‘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.
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.
CHAPTER 12
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.