Andrew Swanston - The King's Spy

The third letter of the text, F, turned out to be O. FRO had the look of FROM. He moved speedily on to the fourth letter.

This one looked easy. With twelve appearances, I was the most frequent letter, followed by A and Q, with eight each. He tackled I first. It worked. The fourth letter of the plain text was therefore M, and the first word FROM, as he had hoped. Thomas now had four letters of the keyword — PARI.

‘I do hope it’s PARIS,’ he said out loud. ‘Monsieur Montaigne would be much amused.’

Assuming it was PARIS, he quickly decrypted the next four letters of the text, BDHE, revealing JOHN. This message had been sent by a man named John.

Thomas was halfway through decrypting the whole message when the old monk brought his dinner. He gobbled it down without noticing what it was, and resumed his work. After another hour, he was able to write out the full text, putting his assumptions about the code numbers in brackets:

FROM JOHN PYM TO COLONEL CROMWELL OUR LATEST

APPROACH TO THE [KING]

HAVING BEEN SPURNED AND [LONDON] DEFENCES NOW

SECURE [OXFORD] PLAN WILL BE CARRIED OUT AS SOON AS

POSSIBLE. YOUR VICTORY AT GAINSBOROUGH

STRENGTHENS OUR HAND. [182?] AND [264?] ARE BUILDING

UP THEIR STRENGTH.

[775?] INFORMS US THAT [QUEEN] WITH CHILD AND MAY

LEAVE SOON FOR FRANCE.

IF WE STRIKE WHILE [QUEEN] IN [OXFORD], [KING] MUST

ACKNOWLEDGE OUR INFLUENCE THERE AND WITH [QUEEN] IN

OUR HANDS WILL BE FORCED TO SEEK TRUCE ON TERMS

FAVOURABLE TO [421?]. [775?] WILL ADVISE TIME

AND PLACE FOR APPREHENSION OF [QUEEN] WHO WILL BE

BROUGHT TO

[LONDON]. STAND READY. GOD WILLING WE SHALL BRING AN

END TO THIS WAR SOON.

He guessed from the context the codes for the king and queen, and for London and Oxford. 182, 264 and 421 probably did not matter much. The critical code was 775. If it could be shown who 775 was, the traitor and murderer would be revealed. A pity the letters of his name had not been encrypted with the cipher. He would wager his life that they would spell out RUSH.

Thomas sat and stared at the message. No wonder it had been encrypted with the Vigenère square, complicated further by numerical codes, and hidden in the messenger’s hat. Simon was due in the morning, but if the queen was in danger of being abducted to London, should he hurry immediately to Merton? Would he be heard, and would the king believe him? He decided that the queen would be safe in her lodgings at Merton, with the college gates closed and guarded, and her own Lifeguards on watch. Anyone attempting to apprehend her would surely do so when she had left the college.

Sleep was out of the question. He made careful copies of his decryption and of the encrypted message, replicating as best he could the encrypter’s hand. It was something he always did when making a copy, just as he always tried to find a way into the encrypter’s mind. Then he lay on the bed and waited for dawn.

Dawn had only just broken when Simon burst in. ‘No time to explain,’ he gasped, throwing a Benedictine tunic, scapular and hood on to the bed. ‘Put those on, get on your knees and pray. And keep praying until I say you can stop.’

‘Simon, what in the name of-’

‘Pray, Thomas, and make haste.’ And with that, he was gone.

There was an unusual urgency in Simon’s voice which made Thomas do as he was told. He slipped the tunic over his head, tied it at the waist with the cord from his Franciscan habit, buckled on the scapular and put the hood over his head. Then, feeling very foolish, he knelt by the bed as if in prayer. It seemed a good moment to ask whoever might be listening to take care of his sister and nieces while he was away, and, because he had never been able to take praying seriously, to request that, having now been both a Franciscan and a Benedictine, he would be spared the dreary black of the Dominicans.

He was trying to think of something else to pray for when there came the unmistakable sounds of soldiers clattering about on the flagstones in the abbey courtyard, and voices raised in anger and command. So that was it. Unwelcome visitors, probably on the instructions of Tobias Rush, and certainly searching for Thomas Hill. Simon must have got wind of them, and warned him just in time. He adjusted his hood to make sure his face was hidden and turned his head away from the door. The voice outside was harsh and insistent. ‘What’s in here?’

‘This is the room of our brother Peter. He stays here alone. His soul is troubled and his body sick. Please do not disturb him.’ It was a voice Thomas did not recognize.

‘My orders are to search every room.’

‘Then, if you must, I ask you to be gentle. Peter is easily frightened.’

Thinking that whoever Peter was, he was not alone in this, Thomas wriggled deeper into his tunic and hood. The door was thrown open and he heard the men enter. Tempted as he was to sneak a look at them, he managed to keep his head bowed in solemn prayer. ‘You there,’ demanded the soldier, ‘get up and show your face.’ Thomas ignored him and kept praying. ‘Get up, damn you, or I’ll get you up myself.’ Still Thomas remained on his knees.

The other voice spoke. ‘It would be a grave mistake to touch Brother Peter. His mind is deranged and he is infected by unholy poisons. I have seen this before. The infection can be passed by touch.’

‘Is that so? In that case, you get him up.’

‘That I cannot do. It might drive his mind still deeper into torment. Peter is sick and harmless. Can you not leave him to his prayers?’

‘Get him up and let me see him.’

‘I cannot.’

Thomas heard a sword being withdrawn from its scabbard and involuntarily tensed his back. ‘As you wish …’ The sword clattered on to the stone floor, and the man cursed loudly. ‘You’ll pay for that, you fucking monk.’ It was more than he could bear. Thomas looked up from his prayer and saw the back of a soldier of the King’s Lifeguards and the face of a tall Benedictine monk, the soldier’s sword in his hand. Only he was not a Benedictine monk, he was Simon de Pointz, a Franciscan friar. Quite unperturbed, Simon stared at the soldier, and spoke in the voice Thomas had not recognized.

‘I think not. Here we serve only God, and it is God who commands us to take care of this suffering creature. Search where you please. Peter will not be harmed.’ The soldier stared back. Then he turned and stormed out of the room. Simon signalled to Thomas to resume his praying, and followed the defeated soldier. He closed the door carefully behind him.

Still on his knees, Thomas wondered again at the extra ordinary presence of the man. Having arrived unknown and uninvited, he had convinced Thomas to leave his home and family and to travel with him to a foul, dangerous place, where sickness and death were everywhere, and now, without so much as raising his voice, he had faced down a soldier of the king intent upon carrying out his orders. And he had done so at great risk to himself. Fortunate for the king that the wayward Norwich boy had become a Franciscan, not a Parliamentarian.

Quite suddenly, the sounds of the search disappeared and the abbey grew quieter. Daring to hope that the troops had given up and left, Thomas got to his feet and stretched his back. He could guess what had happened. The men at Abraham’s funeral had reported back to Rush that two friars had been there, one of them looking after the other. Rush had assumed that Thomas had slipped through his net and sent men to search every monastery and abbey around Oxford. Thanks only to Simon, the fish had escaped the net again.

Or had it? Hearing footsteps approaching his door, Thomas was back on his knees in a trice, head bowed in solemn prayer. He heard the door open and held his breath. ‘You can stop now, Thomas, unless you have more upon which to ask for God’s guidance. They’ve gone.’ Thomas got up again and faced Simon, now back in his familiar grey habit.