Chapter 73: The Sound of Hooves in the Dark

The chamber seemed to contract around them, the candle flames bowing as if in fear. Edmund's mind, that indolent instrument he had spent a lifetime pretending did not exist, raced through the possibilities with the precision of a clockmaker's fingers.

"You cannot stop him by riding after him," Cecily said, stepping fully into the room. Her gaze took in Blanche, standing rigid beside the Queen's bed, and something flickered in her eyes—recognition, perhaps, or the cold arithmetic of betrayal. "He has too great a start."

"Then we do not ride after him," Edmund said.

The Queen stirred. Elizabeth had been listening, as she always listened, her dark eyes moving between them with the patient assessment of a sovereign who had survived twenty-eight years on a knife's edge.

"Speak plainly, Morland," she said. "I have not the patience for riddles at this hour."

Edmund bowed, though his body screamed for a chair, for a pillow, for the simple mercy of horizontal rest. "Your Majesty, the rider carries word to Plymouth. But word of what? He cannot know what we have discovered here tonight. He rides to warn someone—the Falcon's master, or the Spanish agent who waits for the signal. If he reaches Plymouth before us, the trap closes on empty air."

"Then what do you propose?"

He turned to Cecily. "How many horses are in the royal mews fit for hard riding?"

"Two dozen, at least."

"Then we send two dozen riders. Not on one road—on every road. North, south, east, west. They carry torches and they ride hard. They will be seen."

Blanche spoke for the first time, her voice thin as old parchment. "You mean to make him think we know his destination."

"I mean to make him think we know everything." Edmund allowed himself the ghost of a smile. "A man who believes he is hunted will make mistakes. He will alter his course. He will seek help where he should not. And every hour he wastes is an hour we gain."

The Queen sat up fully, drawing her bedrobe about her shoulders. "You are proposing to bluff with the lives of my messengers."

"I am proposing to bluff with the lives of my uncle's murderers," Edmund said quietly. "The men who killed Thomas Ashworth are the same men who sent that rider. They have already chosen their war. I am merely choosing the battlefield."

Elizabeth studied him for a long moment. Then she laughed—a dry, sharp sound that held no warmth but considerable approval.

"You are the laziest man in England," she said, "and yet you think like a general. Very well. Walsingham shall arrange the riders. But you, Morland—you will not ride with them."

"Your Majesty?"

"You will go to Plymouth by ship. The *Swiftsure* sails on the morning tide. You will be there before the rider, even with his head start. And you will find this Spanish agent before he learns that his warning has been compromised."

Edmund's heart sank. A ship. The sea. Days of heaving decks and salt spray and no possibility of a proper bed.

"Your Majesty is too kind," he said, and meant it in the most miserable sense of the word.

She caught his meaning and smiled again, that terrible, knowing smile. "I am not kind, Lord Morland. I am practical. You have a talent for surviving what should kill you. I intend to make use of it."

Cecily stepped forward. "And I, Your Majesty?"

"You will accompany him. You have proven yourself more useful than most of my Privy Council." The Queen's gaze flicked to Blanche, who had not moved from her position by the bed. "And you, Blanche—you will remain here. You and I have much to discuss about the nature of patience."

Blanche bowed her head, and Edmund could not read her expression. Relief? Resignation? Or something deeper, some calculation he had not yet learned to see?

He had no time to ponder it. Cecily was already at his elbow, drawing him toward the door.

"We must move quickly," she said. "The tide does not wait, and neither does the Falcon."

They descended through the palace's sleeping corridors, past guards who straightened at the sight of the Earl of Morland moving with purpose—a sight so unusual that one of them dropped his halberd. Edmund did not pause to enjoy it. His mind was already at Plymouth, already walking the quays, already seeking the shape of the trap he must spring.

"The laundress's ledger," he said as they reached the courtyard. "The name beneath the crown. You saw it?"

"I saw what you saw. A name written in a hand I did not recognize, and beneath it, the words *the one who sleeps beside the Queen*."

"And you believe it refers to Blanche?"

Cecily was silent for a moment. The night air was cool, carrying the scent of the river and the distant smoke of the city's chimneys. "I believe it refers to someone who has been in the Queen's chamber for twenty years. Someone who has had access to every secret, every whispered confidence, every letter that passed beneath Elizabeth's pillow." She looked at him. "And I believe that if Blanche is that person, then the Falcon's master is far closer to the throne than any of us imagined."

Edmund thought of Walsingham's warning: *More than one lion might be in the cage.*

"Then we must be certain before we strike," he said. "A false accusation against a royal servant would be... inconvenient."

"Inconvenient," Cecily repeated, and there was a grim humor in her voice. "You have a gift for understatement, my lord."

They reached the stables, where a groom was already saddling horses for the ride to the river. Edmund paused at the stable door, looking back at the palace. Somewhere within those walls, Elizabeth Tudor was interrogating her own maid. Somewhere beyond them, a rider galloped toward Plymouth with news that could doom them all. And somewhere in the darkness, the Falcon waited, patient as a scar, certain of his master's victory.

"Edmund." Cecily's hand touched his arm. "What if we are wrong? What if the rider is not the Falcon's man, but someone else's? What if we are being drawn into a trap?"

"Then we shall spring it and see who screams." He managed a smile, though his bones ached with exhaustion. "Besides, I have a more pressing concern."

"What is that?"

"I have not slept in two days, and if I am to face Spanish spies and treacherous courtiers, I would prefer to do so with a clear head and a full stomach."

Cecily shook her head, but she was smiling—the first genuine smile he had seen from her since Dover. "You are impossible."

"I am merely practical. The Queen said so herself."

They mounted and rode for the river, where the *Swiftsure* waited, and the tide, and the war that would decide the fate of England.

Behind them, in the palace, a light flickered in the Queen's window. And in the shadows of the courtyard, a figure in a grey cloak watched them go, then turned and walked swiftly toward the city, where a pigeon coop waited on a rooftop, and a message that would reach Plymouth before any of them.