The Printer's Devil

by Chico Kidd

  Confident that further research would yield more information about Southwell, Alan took his notepad from his pocket and looked at what he had written the previous day.

  LIBER ARCANI. Secret book, presumably. Or - book of secrets? He wrote ‘The book of hidden things’.

  HICDIVITI LEGET. ‘Here reads (he reads?)’ What was ‘divitix’7

  Putting down his pen, Alan went to hunt for his old Latin dictionary. Eventually he found it in the glory-hole under the stairs, sandwiched between a hymnbook stamped in purple ink ‘Priory Grammar School. Do not remove’ and a 1960 Ford Anglia manual.

  ‘Here he reads of riches,’ he wrote a moment later, and eventually, with the help of the dictionary, he translated the captions to all the frames.

  The others read: They have set a guardian (he knew ‘custodia’); The reward of avarice; The power of God’s holy saints; and finished with something Alan vaguely thought was a quotation: ‘Auri sacra fames’, accursed hunger for gold.

  And now, he thought, what about that strange string of letters? Looking at them anew, Alan was certain they constituted a cipher, but how to break it?

  GZNUZNZLPVTOVLFOGUHLSGZDVSMRMVWG

  The first thing he noticed now was the frequency of Gs and Zs, one of which must presumably stand for E, the commonest letter in the English language.

  Alan sighed, stood up, fetched a beer from the fridge, and stared out of the window for a while. There was no easy solution to the code: that was plain. Also, it was Sunday, so libraries were shut. Either he’d have to try and solve it without help, or - wait.

  Since waiting was out of the question:

  ‘Okay,’ said Alan to himself, ‘you’re a bright lad. You’ve been known to ring Stedman Triples. You can’t let a little thing like a code bamboozle you.’

  He turned up the stereo, fetched a garden chair from the shed and put it outside in the sun, then settled down with paper and a pen.

  Somewhere he’d seen codes grouped into equal numbers of letters - four or five. He added up the letters and found thirty-two, so wrote them down in fours.

  GZNU ZNZL PVTO VLFO GUHL SGZD VSMR MVWG They looked more manageable like that, anyway.

  All right. There were four Gs, four Zs, and four Vs as well, so maybe these stood for E, T, and A, the commonest letters in English. He played around with this possibility for a frustrating half-hour, convinced that Z stood for A, simply because of the juxtaposition:

  TANU ANAL PETO ELFO TUHL STAD ESMR MEWT

  Something he’d read stirred in his memory then, and he rearranged the letters, taking the first of each group, and then the second, and so on.

  TAPE TSEM ANEL UTSE NATF HAMW ULOO LDRT

  Now he had to guess. The two TSE combinations were almost certainly THE, but that didn’t help much. There were two Os together, and Ls round them, and another L, which made three. Whatever came after E, T, and A as fourth commonest letter? Try O, Alan thought, and got:

  TAPE THE MANE OU THE NATFH AMW OOOO DRT

  Which was nearer to making sense, it seemed. And yet, far from solution.

  ‘Bugger this,’ thought Alan, and stared morosely down the garden. In the background, Luciano Pavarotti was lamenting the loss of Otello’s peace of mind. ‘Ora e per sempre addio, sante memorie, addio sublimi incanti del pensier, ’ he sang. ‘Now and forever farewell, sacred memories, farewell, sublime enchantments of the mind...’ As always, it raised the small hairs at the back of Alan’s neck.

  Then something occurred to him, like a lightbulb over Goofy’s head:

  AB C D E then F G H Z YX W V ... U T S

  It was a backward substitution! Quickly he scribbled out the rest of the alphabet, and came up with: TAKE THE NAME OF THE MAGUS AND FOLLOW IT And what the hell was that supposed to mean? he asked himself.

  The name of the magus. Roger Southwell. Alan laughed suddenly. The answer had sprung off the page, a clue by a seventeenth century cruciverbalist:

  South. Well.

  He’d bet a hundred pounds that there was, or had been, a well in the grounds of Fenstanton Abbey - and he recalled, with a shudder, The Treasure of Abbot Thomas.

  As to what was in the Fenstanton well - ‘Well,’ thought Alan, ‘only one way to find out.’

  ‘...Facilis descensus Averno:

  Noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis;

  Sed revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras,

  Hoc opus, hic labor est.’

  (It’s easy to go down into the Underworld; dark Dis’s door stands open night and day; but retracing one’s steps and finding a way back into the upper air, that’s a job, that’s a problem.)

  Virgil, The A neid

  ‘Roger Southwell’s Fenstanton Abbey, like William Beckford’s Fonthill a century later, was a folly on a grand scale - an exercise so extravagant as to assume nightmare proportions.

  ‘While Beckford’s folly may be viewed as a gesture of revenge against society, Southwell’s is less easy to categorise. Some commentators have seen it as a gesture of defiance against the established Church, that in building an “Abbey” complete with tower (and bells, if contemporary accounts are to be believed, although who the founder was, and what became of them, is unknown to this writer) Southwell was thumbing his nose at the authorities who had excommunicated him. How he escaped the scaffold is a mystery - the last recorded execution for witchcraft took place in 1685 and Southwell died in 1697 - because he apparently made no secret of his activities.

  ‘The Abbey was begun probably in 1657 and building continued for at least ten years; but whether it was actually complete at the time of Southwell’s death is debatable.

  ‘Its tower, in any case, did not survive its creator very long: a 1701 report refers to it as “ruined” and the few references to the Abbey during the eighteenth century culminate in its description by George Wyatt as “the derelict remains of Robert (sic) Southwell’s Abbey” in his Counties of 1802.’

  Kim Sotheran read this item carefully, trying to align it with Alan’s bizarre tale of tombs and codes and putative buried treasure.

  Looking up from the book, she smiled at Alan’s expression.

  ‘So what do you think is down the well?’

  Alan shrugged. ‘Southwell’s book, perhaps. His grimoire. Can you imagine? What a find!’

  Kim raised one eyebrow, a favourite quirk of hers which Alan found irresistible. If she had doubts, she hid them well.

  ‘I want to shoot this,’ she said. ‘I want the tomb and the folly, and the well. I’ll do it on thirty-five mill’ and we can back it up with your new toy.’ She meant the video camera. ‘Someone’ll take it, even if you don’t find anything - ‘

  ‘Less of the “you”, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Well, all right, we then. Does it matter? But listen - why Roger Southwell? I’ve heard of John Dee and Roger Bacon and Michael Scot, but not him. The twentieth century hasn’t heard of him, but you see his name on a peal-board and it’s like a war-horse hearing a bugle.’

  Alan shook his head. ‘I’m not sure why,’ he said. ‘Something... it’ll come back to me.’

  Kim rolled her eyes. ‘Oh...kay,’ she responded, opening her diary. ‘This week looks horrendous; I’ve got a provisional booked on Saturday, but I can probably put them off till the week after.’

  ‘I can’t wait till Saturday!’

  ‘Well, you’ll have to.’

  ‘Can’t you manage Monday or Tuesday?’

  ‘We got to pay the mortgage, mate.’

  ‘I suppose so,’Alan conceded reluctantly. ‘I’ll just have to slave over a hot word-processor all week, then.’

  Despite the forecasters’ pessimistic predictions that the fine weather was about to end, the weekend began in blazing sunshine which almost made Alan regret that the two of them were going to spend a couple of hours inside a car on what might well turn out to be a wild-goose chase.

  Kim seemed to have resigned herself to this prospect, for the moment at least.

  ‘Which c
ar?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, yours... at least we can open the lid. Why didn’t you get a convertible?’

  ‘In England? How was I supposed to know the country was going to turn sub-tropical this year?’

  ‘It’s the greenhouse effect.’

  ‘Well, I’m all for it. Do you want to take any tapes?’ She stuck her key in the lock of the Audi.

  ‘No, I expect you’ve got plenty in there,’ said Alan, opening the passenger door and checking. ‘Yup, looks good to me.’

  ‘Well, if I’m driving, you can do in-flight music.’ Kim slung her jacket in the back and got in while Alan shuffled cassettes. Eventually he chose Rigoletto and sat back as the car filled up with Verdi.

  ‘If you could sing like Pavarotti, I might just fall in love with you,’ said Kim a little later. ‘Why don’t you do some navigating instead?’

  ‘Navigator to pilot, take the next left,’ Alan obliged.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the No Smoking sign has now been extinguished and you may unfasten your seatbelts,’ intoned Kim, then began to sing along with the tape, in a surprising tenor.

  The bells were ringing, unexpectedly, in the redundant church of All Saints, Fenstanton. Sweet and light, their chattering hung in the air, a sound so quintessentially English that it evoked a strange nostalgia for rural idylls which never really existed.

  Kim parked, directed by Alan, where he had a week previously. As she turned off the ignition, and with it the music, she sang the next line herself: ‘Quest’e un buffone, Edunpotente e questo.1’ Okay, I hear where the church is. Let’s go see this tomb of yours.’

  Alan pulled the video camera in its case from the back seat of the car. Kim had been a photographer for too long to trust machines which did too much, preferring control over exposures and shutter speeds. Even she admitted that Alan’s new toy was fun, however, and enjoyed discomfiting their friends by producing it when they came to dinner. It was usually left to Alan, though. Now he pointed it in the direction of the church, and musical Stedman Doubles poured into it, while Kim took her own equipment from the car.

  He pointed out the location of Roger Southwell’s tomb to Kim and went to read the note pinned on the tower door, which read, as he had half-expected, ‘Quarter-peal in progress, please do not disturb’.

  It was pleasant to think that these melodious bells were used from time to time, Alan reflected, and turned to follow Kim.

  ‘Might as well be Adam the bloody gardener,’ she was muttering as he came up to the tomb: she was pulling handfuls of sere grass through the railings. Alan bent to help, tugging at the vegetation, and cursing as his fingers encountered nettles.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Been bit by a nettle. Rotten little sod.’

  ‘Dock-leaves this side.’

  Alan tore off some of the sorrel-like leaves and rubbed his smarting hand with the sap, then resumed his task more carefully. When the tomb was cleared Kim spent some time photographing the panels, while Alan attempted to film them, with helpful translations interjected - he did not intend to waste all his hard work with the Latin dictionary.

  ‘Right,’ said Kim finally. ‘Now where’s Fenstanton Abbey?’

  ‘According to the map, it’s the other side of those trees.’

  The Abbey was indeed a ruin. All that remained were a few ragged lengths of grey wall with empty windows, the base of a tower, little bits of tiled floor and paving scattered among the grass. All the remains of men’s works were being reclaimed by Nature, like the city called the Cold Lairs in The Jungle Book. Weeds found precarious rootholds in the remnants of the walls and crept through cracks. Moss furred the stones. No-one had adopted the ruins: they were adorned neither by green National Trust signs nor by brown Heritage ones reading ‘Fenstanton Abbey, Historic Ruins’ - the sort of thing which Alan hated, as if people needed to be told that a place was a ‘Medieval Church’ or a ‘HistoricMarket Town’.

  ‘Now all we need is to find the well.’

  ‘South.’

  ‘Where’s south? Where’s the sun, and what’s the time? Ten to eleven. Oh...kay. This-a-way.’ Kim led the way across a larger survival of flagstones.

  ‘That must be it,’ said Alan, pointing to a ring of rusty railings and a peeling notice reading ANG R KE P T. He hoisted the camcorder up and fingered the switch. Through the eyepiece he saw an image of Kim, in monochrome, walking up to the railings, which were about four feet high, and looking over them.

  ‘It’s got some kind of a lid on it,’ she called. ‘I can’t see how it’s anchored. Let me just get some shots of it, then we’ll see if we can get it open.’

  ‘I have to tell you that I’m a bit nervous about going down there,’ said Alan, moving closer. Kim stepped back, and adjusted her tripod.

  ‘We probably won’t have to. I expect whatever-it-is is within arm’s reach. Or do you think it’ll be like the hidey-hole in Tosca?’

  ‘More like the well in The Treasure of Abbot Thomas.’

  ‘You mean when the bag put its arms round his neck?’

  ‘Oh, thanks, Kim.’

  ‘Get out of shot, now.’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  After a good deal of scrabbling, straining and swearing, not to mention sweating, since the temperature was well into the eighties already, the two of them managed to remove the rotting wooden cover from the well. Though in an advanced stage of decomposition, its underside coated with black slime, the wood was nearly six inches thick and still able to drive splinters into unwary hands.

  Eventually they wrestled it loose and, panting, surveyed the black hole thus revealed, lined with glistening brick.

  Far below, a dim gleam spoke of water.

  Kim felt gingerly around inside the rim, but found nothing which suggested a hidey-hole: no crevices, no tell-tale loose bricks. She eyed the rusty iron rungs set into the wall with displeasure.

  ‘Looks like Tosca after all,’ she said gloomily. ‘Do those rungs look strong enough to you?’

  ‘’Fraid so,’ replied Alan. ‘I suppose I’d better go first, since I’ve got the light.’ He peered down into the depths. ‘Looks a bit Stygian.’

  ‘Okay, Mephistopheles, down you go. I’ll be right behind you.’

  Alan knelt on the edge of the well and reached for the first rung with a tentative foot. After half a dozen cautious downward steps he began to trust them, and looked up at Kim’s face in a circle of sky.

  ‘I think it’s okay,’ he called, and an instant later the daylight was obscured by her descent. Alan gritted his teeth and continued, trying hard not to think of M R James. The camcorder in its case tended to unbalance him as it swung from his shoulder, and the well’s damp chill made him shiver after the dry baking heat of the day.

  He had not gone very far down - twenty feet or so - when he discovered an opening, and shone his torch into it. There was a confused rattling sound, startlingly loud in the confined space of the well, barking at the echoes.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ demanded Kim in a strangled whisper.

  ‘Dunno.’ Alan crab-walked into the tunnel, and discovered the answer almost immediately as it widened into a cavern. ‘Bats! Must be hundreds of ’em. Oh, yuck.’

  ‘Bats?’

  ‘Look.’ A little nervously, he directed his light into the cave. Like fleshy fruit the bats hung, softly clattering their leather wings, taking startled flight when sudden and unnatural day hit them. He felt, rather than saw, Kim arrive beside him.

  ‘Jesus, did you ever see anything like it?’

  ‘Only on David Attenborough programmes. Be careful - I don’t think bat shit is very nice to get on you.’ ‘I don’t much care to get any kind of shit on me, thanks.’

  ‘It’s got vast quantities of ammonia in it, apparently.’

  ‘I can smell that.’

  The cave, they found, was shaped like a bulbous mineral-water bottle, tapering at the far end. Its sides were rough enough for Alan to think that it was a natural cavern
, discovered when the well was sunk.

  ‘Well, Toto, I guess we’re not in Kansas any more,’ remarked Kim, who had always entertained a fondness for The Wizard of Oz. A moment later, she added, ‘There must be another way out over there, otherwise how do the bats get in and out?’

  ‘Well, that’s a bit academic at the moment, because I don’t intend to go any further into this cave than I am at the moment, and I don’t give a bugger how the bats get in and out.’ Alan kicked crossly at the detritus underfoot, causing noisome dust to rise.

  ‘What about the umbrella?’ Kim asked suddenly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The one in the car. Should stop the worst of it. Worth a try?’

  ‘We’ve come this far. I suppose so.’

  ‘You were the one who wanted to come in the first place.’

  ‘Yes. I know.’

  ‘Well, you keep the light. I can see all right. Don’t go away.’

  Minutes later Kim returned with the dilapidated black folding umbrella which lived in her car (and rather resembled a dead bat itself), and the two of them picked their way delicately and on the uncomfortable verge of hysteria across the filthy floor of the cave, beneath the legion of hanging bats.

  Why, Alan wondered absently, were bats so vilified? He knew part of the answer: their nocturnal ways, their ugliness, their smell (en masse, anyway) - their association with unpleasant legends.

  Yet he had always been quite fond of the little pipistrelles which swooped on noiseless naked wings in the country dusk; this myriad of cave-born rodents, however, unsettled him at a level which was very profound. He supposed he was subject to atavism, after all.

  ‘It’s illegal to disturb them, you know,’ he whispered to Kim, who snorted.

  ‘Tell me how to get to the other side without disturbing the little bastards,’ she said.

  Wings rattled as they passed, and Alan strained to hear the bats’ silent sonar. At length they reached the far side of the cave, which narrowed to a tunnel which a skinny man might just squeeze through.

  ‘Well, now we know how the bats get in and out,’ said Kim.

  ‘Yes, but we’re no nearer to finding whatever’s supposed to be here.’