Chapter 3: The Lute's Lament

The carriage rattled over the cobbles of the Strand, its wheels grinding like Edmund’s thoughts. He had not spoken since leaving Walsingham’s grim house in Seething Lane, and Cecily had not pressed him. She sat opposite, her hands folded in her lap, watching him with that unnerving stillness he had come to associate with a hawk eyeing a field mouse.

“You are brooding,” she said at last.

“I am calculating,” Edmund corrected. “There is a difference. Brooding is for poets and the lovelorn. Calculating is what a man does when he has been pressed into the Queen’s service against his will and is trying to determine how many hours of sleep he will lose in the coming months.”

“And what is your calculation?”

He sighed, letting his head fall back against the worn leather of the seat. “Walsingham has set his trap. He means for me to be the bait, the lure, the unwitting messenger who will draw the plotters out into the open. He has given me the letter—that damned letter—and he expects me to deliver it into the hands of the very men who would see the Queen dead.”

“Then do not deliver it,” Cecily said simply.

Edmund opened one eye. “And if I do not, they will find another way. The conspiracy will continue, and I shall have accomplished nothing save the loss of my afternoon nap for no purpose whatsoever.”

“So you will play the game.”

“I will play the game,” he agreed, “but I will play it my way. Walsingham wishes me to be a fool who stumbles into danger. I intend to be a fool who stumbles into danger very, very slowly, and preferably from a comfortable distance.”

The carriage drew up before his townhouse in the Savoy, a modest but well-appointed residence that had belonged to his grandfather. Edmund stepped down, offering his hand to Cecily with an exaggerated flourish that made her lips twitch.

“You will stay for refreshment?” he asked. “I have a particularly fine Rhenish wine, and I find that plotting is best done with a cup in hand.”

“You find everything best done with a cup in hand,” she observed, but she followed him inside.

The house was quiet, his servants having long since learned that their master preferred silence to bustle. Edmund led Cecily into his study, where the afternoon sun slanted through the leaded glass, illuminating the dust motes that danced above his lute. He poured two goblets of wine, then settled into his favourite chair, the one positioned to catch the light without being so close to the window that a passerby might see him dozing.

“The letter,” Cecily said, holding out her hand.

Edmund produced it from his doublet, a folded sheet sealed with a cipher he had not yet broken. He handed it over without ceremony. “I have been staring at it for an hour. The cipher is not one I know.”

Cecily studied the page, her brow furrowing. “It is a substitution cipher, but not a simple one. The symbols repeat too often to be letters.” She traced a finger along the line. “It may be a code within a code. A letter written in cipher, then encoded again.”

“Walsingham said as much. He has men who spend their lives on such puzzles.” Edmund took a long draught of wine. “He also said that the letter was meant for Mary’s household, but that it was intercepted by one of his agents before it could be delivered. He wants me to ensure it reaches its intended recipients—only after I have first learned its contents.”

“And how do you intend to do that?”

Edmund smiled, a slow, lazy smile that did not quite reach his eyes. “I intend to ask a very clever man who owes me a favour. He is a cryptographer, a former student of John Dee, and he has a weakness for lute music. I shall play for him, and he shall solve my puzzle in exchange.”

“And if he cannot?”

“Then I shall play badly, and he will solve it out of sheer desperation to be rid of me.”

Cecily laughed, a sound that was both warm and sharp. “You are a rogue, Lord Morland.”

“I am an earl,” he corrected, “and rogues are far more common. I prefer distinction.”

He rose, crossing to the window. Outside, the street was quiet, the usual bustle of merchants and servants muted by the heat of the afternoon. He could see the spire of St. Paul’s in the distance, and beyond it, the river, glittering like a serpent of silver.

“There is something else,” he said, his voice dropping. “Walsingham spoke of the Queen’s mood. She is restless, suspicious. The plots against her are not mere whispers; they are a chorus. And he fears that the next attempt will not come from the usual quarters—not from the Catholic gentry or the foreign agents, but from within her own court.”

Cecily rose, coming to stand beside him. “You mean Essex.”

“I mean ambition,” Edmund said heavily. “The Earl of Essex is young, handsome, and beloved of the people. He has the Queen’s ear, and he believes himself her equal. That is a dangerous combination in any man, but in one with his temper and his pride, it is a powder keg.”

“And you are to watch him?”

“I am to do nothing of the sort,” Edmund said, turning to face her. “I am to be seen as a fool, a dilettante, a man so absorbed in his own comforts that he would never notice a conspiracy if it bit him on the nose. I am to be the last person anyone would suspect of being Walsingham’s agent.”

“And that is why you are perfect for the task,” Cecily said quietly. “Because you are, in truth, exactly what you appear to be—a lazy, self-indulgent earl—and yet you are also something more.”

Edmund met her gaze. “And what am I more?”

She smiled, a glint of something like admiration in her eyes. “You are the man who saves the kingdom while pretending to nap. That is a rare thing indeed.”

He was about to reply when a sharp knock came at the door. A servant entered, bearing a sealed dispatch on a silver tray. Edmund broke the seal, scanning the contents, and felt the blood drain from his face.

“What is it?” Cecily asked.

He looked up, his voice flat. “The letter I was given was a copy. The original—the one meant for Mary—has vanished from Walsingham’s own strongbox. Someone has taken it, and Walsingham suspects that someone is close to the Queen.”

He let the dispatch fall to the floor. “It seems, Lady Cecily, that my nap will have to wait a great deal longer than I had hoped.”