by Jo Macauley
John rested one oar and pulled on the other as he tried to alter course – but as soon as he did so, they were spun sideways so violently by the current that the boat rolled alarmingly and Beth and Ralph had to grab the sides to avoid being thrown out. Freezing cold water sloshed and sprayed into the boat, soaking the three of them. The current was trying to snatch the single oar from John’s grasp, and although he managed to get the craft pointing up river again, it was clearly impossible for him to row against the tide to the south bank. And then Beth spotted a new problem ahead.
London Bridge.
She knew that when the river was in this sort of state even experienced watermen hesitated to pass through. For those that braved it, their wary travellers often disembarked, walked past the Bridge, and got back into the boat on the other side. Many times she had passed among the graves of St Katherine’s by the Tower and gazed upon stones inscribed Drowned at the Bridge...
John had spotted the danger too, and his eyes widened. “What are we going to do?”
“We’ll not get through the bloomin” arches alive with the river like this!” Ralph yelled.
Groby’s vessel was just a boat’s length away by now, and Groby himself had moved to the front of his boat. He was holding a long boathook with a vicious-looking curved piece of metal on the end, leaning forward and wielding it like a knight about to go into battle.
“We must take our chances!” Beth shouted. “London Bridge might kill us, but Edmund Groby will. Aim for the middle arch, John – and hold on tight!”
The closer they got to the monumental old structure, with the houses and shops running along its length making it look more like a little stretched-out town than a bridge, the more the water began to churn and swirl. The nineteen arches that carried the bridge across the Thames stood on enormous piers. The fast-flowing water was forced between these, causing violent, unpredictable eddies and wildly fluctuating water levels.
Beth clung to the side of the boat with white knuckles, bracing her feet against its timbers. Ralph had curled up into a ball in the bottom, with his arm wrapped round the wooden bench that spanned the width of the craft. John was still bravely fighting the river with his oars, but it was now like being in a watery hurricane and his efforts were useless.
“Let go of the oars! Brace yourself!” Beth screamed, but as the stone pillars loomed rapidly upon them, the roar of the water was so loud that it drowned out her words. And then the oars were ripped from John’s grasp anyway and went spinning and bobbing crazily in the foaming current. The boat suddenly began to spin as if in a whirlpool, while at the same time being abruptly lifted on the water backing up against the piers.
The three passengers were thrown one way then another, and suddenly it was all a raging blur and Beth could hardly make sense of what was happening. She felt the boat smash against one side of the pier as they passed under the arch, and there was the sickening sound of splintering wood. Before she could take it all in they were swept against the other side, and she screamed as her fingers were crushed between the pier and the boat. Just as she fell backwards into the bottom, the vessel dropped suddenly, as if it had been swept over a cliff. It must have been a fall of at least six feet, forcing the wind from her lungs on impact. Beth heard an ugly gurgling, gasping noise like a pair of broken bellows, and it took her several seconds to realize that she was making it herself as her own lungs fought to draw air in. Her back felt as if it had been hit with a sledgehammer, and her injured knuckles were on fire. A warm flow of blood trickled down her arms from her hand, but she could make no effort to stop it. She lay stunned, her vision blurred, waiting for the cold waters to take her as the damaged little boat was thrown this way and that. At least then it would be over...
And then everything slowed and quietened.
She blinked away the filthy river water from her eyes and saw twinkling stars floating along serenely above as she lay face upwards. They seemed so strangely peaceful and beautiful that she wondered if she was finally in heaven.
But if so, Ralph was with her. Her daydream-like state was broken by his spluttering and coughing up water, followed by a string of swear words, some of which even she had never heard before. She eased her aching body into a sitting position and brushed away the sodden russet hair that was plastered across her face. As soon as she was upright, her head began to spin and ache, but the sensation quickly eased. Ralph was lying in a crumpled heap near the stern. Beth could see now that the boat wasn’t quite sinking, but was lying low in the water at Ralph’s end. Most of the upper stern planking was missing.
Worse still, so was John.
“Look,” said Ralph, leaning over the side of their stricken vessel as it drifted on the current, idly turning slow circles as it went.
Beth saw pieces of jagged timber bobbing in the moonlit water all around them – far too much to have come from their damaged stern – and they were being overtaken by an oar that she knew wasn’t from their boat.
“Groby’s gone to a watery grave if there’s any justice!” Ralph muttered darkly.
Beth was already soaked and shivering, but the mention of a “watery grave” sent an extra tremor through her body. “John’s out there somewhere too...” she said shakily.
“Sorry, Beth, but even if he survived shooting the bridge, he won’t last long when the water’s this cold.”
She fought back the tears welling up inside her and moved to the opposite side of the boat. “No. No, we’re not giving up on him yet,” she said determinedly. “Keep looking. You take that side, I’ll take this.”
They strained their eyes and ears, but the further they drifted without any sign of him, the more their spirits sagged. The rapid current carried them towards the bend in the river near Whitehall Palace, but instead of following the curve their momentum propelled the boat straight on, where it jolted heavily against the wooden posts supporting a jetty outside Worcester House. Beth was sent tumbling into Ralph, and there was an ominous splintering sound from their boat. More of the stern had come away, and a large jagged crack flashed like black lightning across the middle of the stricken craft. Water immediately bubbled up through it and began to fill the boat, and Beth scrambled to her feet, readied herself, then leaped out onto the jetty’s stairs. As the boat quickly filled with water swirling around Ralph’s legs, she reached across to help him out of the boat too.
They sat shivering and exhausted on the bottom stair, looking on mournfully as their boat finally split in two and both parts quickly slipped beneath the murky surface of the river. Beth knew this area well. Drury Lane was just a short walk from here and it almost felt as if she had come home – but as a failure, and now without John. Neither of them seemed able to move just yet, despite the cold.
“That’s it, then...” Ralph sighed. His knees were drawn up with his chin resting on them, his eyes still fixed on the spot where their boat had sunk.
“I – I liked him...” Beth murmured. Blood still trickled from her aching hand, and her back was stiff and sore.
“I could tell...!” Ralph tried to turn it into a light-hearted quip, but there was no conviction in his voice. “Well ... at least he managed to save his friend. Will’s safe.”
“What do you mean?”
“There was no explosion. That amount of gunpowder? We’d have heard it go off if we’d been in a thunderstorm in America!”
Beth realized he was right. “And Groby’s gone – so yes, Will must be free. I wonder if he found—”
“What is that?” Ralph had risen to his feet and he was looking out across the Thames back towards London Bridge.
Beth rose also. All she could see was a dark shape floating their way with what looked like a branch with some twigs sticking out of it.
“’Tis a log, that’s all.”
“I’ve got eyes like a hawk, me,” Ralph said. “It is a log – but that’s not all.”
As it drew closer, they began to hear something echoing across the water.
; Spluttering and coughing.
And then the dark shape sailed into a patch of bright moonlight.
“T’IS JOHN!” Beth exclaimed.
“But the river’s going to take him past us,” Ralph said quickly. “And he doesn’t look in great shape—”
Beth had already seen that, and was moving to the edge of the stairs, crouching.
“Beth, pleeease tell me you’re not going to do what I think you’re going to do...”
“I’m not losing him again,” she said through gritted teeth.
“The current’s too strong! You’ll both drown! He might be able to grab...”
But Beth was already launching herself into the air. The icy water took her breath away and paralysed her for a second as she came up gasping from her headfirst dive, but she made herself press on towards the spot where she hoped she could intercept John as he floated towards her. The current fought against her every inch of the way, trying to force her sideways upstream. She struggled against the water, but everything she had been through was quickly catching up with her and her strength was ebbing away by the second. The injured hand and bruised back that Beth had pushed out of her mind now forced themselves into her consciousness with a vengeance; the water was choppy and kept slapping into her face so that she was swallowing and choking on it with almost every stroke.
But still she kept on, and soon John was heading straight for her. She had to stop and tread water for a moment so that she didn’t overshoot and miss him. It wasn’t until the log he was clinging to was almost upon her that she appreciated just how fast he was being carried along. She reached out and just managed to grab John’s coat, but the protruding branch caught her a glancing blow on the cheek and forehead, its twigs missing her eye by a fraction.
But she had him!
She screamed at John to let go of the log, but although he was conscious, it was as if he was in a trance. He said nothing, just spluttered and gasped and clung grimly to the log. It was his lifeline. She tried to prise his fingers free, but had to keep her own hold at the same time, and it was if his hands were frozen to the wood. In desperation, she manoeuvred her way round him hand-over-hand, using John’s clothing to hold onto until she was on the opposite side of the log. Then she began to kick towards Ralph for all she was worth. At first it didn’t seem to make any difference, but as they approached the bend in the river where their friend waited, Beth’s efforts were rewarded and the log began to cut across the current towards the bank. She wasn’t strong enough to steer it to the stairs where Ralph was, but he realized this himself and scurried down to the next landing place. He leaned out and grabbed the helpless John by the collar before the log could speed past, and in the same instant Beth made a leap and managed to catch a rough, splintery wooden post, hauling herself out of the water with her last remaining energy.
Ralph tended to John while Beth flopped onto her back, her chest heaving, her hands so stiff and cold they no longer felt as if they even belonged to her. She felt her mind begin to go blank and soon she had drifted off into unconsciousness...
Chapter Sixteen - The Cipher
By the time Beth came to her senses again and levered herself up onto her elbows, she discovered that both she and John were covered in blankets to keep them warm, though they were still at the bankside. Ralph must have been waiting for their exhaustion to wear off a little before they got moving again, but sleep must have got the better of him too. He was sitting with his back against one of the steps, his head lolling forward, snoring quietly. The blankets were ragged and flea-ridden, and she dreaded to think where he had found them – but they were warm, and she felt a pang of guilt at ever having doubted his honesty.
But soon she recalled that there were more urgent matters than her own feelings to worry about. Memories of what had happened on the Doodgaan came flooding back, and she felt inside her cloak, relieved to find that the little wooden box containing the coded letter was still nestling there. She lay back again and fumbled to open out the letter with numb fingers. Dawn was just beginning to break now, and there was just enough light to make out the mysterious jumble of letters on the damp but still preserved paper. She stared at it for a moment, deciding to force her weary, fogged brain to concentrate and recall what Alan Strange had taught her about ciphers. Time could be of the essence...
YJJ GQ QCR
UC DMJJMU AYRCQZWQ JCYB
UFCL RFC QUGLC ZSPLQ
RFC PCNSZJGA QFYJJ PGQC YEYGL
Codecracking was hard enough when she was fresh and able to use a pen and paper. If this was a complex cipher devised by an expert – as it probably was – it would be all but impossible to solve under these circumstances. Still, Beth stared at the letters, trying to mentally rearrange them in her head, trying to see a pattern, force them into some sort of order. Lying on her back with the letter held up at arm’s length with just the odd white gull flapping across a dirty grey sky to distract her, she blinked, screwed her eyes up and worked her way through the message again and again.
John began to stir beside her. First there was a grunt, then he suddenly sat bolt upright with a panicked cry. He threw his blanket off and began to rise, looking about him as if ready to escape from some imaginary enemy.
Beth laid an arm on his shoulder. “Be still, John. You’re safe among friends.”
He managed to focus on her, then glanced across at Ralph. “Lord ... I dreamed that Edmund Groby had me in shackles, and he was just about to—”
“Groby is no more,” Ralph croaked, rousing himself into full wakefulness and stretching his arms out wide to get rid of the stiffness.
“We think he is no more,” Beth corrected him. “But we do know his boat was dashed to pieces...”
Now John noticed the letter in Beth’s hand. “Oh – thank goodness you managed to hang onto it. Have you been able to work out what it means?”
She shook her head. “I need time and writing implements...”
“Probably doesn’t matter,” Ralph offered. “I dare say it just says ‘Kill John Turner and his accomplices.’”
“No,” said Beth. “Henry Vale would never have heard of John when he wrote this – four days ago. A letter found in a mystery ship loaded with gunpowder has to be of far greater import.”
“Gunpowder!” John cried, springing up again. “Will!”
“Will’s probably a lot warmer and comfier than us, my friend,” Ralph reassured him.
“The ship didn’t blow up – we’d have heard it,” Beth explained.
John exhaled with relief. He took the letter from Beth and scrutinised it. “There is some sort of logic to it ... Will and I used to send each other coded messages at work making fun of our senior officers when we were bored. Look at how ‘RFC’ crops up twice. ‘The’ is one of the most common words, so the letters representing it would likely crop up several times. In our notes, we would simply use the next letter to the one that was intended – so A would be B, B would be C and so on, so perhaps—”
“No, I’ve tried that and it still makes no sense,” Beth told him quickly. “Besides, people such as the ones we are dealing with would never use such a childish cipher.”
“I was only trying to help...”
“Oh, I didn’t mean you are childish, John. Just that such a code could be so easily broken that a spy would never dare use it.”
“Unless he was in a hurry...” Ralph chipped in.
“What do you mean?” asked Beth.
“Sir Henry Vale was supposed to have snuffed it. Somebody, somehow, saved his neck – but it must all have been done in haste. What if there was no time to work out a really tough code? What if it the person it’s intended for didn’t know the key, so Vale had to risk making it a code that anyone could work out? At least,” Ralph added sheepishly, “someone who knows their letters, not like me...”
“Something more simple...” Beth pondered, then suddenly snatched the letter back from John. She involuntarily flushed with embarrassment as she studied it. �
��You’re right, John. I should not have been so hasty to doubt you. It’s a classic, simple three-letter shuffle!”
“Sounds like a dance!” he said.
“The three-letter shuffle simply means you have two alphabets side by side, and just move one forward or back three places so that A becomes Y or C, B becomes Z or D and so on. It just seemed so unlikely that someone might use it...” she said sheepishly.
“That’s what you get for trying to show off, eh?” Ralph said, but his teasing grin made Beth relent from the retort that was on the tip of her tongue. “So what happens to the letters that go off the bottom?”
“They go to the start. Y becomes A, and Z becomes B if moving on.” She looked at the message again. “But if R becomes T, then the letters here were moved back to code the message, so we have to move them on to decode it.”
They all gathered around in a circle, sitting cross-legged. With growing excitement Beth called out the letters while John worked out what real letter they represented. Each time they got one he etched the word in the muddy ground using a stick. Finally, a message of sorts appeared before their eyes: ragged and faint in places, but clear enough.
ALL IS SET
FOLLOW CATESBY’S LEAD
WHEN THE SWINE BURNS
THE REPUBLIC SHALL RISE AGAIN
“Hmm...” said John, deflated.
The air of expectancy was quickly dampened by the dirt-scrawled message. It was in recognizable English, yet still appeared to make little sense. They stared at the ground, perplexed.
“Clear as mud, then!” Ralph commented laconically after a while.
“It’s not funny!” Beth snapped, but found herself having to stifle a giggle – and she saw John doing the same. Before she knew it they were all laughing so hard that tears came to their eyes. Beth was vaguely aware that the remark wasn’t that funny – but after all they had been through, she thought they were all feeling almost hysterical.
“If only we knew who Catesby is,” said Ralph, once they had calmed down.
“Yes,” agreed Beth. “The name sounds familiar, but—”