The Traitor's Blade, Kevin Sands [fiction novels to read txt] 📗

“Who gave you permission to take these horses?” the man said.

I didn’t recognize him; he hadn’t been here the previous times we’d visited the stables. But none of the grooms had challenged us before. Was it because he hadn’t seen us come from the palace? Or had something else gone wrong at Whitehall?

“Lord Ashcombe said we could use them,” I explained.

“Is that so? And I suppose King Charles tucks you into bed each night?”

My blood grew hot, and I made to retort before Tom put a calming hand on my arm. I clamped my mouth shut.

“That’s right,” the groom said. “Now clear out of my yard.”

Tom led me away before I said anything I might regret. “It’s not worth the trouble,” he said.

“We didn’t do anything wrong,” I said hotly, but Tom was right. We had much more important things to worry about.

Sally joined us, puzzled. “What was all that about?”

“Someone self-important, throwing his weight around,” I said, and not quietly.

Firmly, Tom pushed me farther from the stalls. “Did you find Lords Walsingham and Ashcombe?”

“Walsingham’s at Guildhall,” Sally said. Guildhall was the seat of London’s government, where the offices for the Lord Mayor and the magistrates were. “And Lord Ashcombe left with His Majesty.”

“They’re gone?” I said, not sure if I should be relieved or dismayed.

“Just after you two went to Saint Paul’s. Why? What’s happened?”

“The king’s still in danger.”

I told her about meeting the Templars and pulled the new letter from beneath my waistcoat. The seal was broken; I’d scanned the letter before hurrying back to Tom. Now I handed it over for them to read.

So the final act is played,

The final truth decrypted,

Still your master dies betrayed—

for every scene was scripted.

“ ‘The final act,’ ” Sally read, “and final truth. And… ‘your master dies betrayed’?”

“Do they mean Lord Walsingham?” Tom said.

“I think they’re talking about His Majesty,” I said. “I may be apprenticed to the spymaster, but our ultimate master is the king. And that’s who these plots are against.”

It was the only thing that made sense. Poisoning the party wouldn’t have killed Lord Walsingham; he was never going. And then there was the second line of the riddle.

Still your master dies betrayed.

In other words: Everything we’d done to protect the king was still going to fail. I shook my head. The spymaster had been right; this wasn’t over.

Sally studied the diagram on the paper. “What’s this, then?”

Underneath the riddle was a long and winding arrow, corners jagged as it turned this way and that. The arrow started beside a sketch of a horse. It continued, bending its way past a crown, until it reached an X. Beside the X was a tree, with a tiny arrow pointing to where the trunk grew from the ground.

The big arrow then continued past it, changing directions again, until it ended at a giant circle, inked three times around. Beside the circle was the drawing of a scroll, rolled up and tied with ribbon.

“Looks like a treasure map,” Tom said.

I thought so, too. But I doubted the end held any treasure. “A path to follow, maybe?”

“To the king?” Sally suggested. “That’s what the crown could mean.”

There was logic in that. I followed the arrow. “If up is north, then maybe it means… the king rides from Whitehall? If that’s what this horse is? He goes southwest… and that is the direction of Hampton Court. So is this arrow supposed to be the road?”

“Does the road bend like that?”

I didn’t think so.

“If it is the king’s route,” Tom said, “why does it go past the crown? There’s an X over here, by the tree, but there’s nothing where the crown is.”

“Maybe that’s supposed to indicate the king is going that way, not that he’s there.” Though that didn’t seem right to me.

“I don’t understand how anyone’s supposed to follow all these twists and turns anyway,” Tom said. “This looks like a path through a maze. But without the maze.”

A maze? I thought.

My mind began to race.

A maze, Master Benedict said, and nodded.

That was it.

CHAPTER

43

“YOU’VE DONE IT.” I GRABBED Tom’s arm and shook him. “You’ve done it again.”

“Naturally,” he said proudly. “Er… what did I do?”

“This diagram. It is for a maze.”

“Which one?” Sally said.

“The same one we’ve been complaining about since we got here.” I reached under my apothecary sash and pulled out the map that Dobson, the old servant, had given us. “It’s Whitehall. The arrow is a path through the palace.”

“Look,” I said. “Over here, on the right side, is where we are now. The stables. And look at the letter—there’s a drawing of a horse. If you follow the arrow…” I traced a route along the map. “Remember what Dobson said? The numbers on the map show who’s lodged where. Number 1 belongs to the king—and that’s where the crown is.”

Tom peered at it. “It does look like that.”

“It is. In fact—come on.” I rushed over to where a torch was burning in a sconce on the wall. Carefully, I laid the page with the arrow on top of the map. Then I held the whole thing up to the flame.

The light shone a soft orange through the pages. Held this way, the ink was visible on both of them.

And the arrow traced a route through the palace exactly.

“That’s it,” Sally said, amazed. “The horse is right on the stables… the crown is on the king’s rooms.”

“So we follow it, then?” Tom said.

“We do,” I said. “And see what we find.”

It was a long and convoluted route. I had a mind to simply run to where the tree was marked, but I thought there might be something to see along the way. So we hurried, as fast as we dared, while still keeping our eyes peeled.

We started where the arrow started, back at the stables. When the groom spotted us again, he stormed toward us, fists clenched. We got out of there