Did these numbers correspond to verses of the Bible perhaps? King James’s? Coverdale’s? The Breeches Bible of the Puritans? The Latin Vulgate? The Old or the New Testament? Which Book?
The copy of the King James Bible that he owned was battered, much thumbed, not so much by him but by his parents before him. He found little time himself for the reading of it.
He tried to coerce the numbers to correspond to Books and Verses.
After a further hour or so, he had discovered too many correspondences, verses equally beguiling in their possibilities.
He paced about, and then, like a Quaker, he sat silently. He hoped to be filled with inspiration; he would have accepted it from anywhere. None arriving, he rewrote the numbers as letters, each 1 becoming an A, and so on through the alphabet, and stared at the formations of letters he had made to see whether they aligned themselves into words hidden vertically or diagonally or backwards.
Had the messenger left his message there, or a keyword to unlock it, leaping from the page, stark in its obviousness, like a night-time beacon fire lit upon a hilltop?
Only fragments of words emerged, imposed by his mind upon the grids.
*
A lone gull squawked outside, down towards the river. He realised that daylight made his taper redundant. He blew it out. Blue smoke curled from its tip. He noticed the chilly flow of air around his legs. Their hairs stuck out stiffly, the goose bumps on his skin felt rough.
Noises from the street made him stand to observe from his window. This morning it was colder still; the people outside wrapped themselves tighter, and in yet more layers, than yesterday. The trodden snow along the narrow alley, frozen over night, made an ankle-breaking impediment.
The commotion came from a group of women helping up another from a fall, her forehead and a hand cut after a crunching landing on the ice. Splashes of red showed vividly where she had hit the ground. She sat, too dazed to enjoy her moment of being the centre of such consideration. Hands pulled at her, her rescuers slipping around her. Harry watched the excitement; a dance of scurrying hats, from his high viewpoint, as more people rushed to assist.
She was led away by her new-found friends, and Harry, pulling his blanket more closely around him, returned to the cipher.
Another hour of substituting letters for numbers, numbers for letters, of writing out alphabet grids and number grids, encircling or crossing them out, covering sheets of paper to do so: he was little further forward. He worried away at the numbers, sliding his strips of paper, making further grids of numbers and letters, moving rows and columns. The desk, then his bed as he moved between them, disappeared under paper, and then the floor by his chair.
A knock on the door startled him.
‘Mr. Hunt! I have brought you breakfast!’
‘Mrs. Hannam, I am not yet dressed!’
There was no reply, but he was conscious of her listening, able to hear his pulling at his breeches. He did this as quietly as he could. He opened the door looking dishevelled, but covered.
‘Persephone’s eggs are remarkably large, and this one is a twin!’ She did not let go of the tray; he was not able to take it, as that would have brought her in also. He looked at the coddled double-yoked egg.
‘The Romans broke up the shells of such eggs, to prevent their enemies from making magic against them.’ He was aware that he tried to impress her. She saw over his shoulder the papers proliferating over the room.
‘You are busy, I see . . . ?’ There was a question in her voice. She wanted to talk, and had not let go of the tray.
‘The Society keeps me occupied,’ he answered. ‘This smells good, Mrs. Hannam . . . ?’ The question in his own voice at last made her release it. ‘I am obliged.’
‘What is all this you engage yourself upon?’
‘Oh, I translate some mathematical Latin ready for publication. It is dry stuff.’
‘You are blessed with an ingenious mind, and the Royal Society is blessed to have you.’ A deep blush spread from Mrs. Hannam’s neck to cover her face. ‘But one thing I do not understand,’ she said. ‘How would their enemies recognise a doubly-yoked egg from only its empty shell?’
‘No, the Romans did it for luck, I think. In truth, it is a while since my reading of it.’ Harry wished for something more impressive to follow, but could not think of anything to add.
‘Well,’ she offered, after an awkward pause. ‘In our own time we have as many curious customs, I’m sure. Like the keeping of a hare’s foot.’
‘In future times our habits shall be regarded with as little understanding as we have for the Romans, or other peoples from history. Thank you, Mrs. Hannam. I am very hungry.’
She caught his meaning, and left him to his breakfast, which he took to the window, climbing over his desk to sit on the sill, being careful not to dislodge his instruments or slip on the papers. The eggs and bread, with the rest of his ale, slid down easily, and he looked out at his personal view of London.
The blood left after the woman’s fall stained the ground.
He would take his workings to Gresham’s College, he decided, to see whether Robert Hooke could see the pattern within these numbers, and see how he went about seeking the Secretaryship of the Royal Society.
Observation XII
Of Openness
The few customers clustered near the fire, and sought further warmth from their drinks, wrapping their hands around their cups. A few quiet conversations could be heard; most read a news-sheet, or their letters, addressed to them there at Garraway’s coffee-house.
Hooke and Harry chose one of the long trestle tables, and took a Muddiman’s news-sheet between them. Hooke ordered a pot of tea, and negotiated a price with Thomas Garraway for a full pound of the leaves.
‘It will calm us after the ordeals of yesterday and yesternight, and reinvigorate our thinking,’ Hooke said.
Harry agreed to take a dish, and stifled a yawn. All the paper with his workings on the cipher weighed down the inner pocket of his coat.
An ample serving girl arrived with two cups and a pot. Hooke showed no signs of being tired after his summons to Pall Mall and the body of Oldenburg. Harry, after a long morning with the cipher, too, bore dark stains of fatigue around his eyes.
‘I must gauge opinion before the voting for the new Secretary,’ Hooke announced. ‘I intend to replace the dead Grubendol.’ Grubendol was Hooke’s contemptuous name for Henry Oldenburg.
‘You have the support of all of your New Philosophical Club, Mr. Hooke.’ Harry kept back a comment on not speaking ill of the dead.
‘Yes, Harry, I have my supporters, who for their own good reasons did not trust the Secretary. Sir Christopher will promote me. Dr. Holder, Theodore Haak, Sir Edmund Wylde and John Aubrey too will support me. John Hoskins and Sir Jonas Moore also. John Henshaw, Abraham Hill and William Croon, I hope to encourage. Mr. Boyle I must sound out. He was close to Grubendol, and he may own some other idea of his replacement. Nathaniel Grew? I do not know which way he goes. I must tickle him in the ear to draw him to me. He may yet stand against me for Secretary.’ Hooke rubbed his hands together gleefully.
Harry had rarely seen him so spirited. It did not seem to worry the Curator at all that they had disguised the self-murder of his colleague only the previous night. Harry, conversely, kept seeing the Secretary; on his journey to Gresham that morning he spotted him amongst the crowd, coming out of a doorway, moving across his path. A closer look, of course, showed it plainly to be another, sometimes quite unlike old Henry Oldenburg.
‘Wallis will be against me,’ Hooke continued, ‘as he is against Dr. Holder. They still bicker over the teaching of the deaf mute to speak. I wonder whether Brouncker will persevere as President, now Grubendol is dead. Also, Harry, there is the thorny matter of the Secretary’s papers. If I am voted to replace him, I will propose you as one well able to catalogue them. Mrs. Oldenburg was no more obliging when I ventured there this morning.’
‘How is the wido
w, Mr. Hooke?’
‘It was a stiff blow to her. She takes comfort that at least on his certificate he died peacefully. Dr. Diodati was accommodating; there will be no raising of the Coroner’s suspicions. Grubendol died of an ague.’
‘What led the Secretary to self-murder?’ Harry asked. ‘Why see himself off so violently?’
Hooke was little concerned with the manner or motivation of Oldenburg’s death. ‘He trials the Great Experiment . . . Grubendol’s departure will make the Society more smoothly running. The matter of my hairspring watch hardened my heart against him. And he displayed great importunity in seeking to create dispute between Mr. Newton of Cambridge and me, concerning planetary motion . . .’
‘Mr. Hooke, we must discuss Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey, and the two enciphered letters. And the dead boy from the Fleet.’
‘Ah! Yes.’ Hooke forced himself to change the direction of his interest. ‘The boy is secured, away from prying eyes, and we must leave him so until ordered otherwise by the Justice. So, let us talk instead of the cipher.’
‘I have worked upon it.’ Harry took the papers from the pocket inside his coat. ‘But have progressed little. The pattern is inconstant; there is some change altering the relations of numbers throughout.’
‘You know that the first unravelling may lead to another cipher, and not the final message?’
Harry, back aching and vision strained, assured him that he was aware of the possibility.
‘Once revealed, you must make your report of the cipher in straightforward terms for Sir Edmund.’
‘I shall aim for a mathematical clarity.’
‘Democratic language is the foundation of the Society. There should be openness in all things.’ Hooke sounded as if he already campaigned for the Secretaryship. ‘Although . . .’ he paused. ‘Bring it first to me before Sir Edmund sees it.’
‘You have more faith in my capacity to read this cipher than I.’
‘You will do it, Harry,’ Hooke reassured him warmly. ‘Natural philosophers worthy of the name suffer a curious pride, one whose arrogance allows a sharp disappointment at failure. My worry is that your labours will reveal something of the political, in which I would not wish the Royal Society to become embroiled.’
‘Openness should only reach so far,’ Harry agreed. ‘I do not trust Sir Edmund.’
Hooke looked askance at his assistant. ‘His interests are far wider than only this boy. Care is our watchword! Now, let me see what you have done.’
Harry unfolded the papers and spread them across the table. Hooke poured out more tea, its steam vigorous in the low temperature of the room.
‘You have shown that there is no single correspondence between these numbers and any meaningful message. An admirable start.’
Taking out his portable writing set, Hooke wrote out the alphabet onto strips of papers, exactly as Harry had done, and proceeded to attack the first page, with its neat grid of numbers.
‘If the correspondences between these numbers and the message change sequentially, then this pattern repeats throughout the cipher. It is a strange music, owning its own harmonies and counterpoints.’
‘The same grid, of one hundred and forty-four numbers to each page, is repeated on all pages.’
Hooke placed the sheet down on the table between him and Harry. He looked triumphantly at his assistant. ‘I thought so!’ he exclaimed. ‘I have before seen a similar cipher demonstrated to me!’ His face fell as rapidly as it had risen. ‘Now where was it? And who showed it?’ Hooke became completely still. ‘I am a forgetful dog!’ was all he added.
For at least half a minute he sat this way, Harry beside him hardly daring to draw breath. With a start Hooke came back to life again, and a beaming delight settled upon his features. ‘Colonel Fields! Colonel Michael Fields. He came to us at the College and demonstrated his war codes to a meeting of the Society. Was the event placed into the Philosophical Transactions by Grubendol? Sir Jonas Moore at the Board of Ordnance found him out and asked him to Gresham’s. This is one of them, I am sure of it! I remember the use of this square, its uniformity designed to keep the formation of words within the hidden message all the more secretive. The last page is kept to the same shape by the addition of drivel.’
‘Who is Colonel Fields? Is he to be trusted with our business?’
Hooke did not immediately answer Harry’s questions, instead taking a long slurp of his tea.
‘This cipher depends upon a keyword,’ he continued. ‘A square with each side an alphabet, twenty-six letters across and twenty-six letters down, is formed, and the matrix of letters is completed, written in sequentially, and simply enough. This is as de Vigenère prepared his cipher. With each corresponding letter of the keyword the choice of its substitute, and its position along the page, is decided.’
Hooke’s expression became thoughtful, regarding Harry as if scouring his face for his thoughts, and gripped him by the shoulder. ‘We will not speak yet of our workings to the Justice,’ he said, dropping his voice. ‘I must first hear more of his search.’
‘But why keep them from him?’
‘This cipher was shown by Colonel Fields. That is why I promote hesitation. Fields fought in the wars, for the side of Parliament. Let us be further sure of our ground.’
‘Mr. Hooke, you have not said of Colonel Fields whether he may be depended upon. Should I go to him with this cipher?’
Hooke swallowed down the remainder of his tea, and held out their workings on the cipher to Harry. Harry, with a premonition of the trouble that came later, a shiver working itself through the discs of his spine, took them from him.
‘He is a most dependable man, Harry. But would you wish to depend upon such a man?’
Observation XIII
Of the Red Cipher
The snow, hard underfoot, was dusted by black powder from hundreds of chimneys, and, set up on the streets to keep the traders warm, from the fires, braziers and stoves.
Dirty smog gathered around the Black Eagle Brewery, whose smell was the dominant tone in a dissonant choir of inharmonious smells. The same haze floated between the chimneys of Whitechapel Bell Foundry, where the bells had been cast for Westminster Abbey a hundred years before, and coiled about the brick and tile manufacturers, the glass-blowing houses, sugar refineries, metalworking shops, jewellers, coal stores, tea warehouses, and abattoirs.
Harry tried to relax his features into what he hoped resembled confidence and ease with this world; as a stranger to Whitechapel he was anxious not to draw attention to himself.
The rattle of carts and drays over the cobbles battered his eardrums. Loads were hefted through the crowd with no consideration of feelings or injury, and challenging stares met dissent, elbows jabbing into passers-by that strayed too near. With the clacking beaks and manic beatings of wings, of geese and hens, this raised the human volume; all communication was shouted or screamed. Squealing pigs, beaten by a surly man gripping a long knotted stick to encourage them on, surged between the market stalls. They slid on the ice, thumping down on their fattened sides, scrabbling to right themselves. The waste from their energetic bowels made a hazard equal to the glassy shine of the ground.
Where was the chapel he sought? He tried to look without appearing lost, but his subterfuge became more difficult as he repeated his slippery walk back down the High Street. He dodged his way through the crowd, trying to spot Colonel Fields’s Anabaptist chapel. It would be easier if he knew what he was looking for. Again he found the top of the High Street, facing the fields and windmills, and the coppice, a collection of skeletal trees with snow-laden branches. The remains of the Cromwellian fortifications, the sconce built during the wars as part of the Lines of Communication, stood before him. But no chapel.
He approached a man dressed in the dark clothes of a Huguenot. The Frenchman sent him back the way he had come, with instructions to pass through an alley immediately after the Saracen’s Head. Moving through the crowd again, and seeing the garish sign of t
he tavern, this Saracen’s head having become separated from his body, Harry at last found the alley.
As he turned into it, the rapid diminution of noise tricked his ears into believing that he stood in perfect silence. With the change in sound came a change in light. Fearful of the dimness as he went through, he broke into a trot. Coming back out into the comforting daylight, he saw crisp snow over a meadow, undisturbed since its fall. He crossed it, and climbed over a flimsy gate between flimsier gateposts, and headed towards a roof – all he could see of a building down in a hollow.
Closer, standing on a slope dropping steeply in front of him, he observed that the building’s construction seemingly followed the rule of the trapezium rather than the rectangle, and was more a shed than a chapel.
‘Is it on fire?’ Harry asked himself aloud, for smoke billowed from every seam of the place. Tentatively, he moved down to the door; unsteady on its hinges, it stood half open, and he pushed it aside. He walked into the smoke coming from a central fire, gathering under the ceiling, looking for escape since no chimney transmitted it away.
*
From inside the cloud he could hear a scraping noise. When his eyes accustomed themselves, he could make out a man sitting in the parabola of a hammock rocking between two posts. Harry was closest to the soles of the man’s feet, and the man’s head rested on his toes, foreshortened as his body appeared.
Harry walked further forwards, to get a more natural view.
‘My name is Harry Hunt, Observator of the Royal Society.’
‘And I am Colonel Michael Fields. Good morrow.’
Harry realised that the Colonel was shaving, a razor rasping his jaw as he pulled at his old skin to smooth the wrinkles of age.
‘Mr. Hooke sends me, to seek your assistance.’
The Bloodless Boy Page 7