Andrew Swanston - The King's Spy

Next he added up the number of times each letter had been used. He found that the frequencies ranged from nine (T) and eight (D, G, I, J) to none at all (F, M, O, Y, Z). He allowed himself a small smile. This distribution looked promising. If T represented E, the alphabetical shift dictated by the first letter of the keyword was fifteen. And when he checked the other frequent letters, T emerged as a near certainty for E. If he was right, the first letter of the plain text was F — a shift of fifteen places from the first letter of the cipher text, U, and, most important of all, revealing that the first letter of the keyword was P. So far so good. Monsieur Vigenère was smiling. He turned to the second letter.

Again he wrote out all the letters in the cipher text which had been encrypted, this time by the second letter of the keyword, counted the frequency of each, and applied the same logic to the result. It made nonsense. If any of the most frequent letters represented E, there would be no Rs, three Qs and two Xs in the second letter sequence. Thomas threw down his quill, splattering ink on his papers, and cursed. Either he had been wrong all along, or he had made a mistake in writing down the letters or in counting them. He checked his counting. It was correct. He cursed again. He would have to work his way laboriously through the text to search for a mistake. He lit the stub of a candle and rewrote the second list of letters, starting and ending with R. When he compared it to the original list that had proved useless, his mistake was obvious. In the seventh line, he had missed the double S and jumped from listing the second letters to listing the third. No wonder the letter distribution had been chaotic. Montaigne spoke sternly. ‘If only talking to oneself did not look mad, no day would go by without my being heard growling to myself, “You silly shit.”’ ‘ Merci, monsieur ,’ replied Thomas.

The first glimmers of light on the morning of Abraham’s funeral were appearing through the barred window above his bed. Thomas put his papers under his bed, splashed his face with water, and put on the habit and sandals he had worn in the garden. Taking the elm branch for a walking stick, he slipped quietly out of the door and into the courtyard of the abbey. He could hear voices in the chapel, but saw no one. All at prayer, no doubt. A prayer for Thomas Hill would be welcome, if only the monks knew who he was. The key to the monks’ door within the huge abbey gate was in the lock. Thomas let himself out, and turned east towards Oxford.

Within the hour, having passed only a milkmaid and two boys gathering mushrooms, he saw the steeple of the Church of St Barnabas above a small copse of oaks. He was hungry and thirsty. With no money for food, he would have to rely on nature. A narrow stream ran alongside the copse. Lying on his stomach on the bank, he could just reach the water, and, with cupped hands, slake his thirst. He took a small pebble from the stream and put it in the pocket of his habit. In the copse, he found blackberries. Water and berries for breakfast. Not as good as Margaret’s bread with cheese and eggs, but it would have to do. He found a comfortable place from which he could watch the church unobserved, and sat down to wait.

The church bell started ringing as the funeral procession approached from the direction of the town. It was a small gathering — just Silas Merkin and three others carrying the coffin, a handful of elderly mourners and Simon de Pointz. Thomas slipped the pebble under his foot, took up the elm branch, and limped around to join the back of the procession as it entered the graveyard. No one appeared to notice him. He kept his hood on and his head down, and, when they reached the grave in which Abraham Fletcher would be laid to rest, stood a little back from the other mourners.

The service was mercifully brief. Some prayers and a few words from the parson before the coffin was lowered into the grave. Sensible, unsentimental Abraham would have approved. Thomas turned to leave. Better to be away before the others. He limped back down the path towards the graveyard gate. Glancing up, he saw two men, both armed, standing just outside it. Rush’s men, without a doubt. He could not turn back without drawing attention to himself, so he continued on down the path, hoping that the two men would take no interest in a limping friar.

As he approached, however, one of them called out. ‘Good morning, father, a sad day. Was Master Fletcher a friend?’ Thomas said nothing. These men would have his description, and to reply he would have to raise his head. The man spoke again. ‘I asked if Master Fletcher was a friend. Do you not answer a civil question?’ With no idea what else to do, Thomas stayed silent and kept limping towards them. The two men stepped in front of the gate and barred his way.

A hand gripped his shoulder, and a voice behind him said, ‘You must forgive Father Peter, gentlemen. He’s deaf as well as lame. He and I were old friends of Master Fletcher. I will see Peter safely home.’ Rush’s men shrugged, and let them pass. Simon kept a firm hand on Thomas’s shoulder until they were well out of sight and earshot. Beyond the copse, they stopped and Simon released his grip. Thomas bent to remove the pebble. ‘For the love of God, Thomas, what do you think you’re doing? Rush himself might have been here.’ Simon was furious.

‘It was necessary.’

‘Necessary? Necessary to be arrested and hanged? Or necessary to be thrown back into that cell?’

‘I was released on the orders of the queen.’

‘Thomas, you know perfectly well that that won’t stop Rush finding a way of silencing you. You acted rashly.’

‘Then I apologize. My confinement is irksome. I needed to see the sky and to hear voices.’

‘In that case, I will accompany you back to the abbey. You can look at the sky while listening to my voice.’

As they walked, Simon described the mood at court. Following the death of so many loyal friends, the king had returned from Newbury suffering from a deep melancholy, which the murder of Abraham Fletcher had only made worse. His majesty now saw treachery behind every smile, and a spy in every room. Rush had protested about Thomas’s release, claiming to have absolute proof of his guilt, while the queen had insisted on her faith in Jane’s assurance of his innocence. Rush had demanded to know where Thomas was hiding, and did not believe that the queen had not been told. In his present state of mind, there was no telling what the king might do.

‘Did I tell you,’ asked Simon as they reached the abbey gate, ‘that Rush’s father was a gaoler in the Tower? The story goes that he took a bribe to let a wealthy merchant, accused of treason, escape, and used the money for his son’s education.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘We friars have ways of knowing things, Thomas, and we like to gossip. It’s our besetting sin.’

‘What else do you know about him?’

‘Only that, as a young man, he studied at Cambridge and was friendly with Hampden and Pym, both scholars at Oxford. Hampden, of course, is dead, and Pym, they say, hasn’t long to go. Let us hope that they are soon joined by their old friend.’

‘A trifle unchristian, Simon, don’t you think?’

‘No, Thomas, I do not think. The man’s evil. He should be in hell. And the sooner you decrypt the message and provide proof that he’s a traitor, the sooner we’ll send him there. Have you made any progress?’

‘As a matter of fact, I might have.’ Thomas tried not to sound smug. ‘I shall know for certain by this evening.’

‘Good. I shall call tomorrow morning, when I trust you’ll be able to tell me more.’

Back in his room, Thomas started again on the second keyword letter. Two letters stood out in his list — R and E — both with ten appearances. He would assume one of them represented E. He started with R. He soon found, however, that if R represented E, the second letter of the keyword would be N and the distribution of other letters was equally unconvincing. So E represented itself, and the second letter of the keyword was A, and the second letter of the text, R, was itself. He had the first two letters of the keyword, P and A, and the first two letters of the text, F and R.