate him.

"I am the Earl of Morland," he said, and his voice was calm, almost bored, as if he had all the time in the world. "The Queen has summoned me. Stand aside."

The guards exchanged a glance. One of them, older, with a scar that split his eyebrow, shook his head. "No one enters, my lord. Orders from the Captain of the Guard."

"Whose orders?" Edmund asked, and something in his tone made the younger guard shift his weight. "Lord Hunsdon is dead. Or have you not heard?"

The scarred guard's jaw tightened. "We have our orders."

Edmund reached into his doublet and produced the ring the Queen had given him in Plymouth—a simple band of gold with a ruby set in the shape of a rose. He held it up. "And I have mine. From Her Majesty's own hand. Now stand aside, or I will see to it that you spend the rest of your service in the Tower, explaining to the Lieutenant why you delayed the Queen's business."

The guards looked at the ring. They looked at each other. Then, slowly, they uncrossed their halberds.

Edmund did not wait for them to change their minds. He pushed past them and through the door beyond, into the antechamber that led to the Queen's privy chamber. The room was empty, the fire burning low in the grate, the candles guttering in their sconces. He crossed it in six strides and reached the door to the inner chamber, his hand already on the latch.

He stopped.

Through the oak, he could hear a voice—soft, low, almost a lullaby. A woman's voice, gentle and patient, the voice of someone who had waited twenty years for a single moment.

"—and the realm will be at peace, Your Majesty. True peace, at last. The old faith restored, the usurper's line ended. You have only to sleep now. Only to rest. I will be here. I have always been here."

Edmund threw open the door.

The Queen's bedchamber was dim, lit only by a single candle on the table beside the great canopied bed. Elizabeth lay beneath the covers, her face pale against the pillows, her eyes closed. She looked smaller than Edmund remembered, diminished, as if the weight of the crown had finally pressed her into something human and frail.

And beside the bed, a woman knelt. She was not young—perhaps fifty, with grey threading her dark hair and a face that might once have been handsome. She wore the simple gown of a lady's maid, but there was nothing simple about the way she held herself. She did not start when Edmund entered. She did not cry out. She simply turned her head, slowly, and looked at him with eyes that held no surprise at all.

"The Earl of Morland," she said. "I wondered when you would come."

Edmund's hand went to the dagger at his belt. "Blanche."

She smiled. It was a gentle smile, almost maternal, and it made his blood run cold. "A name I have not heard in many years. I was Margaret once. Then Anne. Then Katherine. But yes—Blanche, in the end. The name I was given at birth, before they took everything from me."

"Step away from the Queen."

Blanche did not move. "She is sleeping. A gentle sleep, my lord. Laudanum in her wine, nothing more. She will wake in a few hours with a headache and no memory of what has passed. By then, it will be done."

"What will be done?"

The woman's smile widened. "The signal. The twentieth of August. The Armada is not coming to invade, my lord. It is coming to protect. To restore. And I—" she touched the Queen's hand, a gesture of such tenderness that Edmund felt sick to watch it, "—I have been waiting to give the order for twenty years."

Edmund crossed the room in three strides. He seized Blanche by the arm and pulled her away from the bed, his dagger now in his hand, the point resting against the hollow of her throat. She did not resist. She did not even flinch.

"You are too late," she said, her voice still calm, still patient. "The message was sent an hour ago. A rider left for the coast. He carries a single word. The word that will bring the Spanish fleet to our shores."

"What word?"

Blanche looked up at him, and for the first time, something flickered in her eyes—not fear, but something like triumph. "Death," she said. "The word is death. And when the Spanish land, they will find the Queen dead in her bed and England leaderless. The Catholic lords will rise. Mary Stuart will be crowned. And I—"

She smiled again.

"—I will finally be avenged."

Edmund stared at her. Twenty years of patience. Twenty years of waiting. And now, in a single night, it would end.

He had to stop the rider. He had to wake the Queen. He had to—

The door behind him burst open, and Cecily Thorne stood in the doorway, her face flushed, her eyes wide. "Edmund," she said, and her voice cracked. "The rider. I saw him. He has a fresh horse and a head start of half an hour. He rides for Plymouth."

Edmund looked at Blanche, then at the Queen, then at Cecily.

"There is no time," he said. "We have to choose."

And somewhere in the darkness beyond the window, the twenty of August drew closer, and with it the storm that would decide the fate of England.