Chapter 78: The Crimson Door's Keeper

The fog swallowed the bridge whole, and Edmund Ashworth, Earl of Morland, walked into its belly with the resignation of a man approaching the gallows. Beside him, Lady Cecily Thorne moved with the quiet purpose of a woman who had long since stopped expecting the world to make sense.

St. Olave's loomed ahead, its grey stones stained black by centuries of London smoke. The crimson door stood exactly where Mistress Alice had said it would—tucked between a chandler's shop and a goldsmith's, unremarkable but for its colour, which glistened in the fog like a fresh wound.

"Charming," Edmund murmured. "I was expecting something more ominous. Skulls, perhaps. A moat."

"The night is young." Cecily's hand found his sleeve. "Remember what we agreed. We knock. We ask for the woman who sleeps beside the Queen. If it is Blanche—"

"Then we have our traitor, and I may finally return to my bed." Edmund paused, considering. "Assuming we survive the evening."

"Assuming."

He knocked. Three times, as the laundress's ledger had instructed. The sound echoed strangely in the fog, as though the door led not to a house but to some vast, empty space beyond.

The door opened.

The woman who stood in the threshold was not old. That was Edmund's first thought—that she could not be much past forty, though her eyes held a weariness that spoke of decades. She wore a plain grey gown, no ornament, no jewels. Her hair was pulled back so tightly it seemed to stretch the skin of her temples. But it was her hands that drew Edmund's attention: they were still, perfectly still, folded before her like a corpse's at a funeral.

"Lord Morland," she said. It was not a question.

"You have the advantage of me."

"I have the advantage of everyone." She stepped aside. "Come in. The fog is unkind to those who linger."

The interior was sparser than Edmund had expected. A single room, a fire burning low, a table with two chairs. No sign of servants, no sign of wealth. But on the mantel sat a small wooden cross, worn smooth by handling.

"Blanche," Edmund said.

The woman closed the door behind them. "I have not been called that in twenty years. To the court, I am Mistress Anne. To the Queen, I am simply Anne, her most devoted servant." She smiled, and the smile did not reach her eyes. "To you, I imagine, I am something else entirely."

Cecily spoke for the first time. "You know why we are here."

"I know why Walsingham sent you. The question is why you came." Blanche—or Anne—moved to the fire, warming her hands. "You could have sent your evidence to the Privy Council. You could have had me arrested. Instead you knocked on my door like tradesmen seeking a delivery."

"I prefer to know whom I am destroying," Edmund said. "It saves time later."

"Does it?" She turned, and in the firelight her face seemed younger, crueller. "I have known the Queen since she was a girl. I have brushed her hair, warmed her sheets, tasted her food for poison. Twenty years of patience, my lord. Twenty years of waiting for a single moment."

"The Armada," Cecily said. "You mean to open the door."

"Not open. Leave ajar." Blanche's hands resumed their still posture. "On the twentieth of August, when the Spanish fleet is sighted, the Queen will sleep. She will sleep deeply, for I will have prepared her posset. And when she wakes, she will find her guard changed, her bedchamber occupied, and a Catholic queen upon the throne."

Edmund felt the weight of the words settle over him like a shroud. "Mary of Scots."

"Mary of Scots," Blanche repeated. "Who else? The Spanish will land at Dover. Hunsdon's men will open the gates. And I—I will do what I have always done. I will tend to my mistress. Only this time, my mistress will be the true queen."

"You speak as though you have already won," Cecily said quietly.

"I have won. You have walked into my parlour, Lady Cecily. You and your Earl." Blanche stepped forward, and something in her bearing changed—the stillness became readiness, the patience became hunger. "Did you think I would not know? Did you think Walsingham would not have warned me?"

Edmund's hand moved toward his sword. "Walsingham is your master?"

"Walsingham is a fool who believes loyalty can be bought." Blanche laughed, a sound like breaking glass. "I serve a higher power. I always have."

The door behind them opened.

Edmund turned, and the Falcon stepped into the room.

He was tall, grey-cloaked, his scarred face lit by the fire. In his hand was a blade, its point already red with something Edmund did not wish to identify.

"You," Edmund breathed.

"Me," the Falcon agreed. "I told you in Plymouth, my lord. I am not your enemy. I am merely the instrument of a greater will. And that will has decided you have become inconvenient."

Cecily's hand found Edmund's arm. "The window," she whispered. "Behind the fire."

Edmund saw it—small, high, but wide enough for a woman who had spent years climbing in and out of windows during her widowhood. He saw too that Blanche had moved to block it.

"Three against two," the Falcon observed. "And one of you is a woman."

"One of us is a woman," Cecily agreed. "And she is very, very angry."

What happened next was not elegant. Edmund lunged at the Falcon, not to kill but to distract, his blade meeting the other's in a clash of sparks. Behind him, Cecily seized the fire iron and swung it at Blanche's head. The older woman dodged, but the movement took her away from the window.

"Go!" Edmund shouted.

Cecily did not go. Instead she hurled the fire iron at the Falcon's legs. It struck his knee. He staggered, and Edmund drove his shoulder into the man's chest, sending them both crashing to the floor.

The Falcon's blade scraped across Edmund's ribs—a shallow cut, but enough to make him gasp. He rolled, came up against the wall, and saw Cecily grappling with Blanche on the floor, the older woman's hands around her throat.

"Cecily!"

She drove her elbow into Blanche's face. The grip loosened. Cecily scrambled up, seized the small wooden cross from the mantel, and brought it down on Blanche's head. The woman crumpled.

Edmund kicked the Falcon's blade aside and pressed his own to the man's throat.

"Who is your master?" he demanded. "Who is the one who sleeps beside the Queen?"

The Falcon smiled, blood on his teeth. "You still do not see. You have been looking at the wrong bed."

"What?"

"The one who sleeps beside the Queen does not sleep in her chamber. He sleeps in her confidence. He sleeps in her trust." The Falcon laughed, and the sound was wet, broken. "You have already met him, Lord Morland. You have dined with him. You have called him friend."

Edmund's mind raced—Essex? Walsingham? Leicester?

"His name," he said. "Give me his name."

The Falcon's eyes flickered past Edmund's shoulder. "Ask her," he whispered.

Edmund turned.

Cecily stood over Blanche's unconscious form, the cross still in her hand. Her face was pale, her breath ragged. But her eyes—her eyes were fixed on something beyond Edmund, something in the shadows by the door.

Edmund followed her gaze.

A figure stepped forward, emerging from the dark as though it had always been there. A man in a plain doublet, no insignia, no weapon drawn. His face was kind, his smile gentle, and Edmund knew him.

"Thomas Phelippes," he said.

The codebreaker inclined his head. "My lord. Lady Cecily. I apologise for the dramatics. But we have much to discuss, and very little time."

Behind him, through the open door, Edmund heard the sound of hooves on cobblestones—many hooves, moving fast, moving south.

Toward the coast.

Toward the twentieth of August.