“Is that so? And I suppose King Charles tucks you into bed each night?”

My blood grew hot, and I made to retort before Tom put a calming hand on my arm. I clamped my mouth shut.

“That’s right,” the groom said. “Now clear out of my yard.”

Tom led me away before I said anything I might regret. “It’s not worth the trouble,” he said.

“We didn’t do anything wrong,” I said hotly, but Tom was right. We had much more important things to worry about.

Sally joined us, puzzled. “What was all that about?”

“Someone self-important, throwing his weight around,” I said, and not quietly.

Firmly, Tom pushed me farther from the stalls. “Did you find Lords Walsingham and Ashcombe?”

“Walsingham’s at Guildhall,” Sally said. Guildhall was the seat of London’s government, where the offices for the Lord Mayor and the magistrates were. “And Lord Ashcombe left with His Majesty.”

“They’re gone?” I said, not sure if I should be relieved or dismayed.

“Just after you two went to Saint Paul’s. Why? What’s happened?”

“The king’s still in danger.”

I told her about meeting the Templars and pulled the new letter from beneath my waistcoat. The seal was broken; I’d scanned the letter before hurrying back to Tom. Now I handed it over for them to read.

So the final act is played,

The final truth decrypted,

Still your master dies betrayed—

for every scene was scripted.

“ ‘The final act,’ ” Sally read, “and final truth. And… ‘your master dies betrayed’?”

“Do they mean Lord Walsingham?” Tom said.

“I think they’re talking about His Majesty,” I said. “I may be apprenticed to the spymaster, but our ultimate master is the king. And that’s who these plots are against.”

It was the only thing that made sense. Poisoning the party wouldn’t have killed Lord Walsingham; he was never going. And then there was the second line of the riddle.

Still your master dies betrayed.

In other words: Everything we’d done to protect the king was still going to fail. I shook my head. The spymaster had been right; this wasn’t over.

Sally studied the diagram on the paper. “What’s this, then?”

Underneath the riddle was a long and winding arrow, corners jagged as it turned this way and that. The arrow started beside a sketch of a horse. It continued, bending its way past a crown, until it reached an X. Beside the X was a tree, with a tiny arrow pointing to where the trunk grew from the ground.

The big arrow then continued past it, changing directions again, until it ended at a giant circle, inked three times around. Beside the circle was the drawing of a scroll, rolled up and tied with ribbon.

“Looks like a treasure map,” Tom said.

I thought so, too. But I doubted the end held any treasure. “A path to follow, maybe?”

“To the king?” Sally suggested. “That’s what the crown could mean.”