34
Nicholas opens the shutters and looks out at the full moon rising above the distant Atlas Mountains, their peaks frosted with a ghostly rime and crowned with a mantle of stars. He wonders if this is the picture Adolfo Sykes saw on the last night of his life. He thinks he might go up onto the roof terrace and spend an hour watching the city settle itself for sleep – if he didn’t have a more pressing action to perform.
‘Careful, Sayidi,’ Hadir says as Nicholas leans out over the window ledge. ‘The Bimaristan will be of no use if you fall from such a height and break your head.’
It takes only a few moments for Nicholas to find the join in the wooden frieze. By touch alone, he slips his hand into the gap from which he’d seen the swift emerge only minutes before.
The space behind is larger than the opening, a cavity where the old masonry has crumbled away with the passing years. Almost immediately he feels something man-made and cylindrical amidst the dried leaves, dirt and bird mess. His instinct is to snatch it out for the hard-won prize he knows it to be. But out of deference to the memory of Adolfo Sykes, he takes his time, treating it more like a holy relic.
By the light of grandmother Tiziri’s oil lamp, he lays the object on the plain wooden table to the left of the window. It is a narrow parcel wrapped in what he presumes was once fine English wool, before it was secreted away in a swift’s nest. It is tied with spun yarn. Nicholas picks at the knot until it loosens. Then he unrolls the cloth to unmask the contents. He takes his time, because when one man dies to protect a secret it is unworthy of another to reveal it with the flourish of a cheap Bankside street-trick.
Lying on the table in a splash of moonlight is a roll of parchment, three or four sheets thick. The pages curl defensively inwards at the edges, as if protecting to the last what is written on them. For a moment Nicholas is afraid to touch them.
Drawing breath, he tentatively spreads the sheets out on the table, nodding to Hadir to bring the lamp even closer.
The first thing Nicholas notices is that one sheet is different from the others. It is covered in hand-drawn characters set inside boxes, each one linked by a vertical or horizontal line. It is similar to the family lineage he’d seen laid out on the document he’d taken from apprentice Hortop’s gabardine coat aboard the Righteous.
Peering closer, he sees that’s exactly what it is – a family tree.
Studying the document, Nicholas becomes acquainted with Sir Walter Vachel, born in the Year of Our Redeemer 1576, lord of the manor of Melton in Suffolk. It is a simple task for him then to trace Sir Walter’s lineage back several generations, following the lines and boxes from the bottom of the page to the top, until he meets one Guillaume de Vachel, Earl of Barentin in Normandy. On the way, he discovers that Sir Walter’s ancestors share one outstanding attribute: they have all fought – indeed, frequently died – in every historical battle of renown from the Holy Land to the Low Countries.
A Thomas Vachel was knighted in the field at Agincourt by the fifth Henry. Sir Norris Vachel expired in glory at Falkirk, battling the Scots alongside the first Edward. Yet another Vachel fought with Lord Stanley’s men at Bosworth Field and gained himself an estate valued at six hundred pounds from Henry Tudor.
And at the foot of the page, next to the box containing the scion of this redoubtable lineage, Sir Walter himself, is a line identical to the one Nicholas had seen written on Hortop’s document:
PROVEN BY DUE AUTHORITY OF THE ROUGE CROIX PURSUIVANT, COLLEGE OF HERALDS
All in all, it is a pedigree of which any Englishman could be rightly proud, thinks Nicholas, were it not for the fact that it is very likely a complete fabrication.
Nicholas knows this because the manor of Melton, of which the young Sir Walter is apparently lord, is barely an hour’s walk from his own home, his father’s farm at Barnthorpe. And Yeoman Shelby, being a mildly prosperous farmer, is on nodding terms with all the local nobility. Their family names, from the Howards down, can be seen on effigies and tombs in churches for miles around. Nicholas has grown up with them, heard those names invoked in all manner of situations, good and bad, for as long as he can remember. But never in his life has he heard of a Sir Walter Vachel, or any of his supposedly distinguished ancestors.
The other three sheets are enciphered, a meaningless procession of five-letter groups.
‘What does my friend say, Sayidi?’ Hadir asks.
‘I don’t know – yet. First I must decipher what he has written.’
Hadir looks at him, uncomprehending.
‘The words have been changed to make them unreadable,’ Nicholas explains. ‘I have to change them back again.’
‘This is infidel magic,’ breathes Hadir, an expression of fearful astonishment on his face.
Nicholas tries not to laugh. He reminds himself that not everyone is acquainted with the artful contrivances of a Cecil. ‘No, it’s not magic,’ he says. ‘It is just a clever trick to hide what you write, so that your enemies cannot read it. I’d show you how, if the matter wasn’t so pressing.’
In the centre of the table is a wooden writing box inlaid with a sinuous mother-of-pearl arabesque that gleams in the lamplight. Nicholas is almost reluctant to touch it, knowing that it once belonged to Adolfo Sykes.
Lifting the lid, he sees a collection of quills, a nib-knife, an inkwell and a pounce-powder pot. As he lifts them out, he cannot help but wonder if the last time they were used was to write these very pages.
‘I will need paper, Hadir.’
‘I know Sayidi Sy-kess keep parchment with his tally books. I fetch.’
While Nicholas waits for Hadir to return, he gathers the pages to him and tries to recall Sykes’s transposition code, the one that Robert Cecil had made him commit to memory before he left.
When Hadir brings the paper, Nicholas takes it from him, ordering him to set down the lamp by the writing box to augment the wash of moonlight. He writes the alphabet in a column on the first blank sheet. Using each letter as a peg, he begins to hang the cipher alongside. To his relief, he soon has all but a handful of matching letters, certainly enough to begin deciphering with confidence. All the while, Hadir watches him in silent bewilderment.
Writing down the first group of letters and their transposed equivalents, Nicholas begins to frown. ‘Something’s wrong,’ he mutters.
The letters spell out nothing but gibberish. He tries again, thinking he’s made a mistake. He gets the same infuriating result. The code remains impenetrable. The leaden weight of defeat makes Nicholas slump forward over the table.
‘What is the matter, Sayidi?’ Hadir asks. ‘Does the magic fail?’
‘Yes, it fails, Hadir. The key I was given by Robert Cecil does not unlock the words written by Master Sykes. And I cannot understand why.’
But Hadir can offer him no comfort, other than a sad expression that’s half-pity and half-mystification.
The word in Bianca Merton’s imagination needs no deciphering. It is as clear as day, written in letters a yard high: Coward.
No matter how rational the course of action she has decided upon, she cannot rid herself of a sense of shame. No one but a coward would flee because the pestilence has arrived just two lanes distant. But remembering the close shave that followed her visit to Constable Willders’s house, she thinks that only a fool would stay.
As she makes her way back to her shop on Dice Lane, Ned Monkton walking protectively at her side in the moonlight, Bianca unburdens herself. It feels strange, she thinks. It should be Nicholas in whom she’s confiding.