The Best of Men (16 page)

Simeon grabbed her by the arm and shook her hard. “You silly girl, don’t you remember who I am? The gypsies are not the only ones cursed at and spat upon in this world.”

“We are all refuse to the
gadje
,” she yelled back, “but it was you Jews who crucified the Lord Jesus. We gypsies only made the nails!”

“For Christ’s sake, we don’t have time for this,” Laurence snapped at her. “Shut up, or I’ll leave you behind.”

Suddenly Marie called out from the window. “Two riders have just come in! One of them might be Saint-Etienne.”

Simeon rushed to look. “No, it’s your English customer, Marie, with his servant. You can tell by the cut of their clothes.”

“So it is,” she said, breathing a sigh of relief. “He hasn’t been here in months, that nice gentleman.”

Simeon turned back to Laurence. “Saint-Etienne and his louts won’t have left the tavern yet. I gave the boy some coin and told him to keep serving them as much as they could drink. They won’t refuse, if it costs them nothing. But, Monsieur, you must be off.” As Laurence paid him for Juana to take one of his horses, Simeon added, “I pray you don’t regret your kindness to her.”

Laurence did not see Juana as he ran out through the kitchen, and he did not intend to wait long for her in the stables as he saddled the horses. He was about to mount when she appeared, clutching her bundle of belongings and a sword, which she thrust towards him. “From Simeon,” she panted.

“He must have lost his mind! I can’t even handle a deck of cards.”

“Take it,” she urged.

With a deep sense of foreboding, Laurence helped her clamber into her saddle. “I hope to God you can ride fast,” he told her, “or we’ll both end up dead.”

“She’d robbed this Englishman, just before we left.” Laurence passed Seward back the pipe. “She took his sword as well as his purse, which is where I discovered these documents, and over four hundred pounds in gold coin. He sent his servant after us, and we were followed all the way through France. I didn’t know why, until she confessed to the theft when we got to Paris. That was the first time I saw the letters.”

“What of the Englishman?”

“He may have been in the market for arms, for the war here. The Hague was full of dealers.”

“Or he was a spy or a courier. Or all three. You never had a glimpse of him?”

“No, nor did she. While she was in his chamber, the curtains of the bed were drawn. Seward, your wine tastes like vinegar.”

“Thank you, Beaumont. I distilled it myself, from elderflowers.” Seward sampled a mouthful from his own cup and wrinkled his nose. “But it has perhaps been sitting too long,” he agreed. “Tell me about the servant.”

“He always kept far behind us on the road. I never saw him at close quarters, though she once did. He was a large man, apparently, and he had – what was it she said? – the evil eye.”

“How curious. Did she elaborate?”

“No. We finally lost him at the Spanish border.”

“What happened to the money?”

“What do you think? We lived off it, though I brought some back with me, and the sword.”

“And what happened to her?”

Laurence lowered his eyes. “I’d prefer not to talk about that.”

“You poor fool,” Seward murmured. “Now replenish the pipe, my boy, while I concentrate on the letters.”

At first it seemed that he might bring forth some speedy results, for he was scribbling away on another sheet various figures and calculations. But as the night wore on, Laurence stopped watching. Fatigued by the wine and hashish, he yawned and stretched out on the floor. All that he could hear was the scratch of Seward’s nib.

He was with Juana in the plains. She sat before him on the sandy ground, knees drawn up and apart; and he noticed to his horror that her belly was swelling, slowly, like an inflated pig’s bladder. Repulsed by this monstrosity, he exclaimed, “For God’s sake, get rid of it!” In the same instant, as though he had wrought some spell upon her, she let out a shriek of pain, grabbing her stomach. Blood soaked her skirts, and she screamed and screamed.

He jolted awake as something landed on his chest. He opened his eyes to see the striped cat glowering at him with a malign intelligence that he did not appreciate; it had its paw upon his cheek.

“Pusskins,” said Seward, “refrain from scratching my friend.” He picked up the cat and deposited it some distance away while Laurence struggled up, his head throbbing. “You’re right, Beaumont,” Seward told him, “that wine I had was sour. It did not mix well with what we smoked. Now go out and wash. You can’t have forgotten your way about College.”

Afterwards he poured Laurence a small measure of dark, syrupy liquid that must have contained some potent remedy, for his headache rapidly dissipated. As they turned their attention to the letters, his scalp began to prickle, as if his intellectual curiosity had transformed itself into a physical reaction. “You’ve broken the code, haven’t you,” he said eagerly.

“Not entirely. I
have
found a key to those symbols. Be patient, and I shall explain.” Seward cleared his throat. “The author is familiar with Gematria, handed down to us from the Jews through the Spanish scholars of the Cabbala, though it is definitely of still older extraction. The Greeks knew of it, and of course it was much used by adepts of the Hermetic school. When we were in Prague, you might recall, we met the last of these great scholars, friends to Dee and Fludd who have since died or gone into obscurity. You may not have heard, Fludd himself has been dead these five years –”

“Enough about Fludd,” Laurence interrupted, pacing about. “Tell me about the code.”

“I repeat,” Seward said crustily, “I did not complete the transcription.”

“Why not?”

Seward pursed his lips, an oddly secretive look on his face. “There wasn’t the time. I did, however, uncover the makings of an astrological chart. The date of birth is the nineteenth of November, 1600.”

Laurence ceased pacing and frowned at him. “Whose is it?”

“That of His Majesty King Charles.”

“Good Christ.” They were silent for a moment, then Laurence asked, “What does it predict?”

“Let’s find out.” Seward had already copied down on fresh paper a series of figures from the original documents, with their decoded equivalents beside them. On another clean sheet, he drew a perfect square, measuring the sides carefully with a ruler, and scored two lines across it diagonally from corner to corner. Then he marked the midpoint of each of the square’s sides and linked these points to form a second square, resembling a diamond shape, within the first. The diamond now contained four smaller diamonds, with eight smaller triangles around it that touched the corners of the outer square. “Twelve spaces in all, for the cabal of twelve houses,” he informed Laurence. “And in the spaces, I shall fill in the figures.” Laurence observed, chewing on his lip, as each was entered and Seward pored meticulously over the whole.

“I don’t like to trust another man’s calculations,” he muttered at last, “but if the mathematic and the reading of the stars are correct, His Majesty has only a short time to live. Two years or a little more. And he will die through violence.” He dropped his quill, sending a small splash of ink across the chart, and gazed up at Laurence.

“You’re thinking the same as I am, aren’t you,” Laurence said, his throat suddenly constricted. “Whoever made these calculations is plotting to kill him.”

“That is a wild assumption.”

“Why else would someone cast his horoscope?”

“There might be many reasons. Queen Elizabeth had hers cast regularly by Dee.”

“I’m sure Dee wouldn’t put it in a code that no one could read.”

“Calm down, Beaumont! His Majesty might have requested that it be done, for his own protection. Why, have you any grounds for what you suspect?”

Laurence paused. He hated to give credence to any kind of divination, yet if he were right, the potential consequences horrified him. He was being irrational, he told himself next. “No,” he said. “I have no grounds.”

“Well, we shall see once the transcription is finished. As for the code, I shall show you how it is designed. There is a key of repeated symbols. Are you paying attention, or must I take a rod to your backside?”

It took Laurence some time to understand how the key functioned, but eventually Seward brushed the sheets into a pile and handed them over to him. “It’s up to you, now. You’ve plenty of work ahead of you, so go to it.”

“But why can’t we do it together this morning?”

The same odd look passed over Seward’s face. “I am too busy with my own studies,” he said, in a waspish tone. “Pray remember that I am not your tutor any more, Beaumont.”

Laurence had a question on the tip of his tongue; it came out as a statement. “You
have
seen the code before, haven’t you.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because what you did would be close to impossible otherwise. It’s too dense, too difficult. I tried for months and got nowhere.”

“Pray give me credit where credit is due. I am no humble initiate at such things.”

“Neither am I.”

“You have precious little knowledge of the Cabbala,” Seward grunted, and Laurence knew he would get no more out of him on that score.

“What if the letters
do
concern regicide?”

“You will have to alert His Majesty! Such an expression on your face,” Seward remarked, in a gentler voice. “As a boy, you were afraid of nothing and no one, much to your parents’ consternation. Have some
courage: Fortune dealt you the hand, and you will prove equal to it.” He reached out and ruffled Laurence’s hair. “I missed you. Few of my students had the ability to provoke me as you did.”

“Thank God you’re still here to provoke. Seward, I’ll have to take the letters to my father’s house. I’d rather not stay here in Oxford for the present.”

“Why is that?”

“Some of the men I knew who fought abroad are pressing me to serve in their regiment,” Laurence said quickly, as he tucked the papers inside his doublet. “I’ll come back again once they’ve left to join the King, in the north.”

Seward accompanied him to the door and unbolted it. “Don’t let six years pass before we see each other again. I have every expectation of being dead by then.”

“You can raise the dead, can’t you?” Laurence winked at him. “Teach me how, and I’ll revive you.”

“Thank you, but I’d prefer the company of angels even to yours. One last thing: keep the letters secret until we have discussed how you should proceed. And when you visit me next, I should like you to bring the sword your gypsy stole. I might be able to glean something from it. Metal can be used to draw forth its owner, with certain magical operations. It can also speak, in its own fashion.”

“How remarkable – a talking sword. It hasn’t yet told me a thing.”

“Your scepticism only betrays your ignorance. Now, be off with you, Beaumont,” said Seward, pushing him out into the bright sunlight.

L
aurence swore as he screwed up yet another wasted sheet of paper. He was almost sick with anxiety: after two weeks spent toiling over the letters, he still could not produce a full transcription, but he now knew that he had indeed uncovered a plot to kill the King. Yet he could put no names to the conspirators, nor could he establish where or precisely when they were planning to commit their crime.

With Seward’s key he had unlocked one layer of the code, only to discover a further puzzle beneath. It was a mathematical cipher which, though challenging, he had unscrambled to identify words, and then parts of sentences. Nevertheless, huge gaps remained, sequences of numbers that must be in a different code altogether for which he had not the key. Even if he took the information to His Majesty, it was incomplete in the most vital aspects.

Folding away the papers, he left his chamber for the library, where he concealed them carefully inside one of Lord Beaumont’s dustiest volumes. He replaced it high up on a shelf, tucking it for good measure behind several other tomes. Then he went downstairs as quietly as he could.

Lord Beaumont’s valet, Geoffrey, stopped him at the front doors. “Her ladyship has asked for you, sir. She is expecting a guest today
whom she particularly wishes you to meet. Might I ask where you are off to, sir?” Geoffrey added.

“To the river.”

“Not to bathe? Oh sir, what if you catch a chill? Or drown, more like. Only witches and dead men float.”

“Then I must be a witch.”

“It’s no joke, sir. There was a woman ducked at Moreton-in-the-Marsh just last year. She’d put a hex on her neighbour’s cattle.”

“Did she float?”

“No, she was sinking till they dragged her out. She died in gaol later, though – of a chill.”

“Don’t you worry – that won’t happen to me,” Laurence assured him, and hurried off.

Outside not a breath of wind stirred the humid air, and the sky was almost white, the sun invisible behind a film of cloud; there would be rain before nightfall, Laurence thought. He passed through the courtyard to open meadow, where the heat became more intense, and when he arrived at the riverbank he sat for a while, gazing at the water and the apparently aimless passage of dragonflies over its shining surface, before removing his clothes. As he waded in and dived under, the frigid temperature shocked his skin. He stayed below as long as he could, feeling the sucking sensation of mud beneath his toes as he reached bottom, and the soft reeds that stroked his skin. He closed his eyes, imagining fronds and fish moving at the same calm pace about him.

Resurfacing, gasping from the cold, he looked across the gleaming expanse of river to the far bank. It was not his father’s property, and he had enjoyed trespassing there as a boy. Once he had scared some shepherds by springing out of the water stark naked, apart from the riverweed clinging to him. They had crossed themselves at first, thinking him some sprite. Later they grew accustomed to him, and would explain in their thick Gloucestershire accents where to find the biggest
fish or how to get an orphan lamb to take milk from a bottle, and why he should not touch a toad for fear of poison, or kill certain birds whose death brought bad luck. Where were they now, he wondered; some probably dead, some with sons whose lives might soon be interrupted or ended altogether by a war they cared nothing about.