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

friends. Let’s drink the night away.”

Lord Ashcombe and Charles turned to leave. Time for me to sneak out of here, too.

Walsingham stopped us all. “With your permission, sire, I’ll join you in a moment. There is a matter I must attend to.”

“Oh? Very well. Hurry, then.”

The king left with Lord Ashcombe. Walsingham waited until they’d disappeared. Then he spoke. It was the first time I’d ever heard him raise his voice above a murmur.

“Loyalty like that is so rare.” His words carried through the garden. “Don’t you think?”

I froze.

The spymaster waited, his back to me.

Finally, sheepishly, I stood. “Yes, my lord.”

He turned and looked up. “I dislike speaking this way.”

I went downstairs, burning red. “Sorry, my lord.”

“For what?” Walsingham said.

“Well… for spying on you. And His Majesty.”

“That’s your job.”

“I thought it was to spy on other people.”

He shrugged. “Do as you need. If there is trouble, I will sort it out.”

The man continued to surprise me. But there was something else I was sorry for. Something that left me deeply ashamed.

“I failed you,” I said.

“How?”

“The king was nearly killed because of me. I was duped.”

“So were we all. As I told you before, your job is to keep us informed. The decision—the responsibility—is ours.”

“But—”

“Your efforts to accept blame are tedious,” the spymaster said, and that was the end of that. “On to other matters. I have examined Ardrey’s corpse. I agree with your conclusion. He was bound at the time of the explosion. So we may be certain: A traitor still walks among us.”

“What about the groom who tried to stop me?” I said.

“He confesses to being a Covenanter. He denies knowledge of other conspirators. He claims instructions came only by letter.”

“Do you believe him?”

“He was questioned most vigorously. Could he withstand such pressure?” Walsingham shrugged. “There are men who can. I think, however, he is not one of them. I consider his statements credible. He is a traitor, but not the traitor.”

“Do you know who that is?” I said.

“No. Do you?”

That took me aback a little. “In the palace? I’m sorry, my lord, I don’t know enough people here to say.”

“It appears none of us do. I like these flowers.”

He stared down at some early blooming hyacinths.

I didn’t think I’d ever get used to the spymaster’s ways. “Er… yes, my lord. I also… I wanted to talk to you about the messages I was sent. With the puzzles.”

He nodded. “So we should.”

“I think… I think they were sent by the Raven.”

“I thought the Raven was dead.”

His words were less a question, more a challenge for me to explain.

“Rémi is dead,” I said. “Simon Chastellain is certain of that. But we never knew for a fact that the Raven was Rémi. It could have been someone else pulling the strings.”

“That is possibility, not proof.”

“It explains the attack on Simon, though. Why would Covenanters care about a French vicomte? We explained it away as him being a friend of mine, but really, that was just us twisting the evidence to fit our theory.” Which was exactly what Walsingham had warned me not to do. “It had to be the Raven who sent that assassin. Only he had a grudge against both of us.”

“A stronger possibility,” the spymaster agreed. “Yet still not proof.”

Perhaps not—but this was. “Only the Raven could have sent me the letters.”

Walsingham was still staring at the hyacinths. “Justify your claim.”

“The riddles, the puzzles,” I said. “They weren’t just sent to me. They were about me. The first one told me to remember Paris. The second was based on Alberti’s disk, which Master Benedict had taught me to use. The third required me to recognize that ‘swan’ meant arsenic, and find its symbol—again, things Master Benedict taught me as an apothecary and alchemist. And the fourth… it was handed to me by people in costume, telling the story of what’s happened to me since my master died. The archangel, the plague doctor, the—” I left out the Templar. “The White Lady.

“They had to know me,” I continued, “and know my master, too. When I was in Paris, at Maison Chastellain, I spoke of what happened with the Cult of the Archangel and Melchior. Rémi heard it. And, of course, he knew of my hunt for the old Templar treasure, and the puzzles I’d found. If he told the Raven—the real Raven…

“What’s more, in the Raven’s letter to me, he said he knew Master Benedict, years ago. That my master had been a thorn in his side. Only the Raven could know all of my past.”

I’d thought the letters were being sent to me by the Templars. The riddles were just like the ones I’d found in Paris, so I’d made assumptions. Jumped to conclusions. Again. Even though I knew better.

In the end, it was all just trickery on the Raven’s part. He’d played me for a fool.

Walsingham considered what I’d said. “The White Lady lived in the wilds of Devonshire,” he noted. “How could the Raven know that?”

“I sent letters to Simon,” I said, “telling him about it. He never got them, which is why he came to London looking for me. We both assumed the letters had just been lost in this winter’s terrible storms.

“But what if they weren’t? What if the letters never arrived because they’d been intercepted?”

“By the Raven,” Walsingham said.

“Yes.”

He stood there, silent.

“I really think—”

The spymaster raised a hand. “Your logic is sound. I agree.”

I slumped in relief. I hadn’t realized just how badly I’d needed to be believed.

“There is another incident,” Walsingham said, “of which you are unaware. The attack on His Majesty was not the only event of yesterday.”

He finally turned away from the flowers. “Late last night,” he said, “while the party continued at Berkshire House, the vault in the secret passage was robbed.”

“What?” That didn’t make sense. “Sally didn’t say she collected the guards from underground.”

“She didn’t. Those soldiers died at their post. We found them shot in the back, with crossbow bolts.”

I was stunned. “How could this happen?”

“From what I’ve