Chapter 6: Who Sent Her

The message came through Catherine, who handed Margot a folded paper with a glance that suggested it ought to be burned rather than read. It was not sealed; there was no signature. The script was not Francis's own hand, which meant it had gone through a copyist, which meant the content was operational.

"Ten minutes. Upper gallery, midsummer procession."

That was all.

Margot folded the paper again and did burn it, crushing the ash into the hearth with the heel of her slipper. She had thirty minutes to reach the upper gallery without appearing to move with any particular intention. She had never managed this feat before. She managed it now.

The procession had not yet entered the gallery corridor when she found her position. The space was already crowded: courtiers and their attendants pressed along the length of the railing, all angled forward to watch. The Queen's midsummer procession was not the grand formal affair of spring; it was more intimate, a progress through the palace's interior chambers before the evening feast. Six musicians led, their pipes setting an insistent, bright pace. Behind them came the torch-bearers, though the summer light through the tall windows made the flames almost invisible by day.

Elizabeth came third, as she always did, in a gown of white damask that caught the light like water. The embroidery at her throat and cuffs was sewn with seed pearls, and they threw small stars onto the walls as she turned her head to acknowledge her courtiers. Her ladies followed in order of precedence, their gowns a strict palette: the reds and purples and golds that the Queen permitted.

Margot had pressed herself into the angle where the gallery's wall met the deep window embrasure. It was the kind of space that belonged to no one, from which she could see the procession without being obviously part of the crowd. The stone was cool through her silk. The crowd around her was talking in the low, constant murmur that happened when people had been quiet too long and were about to explode into chatter once the formal moment passed.

She did not sense him arrive. He was there, beside her, the way fog arrives in the evening. She did not turn her head.

"The French contact met with Alderton," Francis said. His voice carried nothing. A man might have been standing here for hours, watching the procession pass. "Thursday last, the Crown and Rose in Fenchurch Street. Mid-morning. They were there together for twenty minutes."

Margot kept her eyes on the musicians. The pipes were very loud in the enclosed space, echoing off the wooden beams above.

"You're certain it was Alderton?" she said.

"The description is firm. The timing is firm. It matters because until now Renaud and Alderton have had no direct connection that we can place."

The Queen was moving beneath them now, her ladies in a careful train, their pace measured to the pipes. It was very hot in the upper gallery. The air did not move well in the window embrasure, and there were perhaps thirty people pressed into a space designed for fifteen to watch comfortably.

"You need me to observe him," Margot said. It was not a question.

"For a week. Beginning today. Behavioral change, new associates, anything that suggests his communication channels have shifted. He's in constant attendance now that the Queen has chosen to remain in the city."

Someone in the crowd shifted, turning to look at something in the opposite direction. It was a small jostle, nothing violent. The crowd rearranged itself the way water moves around an obstacle. Margot was pushed a step closer to the window, toward Francis.

He was turning to steady someone who had stumbled against the railing.

His hand came to her arm—not her hand, her arm, just above the elbow where her sleeve was linen. The contact was light, steadying, the kind of thing a man might do to prevent a woman from falling. Heat, the weight of his palm through cloth. It lasted the time it took for the crowd to absorb the jostle and resettle. One beat. Two. The procession moved on, and her heart had gone arrhythmic, too fast and just off beat. She had not made any sound. She had not turned. His hand was gone before he withdrew it, if withdrawal implied a moment of lingering that did not occur.

The crowd continued to watch the Queen pass beneath them. The music continued. The heat continued.

"There is a pattern," Francis said, his voice absolutely level. "We believe he is being tested. A low-level communication to see if the intelligence reaches Elizabeth and if so, how. The French are deciding whether he is useful or compromised."

"If they decide he is compromised," Margot said, her voice steady in a way she was privately impressed by, "they will cut him off and start again with someone else. Which means I need to know within days, not weeks."

"Three days would be better. But I will not press you harder than the work allows."

The Queen was almost clear of the gallery now, her train of ladies following in their prescribed order. The pipes began to resolve the final phrase of their music. In another moment the formal part would end and the crowd would scatter.

"I will watch him," Margot said. "Starting with the evening feast. He'll be among the courtiers standing behind the Queen's table."

"He'll be changed," Francis said. "Men who have made a dangerous contact always are. They carry it in the shoulders. They eat differently. They cannot quite match the timing of normal conversation."

She turned her head just far enough to look at him. He was not looking at her. He was watching the procession pass with the attention of a man whose job it was to observe everything that happened in any room. His face was composed. The line of his jaw was composed. There was nothing in his bearing that suggested he had just placed his hand on her arm or that he was aware he had done so.

She turned back to the procession.

"I know what changed men look like," she said.

"I know you do," he said, and there was something in that she could not parse. Something closer to recognition—not warmth, not quite. "Which is why you'll see it. The moment you do, send word. It can go through Catherine."

The Queen had passed entirely beneath them. The musicians were moving on toward the next corridor. The torch-bearers were following. The crowd at the railing was already beginning to disperse, turning to one another, releasing the energy they had been holding.

Francis was already moving, angling back toward the broader gallery, becoming once again a man who had been watching a procession. By the time Margot turned to track him, he was gone. She stood alone in the embrasure, her arm where his hand had been still carrying the impression of warmth through linen, and watched the crowd redistribute itself.

She had work to do.