Read Chapter 30: The Downfall

The Queen’s chamber stank of smoke and rage. Howard stood at the centre of it, his voice a blade that cut through the murmuring courtiers. “Your Majesty, this boy is the traitor. He has fed French gold into your own household. I have watched him weave his lies since the moment he set foot in London.”

Mary’s eyes, hard as flint, found Thomas. “You brought me a poisoned book, boy. And now you bring me accusations against my most trusted lord.” Her fingers whitened on the arm of her chair. “Speak, and make it worth my while not to hang you.”

Thomas’s heart slammed against his ribs, but his hands stayed steady. He stepped forward and laid the leather ledger on the table before her. “Your Majesty, this is Lord Howard’s own account book. You will find entries dated the twelfth of March and the third of April—payments to a man called Duval, the French ambassador’s secretary.” He flipped the pages. “Two hundred crowns for ‘ink services rendered.’ That ink, Your Majesty, was the poison meant for your prayer book.”

Howard laughed, cold and sharp. “A forged ledger. Anyone can buy a clerk to scribble fiction.”

“Then explain this.” Thomas drew out the letters, still creased from his sleepless nights, and set them beside the ledger. “These were intercepted by Secretary Cecil’s men. They are written in a cipher known only to my father and myself—a cipher my father taught to no one else in England. The hand is trained. The style is courtly. And the subject is your plot to place Lady Jane Grey upon the throne your brother left to you.”

The murmuring died. A lady near the window let out a small, strangled breath.

Howard’s face did not so much as twitch. “The boy is mad. His father was a traitor who fled the realm. He has inherited the family disease.”

Thomas reached into his doublet and drew out the ruby necklace. The stones caught the candlelight, blood-red and bloated. “You know this necklace, my lord. You gave it to your couriers so they could pass your meeting rings unchallenged. I wore it into your own gathering three nights past. I heard you tell your man to see the Queen’s prayer book delivered before matins.”

Howard’s jaw tightened. “That necklace is a woman’s trinket. I have never—“

“Then why does it bear your crest?” Thomas turned it over in his palm. On the clasp, tiny and precise, was the Howard lion rampant. “I found it in the sleeve of your own messenger. She did not know what she carried. You used her blindness as you used her loyalty.”

The Queen rose. The scrape of her chair was loud as a drawn sword. “Howard.” Her voice was low. “Is this true?”

For a heartbeat, Howard’s composure cracked. His eyes darted to the door, to the guards flanking it, to the window. Then he straightened. “Your Majesty, I have served your family since before this boy was born. If you will take the word of a printer’s apprentice over a lord of England, then England is lost already.”

Thomas stepped closer. He was aware of his own breathing, of the sweat on his neck, of the weight of his father’s memory pressing on his chest. “My lord, I have one thing more.” He pulled the final sheet from his belt—the letter addressed to Lady Jane Grey. “This is written in the same cipher, and it names you as the architect of her claim. It was intercepted in the hands of a servant bound for her household. If you are innocent, my lord, let Secretary Cecil’s cryptographers examine it. If you are innocent, you will be cleared within the week.”

The silence stretched. Howard’s hand drifted to his sword.

The Queen’s voice cut through. “Guards.”

Two men stepped forward. Howard’s face went grey. He opened his mouth, but no words came.

“Take him,” Mary said. “To the Tower. Let him cool his treason in stone.”

As they dragged him past, Howard’s eyes met Thomas’s. There was no rage in them, only a flat, knowing coldness. “Your father sends his regards,” he whispered. “Wherever he is hiding.”

The doors slammed shut.

Mary turned to Thomas. For a long moment she studied him—the ink-stained fingers, the plain doublet, the youth of his face. Then she said, “Kneel.”

He knelt. She drew her own sword, rested it on his shoulder.

“Rise, Sir Thomas Finch, royal cryptographer. You have saved my life, and you have shown me the shape of the snake in my own garden. You will serve me, and I will not forget.”

The words rang in his ears. Sir Thomas. He rose, legs unsteady, and bowed.

But as the court applauded and the Queen smiled, he could not shake the echo of Howard’s last whisper. *Your father sends his regards.*

Wherever he was hiding.

Thomas’s hand closed on the letter in his pocket. Whoever had trained the poet of those ciphers, whoever had written his mother’s name as the key—they were still out there. And now they knew he was watching.