‘Good day, Master Rush.’ Alone, Thomas turned into Broad Street, intending to follow Catte Street to the High Street, and thence to St Aldate’s and Pembroke. It did not take him long to change his mind. Broad Street was more Bedlam than street. Realizing that he would have to run a gauntlet of beggars, whores and pickpockets, he turned back towards Cornmarket. He was not quite quick enough. He smelt the woman before he saw her. Out of a dark doorway she came, another stinking, poxed, toothless crone, this one with a humped back. She grabbed his shirt, and pressed herself against him. ‘Good evening, sir. You’re a fine gentleman and no mistake. For a sovereign, I’ll make you a happy one.’ Bile rising in his throat, Thomas wrenched his shirt free and ran. He kept running almost as far as Pembroke. Outside the gates, he stopped, took deep breaths until he was calm, and walked slowly into the college.
‘Good evening, sir. You look a trifle flushed. Are you well?’ Silas, keeping watch from his room, had seen him come in. Silas missed nothing. Thomas’s face was red and his shirt askew.
‘Quite well, thank you, Silas. I should be grateful for a bottle of hock and some dinner. Would you have them sent over?’
Silas looked him up and down. ‘As you wish, sir. Nothing the matter, I hope.’
‘Nothing, Silas, thank you. The evening is warm. Walking too fast, I daresay.’
Silas looked doubtful. ‘Indeed, sir. I’ll have the bottle and a plate sent over directly.’
In his room, Thomas took off his shirt and breeches and lay on his bed. They would have to be washed. Waiting for his dinner, he wondered what he had agreed to. Queen Henrietta Maria was known to be fond of masques, and even sometimes appeared in them herself. It was said that in London the most extravagant of her entertainments had cost over twenty thousand guineas. Twenty thousand guineas. Enough to build two hundred cottages or a hundred schools, feed an entire town for a year, provide for every beggar and orphan …
Before he could add to the list, his dinner arrived, brought by one of Silas’s boys. Intending to give the boy a few pence, Thomas reached for his purse on the table. Then he remembered that it was in his pocket. He picked up the discarded breeches and felt for the purse. The pockets were empty. He looked around the room in case he had been mistaken. No purse. Then he realized. The hump-backed hag must have picked his pocket. Silas’s boy was not going to get a whole sovereign from the bag hidden under the bed, so he would have to go unrewarded. ‘Thank you, young fellow,’ said Thomas graciously, ‘you shall have a shilling next time.’ Unsure whether to be pleased or not, the boy departed.
Thomas’s last waking thought that evening was whether there was anyone in Oxford who was what he seemed. Abraham, of course, and Silas. But what about Simon? What about Rush? What about Fayne? He acted like an arrogant oaf, but could he be a traitor? Or even a mild-mannered scholar in disguise?
For two more days, Thomas saw little of the sun. He was determined to decrypt every one of the documents perfectly. When working, he found that he could blot out the clash and clamour outside. Only when he left his room for trips to the privy, to fetch water from the well or to find food did he have to face the awful squalor and destruction that had been brought on his old college.
As he always had, Thomas found himself giving each encoder a personality. He could look at a sheet of paper covered in random letters, numbers and symbols, and, after identifying just a few letters, could often divine its soul. And, even before starting the decrypting process, he sometimes recognized the hand of the sender. By visualizing the man — fat, thin, tall, short — and his traits — tidy, careless, quick, slow — he could anticipate the methods he was likely to use. It was a marriage of science and art that Abraham used to call Hill’s magic.
He expected to find the remaining documents encrypted much as those he had already decrypted, but it did not take him long to discover that Abraham was up to his tricks. The old fox had mixed up the documents to conceal their context and chronology. The tenth document surprised him with an unusually high proportion of the letters A and I, until he realized that it had been written in Latin. In the other documents, there were deliberate misspellings, and some parts of the texts — the most difficult to decrypt — were nomenclators — combinations of letters, symbols and numbers. The symbols and numbers were either homophonic substitutions for single words or meaningless nulls, sometimes both in the same message. Much like the cipher Phelippes had decrypted, although simpler. Thomas started with the assumption that the most common letter combinations, such as THE, AND and TION, would appear most often, and proceeded from there. The approach was laborious but effective.
By the evening of the third day, Thomas had a pile of twenty plain texts to match the twenty coded ones, and his skills had become as sharp as they had ever been. Although Abraham had said that their own codes were superior to those of the enemy, Thomas disagreed. He found little difference between them, and the messages were just as tedious. Demands for men and supplies, complaints about the lack of pay, boasts and excuses. The most interesting text turned out to be a description, written backwards, of Abraham’s favourite wines. How typical of his old friend to lighten the day with a joke.
Thomas decided to wait until the morning to deliver the decrypted texts to Abraham. After a walk to the Cherwell and back, and an excellent plate of black pudding with capers and pickled cucumbers, he was undressing for bed when there was a knock on the door. He quickly pulled up his breeches. ‘Who is it?’
‘It’s your favourite friar, Thomas. Simon de Pointz.’ Thomas opened the door. ‘And I come bearing gifts,’ said Simon, handing over the clothes he was carrying. ‘These are from Tobias Rush. I do hope they fit.’
‘Good evening, Simon. I had thought you might have called earlier, although I have been busy.’
Simon looked at the pile of papers on the table. ‘So I see. Have your efforts met with success?’
‘Happily, yes. But it was only practice. The real tests will come later. Should I try these on?’ He held up the clothes.
‘I would recommend it. Queen Henrietta Maria can’t help but notice an ill-fitting shirt or coat. She has an eye for such matters.’
Thomas took off his plain breeches again, and tried on the new ones. They were dark blue, loose-fitting, tied at the knee with yellow ribbons, and with bows and rosettes attached to the sides. A pair of white silk stockings were embroidered in blue and red. Over a fine lace shirt, he donned a short pale-blue coat with a red lining and red ribbons on the sleeves, then, finally, pulled on a pair of soft leather boots with silver buckles. Simon, who had watched the process intently, was delighted. ‘Master Hill, who would have thought a Romsey bachelor could be turned into such an elegant and courtly gentleman? Their majesties will share my admiration. And it all fits perfectly. How clever of Master Rush.’
Thomas was doubtful. ‘Are you sure, Simon? I feel like a popinjay.’
‘Nonsense. You look splendid. Now take them off and put them away somewhere safe. It would be a pity to spill your soup on such finery.’
As Thomas was undressing, he asked Simon if he knew Lady Romilly. ‘Of course I do,’ replied the priest. ‘She is a lady-in-waiting to the queen. A lovely lady, sadly widowed. Why do you ask?’
‘I chanced to meet her in the town. Will she be at the masque?’
Simon raised an eyebrow. ‘I imagine so. The queen is seldom seen in public without her ladies.’ He paused. ‘Now I must be away. Wednesday, at two in the afternoon. I shall not be present, as Franciscans and masques do not go well together, but I hope you enjoy the spectacle. The queen is much looking forward to it.’
Soon after Simon had left, Thomas fell asleep wondering whether or not he too was looking forward to it.