Lest anyone think that I could call on an army of assistants in the fashion of Thurloe, I must hasten to state the true facts. Although I had a number of people who passed me information, I had precisely five in the entire country who could be relied on to act for me and two of these, I must confess, frightened even me. Nor was this matter my only, or even my main, occupation. I have mentioned the rising which I knew was being planned, and that naturally was my greatest concern. But there were also countless other irritations, most nonsensical although each with dangerous potential. The garrison at Abingdon had been purged, but was still less than satisfactorily quiescent. Sectaries and conventicles grew up like so many mushrooms across the landscape, giving scope for malcontents to meet and draw courage from each other. There were persistent reports that (yet again) the Messiah had returned to usher in the Millennium, and was traveling the country in some guise, preaching and teaching and sowing sedition. How many of these characters had there been in the past few years? Dozens at least, and I had hoped that quieter times had put an end to them, but it was not apparently, the case. Finally, in the middle of the affair I intend to relate, a drunken Irish magus called Greatorex turned up in Oxford and held court at the Mitre Inn to milk the gullible of their coins, so I had to divert much time to persuading him to move on his way. I had enough on my plate, in other words, and though I worked without stint I must say that neither then nor later were my efforts ever fully recognized or rewarded.
For the particular task of getting hold of these letters, I had to call on the services of one John Cooth, whose loyalty to the king was due solely to my having intervened when he nearly killed his wife in a drunken frenzy, then slit a man’s throat for (he said) trying to put a pair of horns on him. He was in no wise intelligent but was skilled at housebreaking and was thoroughly in my debt. I thought he would serve, especially as I gave him a strict lecture about what he was to do, and how he was to do it. In particular I told him there was to be absolutely no violence, and I labored the point so much even a man of his diminished wits must understand.
Or so I thought. When Matthew told me that the package had been delivered to di Pietro’s house and was to go aboard one of his ships the next morning, I told Cooth to bring it to me as rapidly as possible. Cooth dutifully returned a few hours later and gave me a package which contained all the mail being sent, including the letters delivered by Matthew. I copied them, and he took it back. And the next morning Matthew came with the news that Signer di Pietro had been murdered.
I was appalled by this, and prayed to the Lord for forgiveness for my foolishness. It was fairly obvious to me, despite Cooth’s denials, what had happened—he had gone into the house and, instead of just taking the package, had decided to help himself to the contents of the treasury as well. Di Pietro was roused, came to investigate and Cooth had coldbloodedly cut open his throat so badly the head was almost severed from the body.
Eventually I wrung a confession out of him—what was it to me, he said, whether he’d killed the man or not? I’d wanted the package, I’d got the package. I lost patience, and cut him off. He was going back to jail, I said, and if he so much as breathed a word of this, he’d hang. Even he understood my seriousness and the matter went no further; I soon learned that Cola had an English partner who wanted the entire business, and was unconcerned about discovering the author of a deed which had served him so profitably. It took many days but, after much effort, I felt I could relax, relatively certain that Mr. Bennet would not hear of the affair.
3
This unfortunate business at least provided me with di Pietro’ s mailbag, which turned out to be far more interesting than even I had hoped. For not only did it include the letters being sent to the radicals, it also contained another, unmarked in any way, which came from a different and unknown source. I only looked at it because I remembered the habits that Thurloe had inculcated into his office, one of which was that when examining a mailbag for suspicious correspondence, check everything else it contains as well. There were twelve letters in all, one from the radicals, ten entirely innocuous and concerned only with trading matters, and this one. Its lack of address alone would have alerted my attention, the fact that the seal on the back was entirely blank merely added to my determination. I only wished that little Samuel Morland had been there by my side, for no man was ever swifter at removing a seal, nor better at putting it back unnoticed. My own efforts were more laborious, and I cursed mightily as I wrestled with that most delicate task. But I did it, and did a fine job, so that once it was battered a little by transporting, I felt sure no one would see my handiwork.
And it was worth the effort. Inside was as fine a piece of coding as I had ever seen—a very long letter of about twelve thousand characters, in the complicated random cipher I described earlier. I felt a tingling of excitement as I contemplated it, for I knew it to be a challenge worthy of my skill.
But at the back of my mind was a more worrying thought, for ciphers are like music and have their own rhythms and cadences. This one, as I scanned it, sounded in my mind as being familiar, like a tune heard once before. But I could not yet place the melody.
Many times have men asked me why I took up the art of decipherment, for it seems to them to be a vulgar occupation, not in keeping with my position and dignity. I have many reasons, and the fact that I enjoy it is but the least of them. Men like Boyle are absorbed by teasing out the secrets of nature, in which I also take the greatest pleasure. But how wonderful it is also to penetrate the secrets of men’s minds, to turn the chaos of human endeavor into order and bring the darkest deeds from night into daylight. A cipher is only a collection of letters on a page; this I grant. But to take that confusion and turn it into meaning through the exercise of pure reason provides a satisfaction which I have never managed to communicate to others. I can only say that it is not unlike prayer. Not vulgar prayer, in which men chant words while their minds are elsewhere, but true prayer, so complete and profound that you feel the touch of God’s grace on your spirit. And I have often thought that my success shows His favor, a sign that what I do is pleasing to Him.
The letter sent by the sectaries was pathetically easy to unravel, and scarcely interesting; had I known what it contained I would never have bothered as it was not worth di Pietro’s life or the trouble his murder caused me. It spoke of preparations in that pompous language so beloved of sectaries, and referred elliptically to a place I confidently identified as Northampton. But there was little meat, nothing which justified the risk I had taken. If that lay anywhere, it was in the last, mysterious letter; I was determined to read it, and knew I must have the key.
Matthew came to me as I sat at my desk, the unreadable letter in front of me in all its defiance, and asked whether he had done well.
“Very well,” I told him. “Very well indeed, although largely by chance—your letter is uninteresting; it is this other one which fascinates me.” I held it up for him to examine, which he did with his habitual neatness and care.
“You know this already? You have unraveled it all?”