Chapter 79: The Codebreaker's Confession

The hoofbeats faded southward, swallowed by the darkness beyond the window. Edmund did not move. He stood with one hand resting on the back of a chair, the other loose at his side, and regarded Thomas Phelippes with the expression of a man who had been expecting bad weather and found a hurricane instead.

"You have a talent for entrances," Edmund said. "First the Tower, then the river, now my doorstep. I begin to think you enjoy the theatre of it."

Phelippes stepped inside, closing the door with a soft click. He was a small man, unremarkable in every particular—brown hair, brown eyes, the sort of face one forgot between one meeting and the next. That was his gift, Edmund supposed. A man who could not be remembered could go anywhere.

"I enjoy very little these days," Phelippes said. "But I find that dramatic timing is often the only advantage left to a man in my position."

"And what position is that?"

"The position of a man who has been working for two masters and is no longer certain which one will kill him first."

Cecily had not moved from her place by the window. Her hand rested on the sill, casual enough, but Edmund knew she had a small pistol concealed in the folds of her skirt. He had seen her load it that morning.

"Sit down," Edmund said. "You look like a man who has been riding hard."

"I have. From Greenwich. I left as soon as I learned what was in the satchel."

Edmund and Cecily exchanged a glance. The satchel. The list with Essex's name. The ledger that marked Edmund for delivery on the twentieth of August.

"You knew about the satchel," Cecily said. It was not a question.

"I knew someone would find it. I did not know it would be you." Phelippes lowered himself into a chair, and for the first time Edmund saw the exhaustion beneath the man's careful composure. His hands trembled slightly as he rested them on his knees. "I have been trying to contain this for months. Ever since I realised what was happening."

"Which is?"

Phelippes looked up. His eyes were the colour of weak tea, and in them Edmund saw something he had not expected: fear.

"The Falcon is not a man," Phelippes said. "It is a position. A role, passed from one servant to another, like a cloak. The man you saw in the Tower, the scarred one—he was the Falcon for a time. But he was not the first, and he will not be the last."

Edmund felt the floor shift beneath him. He had spent weeks chasing a shadow, and now the shadow was telling him it had never been the shape he thought.

"Then who holds the cloak now?"

"I don't know. That is the truth, my lord, whether you believe it or not. The Falcon communicates through intermediaries, through dead drops, through ciphers I have spent years trying to break. I know only that the Falcon's master is someone close to the Queen—someone who sleeps beside her, as the ledger said."

"Blanche," Cecily said quietly.

Phelippes nodded. "Blanche is the key. She has been in the bedchamber for twenty years, waiting. She was placed there by Norfolk, before his fall, and she has outlasted every plot since. She is the one who passes information to the Falcon's master. She is the one who knows the name."

"Then why not seize her?" Edmund asked. "Why not take her to the Tower and put her to the question?"

Phelippes laughed, a dry, humourless sound. "Because she is the Queen's favourite maid. Because she has been with Her Majesty for two decades. Because if you accuse her without proof, the Queen will have your head, and then mine, and then anyone else who dared to suggest such a thing. Blanche is untouchable—unless you catch her in the act."

"Which is why you came to me," Edmund said slowly. "You cannot move against her yourself. You need someone outside the web."

"I need someone the Falcon does not suspect. Someone who has already been marked for death, so that death will not seem remarkable when it comes." Phelippes met his eyes. "I am sorry, my lord. I did not choose you. But you were chosen."

The words hung in the air like smoke. Edmund thought of his uncle, Thomas Ashworth, struck down in a chapel. He thought of the dead man's ledger, his own name written in a careful hand. He thought of the twentieth of August, less than a week away.

"Who chose me?" he asked.

Phelippes was silent for a long moment. Then he reached inside his doublet and drew out a folded paper, sealed with a crest Edmund did not recognise—a hawk, wings spread, talons extended.

"I found this in the satchel," Phelippes said. "I did not show it to Walsingham. I did not show it to anyone. Because I did not know what it meant, and I feared what it might mean."

Edmund took the paper. The seal cracked under his thumb. Inside, in a neat, precise hand, was a single sentence.

*The Earl of Morland will serve our purpose, whether he wills it or not, for he is his father's son.*

Edmund read it twice. The words did not change. The room seemed very cold.

"My father died at sea," he said. "When I was a boy. His ship went down off the coast of France."

"Did it?"

Edmund looked up sharply. Phelippes's face was unreadable.

"What are you saying?"

"I am saying that the Falcon's master knows something about your father that you do not. I am saying that your name was on that list for a reason. And I am saying that if we do not find out what that reason is before the twentieth of August, it will not matter whose side we are on. The Armada will come, and England will fall, and the Queen will die, and all of this—" he gestured vaguely at the room, at the night beyond the window, at the whole tangled mess of it— "will have been for nothing."

Cecily moved from the window. She stood beside Edmund, close enough that he could feel the warmth of her shoulder near his.

"You said you have been trying to contain this," she said. "What else have you contained? What else have you not told Walsingham?"

Phelippes hesitated. It was the first crack in his composure, and Edmund saw it.

"There is a ship," Phelippes said. "A pinnace, fast and small, waiting at Gravesend. It sails for Spain on the eighteenth. On board is a man who knows the Falcon's true name—the name of the master, not the servant. I have been trying to reach him for weeks, but the Falcon's people are everywhere. I cannot get to the ship without being seen."

"But I can," Edmund said.

"You can. You are already marked for death, my lord. The Falcon will not expect you to run toward the danger. He will expect you to flee."

Edmund thought of his bed. His warm, soft, empty bed at Morland, where no one was trying to kill him. He thought of the lute he had not touched in weeks. He thought of the nap he had been promising himself since Dover.

"Very well," he said. "Gravesend."

Phelippes rose. "I will send word to the ship. A man will meet you at the Falcon Tavern on the sixteenth. Ask for the codebreaker's friend."

He moved to the door, then paused.

"My lord. One more thing. The woman beside the Queen—Blanche—she has a sister. A sister who serves in the household of the Earl of Essex."

Edmund felt the floor tilt again.

"Essex," he said.

"Essex," Phelippes repeated. "And if the Falcon's master is who I think it is, then the twentieth of August is not the end of the plot. It is only the beginning."

He opened the door and stepped out into the dark. A moment later, the sound of his horse faded into the night.

Edmund stood in the silence, the paper still in his hand, and felt the weight of his father's name pressing down on him like a stone.

"Edmund," Cecily said softly.

He turned to her. Her face was pale, but her eyes were steady.

"We go to Gravesend," she said. "And then we find out what your father did."

He nodded. Outside, the wind had turned, blowing from the south. Toward the coast. Toward Spain. Toward the twentieth of August.

And somewhere in the dark, a hawk was flying.