Chapter 12: The Whole Board

The household prayers in the chapel always ran to full length when the Bishop came to Hampton Court. Margot knelt through the invocations and responses with the other ladies-in-waiting, conscious of the press of bodies, the smell of flowers and beeswax, the particular exhaustion of devotion performed in public. When the Bishop's blessing came at last, she rose with relief and moved through the crowded exit toward the corridor.

Francis had sent word by a boy in the kitchens an hour before. Library. After the prayers. After the household settled.

She did not go directly. She changed from her formal gown into a simpler dress that would not announce her if she passed a servant. She waited in her chamber until the corridors had quieted, until the candles in the passages had burned lower. Only then did she make her way down the dark stairs toward the back of the palace.

The library door was unlocked. She slipped through into candlelight.

Francis was there, seated in the small reading room at the end of the shelves, with a single candle set on the table between two high-backed chairs. The books around them seemed to absorb the light, the spines dark and indistinct. He stood when she entered, not speaking, waiting for her to close the door and move to the chair across from him.

He had aged since they had last been alone. Or perhaps she had never looked at him properly before. In the candlelight, the lines around his eyes seemed deeper, the particular tension he carried showing in the set of his shoulders.

"You sent the letter," he said without preamble. Not a question.

"Yes."

"And you did not tell me."

"You instructed me not to use channels except the ones you provided."

"That is not what I meant, and you know it." He sat down again, and she sat across from him. "You took a considerable risk."

"I took the risk you were taking every time you asked me to copy something, remember something, observe something. Why would this risk be different?"

He closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them again, he looked at her with something like resignation.

"Because now they know," he said quietly. "And because what I am about to tell you means you need to understand exactly what they know."

She waited.

"Lord Alderton," he began, and the name meant nothing to her until he continued. "The gentleman who came through the audience chamber three weeks ago. The one with the jeweled rings."

She remembered him now, dimly. A courtier of middling consequence, the kind of man who had always existed in palaces, unremarkable.

"He is English," Francis said. "Which is to say, he was born English, raised English, and by every appearance is a loyal subject. But he is also the primary asset the French Catholic network has been cultivating in this country for the better part of a year. He has access to courtiers, to servants, to information that flows from one hand to another in the ordinary course of Hampton Court life. And he passes that information across the Channel through a network of merchants and priests and several ladies-in-waiting who do not understand what they are carrying."

"Cecily," Margot said.

"Among others, yes. She has been sending packets through her brother for nearly eight months. She believes she is sending love letters."

The knowledge pressed cold through her. Cecily, who made her laugh, who had asked her to embroider a cuff together just two weeks past. Cecily, whose brother had come to court, whose face had brightened at the sight of him.

"She is not culpable," Francis said, watching her. "She must never know. The moment she understands, she becomes either a threat or leverage, and neither is acceptable."

"What has been sent?"

"Court movements. The queen's preferences. The names of those who have her favor. The timing of diplomatic visits. Nothing classified in itself, but the accumulated picture allows the French to anticipate decisions, to move pieces before the board shows them. And there have been two operations deliberately designed to destabilize this court."

He leaned back, and in the candlelight, his face became part shadow.

"Six months ago, a letter arrived for the Countess of Norfolk purporting to come from her son in France. It contained news of her estate, requests for money, and one other element: an instruction to speak with particular courtiers about the advisability of Elizabeth negotiating with Catholic powers in a certain way. The letter was meant to draw her into conspiracy, whether she realized it or not."

"The forged letter," Margot said. "That was one of them."

"Yes. You stopped that one. There was another, earlier, aimed at a minor ambassador's wife. She believed she was receiving intelligence about her husband's conduct from a sympathetic source. The intention was to create dissension in the marriage, to provoke a confrontation that would compromise his standing and his usefulness to the Crown."

"And the network accomplished that?"

"It did. He was recalled. His replacement is less effective. It was a small victory for them, but victories accumulate."

Margot tried to hold the shape of it in her mind. The board. The pieces moving. The game that had been happening beneath the visible surface of the court, in the quiet moments between ceremonies, in the hands of ladies-in-waiting and merchant brothers.

"Why are you telling me this?" she asked.

"Because your name appears in an intercepted communication from the French network." He said it plainly, watching her face. "It was encoded, but we have the key. Someone has identified you as the likely source of the intelligence that prevented the second operation from proceeding more fully. Someone knows that you have access to the intelligence chief of England. Someone has recommended that you be approached or, failing that, that you be discredited."

She heard the words. She understood them. And in that understanding, she felt the presence of danger as an almost physical thing, the way she might feel the presence of someone standing very close to her in a dark room.

"You should withdraw," Francis said quietly. "You should return to being only what you appear to be. A lady-in-waiting. A young woman of good family with good prospects. You could be married off within the year, removed from court, placed safely in some country house where the network cannot reach you."

She looked at him across the single candle. Behind him, the books seemed to lean forward, as if listening.

"No," she said.

"You do not understand the risk."

"I understand perfectly. I know the board now, Francis. That is not a reason to leave it."

He did not move. He did not argue. He sat with her refusal the way one sits with a held breath, as if she had said something that changed the shape of the room.