Chapter 5: The Devil’s Arithmetic

The corridor was cold, despite the season, and Edmund’s boots echoed against the flagstones with a sound like the ticking of a clock—the one thing he loathed above all others. He had not been allowed to return to his chambers. Instead, Walsingham’s man, a thin ferret of a fellow named Barrow, had led him through a labyrinth of servants’ stairs and hidden doors until they emerged in a low-ceilinged room beneath the palace proper.

It smelled of ink, dust, and fear.

“You will wait here,” Barrow said, already retreating. “Sir Francis will see you when he is ready.”

“And when might that be?” Edmund asked, but the man was gone, leaving him alone with a single guttering candle and a stack of papers that looked distressingly thick.

He sighed, lowered himself onto a three-legged stool that wobbled ominously, and picked up the topmost document. It was a letter, written in a neat, feminine hand, and it was addressed to a merchant in Antwerp. A dull thing, full of shipping manifests and the price of wool. He was about to set it down when a word caught his eye—*Anthony*. Not the saint, not a servant. A code name. He had seen it in the intercepted letter he had so disastrously stumbled upon, the one meant for Mary Stuart. His fingers tightened on the paper.

“Oh, no,” he murmured. “I am not doing this. Not for all the gold in Spain.”

He dropped the letter as if it had burned him and began to pace the small room. Three steps one way, three steps back. The ceiling pressed down on him, and he felt the familiar ache behind his eyes that always preceded a headache. He needed sleep. He needed wine. He needed to be anywhere—anywhere at all—but here.

The door opened, and Walsingham entered like a winter draught.

He was a small man, spare of frame and severe of feature, with eyes that seemed to have seen every betrayal ever plotted and found them all wanting. He carried no papers, no sword, nothing but the quiet authority of a man who knew secrets worth more than armies.

“My lord Ashworth,” he said, as if they were meeting at a garden party. “I trust you have made yourself comfortable.”

“I have counted the stones in the wall,” Edmund replied. “There are four hundred and twelve. I intend to count them again, if you would be so good as to leave me in peace.”

Walsingham did not smile. He moved to the table, picked up the letter Edmund had discarded, and held it to the candlelight. “You have noticed the name. *Anthony*. Tell me what you know of it.”

“I know that I wish I had never seen it.”

“And yet you have. The letter you intercepted—the one meant for the Queen of Scots—it contained the same name. I have spent three weeks trying to break the cipher in which it was written. You solved it in an afternoon, between your hunting and your naps.”

Edmund winced. “I did not solve it. I merely… noticed a pattern. The numbers corresponded to a book of horas. It was on my shelf. A gift from my mother. It seemed obvious.”

“To you,” Walsingham said, with a thin, bloodless emphasis on the last word. “Not to the finest cryptographers in Christendom. So you will forgive me, my lord, if I do not permit you to return to your idleness just yet.”

Edmund sagged against the wall. “I am not a spy. I am a man who enjoys a quiet life. I have no taste for intrigue, no stomach for violence, and no desire whatsoever to die in a ditch with a Spanish dagger in my ribs.”

“Excellent,” Walsingham said. “Then you will not be tempted to do anything foolish. The men I employ who *enjoy* the work tend to die quickly. Their enthusiasm is a liability.”

He drew a second letter from his doublet and laid it on the table. This one was sealed with a heavy blob of wax, unbroken. “This arrived this morning, by way of a French courier who was found floating in the Thames. It is addressed to a gentleman in the household of the Spanish ambassador. I need to know what it says before the ambassador does.”

Edmund stared at the letter. It was a simple thing, cream-coloured vellum, a neat fold. And yet he felt as though it were a viper coiled on the table, waiting to strike.

“And if I refuse?”

Walsingham’s expression did not change, but something shifted in the air between them—a cold, sharpening edge. “Then I will inform the Queen that you are the gentleman who has been corresponding with the Spanish ambassador’s household.”

“You would not.”

“I would. I am a practical man, my lord. You have proven yourself useful. If you will not be useful to me, you will at least be useful to the realm as a scapegoat. The Queen is fond of you—she finds your laziness amusing. But she is not so fond of any man that she would shelter a traitor.”

Edmund felt the blood drain from his face. He had known, in the abstract, that Walsingham was ruthless. But to hear it spoken so plainly, so calmly, was like a physical blow.

“You have a strange way of recruiting talent,” he said at last.

“I have a strange way of keeping England safe,” Walsingham replied. “Now. The letter, if you please.”

Edmund took it. His hands were steady, which surprised him. Perhaps the shock had frozen his nerves. He broke the seal, unfolded the paper, and read.

It was a list. Names, dates, locations. A network of safe houses, stretching from London to the coast. And at the bottom, a single line in a different hand, smaller and more hurried:

*The Armada sails in the spring. The King expects the signal from the North.*

Edmund read it twice, then a third time, and felt a cold that had nothing to do with the stone walls settle into his bones.

“This is not a cipher,” he said. “It is plain as day. Whoever wrote it knew it would be intercepted.”

Walsingham took the letter from him, scanned it, and went very still. “Then it is a message meant to be found. A warning, or a trap.”

“Or both,” Edmund said, and for the first time, he felt a flicker of something other than dread. A curiosity, sharp and unwelcome. “If the Armada sails in the spring, then someone in England is preparing to light the beacon. And this list—these names—they are the ones who will carry the signal.”

Walsingham looked at him with renewed interest. “You see it, then. The shape of the thing.”

“I see that I am going to miss a great many naps,” Edmund said, and he sighed, the sound of a man accepting his fate. “What do you need me to do?”