Cue for Treason

by Trease Geoffrey

  the nimble gunner

  With linstock now the devilish cannon touches,

  And down goes all before them!

  I knew that I hadn't marked those lines. The only man who would be likely to underline them would be the man in charge of the stage effects, and he, of course, had his own copy. It was a trivial, meaningless mystery, but it bothered me. I drew Kit's attention to it, but she could explain it no better than I.

  ‘And what's this?’ she asked, turning the bundle of script and pointing to a few scribbled lines on the back. ‘Have you been composing poetry in your spare time? Plenty of Crossing out, anyhow!’

  I stared at the black, unfamiliar writing. Allowing for the numerous corrections, the verses ran:

  Since words and wit are weak in friendship's need,

  Even to say a tithe of that I would,

  Now bend a penetrating eye and read,

  Divining how I'd greet thee if I could.

  No golden voice have I to sing thy praise;

  Eloquence is not mine; I lack the tongue

  Worthy to celebrate these happy days,

  Singing their glory as it should be sung.

  It was a sonnet – and a pretty poor one, I thought. The second half went:

  But 'tis the meaning matters, not the form;

  Y-wis, the thought behind is more than face.

  Proserpina herself is not more warm,

  Even when dusky Pluto's fond embrace

  Enfolds her, than these wishes that I send,

  Love-charged, to hail the birthday of my friend.

  Underneath was scribbled ‘26 copies’ and a tick, as though the copies had been duly made.

  ‘Silly stuff,’ I said; ‘I'd be ashamed to write it. It doesn't mean anything.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ retorted Kit, ‘I think it means a great deal. The question is, What exactly? More treason, if I know anything!’

  13. The Clue of the Sonnet

  THERE was something odd about that poem, certainly.

  ‘I smell a rat,’ I said.

  ‘So do I,’ Kit agreed – ‘a rat that's been dead a long, long time.’

  Think it out for yourself. On the face of it, there was nothing suspicious about the poem. When I was a boy – more, perhaps, than nowadays – it was quite a usual thing for a man to toss off a sonnet, as easily as he would write a letter, and send it to his friend as a form of birthday greeting, or congratulation on his marriage, or something of that sort. Some of the sonnets might be good as poetry, if a man like Shakespeare wrote them, or they mightn't be worth the notepaper they were written on.

  Now, it doesn't take an expert to see that the yellow gentleman's composition (supposing it was his) was no great shakes at poetry. If you read it again, you'll see that it spends most of its fourteen lines saying ‘Words fail me’ in a rambling and roundabout fashion.

  ‘If he felt he couldn't express his feelings properly,’ said Kit, ‘why did he try to make a poem?’

  ‘And have twenty-six copies written out?’ I added in amazement, remembering the impositions at school and what hard work they were.

  ‘False modesty! Perhaps he really think's he's written a masterpiece.’

  ‘The bit about Proserpina and Pluto is very bad,’ I said critically. When you worked every day with a man like Shakespeare you did learn the meaning of good verse, if nothing else.

  ‘Yes,’ Kit agreed. ‘Pluto's the King of the Underworld, a pale, cold land of shadows. I should think his embrace must be a chilly sort of business! Certainly, if I wanted a nice poetic comparison for warmth, I'd think of something better. The sun, say, or a fire.’

  I felt sure it wasn't a genuine birthday greeting. The poem was written with some other motive, and the writer hadn't cared a farthing about sense or style. There was a hidden meaning wrapped up in it somewhere: he'd concentrated his mind on that.

  ‘Listen,’ I said, reading:

  ‘Now bend a penetrative eye and read,

  Divining how I'd greet thee if I could.

  Isn’t that as plain as a pikestaff? He’s warning the reader to read between the lines.’

  ‘And farther on,’ cried Kit excitedly:

  ‘But 'tis the meaning matters, not the form…’

  ‘ “Y-wis,” ’ said. ‘What in Heaven's name is the meaning of “y-wis”?’

  She wrinkled her brow, trying to remember. ‘I've met the word somewhere before… let's see… I believe it was in a poem by Spenser. I think it means “truly” or “certainly.” ’

  ‘That would make sense, anyhow. But what a word!’

  ‘I s'pose he thought it sounded grand and poetical.’

  ‘Twenty-six copies,’ I murmured. ‘For whom? Twenty-six conspirators?’

  Kit said she wouldn't be surprised. Nor – I thought – after the conversation I had overheard, should I.

  Well, we pored over that poem till our candle guttered out – which didn't seem to matter, because we knew every word by heart. But could we get the secret meaning out of it? Not a glimmer!

  Afterwards, of course, we realized that it had been staring us in the face all the time, and we cursed ourselves for fools, because we hadn't seen what was under our very noses. We'd been warm on the scent, had we but known it, when we talked of that silly word ‘y-wis’, and wondered why the writer had used it. If we'd thought a little harder, everything would have come crystal-clear; but there, we didn't…. Once the light went out, all chance of unravelling the mystery that night went with it; but, of course, we hadn't an inkling of that, and sat on in the dark, cudgelling our brains to no purpose whatever.

  I wonder if it really was so obvious? Once we'd been shown, it looked so easy. Well, have another glance at the sonnet yourself before I give the game away, and just see if you would have done better than we did.

  What were we to do?

  We couldn't just let the matter rest because we hadn't been able to solve the puzzle ourselves. We knew enough to feel certain that we had stumbled on the fringe of a big mystery, and that the proper authorities ought to be informed.

  Should we take Shakespeare into our confidence? I was shy of doing that, for it would mean confessing what a fool I had been with my copy of his play.

  Should we go off by ourselves and call on the City Sheriff? Would he believe our story – with no more convincing evidence than a scribbled sonnet which didn't read quite right? I had an unpleasant suspicion that the criticism of poetry was possibly not the Sheriff's strongest point. And who were we, anyhow? Two of those rascally young actors who impudently set up their stages just outside the City boundary, whence they could thumb their noses at the Sheriff and Mayor and the rest of the authorities!

  ‘A boot to our backsides – that's all we'll get, most likely,’ said Kit pessimistically.

  ‘Or awkward questions about ourselves – who we are, and where we come from. Neither of us wants that particularly.’

  ‘We'll have to chance it, though. If those men really said what you say they did –’

  ‘Of course! Do you think I dreamt it?’

  ‘This is something big, something we daren't keep to ourselves.’

  ‘I know,’ I said quickly; ‘I've had an idea. Sir Joseph Mompesson!’

  ‘Sir Joseph Momp – ; but, Pete, he's a Secretary of State; he's such a big man – ’

  ‘We want a big man,’ I retorted; ‘you said yourself this thing is big. Sir Joseph is a Cumberland man, that's the point. He was born at New Hall in the blessed shadow of Skiddaw itself. He went to our school.’ I grinned at a memory. How sick of Sir Joseph's name we boys used to get! He was the master's favourite, shining example. If I had heard it once, I had heard twenty times the story of Joe Mompesson who went up to the Queen's College at Oxford, took his degrees, went abroad, became a master of foreign languages, and then came to Court and started a brilliant career in the Queen's service. Well, now I was going to benefit by that past boredom.

  ‘First thing tomorrow,’ I said, ‘we're goi
ng to find his house and call on him. He won't refuse to see an old schoolfellow, even if we weren't at Keswick together.’

  And so – a little to my surprise and relief – it proved.

  We were lucky in finding Sir Joseph at home and disengaged. When I sent in my true name, and said I was a late scholar of the same school, we weren't kept waiting a minute.

  Sir Joseph was sitting before a blazing fire of sea-coal, for the day was chilly. His long face, lolling against the high chair-back, was as warm and merry as the dancing flames.

  ‘Brownrigg? Brownrigg? Come in, boys. The very name's like a whiff of peat-smoke! And what's the news from Cumberland? Have you brought me any sweet butter?’

  ‘I – I'm afraid not, sir,’ I said. ‘It's – it's rather a long time since we left Cumberland. If we'd known you – ’

  ‘There, there,’ he said quickly, seeing that I was crestfallen. ‘Only my fun! I have a cook who can make sweet butter that you'd swear came from the dales. You shall taste some in a minute. Sit you down, sit you down. How's Keswick, and Crosthwaite, and Threlkeld, and all the other places? What a devil of a journey it is! Yet if I weren't tied to Court I'd make it often enough.’

  It was quite hard to tell him our business, he was so eager to question us about home. But at last I managed to get to my story, and he heard me to the end in silence. Then he said:

  ‘You're not romancing, my lad?’

  ‘No, sir.’ I showed him the script and the sonnet written on the back of the last sheet. He read it with pursed lips.

  ‘Bad,’ he said. Then his eyes twinkled. ‘But no worse than scores of us have written when we've been young and in love. You can't chop a man's head off for writing bad poetry.’

  ‘It's a pity,’ said Kit, who had kept mum, mostly.

  ‘I'll tell you what I'll do,’ said Sir Joseph after a moment's meditation. ‘I can't make head or tail of this, but I know who can – if there is anything in it. I'll send this manuscript to him. Don't look worried; we shan't let Mr Shakespeare's play fall into wrong hands again. It'll be as safe with us as a State document. In fact, if your idea about a code is correct, it soon will be a State document.’

  ‘Will you want to see us again?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, most certainly. You'll have to repeat this story of yours, on oath maybe, and sign a deposition. Can you meet me again tonight?’

  ‘Yes, sir; we're free as soon as the play's over.’

  ‘Seven o'clock will be soon enough. In the meantime, not a whisper to anyone – not so much as a mouse's squeak. Understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Sir Joseph sat tugging at his ear. ‘Not at this house,’ he said finally. ‘At Sir Robert Cecil's. Anyone will direct you. It's the big new brick-and-timber house in the Strand – you'll notice the fine smooth pavement in front of it. Ask for Sir Robert. And, Brownrigg – ’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Walk warily till then. Look behind you. Take care of yourselves.’

  I was glad of his warning. It showed he was taking us seriously. There was probably no danger, for, in the welter of papers on the yellow gentleman's table, the absence of the playscript might go unnoticed for some time, long enough for him to feel uncertain when and where he had mislaid it. It looked, too, as though he might have finished with it – the twenty-six copies of the sonnet had evidently been made – and in that case the yellow gentleman would not trouble himself unduly.

  ‘Anyhow,’ I reassured Kit as we walked away from Sir Joseph's, ‘the yellow gentleman doesn't even know that I know where he lives, and there's no earthly reason why he should connect me with the distressed damsel he comforted last night or the courting couple in the boat.’

  None the less, I wasn't sorry when the day passed without incident. You hear of strange things in London. Men die in the dark alleys, and the murderers are often untraced. In the mountains a man's cry will bring other men running for a mile, but in London the death-scream is only another sound to be swallowed up in the din of the shopkeepers and hawkers, the tumult of traffic and the clamour of the bells. A body may lie in the gutter for half an hour before someone is inquisitive enough to turn it over - its owner is so much more likely to be drunk than dead. I took Sir Joseph's advice and looked behind us, for I'd no fancy to wear a dagger between my shoulders.

  Seven struck as we knocked on Sir Robert Cecil's door. We were evidently expected. Before I had half finished stammering our names and business we were swept inside and ushered up staircases and along passages into a panelled room. Sir Joseph was warming himself – or trying to warm himself – at a poor little fire under an immense chimney. ‘These are the boys,’ he said cheerfully.

  Sir Robert Cecil looked at us gravely across his table.

  He was a quiet man, not at all imposing – very ordinary, you would say. He was dressed entirely in black, save for his starched white ruff. I knew that he was the son of the great Lord Burghley, and I knew that he himself was someone important, someone very near the Queen. I did not know till afterwards that he was the head of her Secret Service.

  He stirred a little in his chair and sighed. He did not stand up the whole time we were there, and I should never have guessed that he was deformed, almost a hunch-back.

  ‘Another plot?’ he said wearily.

  ‘That remains to be seen,’ said Sir Joseph. ‘Hear young Brownrigg's story from his own lips.’

  So I told it again. I described the yellow gentleman in detail, and the house. Kit added a few further details. Sir Robert sharpened one quill after another with a tiny silver-handled knife, and laid them methodically on his inkstand. At last he broke silence.

  ‘Your yellow gentleman is Sir David Vicars,’ he said dryly. ‘We have had our suspicions for some time.’

  Kit shot a triumphant glance at me. I winked back, and then saw that Sir Joseph had seen me, and began to flush, until he winked too. He was standing behind Sir Robert's chair, so he could pull all the faces he liked.

  ‘Morton?’ went on Sir Robert. ‘That is rather more of a surprise. You heard no other names, I suppose?’

  ‘No, sir; I'm sorry, sir.’

  ‘Morton, Cumberland. Vicars, Northumberland. H'm! Sir Robert twisted in his chair and smiled wryly at Sir Joseph. ‘A disloyal lot, in the North, Mompesson!’

  ‘Dash it, I'm Cumberland myself! So are these boys! There's good and bad up yonder, the same as everywhere else.’

  ‘Oh yes. Oh yes.’ Sir Robert reached for a quill and played with it, turning the white feather over and over against the black table-top. ‘But after all, Mompesson, the last serious rebellion was the Rising of the North.’

  ‘That was twenty-five years ago – longer.’

  ‘All the same, I have a fancy that not all the northern gentlemen have learnt their lesson. And now these boys come along with their story of Sir Philip Morton. The North again! Coincidence, you think? Possibly. Yet if we could only know the names of the twenty-six gentlemen who are receiving copies of that sonnet, I think we should see a good collection of fine old northern families.’

  ‘Have you found out what it means?’ asked Sir Joseph hurriedly, not much liking the way the talk had turned.

  ‘I sent it to my cousin Francis. He has his uses. He has the knack of these things. He should be here by now. Unless it's too hard a nut for him to crack.’

  But apparently it wasn't, for a couple of minutes later there was a discreet tap on the door and a gentleman walked in with a package under his arm, wrapped up in a piece of dark velvet.

  ‘Well, Francis?’

  ‘It was quite easy,’ said the newcomer, undoing his package and laying my play-script on the table. ‘One of the easiest codes in existence. I should have thought you'd have seen it yourself at a glance.’

  ‘I have other things to do,' Sir Robert suggested mildly. ‘Why was it so obvious?’

  ‘That word “y-wis,” for instance –’ Sir Francis Bacon laid a neat forefinger on the line. ‘Why did he use that particular w
ord when he could have said “truly”?’

  ‘The Devil alone knows,’ said Sir Robert. ‘I'm no poet.’

  Sir Francis snorted. He looked round at us all with an air of pleased superiority. He had cold, clever eyes, like a snake. ‘Because, gentlemen, he wanted to begin that line with a letter Y. He had to. And there aren't a lot of words which begin with Y – and still fewer which fit the rhythm and sense of his poem. It's a childish cipher. You, boy,’ he said, motioning me forward to the table, ‘read Sir Robert his hidden message.’

  ‘But – ’ I began, and then, in a moment, I saw. You simply read down the sonnet taking the initial letters of each line. SENDNEWSBYPEEL. ‘Send news by peel,’ I said.

  ‘There you are,’ said Sir Francis.

  ‘And may I ask what in Heaven's name it means?’ said Sir Robert.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sir Joseph. ‘How much forrader are we? “Send news by peel.” What do you make of that, Sir Francis?’

  ‘Oh, quite simple, quite simple. For some reason the conspirators are getting nervous. They want to communicate in a more secret manner; no doubt there are reports to make, letters to exchange –’

  ‘Yes, yes; but this peel?’

  ‘That's a well-known method of transmitting messages. A tiny cut in the peel of an orange, say – slip in a small folded paper, send a basket of oranges to your friend, and there you are.’

  ‘What about the juice?’ I said, and he stared at me very haughtily as if I'd no right to speak except when he told me.

  ‘Yes, wouldn't it make the ink run?’ queried Sir Robert.

  ‘Possibly an apple would be better, Robert. If you like, I'll test the idea myself.’

  ‘I can't see it will help matters very much,’ said his cousin, playing with his quill. ‘Of course, we can have some of these suspected gentry watched, though' – he sighed – ‘spies are so expensive. If we're to find out every time a man receives a gift of fruit, it will need a small army of our agents planted in their various households. I don't quite see how it can be done. Sir Philip Morton, for instance, has gone home to Cumberland. How are we to get a spy into his house?’