Andrew Swanston - The King's Return

For two hours he worked away at more combinations of numbers, ignoring the spaces between groups and hoping to alight on a clue. If he could find just one possible combination it would be a start upon which he should be able to build.

The start, when it came, was unexpected and thanks to the number 28, which appeared seven times, followed by seven different numbers. He guessed at the letter N, a medium-weight number, followed, at least in some cases, by T. NT was a very common pair – urgent, agent, interest – and likely to appear several times in a text of this length. And T would have about nine numbers allocated to it. The pair also had the characteristic of usually requiring a vowel before the N. From this tentative beginning, he slowly – very slowly and with many corrections – started to ascribe numbers to letters and to write them on his chart. There was no great pleasure in this. He knew that he should have found the letter N sooner. It was Madeleine Stewart’s fault. She had unsettled him.

An exercise like this always reminded Thomas of a race he had once run. Each year on Midsummer’s Day, some of the more athletic scholars had competed for a cask of ale by running ten times around Christ Church Meadow. Naturally they ran as the ancient Greeks had – naked – and there was invariably a good crowd of boisterous onlookers of both sexes. Most of the competitors set off as fast as they could and hoped to get too far ahead for anyone to catch them. They quickly tired each other out. Thomas had won the race easily by starting slowly, accelerating a little in the middle and finishing at a sprint. Complex decryption was much the same. Start too fast and you would regret it later. Take your time and check your work carefully before moving on; and as each letter revealed itself the next one became a little easier.

During the afternoon and evening he found the vowels, then T, S and M. All fatigue disappeared and he was accelerating. At six o’clock he sent for more fuel, gobbled down half a chicken and prepared himself for the final mile.

The mile took longer than expected, however, because there turned out to be as many as twenty-five instances of N, the very first letter he had identified, and only twelve of D, which should have occurred about the same number of times. Reminding himself that if such anomalies did not sometimes occur cryptography would be easy, he continued patiently on his way, until he had a complete list of letters and numbers.

When he was satisfied that the actual number of appearances of each letter was close enough to what he expected, Thomas tried writing out the message. Soon he had:

MONEY DUE FROM ARGENTUM NEEDED IMMEDIATELY. OUR PLANS NOW FAR ADVANCED AND EXPENSES HIGH. RECENT INTELLIGENCE FROM AURUM UNHELPFUL. TAKE URGENT STEPS TO RECRUIT MORE AGENTS. OUR FRIENDS IN FRANCE WILL JOIN US ONLY IF CONFIDENT OF OUR STRENGTH IN ENGLAND. GOD BE WITH YOU. ALCHEMIST.

So the name A. Silver Esq was significant. Argentum and Aurum – silver and gold. And all, it seemed, in the hands of an Alchemist – not, presumably, Ben Jonson’s Alchemist . If proof were needed of a dangerous spy ring run from Holland, here it was. The Dutch and the French. Plans far advanced. More agents. Time to wake the acting secretary of state.

Despite the anticipation of finding out in the morning whether or not Thomas had been successful, Williamson had retired early and was sound asleep when his servant woke him just after midnight. Within minutes he was alert and presentable and down the staircase, where he found Thomas waiting for him, paper in hand.

‘Thomas, good news I trust.’

‘Good news, Joseph, in that I have decrypted the letter. The contents, however, are not so good.’ Thomas handed over the paper. Williamson took it and read it twice.

‘No, not so good, although it might have been worse if you had not decrypted it. The sender of this letter did not expect it to be intercepted and certainly not to be decrypted. It confirms what we have suspected for some months. The Dutch are trying to persuade the French to join them against us, possibly even launch an invasion. The Dutch fleet is already stronger than ours, and if supported by the French …’ He let the thought hang in the air.

‘And Argentum and Aurum? Have you any idea who they are?’

‘None. One apparently a source of finance, the other of intelligence. Two traitors acting together against us – one wealthy or with access to wealth, the other with information valuable to our enemies. I am sure the murders of Matthew Smith, John Winter and Henry Copestick were connected to them and that we are dealing with a formidable foe. A ruthless foe who has penetrated our intelligence network. Has Mottershead told you about the rumour of a disfigured foreigner?’

‘He has mentioned it. He said there is talk of the man being the murderer, but there are no witnesses and no clues. It’s merely conjecture.’ Only a white lie, thought Thomas.

‘Quite so. Copestick’s death worries me the most because he worked in the Post Office itself. I know there have always been suspicions about Morland. The man was an ardent republican and has all the charm of a dung heap, but there is not a scrap of hard evidence against him.’

‘What about Squire?’

‘Ha. Too busy stuffing himself, drinking too much and falling ill. Surprisingly clever, but he was never a republican. In fact, like many travelling players, he claims to have carried royalist messages from place to place. I always suspected that was why Cromwell closed the theatres, rather than out of principle. And Squire’s sexual inclinations make him an unlikely Puritan. The theatre was his home and his pleasure. I daresay the precious metals are outside the Post Office after all. The Foreign Office, perhaps.’

‘Perhaps. But there are two of them, it seems. Twice as easy to catch. And what about the Alchemist himself?’

‘As you no doubt know, there are agents scouring Europe for those who signed the late king’s death warrant. I will instruct them to keep their eyes and ears open, but I suspect we’ll only discover the Alchemist’s identity if we can catch Aurum or Argentum and force it out of them. Even then, he’ll be safe in Holland.’ He paused. ‘I think we will keep this to ourselves for now, Thomas. Much as I would like to see Morland’s face when presented with your decryption, it will be safer if no one else but His Majesty knows that we have read this letter. Meanwhile we will redouble our efforts.’

‘We?’

‘I hope you will assist me, Thomas.’

‘I had intended to return to Romsey immediately.’

‘Immediately? Why so sudden?’

‘I do not care for London. I wish to go home.’ And I wish to persuade my niece to do the same, he thought, before disaster strikes. I have neglected my duty as her uncle and I have no more excuses for doing so.

Joseph peered at him with his good eye. ‘I quite understand. You have done enough. Now I must dress and leave at once to see the king. Go and find a comfortable bed, Thomas. You look as if you need one.’

Thomas awoke in his bed at the Carringtons’ house twenty-four hours later. Just before waking, he had dreamed that Madeleine Stewart was speaking to him in a language he could not understand. The more she spoke the angrier he became, until he picked up a pot of ink and threw it at her. But instead of the ink covering her, it turned itself into letters and numbers which hovered in the air. When he opened his eyes, the room was dark and it took him a minute to remember where he was.

Thomas could never see a summer dawn without thinking of Homer’s ‘rosy-fingered dawn, child of the morn’, and when he looked out of his window, he did so again. A cloudless sky, streaked with red, was lightening as the sun rose, the birds were singing their chorus and the chestnuts in the square were as green as the oaks in the New Forest. A perfect day to begin his journey. In three days he would be home. First, however, he must pay his respects and make his explanations to Charles and Mary, of whom he had seen little since taking on the work for Williamson. More’s the pity. Charles and Mary, quite apart from having saved his life twice, were people he loved dearly. Excellent company, caring, open, honest. The very people a new colony like Barbados needed. Having spent nearly four wretched years on the island, Thomas knew just how demanding a life it was, even for the now-wealthy planters. Disaster lurked around every corner – heat, disease, storms, violence, crop failure – each one could bring a man down and often did. The Carringtons, of course, would take whatever fate threw at them with courage and good humour. That was their way.