The Bloodless Boy (9 page)

‘Mr. Hooke, you have not said of Colonel Fields whether he may be depended upon. Should I go to him with this cipher?’

Hooke swallowed down the remainder of his tea, and held out their workings on the cipher to Harry. Harry, with a premonition of the trouble that came later, a shiver working itself through the discs of his spine, took them from him.

‘He is a most dependable man, Harry. But would you wish to depend upon such a man?’

Observation XIII
Of the Red Cipher

The snow, hard underfoot, was dusted by black powder from hundreds of chimneys, and, set up on the streets to keep the traders warm, from the fires, braziers and stoves.

Dirty smog gathered around the Black Eagle Brewery, whose smell was the dominant tone in a dissonant choir of inharmonious smells. The same haze floated between the chimneys of Whitechapel Bell Foundry, where the bells had been cast for Westminster Abbey a hundred years before, and coiled about the brick and tile manufacturers, the glass-blowing houses, sugar refineries, metalworking shops, jewellers, coal stores, tea warehouses, and abattoirs.

Harry tried to relax his features into what he hoped resembled confidence and ease with this world; as a stranger to Whitechapel he was anxious not to draw attention to himself.

The rattle of carts and drays over the cobbles battered his eardrums. Loads were hefted through the crowd with no consideration of feelings or injury, and challenging stares met dissent, elbows jabbing into passers-by that strayed too near. With the clacking beaks and manic beatings of wings, of geese and hens, this raised the human volume; all communication was shouted or screamed. Squealing pigs, beaten by a surly man gripping a long knotted stick to encourage them on, surged between the market stalls. They slid on the ice, thumping down on their fattened sides, scrabbling to right themselves. The waste from their energetic bowels made a hazard equal to the glassy shine of the ground.

Where was the chapel he sought? He tried to look without appearing lost, but his subterfuge became more difficult as he repeated his slippery walk back down the High Street. He dodged his way through the crowd, trying to spot Colonel Fields’s Anabaptist chapel. It would be easier if he knew what he was looking for. Again he found the top of the High Street, facing the fields and windmills, and the coppice, a collection of skeletal trees with snow-laden branches. The remains of the Cromwellian fortifications, the sconce built during the wars as part of the Lines of Communication, stood before him. But no chapel.

He approached a man dressed in the dark clothes of a Huguenot. The Frenchman sent him back the way he had come, with instructions to pass through an alley immediately after the Saracen’s Head. Moving through the crowd again, and seeing the garish sign of the tavern, this Saracen’s head having become separated from his body, Harry at last found the alley.

As he turned into it, the rapid diminution of noise tricked his ears into believing that he stood in perfect silence. With the change in sound came a change in light. Fearful of the dimness as he went through, he broke into a trot. Coming back out into the comforting daylight, he saw crisp snow over a meadow, undisturbed since its fall. He crossed it, and climbed over a flimsy gate between flimsier gateposts, and headed towards a roof – all he could see of a building down in a hollow.

Closer, standing on a slope dropping steeply in front of him, he observed that the building’s construction seemingly followed the rule of the trapezium rather than the rectangle, and was more a shed than a chapel.

‘Is it on fire?’ Harry asked himself aloud, for smoke billowed from every seam of the place. Tentatively, he moved down to the door; unsteady on its hinges, it stood half open, and he pushed it aside. He walked into the smoke coming from a central fire, gathering under the ceiling, looking for escape since no chimney transmitted it away.

*

From inside the cloud he could hear a scraping noise. When his eyes accustomed themselves, he could make out a man sitting in the parabola of a hammock rocking between two posts. Harry was closest to the soles of the man’s feet, and the man’s head rested on his toes, foreshortened as his body appeared.

Harry walked further forwards, to get a more natural view.

‘My name is Harry Hunt, Observator of the Royal Society.’

‘And I am Colonel Michael Fields. Good morrow.’

Harry realised that the Colonel was shaving, a razor rasping his jaw as he pulled at his old skin to smooth the wrinkles of age.

‘Mr. Hooke sends me, to seek your assistance.’

‘In all this fog I thought you a phantom.’ Fields wiped the blade between his fingers.

The Colonel was wrapped in a tattered campaign coat. His whole head was freshly shaved, with a few nicks on his scalp. It was a large head, covered with liver spots, like islands on a globe. A long scar curled around the back of it, starting above his right ear, whose top was missing.

He had evidently been a strongly-built man, although the muscle had melted with age. In the same way his clothes, once brightly coloured, were faded. Only an orange scarf relieved their drabness. His trousers were brown – Harry suspected that once they had been scarlet.

Beside Fields lay an edition of the
Souldier’s Pocket Bible
, as battered as he was, and an unlit candle – tallow, Harry observed – was stuck to the chair beside him in a pyramid of melted wax. A horseshoe of other chairs awaited his congregation.

Colonel Fields made no move to leave the sanctuary of his hammock. ‘So!’ he exclaimed, waving the razor. ‘Why do you come here, young man? I do not preach again until this evening.’

Harry, his eyes streaming, decided on a straightforward approach.

‘You came once to Gresham’s College, and spoke there with the Curator, Mr. Robert Hooke, and were helpful upon ciphers. A cipher you showed has returned again.’

‘Returned? Which of the ciphers is this?’ asked the old man incredulously.

‘One using numbers in a grid upon the page, their substitution altered by use of a keyword. Each row a dozen numbers along, and a dozen rows to a page.’

‘The Red Cipher,’ said Fields.

‘A red cipher?’ Harry repeated. ‘Why is it so called?’

‘From a soldiering past, Mr. Hunt; from long ago, in the time of the Civil Wars. I showed it at the College as a historical curiosity only. It was in the Red Regiment of the London Trained Bands that it was first employed. Also, you would shed all of your red blood before giving over the keyword. It was a promise we users of the cipher made to one another. Its sounds bluff, now, does it not, such sentiment? Yet such were the times. So! Used again?’

‘Yes,’ Harry confirmed. ‘If this is your cipher.’ He produced the bundle of papers from inside his coat.

‘It may, of course, be another system, but the use of twelve numbers along and twelve numbers across gives the appearance of the Red Cipher. You have found out its message?’ Fields looked pleased, glad that his lesson was learnt, and was evidently useful. His expression fell at Harry’s shake of the head. ‘Give it to me.’

The Colonel rested down his razor and bowl onto the chair, and spread the papers on his outstretched legs, spending some time sorting through them all. Harry stood by him, next to the hammock, the atmosphere attacking his eyes.

‘Well,’ Fields spoke at last. ‘A number of your substitutions may be correct, you know, but without its neighbour to guide you, it is knotty to hazard which of them sit prettily. You have no notion of the keyword?’

Harry shook his head.

‘Then you will not know its length. That is a way in, as the pattern repeats throughout. Longer messages, certainly, could be breached this way. De Vigenère, in the last century, employed a similar system.’

‘Mr. Hooke believes that a de Vigenère square is used in the making of this cipher.’

‘Then Mr. Hooke is fallible, for he is wrong!’

Fields sat up, making the hammock sway, wanting a better look at Harry. ‘We used just one alphabet to make the cipher, instead of twenty-six, which owns the advantage of speeding the method along. Concealment can be a tedious business. Reach me my pen. Over there. And I have some ink.’

Harry located the pen and ink for the old soldier, and Fields wrote out a grid on the back of one of the sheets that Harry had with him.

‘This is a simple system!’ Harry exclaimed.

‘I have not yet added the keyword to this alphabet, to mix the order of the letters.’ The Colonel thought for a while. ‘So! A suitable keyword, for example, might be
Putney
, where the debates were held.’ Fields saw Harry’s look of incomprehension. ‘A historical detail, Mr. Hunt; I would not expect you to know of them. But let us use this word,
Putney
, as our keyword.’ He wrote out a series of numbers.

41
  
51
 
45
 
34
 
15
 
54
  
41
  
51
 
45
 
34
  
15
 
54

‘These are the co-ordinates of the letters in the word
Putney
, which then repeat throughout the cipher. The co-ordinates of the keyword are then added to the co-ordinates of the letters of the message.’ He wrote out more numbers under those of the keyword, then added the numbers in the first row to the second:

41
  
51
  
45
  
34
  
15
  
54
  
41
  
51
  
45
  
34
  
15
  
54

13
  
43
  
35
  
33
  
52
  
15
  
32
  
32

54
  
94
  
80
  
67
  
67
  
69
  
73
  
83

‘The name Cromwell owns two Ls, each becoming a 32; these, in the Red Cipher – but only when using
Putney
as the keyword – become 73 and 83 respectively. Cromwell, who was Lord Protector –’

‘I know of Oliver Cromwell, Colonel.’

Fields looked at Harry anxiously, as if checking that he had all of his faculties, was mentally acute, and so could be trusted that he really knew of Oliver Cromwell. Something in Harry’s face convinced him, for his own face broke open in a blissful smile. ‘Good!’ he exclaimed. ‘Very good! Well, likewise, along this bottom line, we see two instances of the number 67, yet these denote, in the name of Cromwell, M and W respectively. Where did you find this? It brings things back, you know . . .’

Mindful of their promise to Sir Edmund, Harry said nothing of the boy found at the Fleet. ‘It was delivered to Mr. Hooke, having been left with a Solicitor named Creed, who was secretive upon its author.’

‘Creed, you say?’ the old Colonel muttered, stroking the dome of his head.

‘Moses Creed. You have heard the name?’

Fields rolled back his streaming eyes, as if the answer to Harry’s question would be found on the inside of his forehead. ‘I do not know Moses Creed. He is not part of my Congregation here. But then, few are. Not many interest themselves in our meetings presently. Would you, perhaps?’

‘We have a similar problem at the Society,’ Harry replied, avoiding his question.

The Colonel laughed a hollow laugh. ‘You can see, it is a simple system, but difficult to break unless you have the keyword. A war-time cipher, robust and worthy, not one to break the brains of the soldiers.’

‘I am obliged to you, Colonel Fields.’

‘And so am I to you, Mr. Hunt, for I enjoy this talk of ciphers. It is rejuvenating; it makes me mindful of the man I used to be.’

‘We have been asked to assist the Justice of Peace for Westminster, Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey, with an investigation. He came across a similar communication, making use of the same cipher.’

The Colonel gave Harry an appraising look, as if inspecting his buckles for tarnish. ‘You know, you must take a care if you are dealing with Sir Edmund. Do you have now the time for an old soldier’s tale, to show why I urge caution against the Justice?’

Harry nodded hesitantly, aware that he had said too much. He had been anxious to impress; something about this old soldier made him so.

‘Then let me tell you of an occurrence during the Wars . . .’

*

The Colonel gingerly descended from his hammock, and went to stand by his fire, almost disappearing into the smoke. ‘. . . the last of the Wars between Cromwell and this new King . . .’

The ‘new King’ had been on his throne for nearly eighteen years. The old man was about to go off into his reminiscences – Harry told himself to be patient.

‘This will seem as ancient history to you, but bear with me. Bear with me!’ He warmed himself for a while, and then returned, to sit on one of the chairs.

‘It was with Oliver Cromwell that I travelled to Ireland, attending to the tumults there. We afterwards went together to Scotland, to fight the Charles Stuart who is now our King. He had made agreement with the Scots, as did his father before him, promising to root out Episcopacy and implant Presbytery. You see how expediency rather than Revelation dictates our ways of worship! This Charles decided to move his Scots into England. We fought him at Worcester. Here, in September of ’fifty-one, was to be the last battle of all the Civil Wars.’

‘But what of Sir Edmund?’ Harry asked. ‘Where does he fit into your narrative?’

Fields stared at him for a long moment, and Harry saw the force of the man, and could imagine him as a young officer exhorting his troops into battle.