‘I have. She is well, and asks after you. An admirer, Thomas, I fancy.’
Thomas felt himself blush. ‘Come now, Simon, I hardly think so. We get on well. Nothing more.’
‘Well, Jane would like to visit you. I’m reluctant to arrange it because she would learn where you are, which might be dangerous for her and for you. She’s probably being watched, and Rush must on no account learn of your whereabouts.’
‘It would cheer me greatly to see her, Simon. Can you not think of a safe way for her to come?’
‘If you wish it, I’ll try. But do not raise your hopes. Rush’s men are everywhere.’
‘And what of dear Abraham, Simon?’
‘The coroner released his body today. He will be buried in two days’ time at the Church of St Barnabas, just outside the west wall. He liked the place. The funeral is set for ten.’
Thomas was silent. He felt guilty for not having grieved properly for his old friend, and now he could not attend his funeral. He would have to mourn in private.
‘Here’s the letter, Simon,’ he said, handing it over. ‘God willing, it will arrive safely, and there will be a reply.’
The next morning, Simon did not visit and Thomas’s breakfast was brought by an elderly monk who could see little and said nothing. When he had eaten, Thomas laid out the encrypted message on the table and studied it again. It was still the same:
URF UBD HE XQB TF KGA OEMD RRFUO TLC WMG LRB WHT R XHGORKZ IO KPW769 WA MQFV BVMF HPL ZFTD RVV57 4SEWMFREJ VGL SVKMGE 852 GTSC WZTD QE TIJG IVL GJT RA KDOE IK EOJAAQLV GGJR MQU IOIGSI GRQF HBFZG JGY ALG EE OLWEEA GJR YIFS1 82AEL2 64SGE SC AAD ZVY JP KP WXR JB JTN XBZ77 5XNW WJBS LA LWAK371 EAIH TPA AD RVV BAP TWPVV AGDN WWJ URR VUT IW EW HTI QCT WY QDT37 1IE852 769UMHT RKC CONT WSGV WMG IEN DJEE KWIHV ZW PNU EAIH371 ZV GJR YIFSS NQ DA BV NGGCVL LD SVMC IRLKW DN KMJ BS WINDU IITAE KW42177 5OX LCIVK IJM LXMV IFS PCI UT FFZ SEPI MZTNJQGCOW3 71E ZDWZTD QE SZGJ GYB LD 574SKIFS RVIV N GFL OX LC QFV WV AZPLCJJX NX IF TNU BG IHZA OP RJWGC
And still it revealed nothing of itself. Having been intercepted nearly two weeks ago, it might, in any case, no longer be useful — a thought he quickly put aside. His job was to decrypt this text, whatever it turned out to be.
Proceeding on the assumption that the keyword consisted of five unrepeated letters, Thomas wrote out each of the letters that would have been encrypted using the first letter of the keyword. Ignoring all numbers and spaces, he began with the first letter, U, followed by the sixth, D, the eleventh, B, and each following fifth letter, until he had listed ninety-two letters. In a text of four hundred and fifty-six letters, the first letter of the keyword would have been used ninety-two times, and the other letters ninety-one times. It was a painstaking task and easy to make a mistake. He worked slowly.
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.