Chapter Four: The Blood in the Crest

Dr. Samuel Hart had been James’s closest friend before the accident.

Now retired, he lived alone in a modest house outside Oxford, surrounded by medical books and dying roses.

When Eleanor arrived with Thomas after midnight, Samuel looked at the boy and nearly dropped his lamp.

“My God,” he whispered. “James.”

Thomas stiffened.

“My name is Thomas.”

Samuel’s eyes filled with sorrow. “Of course.”

Inside, Eleanor placed the glass tube and roll of film on his desk.

Samuel examined the dried blood.

“James gave this to me sixteen years ago,” he said.

“You knew?”

“I knew Clara was pregnant. I did not know where she went after France.”

Eleanor’s voice shook. “Did everyone know except me?”

Samuel lowered his eyes.

“James believed ignorance would keep you alive.”

“It kept me dead for fifteen years.”

Thomas stood by the fire, silent.

Samuel loaded the roll of film into an old projector.

Images flickered across the wall.

Documents.

Bank records.

Photographs of politicians meeting foreign agents.

Lists of payments hidden inside royal cultural foundations.

Then a final frame appeared.

Edmund stood beside a younger man Eleanor recognized immediately.

Sir Alistair Vane.

A celebrated adviser to the Crown.

A close friend of the Ashford family.

The man who had delivered the news of James’s death.

A handwritten label appeared beneath the photograph:

RAVEN COMMAND.

Samuel turned off the projector.

“Vane controlled the network. Edmund handled the money.”

“And James discovered them.”

Samuel nodded.

“He planned to deliver everything to the Queen’s private secretary during his French tour. But Edmund learned what he was doing.”

Thomas stepped closer.

“What happened to my father?”

Samuel hesitated.

Eleanor said, “Tell him.”

“James survived the staged crash. He intended to disappear only for a few months. But Vane’s men captured him before he could reach the coast.”

Thomas’s face went still.

“Is he dead?”

“I don’t know.”

Eleanor gripped the edge of the desk.

Samuel opened a locked drawer and removed a sealed envelope.

“This arrived twelve years ago.”

The handwriting was James’s.

Samuel had never opened it because the front contained a warning:

ONLY IF THE CELLO RETURNS.

Inside was a single page of musical notation.

No words.

Thomas studied it.

“That’s the melody I was playing.”

“The unfinished one?” Eleanor asked.

He nodded.

“My mother taught it to me. She said Father wrote it as a map.”

Samuel placed the sheet beside a railway atlas.

The notes were marked with unusual letters and numbers.

Eleanor recognized the code from a game James used during their courtship.

Each musical note corresponded to a place.

Together, they decoded the first line.

Saint Orison Monastery.

The second line gave a date.

December 24.

The next day.

The final line contained four words:

Beneath the silent bell.

A motorcar slowed outside Samuel’s house.

Thomas moved toward the curtains.

A black vehicle waited at the gate.

Samuel extinguished the lamp.

“They found us.”

Men began forcing the front door.

Samuel led Eleanor and Thomas through the kitchen toward a rear garden.

“What about you?” Eleanor whispered.

“I will delay them.”

“You cannot.”

“I failed James once.”

Samuel pressed a revolver into Eleanor’s hand.

“I will not fail his son.”

The front door splintered.

Samuel locked the kitchen behind them.

Eleanor and Thomas ran into the frozen darkness.

As they reached the trees, two gunshots echoed from the house.

Thomas stopped.

Eleanor grabbed his hand.

“We have to keep moving.”

His eyes filled with horror.

“Everyone who helps me dies.”

Eleanor held his face between her hands.

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“Then we make sure their deaths mean something.”

Behind them, Samuel’s house began to burn.