Chapter 74: The Pigeon's Flight

The *Swiftsure* cut through the grey chop of the Thames with the tide behind her, her oars biting in steady rhythm. Edmund stood at the stern, watching the Tower dwindle to a smudge of smoke and stone against a sky the colour of wet slate. The river smelled of tar and rot and the cold breath of the sea beyond Gravesend.

"You should sleep," Cecily said, coming to stand beside him. She had wrapped herself in a heavy cloak against the wind, her dark hair pulled back under a plain hood. In the dim light of the lantern swinging from the mast, she looked like any merchant's wife bound for the Low Countries. "You always think better when you've slept."

"I always think better when I'm not being shot at, drowned, or pursued by men with knives." Edmund rubbed his eyes. "Sleep is a luxury I have not enjoyed since the day I opened that cursed letter."

"You could have refused Walsingham."

"I could have refused to be born, too, and yet here I am."

Cecily smiled despite herself. She had been smiling more often since Dover—or perhaps it was only that Edmund had learned to read the small movements of her face, the way her mouth tightened when she was afraid and softened when she was not. He had known her now for less than a year, and yet he could not imagine navigating this labyrinth without her.

"The laundress's ledger," he said, returning to the matter at hand. "Blanche. Twenty years of patience. The woman who sleeps beside the Queen."

"You believe her."

"I believe the ledger. I believe the name written in a dead man's hand. What I do not believe is that a maid who vanished during Norfolk's fall has risen to the royal bedchamber without someone powerful arranging it."

Cecily was quiet for a moment. The oars creaked. Somewhere ahead, a bell buoy tolled in the fog. "You think she was placed there."

"I think she was planted. Twenty years ago, when Elizabeth was young and the Catholic cause still had teeth. A girl in the household of the Duke of Norfolk, trained to wait, to listen, to be invisible. And when Norfolk fell, she did not fall with him—she slipped through the cracks and into the Queen's own chamber."

"To what end? To kill her?"

"To be there when the moment came. To open a door, perhaps. To put poison in a posset. To signal a ship. We do not know, and that is the trouble. She has had twenty years to prepare, and we have perhaps days."

Edmund leaned against the rail and stared into the darkness. Plymouth was still a day's sail, perhaps more if the wind turned foul. Somewhere ahead of them, a pigeon was already flying, carrying word of their departure to the Falcon's master. The thought of it made his skin crawl.

"We need to identify her before we reach Plymouth," he said. "Someone in the Queen's household must know her. A maid who served with her, a groom who remembers her face. Walsingham said to ask the maids directly."

"Walsingham also said the Falcon has eyes everywhere."

"Then we must be quicker than his eyes."

They sailed through the night, past the lights of Gravesend and the dark marshes of the estuary, out into the open sea where the wind freshened and the *Swiftsure* began to pitch. Edmund retreated below to the small cabin he shared with Cecily, where a candle guttered in its tin holder and a map of the south coast was pinned to the bulkhead. He did not sleep. He sat with his back against the hull and let the motion of the ship rock him while his mind worked at the problem like a tongue worrying a broken tooth.

Blanche. The name was a blank. He had met the Queen's maids a dozen times at court, had smiled at them, had probably danced with one or two at some long-ago masque. They were a faceless crowd of women in white and silver, interchangeable as chess pieces. But one of them was not what she seemed. One of them had been waiting for twenty years.

At dawn, Edmund went on deck. The sea was a hard grey line beneath a sky of hammered pewter, and the coast of Sussex was a smudge of green to the north. Cecily stood at the bow, her cloak whipping in the wind.

"I have been thinking," she said without turning. "The woman beside the Queen. You said she was placed by Norfolk."

"I said I believed so."

"Then she was placed by someone who knew Norfolk. Someone who survived his fall. Someone who still has influence at court."

Edmund felt the cold weight of understanding settle in his chest. "You mean Hunsdon."

"I mean Hunsdon. The Queen's own cousin. The man who commanded her guard. If anyone could put a maid in the royal bedchamber and keep her there for twenty years, it was Henry Carey."

"But Hunsdon is dead. Or he fled. We do not know which."

"We know he was the traitor at the masque. We know he tried to put Mary on the throne. And we know he had a network of agents. Blanche could be his creature still, waiting for orders from a dead man—or from whoever inherited his plans."

Edmund gripped the rail. "The Falcon."

"Or the Falcon's master. Whoever that may be."

The words hung between them. The Falcon's ledger had revealed its true master was "the one who sleeps beside the Queen." Edmund had assumed it meant a lover, a confidant, someone close to Elizabeth's heart. But what if it meant something simpler? What if it meant the woman in her bedchamber, the one who was there every night, who had access to the Queen's most private moments?

"Blanche is the Falcon's master," he said slowly. "Not his servant. His master."

"It would explain why we could never find the puppet strings. They were in the Queen's own chamber."

Cecily turned to face him, and in the grey light of morning her eyes were hard as flint. "We cannot reach her from Plymouth. We cannot reach her from London. She is inside the one place we cannot enter without the Queen's invitation."

"Then we must earn an invitation," Edmund said. "Or we must find someone who already has one."

He thought of Lady Margaret, who had given them details of Cold—whatever Cold was—and who had access to the court. He thought of Walsingham, who was dying and desperate and might risk anything. He thought of the Queen herself, who had trusted him enough to send him to Plymouth, and who might trust him enough to listen.

But the Queen was surrounded by her maids, by women who dressed her and undressed her, who brought her food and took away her secrets. If one of them was a traitor, then Elizabeth had been sleeping beside her enemy for twenty years.

"Send word to Walsingham," Edmund said. "Tell him we have the name. Tell him to watch the Queen's maids. Watch them all, but watch Blanche most of all."

"And if the pigeon is intercepted?"

"Then we had better hope the Falcon already knows we are coming."

He turned back to the sea. Far to the south, a sail flickered on the horizon—a Spanish sail, perhaps, or a Dutch merchant, or something worse. The twentieth of August was coming, and the Armada with it, and somewhere in the Queen's own bedchamber a woman was waiting for the signal to open the door.

Edmund had never wanted to be a hero. He wanted his bed, his lute, his quiet afternoons. But the realm had other plans for him, and so did the woman beside him, and so did the Queen.

"Plymouth by nightfall," he said. "And then we find a way into the one place no man is permitted to go."

"Which is?"

"The Queen's bedchamber."

Cecily laughed—a sharp, surprised sound. "You are impossible."

"I am merely practical," Edmund said, but he did not smile. "Someone has to be."

The *Swiftsure* pressed on toward Plymouth, and behind her, unseen, a pigeon winged its way east, carrying a message that would reach London before them. In the palace, a woman with twenty years of patience waited for word. And in the shadows of the courtyard, a figure in a grey cloak smiled, and began to pack his bags for Plymouth.