Read Chapter 5: The Disappearing Clerk

The rain had followed him from Cheapside, a thin, miserable drizzle that slicked the cobbles and dampened the smell of the river to something rank and low. Thomas kept his hood up and his pace uneven, stopping when Robert stopped, moving when Robert moved, a shadow stitched to the clerk's heels.

Robert walked like a man who knew where he was going. He cut through the press of carts and fishwives without hesitation, turning south toward the docks, where the streets grew narrower and the signs above the doors less reputable. The lanterns here burned dim or not at all. Men watched from doorways with the flat, patient gaze of those who had learned not to ask questions.

Thomas's heart hammered against his ribs. He had followed Robert for nearly a mile now, through the morning market and down past the warehouses, and the clerk had not once looked back. That was either luck or carelessness. Thomas did not trust either.

Robert stopped outside a tavern called the Blind Goat. A sign creaked above the door, the painted goat missing one eye, the other a milky white. Robert glanced up and down the street, then pushed inside.

Thomas waited. He counted to fifty, then followed.

The tavern was low-ceilinged and thick with smoke. A fire spat in the hearth at the far end, and the few patrons hunched over their cups looked like men who had outlived their better judgment. Robert was already seated in a corner booth, his back to the wall, his hands flat on the table.

Across from him sat a man Thomas did not recognize. Foreign. French, perhaps, or Flemish. He wore a wool cap pulled low and a coat that had seen better days, but his boots were new. That was the tell. Men who dressed down for a secret meeting always forgot their boots.

Thomas slid onto a bench near the door, keeping his face turned toward the fire. He could not hear their words over the din, but he could watch. The foreigner spoke. Robert shook his head. The foreigner spoke again, and this time Robert reached into his doublet and produced a small leather purse.

The exchange was quick. The purse crossed the table, disappeared into the foreigner's coat. Then Robert stood, and Thomas looked away, studying the grain of the wood as though it held the secrets of the universe.

Robert walked past him without a glance. The door swung shut.

Thomas stayed seated. Through the window, he watched Robert's shape move up the street, growing smaller, turning a corner. Then he stood, crossed the room, and slid into the booth the clerk had just vacated.

The foreigner looked up. His eyes were pale, the color of winter ice. "You are not him."

"No," Thomas said. "He left something behind."

He reached under the table where Robert had been sitting. His fingers found it immediately—the purse, abandoned in the shadows. Robert had taken the foreigner's payment and left the purse behind. Or perhaps it had fallen. Thomas did not care.

He grabbed it and stood.

The foreigner's hand shot out, quick as a snake, and caught his wrist. "That is not yours, boy."

Thomas pulled away. The man's grip was strong but not unbreakable. "Neither is the loyalty you bought," he said, and wrenched his arm free.

The foreigner did not rise. He watched Thomas back toward the door with an expression that was more curious than angry. "You have made an enemy tonight, boy. I hope the purse was worth it."

Thomas did not answer. He slipped out into the rain.

He did not open the purse until he was three streets away, huddled in the alcove of a shuttered chandler's shop. His fingers were shaking as he worked the drawstring.

Inside were six silver coins—English, not French, which told him something—and a folded scrap of paper. He unfolded it.

Three words, written in a neat, practiced hand:

*The debt is due.*

Thomas read it twice. The debt. His father's debt. The five hundred pounds that had vanished with Walter Finch on the same day he had disappeared. And now Robert, a clerk in Sir Cecil's own household, was carrying a note that echoed those words back to him like a bell tolling in an empty church.

He pocketed the note. The coins he left in the purse. He had no use for silver that had been paid for treason.

Robert was gone, but Thomas knew where he was heading. The Strand. Cecil's office. And if Robert was returning there, then whatever he had come to do was done, and he would be covering his tracks.

Thomas broke into a run.

He knew the way now. He had walked it twice in preparation, memorized the turns. The Strand was not far, but the rain and the crowds slowed him, and by the time he reached the tall stone facade of Cecil's London house, he was breathless and soaked through.

The door was ajar.

Thomas pushed it open. Inside, the entrance hall was empty—no servants, no guards. That was wrong. This was the home of the Secretary of State, and it should have been bustling.

He moved down the corridor, following the sound of his own heartbeat. At the end of the hall, a door stood open, spilling candlelight into the dark.

Cecil's study.

Thomas stepped through the doorway and stopped.

Robert was there, bent over the hearth. In his hands, he clutched a bundle of papers—the ledger, Thomas realized with a jolt. The ledger from the shop. Robert had taken it from wherever Cecil had stored it, and he was feeding it to the fire, page by page.

"Stop!" Thomas shouted.

Robert spun. His face was twisted, not with fear but with fury. "You," he said. "You should have stayed lost, Finch."

He shoved the remaining pages into the flames. The paper caught, curling black at the edges, and Thomas lunged.

He caught Robert's arm, wrenched him away from the fire. The clerk stumbled, and the burning ledger fell to the hearth, flames eating the ink. Thomas grabbed at it, but the heat drove him back.

Robert moved fast. He shoved Thomas into the desk, sending a stack of papers cascading to the floor, and fled through a side door.

Thomas scrambled to his feet. He made for the door, but a voice stopped him cold.

"What," said Sir William Cecil, standing in the doorway with a pistol in his hand, "is happening in my study?"

The fire crackled. The last page of the ledger curled and blackened, reduced to ash.

Thomas looked at Cecil, then at the empty door where Robert had vanished, then at his own hands, still smudged with ink and blood from where Robert had hit him.

"The clerk," Thomas said, his voice hoarse. "Robert. He was burning the ledger. He's the spy. The eagle."

Cecil's face was unreadable. He did not lower the pistol.

"Robert," he repeated. "Robert is dead."

Thomas went cold. "What?"

"He was found in the river this morning. Throat cut." Cecil's eyes narrowed. "So I ask you again, boy. Who are you, and what are you doing in my house?"