‘Found anything?’ called Giora.
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘It wasn’t robbery. This one’s got twenty aureii in his purse.’
‘Keep it,’ said Alityros.
‘I fully intend to. But I think I know why these three were killed. Whoever did this thought they were us.’
‘Paul?’ asked Giora, his voice betraying the nervousness they all felt.
‘Who else?’ said Josephus. ‘His people are probably at the next caupona with their feet up in front of the fire congratulating themselves on a job well done.’
‘So that means we’ll be all right then,’ said Alityros. ‘If they think we’re dead then we’re safe.’
‘I wouldn’t put money on it,’ said Josephus. ‘Here, take this,’ he said to Giora, handing him one of the swords he’d taken from next to the bodies. ‘I think you might need it.’
They set off once more, their horses plodded along inside what felt like a motionless white sphere. ‘Stop. I can smell burning,’ said Alityros.
‘So can I,’ said Josephus. ‘Must be woodsmoke from the caupona. We’re nearly there.’
Alityros reined his pony to a halt. ‘No. It’s not woodsmoke, it doesn’t smell right.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Giora, clapping him on the shoulder as he rode past. ‘Come on or you’ll freeze if you don’t keep moving. It’ll be dark soon.’
‘I still don’t like it,’ said Alityros as Giora and Josephus disappeared into the gloom a few yards further on. Not wanting to be left alone he kicked on and after only a few seconds almost collided with the others who had come to a halt. In front of them stood the outlines of a low range of buildings; one of which had been reduced to a fire-blackened shell. ‘Told you so,’ he said.
From the chimney of the undamaged part of the caupona, a thin stream of smoke drifted lazily into the milky whiteness but no lights showed from its closely-shuttered windows. In silence Josephus led them on, looping round the roofless structure, its walls blackened with soot and its interior a charred heap of timbers and roof-tiles.
Josephus dismounted and made his way towards the stable which, like the still standing portion of the Caupona, had also escaped any damage. He pushed the door open and peered into the warm gloomy interior. At last, satisfied that there was no one around he stuck his head round the door and motioned to Giora to join him leaving Alityros holding the ponies. ‘Six horses,’ he said in a whisper. ‘Not great odds but we’ll have the advantage of surprise and they may be drunk –’
Josephus eased the door shut behind him and as he did so a sharp metallic ring made them both spin round: in time to find a sword at their throats. ‘Drop your weapons and neither of you move,’ said a voice. Then Alityros appeared, also at sword point.
The leader, a cube of a man with a jet-black beard covering most of his face, stood back and appraised his captives. ‘Kill them,’ he said with no more emotion than someone ordering a drink at a caupona bar. His companions raised their weapons.
‘Stop! What in the name of Hades d’you think you’re doing?’ A burly figure stood silhouetted in the doorway to the interior of the building, his hands on his hips in a pose of indignation. Taking no chances, Josephus and the others threw themselves flat on the floor.
‘We found three more, sir,’ said the cube. ‘More of Paul’s mob by the look of it.’
The newcomer strode into the stable, and ignoring the captives, took a cursory glance at the horses. ‘You’ve no idea who they are have you, idiot? And if they are Paul’s we need to find out how many more there are out there.’
The man’s voice seemed vaguely familiar and Josephus propped himself up amongst the straw and dung which coated the earth floor of the stable. ‘Gubs? What on earth are you doing here?’
‘Josephus,’ he shouted. ‘The gods be thanked you’re alive.’ And pulling his friend to his feet, warmly embraced him, ignoring the residue clinging to Josephus’ clothing. ‘We thought those bastards had killed you.’
‘Which bastards?’ asked Josephus, still shaky after his close call at the hands of the cube.
‘The ones Paul sent. But how on earth did you get away? They said they’d killed you all about an hour back up the pass. Not that they volunteered the information straight away, you understand.’
‘I don’t think I understand anything,’ said Josephus. ‘I need to thaw out and I could murder something hot to eat.’
Leaving the six horses in the care of the stable lad, who looked to Josephus worryingly like the one from the previous caupona, they trooped into the warm fug of the inn. Unlike the main room of their previous night’s stay, this time, save for the detachment from Gubs’ crew, the place was deserted. The innkeeper brought three steaming bowls of soup.
‘So what on earth are you doing here?’ asked Josephus when they had finished eating.
‘Looking for you of course,’ replied Gubs. ‘When the weather started closing in I decided to make a run for it back down the coast to Trapezus even if it meant leaving you behind till Spring.’
‘I wouldn’t have blamed you if you had,’ said Josephus. ‘We all expected you to have sailed weeks ago.’
‘We were taking on stores,’ continued Gubs. ‘And one of my lads got chatting to a bunch of what he thought were army deserters in a tavern. Anyway, after a fair old skinfull, they started trying to get him to convert to their religion.’
‘Christians,’ said Josephus.
‘Exactly. Anyway, being a good lad, he reported them to me and it just seemed like too much of a coincidence so I did a bit of digging to see if I could find out what they were up to. Don’t know if it that was coincidence too or something I said, but the next night when we went back to the tavern, they’d paid their bill and cleared off.’
‘So you decided to follow them?’ asked Alityros. ‘That was brave.’
‘Not really, but the fact that they were here and you lot were so far overdue, we decided to try and find you. The idea was for a quick look: two days out, and if there was no word, we’d assume the worst and come back.’
‘And at a guess, you weren’t the only one looking for three travellers,’ said Josephus.
‘Exactly. At around midday, the five men we’d seen at the tavern came in to the bunk house out the back and without going into too much detail, let’s just say that the conversation between them and my lads got a bit heated if you’ll excuse the pun.’
‘Where are they?’
‘Dead. The lads got three of them straight away, but don’t worry, we got plenty of information out of the others before we finished them off.’ Gubs slid a wooden-framed message tablet onto the table. ‘Here, take a look at this. I think you’ll recognise it.’
Josephus undid the cord and unfolded it to reveal the wax writing surface beneath. What he saw made his blood run cold. ‘I sent you this from Albanopolis, Gubs.’ Traced in the cold, hard wax was the description of their successful operation against Nathanael Bar Talmai, their intended route back to the shores of the Black Sea and an estimated date for their arrival.
‘I know you did,’ said Gubs. ‘But it never reached me. They must have ambushed the Cursus Publicus and once they’d got the message block that’s how they found you.’
‘Hold on a minute,’ said Giora. ‘What about the three men we found on the road? Who killed them?’
‘Paul’s mob,’ said Gubs. ‘One of them was blind drunk and came into the bunk house shouting his mouth off about what they’d been up to, so we thought you were done for. One of my lads recognised him from the bar in Phasis and naturally assumed that if you three were dead then he’d been traipsing through the snow for nothing – he’s Carthaginian you see and they’re not very keen on snow. That’s when the fight kicked off. Pity about the bunk house but at least three of the Christians got a decent funeral pyre.’
‘I can see why you thought we were dead,’ said Josephus. ‘Whoever stole our horses this morning ended up doing us a big favour.’ He paused for thought. ‘If we’
re going after Paul himself next we need to make sure we’ve got a more secure form of communication. All this has given me an idea.’
‘What have you got in mind?’ asked Gubs.
‘It’s Greek.’
Gubs snorted. ‘Whatever it is, I don’t like the sound of it,’ he replied, casting a sideways look at Alityros.
‘No, it’s nothing to do with that.’ Have you ever heard of Polybius?’ Gubs shook his head and Josephus continued. ‘He was a Greek mathematician who came up with a way of turning messages into code. The problem is, his method isn’t difficult to break even without the key. Mine will be impossible to read unless you have both keys.’
‘You’ve lost me again,’ said Gubs.
Josephus smiled. ‘I think you’ll like it. It could even be useful for the fleets. I’ll explain it to you when we get to Phasis.’
Under normal circumstances, even in the relatively sheltered coastal waters of the Black Sea, no sane captain of a liburna would ever leave port during the winter months, but Gubs, now master of the Celer and with supplies dwindling, decided to take a chance and head west from Phasis towards the fleet base at Trapezus. Starting at first light, relying mainly on the oars during the bitterly cold but clear days and running for shelter at the first hint of bad weather, they made the journey in five days.
Josephus, Giora and Alityros leaned over the rail as the ship, driven on by the rhythmic beat of its sweeps rounded the eastern end of the mole into harbour.
‘Hardly Ostia, is it?’ said Alityros as the Celer coasted through the ranks of warships, their masts waving gently as the liburna’s wake stirred them at their moorings.
‘Cheer up,’ said Josephus. ‘Only three more months and we can sail for home.’
Alityros stared down into the black, scummy waters of the harbour. ‘My career’s ruined, you know,’ he said. ‘By the time we get back, no one will even remember who I am.’
‘So long as the emperor does, you’ll be all right,’ Josephus replied.
‘Assuming he’s still emperor,’ said Alityros, watching distractedly as a dead dog drifted slowly astern.
‘You’ll have to hope so,’ added Giora, slapping him on the back, otherwise you’ll have to spend the rest of your days traipsing around the arse ends of the empire with Josephus here.’
‘Perish the thought,’ he replied with a shudder.
Later that evening, Josephus gathered Gubs and his two friends around one of the long wooden forms in the fleet mess which was to be their home for the remaining months of winter. Darkness had fallen early under the leaden skies and he set a ring of oil lamps and candles around the squares of papyrus which he spread out on the table.
‘You asked to see this, Gubs,’ he said. ‘And I’ve even created a special version for military use, but we’ll come on to that later. By my reckoning, there are seven leaders of the Chrestos cult still alive: Simon Kefas, who’s known in the cult as Peter; Paul who changed his name from Saul; Philippos; Matityahu or Matthew if you prefer; Didymus, known as Thomas; Yehudas who sometimes goes by the name of Thaddeus and finally, his sidekick, Simon Kananaios. I call them the “Seven Stars”, and each one of them is going to fall.’
‘So how does this message system of yours work?’ asked Gubs.
‘For each of the targets there’s a separate grid that allows you to encrypt and decrypt messages. Each man is assigned to one of the stars in the constellation of Ursa Major, that way we don’t have to use names and even if one of the grids falls into the wrong hands, no one will be any the wiser.’ Josephus looked around at each one in turn to make sure the message had sunk in, his face lit from below, which in the echoing darkness of the mess hall gave him an appearance of demonic fanaticism.
‘The cipher for Paul is different, for obvious reasons,’ he continued. ‘And that’s the one I think you’ll like, Gubs. But let’s start with the first one: Peter, represented by Phecda: that’s the star at the bottom left corner of the body of Ursa Major.’ He spread out a papyrus sheet on top of which was a simple drawing of the constellation with the relevant star surrounded by a circle. Underneath lay a grid, with the twenty three letters of the Latin alphabet written left to right along the top, and from top to bottom down the side to form a matrix with 529 squares: in each square was a letter.
‘Right, gather round and pay attention,’ said Josephus. ‘This is how to use the grids and the key.’
At first his friends were baffled by the logic but gradually they grasped that each letter in the encrypted text was represented by two letters and to decode the message, all the reader had to do was find the letter represented by the row and column pairs. ‘So,’ said Josephus, ‘If you want to send a message about Peter that starts with the letter “E”, pick any old “E” from the body of the grid – here’s one, at the intersection of row H and column N – and write down the letters corresponding to the row and column: HN.’
‘And so when I receive the message,’ said Gubs. ‘All I have to do to read it is go to row H, column N and see what letter’s at the intersection.’
‘You’ve got it in one,’ said Josephus. ‘Or, on the same grid the person writing the message could’ve used “S” and “O”.’
Gubs ran his finger along row “S” until he got to column “O”. ‘Which gives us another letter E.’ He looked up and grinned. ‘This is fantastic, Josephus, and it’s dead easy too. Even the dimmest of my crew could use this.’
Josephus moved quickly through the grids for the next five stars before arriving at the grid for Paul. ‘Now, for the last one,’ continued Josephus, laying a new grid over the previous one, ‘you’re going to have to concentrate. Paul is represented by the star Merak; bottom right of the Bear’s body.’ He tapped the circled star with his finger to emphasise his point. ‘As you’ll see, the grid is different. Instead of the letters in the squares being all jumbled up, here they’re in order. Take a look.’
‘Provided you don’t use “AE” every time you want to use the letter “E” you could probably get away with using this grid as it stands. However, what I’ve done is to make sure that any message sent using this method can never be read by anyone without the key. Here’s how it works. I take it you’re all familiar with Caesar’s Gallic Wars?’
‘Painfully so,’ said Alityros, rolling his eyes. Our magister was a brute and used to beat me black and blue.’
‘I thought you liked that sort of thing,’ quipped Gubs.
Alityros pouted, ‘Well there are limits, you know…’
Josephus showed them another piece of papyrus on the top half of which were written the first few lines of Book 1:
“Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, qvarvm vnam incolvnt Belgae, aliam Aqvitani, tertiam qvi ipsorvm lingva Celtae, nostra Galli appellantvr. Hi omnes lingva, institvtis, legibvs inter se differvnt.”
He uncovered the bottom half. ‘Now, take out the spaces between the letters and you get this.’
“galliaestomnisdivisainpartestresqvarvmvnamincolvntbelgaealiamaqvitanitertiamqviipsorvmlingvaceltaenostragalliappellantvrhiomneslingvainstitvtislegibvsintersediffervnt”
‘That’s the key that locks the message from prying eyes.’
Giora scratched his head. ‘I’m sorry, Josephus, you’ve just lost me,’ he said.
‘Don’t worry, it’s dead easy. I’ll explain. Suppose we want to send a message, itself taken from Gallic Wars.’ Underneath, Josephus had written:
“Horvm omnivm fortissimi svnt Belgae”: “the bravest of all these are the Belgae.”
With a flourish, Josephus produced yet another piece of Papyrus. ‘Let’s just look at the first two words with the spaces taken out.’ By the light of the guttering oil lamps they read “horvmomnivm”. ‘Now write the key underneath it and you get this. Plain text on top, key underneath: got it?’ They all nodded.
‘Now here’s the clever bit. We encode the first letter of our message, “H” using the row given by the key, in this case “G”: so where row G and col
umn H intersect we get O from the grid and our encoded message looks like this.’
‘So when you receive “oodhvoqfdkx”, to read it you just reverse the process using the key and the grid. Then all you have to do then is work out where the gaps between the words go. Provided you’ve got a copy of the Gallic Wars to hand, you can always decode any message.’
‘Hold on a minute,’ said Gubs. ‘What if the message is longer than the key?’
Josephus smiled. ‘Easy, you just repeat the key from the beginning. If the key was something short like, oh, I don’t know, “CANIS”, say, then you just keep repeating it so it would look like this.’ He dipped the worn metal nib into the ink pot and wrote on a corner of the papyrus.
‘The important thing to remember, is that the longer the key, the safer the code. I’m confident that what I’ve come up with will never be broken.’
Chapter Twenty-two
William Sunday University, Bibb County, Alabama
That the Reverend John Mortlock was not happy was plain to see. Illuminated like a Raphael saint by the light slanting through the stained glass windows of the refectory, he stood up and thumped the table, gesturing towards Irvine who sat at its head acting as chairman of the thirty-strong group. From their heavy frames set at regular intervals along the wood-panelled walls, the censorious faces of William Sunday’s founders and benefactors gazed down on the debate.
‘You told us your student body was made up of pious and disciplined young men, not thieves and racists. This isn’t the publicity you promised,’ shouted Mortlock, pausing to wipe a trail of spittle from his chin. ‘The whole evangelical movement is all over the press and TV with us looking like fools. That’s the last thing we needed.’
Irvine remained impassive and sat fiddling with one of his gold cuff-links, not even looking up in the face of the tirade.
‘Sit down, John, and please don’t raise your voice,’ he said. ‘I grant you that through no fault of our own, the evangelical movement in general and this great university in particular have been damaged by the actions of two well-intentioned but foolish young men who committed a serious crime. You can be assured that we are co-operating fully with the authorities.’ Irvine looked up as though seeking higher inspiration and his voice moved down half a register for maximum impact. ‘Sadly, one of them, a highly intelligent and diligent student, paid the ultimate price for his folly and we can only hope and pray that the good Lord will have mercy upon his soul.’
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