The silly man looked modestly down his nose at the compliment. “I will do my best for you,” he said. “And I can assure you, that if I cannot find a copy, no one else will be able to.”
“That is all I ask,” I replied, and ushered him out as quickly as was possible.
4
I have read of late a scurrilous pamphlet which (without naming me directly) said that the crisis with which I was dealing at this stage was a fabrication, whipped up by a government to foment fear of sectaries and that it did not, in fact, exist. Nothing could be further from the truth. I hope I have already made my good intentions and my honesty clear. What I did, I admit—I freely own that I overemphasized the danger of the rising which led to my employment by Mr. Bennet, and claim for myself the mistake which led to the regrettable death of Signor di Pietro. I hope there is no doubt about the sincerity of my remorse, but the fact remains that the man was carrying subversive and conspiratorial material, and it was necessary for the security of the kingdom to have it.
I feel as though I ought to set out some of my thinking, lest it be thought that my punctiliousness over letters and obscure books makes me seem fussy and obsessive. For it had struck me as obvious that these books which Matthew had told me about were most unusual. Everybody knows about the sectaries and their pathetic claims to learning. Self-taught scrabblers in the dust, most of them, seduced by second-rate reading into the delusion that they are educated. Educated? A Bible whose sublime subtlety and symbolic beauty they cannot even begin to understand, and a few screeching pamphlets by that handful of dissenters whose arrogance exceeds their shame, is all they have by way of education. No Latin, no Greek, and certainly no Hebrew; unable to read any language but their own, and assaulted by the ravings of false prophets and self-appointed Messiahs even in English. Of course they are not educated; knowledge is the province of the gentleman. I do not say that artisans cannot know, but it is obvious that they cannot assess, as they possess neither the leisure nor the training to consider free from prejudice. Plato said so, and I know of no serious person who has denied him.
And the writer of this letter to Cola was using one of these fine texts for his code? Livy, Polydore, More. Initially it made me shudder to think of such hands even touching these works, but then I reconsidered—some scruffy pamphlet I would have accepted, but these? Where did they get their hands on books which belong only in the library of a gentleman?
By the time Wood reappeared, sniffing and twitching like a little mouse, I had established that neither the More nor the Polydore Vergil was the book I required. The answer therefore lay in the Livy—find it, find who possessed it, and my investigation would advance in a great leap. Wood told me that a long-dead London bookseller had brought half a dozen copies into the country in 1643, as part of a general shipment for scholars. What had happened to them after that, alas, was unclear, as the man had been a supporter of the king, and all his stock was confiscated in fines when Parliament secured its hold on London. Wood assumed these books were dispersed then.
“So you mean to tell me, after all that, that you cannot get me a copy?”
He looked a bit surprised by my sharpness of tone, but shook his head. “Oh, no, sir,” he said. “I thought you might be interested, that is all. But they are rare, and I have identified only one person who definitely had one, which he brought in himself from abroad. I know of it because my friend Mr. Aubrey wrote to a bookseller in Italy on some other matter…”
“Mr. Wood, I beg you,” I said, my patience very near to expiring. “I do not wish to know every single detail. I merely need the name of the owner so I might write to him.”
“Ah, you see, he is dead.”
I sighed heavily.
“But do not despair, sir, for by the greatest good fortune, his son is a student here, and would no doubt know whether the book remains in the family. His name is Prestcott. His father was Sir James Prestcott.”
Thus my story and Cola’s tales (as fictional as boccaccio and as unlikely as the rhymes of Tasso, though less finely hewn) begin to intersect through the medium of poor deluded Prestcott, and I must lay out the details as best I can, although I fully admit that I am not entirely clear about some of the circumstances.
The lad had come to my attention several months previously, when I heard of his visit to Lord Mordaunt. Mordaunt had properly communicated with Mr. Bennet, and news of the event was passed on to me as a matter of course; students, and sons of traitors, seeing fit to interrogate members of the court was no usual occurrence, and Mr. Bennet thought that an eye should be kept on the young man.
I knew few of the details but had heard enough to be certain that Prestcott’s belief in the innocence of his father was as ludicrous as it was touching. I was uncertain what the precise nature of his betrayal was, for I had left the government’s employ by then, but the noise he created signified something of great importance. I knew something of it because, as my skills were indispensable, in early 1660 I was requested to work on a letter with the greatest urgency. I have mentioned it before, for it was my one failure and the moment I saw it, I knew that there was little chance of success. As much to preserve my reputation as my position (the fall of the Commonwealth was becoming increasingly certain, and I had no wish to prolong my association with it) I declined the task.
The suasion placed upon me was great, however. Even Thurloe himself wrote to me, using a mixture of flattery and threat to win compliance, but still I refused. All communications were brought by Samuel Morland himself, a man whose weaselly words and concern for self-advancement I detested, and his presence alone made me obdurate.
“You cannot do it, can you, doctor?” he said in his sneering way, on the surface so amiable, but still barely hiding his cocky contempt for all others. “That is why you refuse.”
“I refuse because I am doubtful why I am asked. I know you too well, Samuel; everything you touch is corrupt and deceitful.”
He laughed merrily at this, and nodded in agreement. “Perhaps so. But this time I have noble company.”
I looked at the letter once more. “Very well,” I said. “I will try. Where is the key?”
“What do you mean?”
“Samuel, do not treat me like a fool. You know very well what I mean. Who wrote this?”
“A Royalist soldier, called Prestcott.”
“Ask him for the key, then. It must be a book, or a pamphlet. I must know what the code is based on.”
“We don’t have him,” Samuel replied. “He fled. The letter was found on one of our soldiers.”
“Why so?”
“A very good question indeed,” Samuel said. “That is why we want this letter deciphered.”
“Ask this soldier, then, if you cannot lay your hands on Sir James Prestcott.”
Samuel looked apologetic. “He died a few days ago.”
“And there was nothing else on him either? No other paper, no book, no piece of writing with it?”
Morland looked discountenanced for once, a fact which gave me some pleasure, for he usually adopted such a self-satisfied air that it was satisfying indeed to see him uncertain and nervous. “This was all we found. We had been expecting more.”
I tossed the letter onto my desk. “No key, no solution,” I said. “Nothing I can do, and nothing I will try to do. I do not intend to work myself to death because of your foolish incompetence. Find Sir James Prestcott, find the key, and I will assist you. Not until then.”
Rumors that had swept through government and army in the previous few weeks gave some clue of course; I had heard of fighting down in Kent, also of a frenzied investigation, conducted with the greatest secrecy and ferocity. Later I heard of the flight of Sir James Prestcott abroad, and of his being accused of betraying the 1659 rising against the Commonwealth. That, in itself, struck me as highly unlikely—I knew something of the man and considered him about as supple as a large piece of oak planking, with an absolute conviction in his own beliefs. Men had sinned, men must be punished and revenge taken—that was the alpha and omega of his politics, and this limited vision was strengthened by his own privations in the war. It made him useless as a conspirator but, in my opinion, also made him unlikely to conceive of anything so subtle as betrayal—he was too upright, too honorable, and far too stupid.