I was still lost in the maze of these thoughts when I reached Lichfield and found myself a room again at the Swan. Once I had seen to Hector, I walked round to the White Hart, where I asked for Sir Anthony.
‘Come in, lad, come in!’ he said, waving me to a chair. ‘Edward, see whether the landlord can find some food for the boy. He looks hungry to me.’ He beamed at me, clearly in high spirits.
As the servant went out in search of food, which I would not refuse, he said, ‘I’ve forgotten your name, lad.’
‘It is Simon, sir.’
‘Well, Simon, the letter is not quite ready, but it would be too late to take it tonight anyway. Can you read?’
‘Certainly, sir,’ I said stiffly.
‘I’ll wager you’ve never read anything like this!’ He beckoned me over and held out to me the top sheet from a pile of papers.
It was covered with the symbols of one of Curll’s simplest ciphers. I could read it straight off, even without a key. It was a long paragraph listing possible ports where ships from France could land men.
‘Clever, isn’t?’ he said. ‘Takes me the devil of a time to work out, though.’
‘Is it a secret language, sir?’ I asked innocently.
‘Yes, I suppose you could call it that. Secret, certainly. It’s what they call a “cipher” or a “code”. Ah, here’s Edward with a tray.’
I ate the excellent game pie and gooseberry fool with relish. It would save me paying for a meal at my inn. When I had finished, I stood, turning my dreadful cap in my hands.
‘Shall I come back tomorrow morning, sir?’
Babington ran his hands through his hair and flipped through his papers.
‘To be quite honest with you, Simon, I do not think this will be finished until the evening. Come about dusk and I’ll have it ready for you. Then you can start for Chartley first thing the next morning.’
‘Should I wait for an answer, sir?’
‘See what Curll says. It may take some time. Perhaps you should stay up there for a day or two, if Curll thinks best.’
I bowed my way out. Despite a bad start, it seemed things were falling into place now.
Having the next day to myself, I strolled about the little town, visiting the marketplace and buying a new cap with some of the money from the purse I had been given. It was still a cap suitable for a messenger boy, but at least it was clean and not as hot. When I passed the great pond near the cathedral, I threw the old cap in and waited for it to sink. A couple of mallards swam over to investigate, thinking it some curious form of vegetable life, but they soon scorned it and it sank at last.
During the afternoon I spent some time on my knees in the cathedral. I love the cool bare spaces of these English cathedrals. The churches I had known in Portugal had been a riot of colour, so full of statues and draperies and candles and side altars and crucifixes that my mind was always distracted. The space here was like a quiet grove of great trees, ancient beeches, perhaps, with their trunks soaring high above me and meeting overhead in a glorious intertwining of the branches in the roof of the nave. Yet at the same time the patterning of the ribbed vaulting was like the physical manifestation of a mathematical problem, elegant and pure, a problem which had been solved by those long-ago stone masons in a breathtaking union of tree and stone, art and reason, nature and mathematics.
It set me to thinking about symmetry in nature, the beautiful symmetry of the most humble leaf, or the complex spiral at the centre of a daisy. Yet mankind is not symmetrical. Yes, we seem symmetrical, our bodies’ symmetry mapped from one side to the other down the central line from nose to crotch. Yet we are not. Even our faces give us away with their tiny asymmetries. The real secret of man’s deviation lies within, however. I was not a surgeon, but my father had instructed me in the anatomy of the human body that I might be a better physician, and I had read his Vesalius, one of the few books he had managed to bring with him from his considerable library.
Is it the asymmetry of our internal organs that makes us restless, never quite at ease in the world? The Bible says Eve ate the forbidden fruit of knowledge and thus mankind was cast out from Eden. But what if that asymmetry, that sense of being slightly askew from nature was the real root of the trouble?
I stayed in the cathedral until it was time to go back to the White Hart, letting its peace wash over me. I prayed that what I was doing was right, that God would give me some sign if I should abandon this task now. But He gave no sign. I emerged from the cathedral blinking in the setting sun. I felt quiet. Not at peace exactly, but as though I must simply move through the next hours not thinking, but simply doing.
Phelippes and Gregory should be near now. If they had left the day after me, they should reach Lichfield this afternoon or evening, but they would ride on to Stowe-by-Chartley without stopping. It would have been a hard ride for Phelippes. I hoped they would be there when I reached the village tomorrow, otherwise I would have to wait about, and that might cause comment.
The letter was ready. Sir Anthony handed me a fat packet, firmly sealed and stamped with his coat of arms, which I recognised from one of those seals regularly in use on Gregory’s desk. It was no wonder it had taken him so long to encode. What I held in my hand was more the size and weight of a government report than a letter.
‘I’ll be on my way first thing tomorrow, Sir Anthony. Then wait near Chartley in case there is an answer to bring back.’
He wished me God speed and slipped another sovereign into my hand. At this rate I would soon be the richest messenger boy in England.
The next morning I was not in a great hurry to leave. Having heard and seen nothing of Phelippes and Gregory, I did not want to reach Stowe too soon. After a leisurely breakfast at the Swan, I set Hector ambling peacefully along the road to Rugeley. It took us considerably longer than it had done the previous time, but at last I rode up to the outskirts of the village. Remembering Phelippes’s advice to arrive on foot, I found a copse of birch and elm where I tethered Hector, removing his bridle so that he could graze more easily, and hanging it on a branch. Then I made my way the last few hundred yards on foot into the village with its single inn. I need not have worried. Phelippes was sitting on a bench outside, apparently enjoying the sun. He seemed to be smiling to himself over some private joke.
‘Ah, there you are, Kit. Do you have what we came for?’
‘It is here.’ I tapped the satchel at my side. ‘It’s very fat. It will take a long time to copy.’
‘Then we’d best make a start.’
He grinned again and I wondered what had amused him. I did not need to ask, for he was keen to tell me.
‘You will never guess who has just passed by.’
‘Curll?’ I ventured.
‘No. Her Scottish Majesty herself! She drove past in a carriage. I suppose they must let her out occasionally for some air.’
‘The queen! Did she see you?’
‘She did. She smiled at me and waved. I bowed very courteously back. I suspect she thinks me one of her faithful followers, come to spring her from prison.’
No wonder he was smiling. How extraordinary!