Chapter 87: The Bell at St. Olave's

They rode into Gravesend with the wind at their backs and the smell of burning pitch in their nostrils, and Edmund knew before they reached the market cross that they were already too late.

The smoke was no longer a thin plume. It had thickened into a column that leaned eastward with the river breeze, greasy and dark against the twilight, and beneath it the bells of St. Olave's had begun to toll—not the slow, solemn peal for the dead, but a hurried, clattering rhythm, urgent as a heartbeat. Three strokes, a pause, three strokes again.

"A signal," Cecily said, reining in beside him. Her mare was lathered and blowing hard. "That is no call to prayer."

"No." Edmund swung down from the saddle, his legs unsteady after the long gallop. His boots struck the cobbles and he stood a moment, breathing, listening. The town had emptied into the street. Fishermen and watermen, a smith with his hammer still in his fist, women clutching children to their skirts—all of them staring up at the hill, at the church, at the smoke.

"Three and three," he murmured. "The twentieth of August. They are telling the coast."

A man in a leather apron hurried past, and Edmund caught his arm. "You there. Who gave the order to ring?"

The man's face was slack with fear. "A rider, my lord. Came an hour since. Said it was the Queen's business, that we was to ring the bell and light the beacon above the church, and not to question."

"What manner of rider?"

"Grey cloak. Spoke soft. Had a scar here." The man touched his own cheek, and Edmund felt the cold settle in his chest.

The Falcon had not followed them to stop them. He had ridden ahead to make certain the signal was lit before they could reach it.

"Where is the beacon?" Edmund asked.

"On the hill, behind the church. Old widow Mabbot's field. They've piled the faggots there since spring, ready for the Spanish."

"Thank you. Go home. Bar your door."

The man needed no second telling. He vanished into the crowd, and Edmund turned to Cecily, who had dismounted and stood with her hand on her mare's neck, watching him with those grey eyes that missed nothing.

"He meant us to chase him," she said. "All the way from Plymouth. He wanted us running behind him, not ahead."

"Aye." Edmund looked up at the hill. "He has been ahead of us at every turn. But he has made one error."

"What error?"

"He lit the fire before the Armada is sighted." Edmund began to walk, fast, toward the lane that led up the hill. "The signal is meant to call the fleet to readiness, not to battle. If the beacons burn tonight through all the south coast, every captain from Dover to Falmouth will put to sea expecting the Spaniards at dawn. They will scatter, they will exhaust themselves, and when the Armada truly comes—"

"It will find empty harbours and spent ships."

"Exactly."

They left the horses with a stable boy and climbed the path on foot. The lane was narrow and steep, walled with flint and overhung with elder, and the smoke grew thicker with every step. Edmund's lungs burned, but he did not slow. Behind him Cecily kept pace, her skirts gathered in one hand, her other hand resting on the hilt of the little dagger she carried beneath her mantle.

They came out into the open field behind the church, and there it was: a great pyramid of faggots and tarry rope, twenty feet high, roaring with flame. Two men stood beside it with long poles, feeding the fire, their faces orange in the glow. A third stood apart, a grey cloak hanging loose from his shoulders, his black horse cropping grass at the field's edge.

The Falcon turned as they approached. He was smiling.

"My lord of Morland," he said. "You are punctual. I had not thought you would be."

"I am seldom punctual," Edmund said. "It is one of my few virtues. Punctuality implies enthusiasm."

"Yet here you are."

"Here I am." Edmund stopped ten paces from the fire, close enough that the heat pressed against his face like a hand. The two men with poles had paused, watching him. "Call off your men and put out the fire."

The Falcon laughed. It was a pleasant sound, almost warm. "Why would I do that? The beacons are burning from Kent to Cornwall by now. Your Queen's navy will be at sea before midnight, chasing shadows. And when the Duke of Medina Sidonia sails up the Channel two weeks hence, he will find the English fleet scattered like chaff, and the road to London open."

"You are premature," Edmund said. "The Armada has not sailed."

"Not yet. But it will. And when it does, it will find England blind and deaf." The Falcon tilted his head, studying him. "You have cost me a great deal, my lord. Thomas Phelippes. The Grey Lady. My man in the Tower. I have been patient for twenty years, and you have undone me in a season."

"Then perhaps you should have chosen a lazier opponent."

"I chose well enough. I chose a man who naps in the afternoon and composes lute music and has never in his life done anything of consequence." The Falcon's smile thinned. "I did not reckon on his father."

Edmund felt the words land like a blow. "My father is dead."

"Your father is a name on a list, my lord. As you are a name on a list. As we all are." The Falcon drew something from beneath his cloak—a folded paper, creased and soft with handling. "Do you know what this is? It is the original signal order. The one your father carried to Spain twenty years ago, when he was the Queen's man and I was his courier. He wrote the ciphers himself. Did you know that? He taught me the trade."

"You are lying."

"I am not. He was a great man, your father. The best cryptographer in England. And then he fell in love with the wrong woman, and he was lost." The Falcon held up the paper. "This is the key to every cipher we have used since. I have carried it for twenty years. And now I am going to burn it, with the rest of England's secrets, and there is nothing you can do to stop me."

He turned and flung the paper into the fire.

Edmund did not move. He watched the paper curl and blacken and catch, and he felt something inside him go very quiet and very still.

"Was that meant to be a revelation?" he asked.

The Falcon frowned. "It was the last proof of your father's treason."

"No. It was the last proof of yours." Edmund reached inside his doublet and drew out a folded paper of his own—Phelippes's confession, signed and witnessed. "I have the true account. Your name. Your master. Your twenty years of patience. And I have the Queen's ear."

The Falcon's hand moved toward his sword.

And then, from the lane behind them, came the sound of hooves—many hooves—and the jingle of bridles, and a voice that cut through the smoke like a blade.

"In the Queen's name! Surrender your weapons!"

Cecily had not been idle while Edmund talked. She had been watching the lane. And she had lit a lantern in the church tower window, the signal they had agreed upon at Plymouth.

The Falcon looked at the approaching riders, and then at Edmund, and his smile returned—not warm now, but sharp and cold.

"You think you have won," he said. "But the fire is lit, my lord. The beacons are burning. And the Armada is coming."

He whistled, and his black horse came to him, and he swung into the saddle in one fluid motion.

"Stop him!" Edmund shouted.

But the Falcon was already riding, straight through the fire, sparks scattering around him like a cloak of stars, and the last Edmund saw of him was the grey cloak streaming behind, and the smoke swallowing him whole.

The riders reined in around them—soldiers in the Queen's livery, and at their head a captain Edmund did not know, who looked from the blazing beacon to Edmund and back again.

"My lord of Morland?" he said. "We had word from London. You are to come at once."

"What word?"

The captain's face was grim. "The Earl of Essex has been arrested for treason. And the Queen asks for you."