The Queen's Cipher (17 page)

This bothered Milton. The symbols remained but there true meaning had been lost. What if they had their origin in Shakespeare’s day and undermined his scholarship. The evidence was mounting.

“Something I’ve been meaning to ask you, Elliott.” He tried to sound casual. “What is the true history of our Scottish Rite? Did it really start in Scotland?”

“I believe so.” Manley gave him a toothy smile. “Modern Masonry dates back to the late sixteenth century when the Schaw Statutes decreed that Scottish lodge members would be tested in ‘the arts of memory and science thereof.’ Throughout Europe brilliant minds were seeking a trans-denominational, trans-cultural theology that would cut across religious divides to create a rational universe of freedom and love. Utopian perhaps, but born of a genuine desire to restore the Kingdom of God, the ancient wisdom that man had somehow lost.”

“So it wasn’t just going on in Scotland.”

“No, it was a European-wide phenomenon. The transition from the old craft guilds to the lodges of speculative Masonry more or less coincides with the publication of the Rosicrucian manifestos in Germany and, as you know, our Scottish Rite has its Rose Croix degree.”

Out in the Tidal Basin two rowing boats collided with one another. Maybe that too was symbolic. Having the same idea didn’t always lead to harmony.

“How did the Scottish Rite end up here in America?” 

“It’s all a bit sketchy,” Manley replied. “The new speculative masonry seems to have followed a circuitous route from Scotland to France when the Stuarts went into exile there and then on to the New World where its egalitarian creed was incorporated into the Declaration of Independence.”

“Are there any other Rosicrucian organizations in America?”

“Absolutely, there’s the Rosicrucian Brotherhood, the Society of Rosicrucians, the Rosicrucian Fellowship and the Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis all claiming to represent the true faith.”

Milton shook his head in disbelief. “I had no idea we were so schismatic.”  

The librarian’s bulging eyes fixed on him. “Tell me, Milton,” he said, “what do you make of Abel Sizeman’s new book,
Will’s Secret Life
?”

“I haven’t read it.”

“OK, let me fill you in. Rosicrucianism began in the 1590s when a secret brotherhood met in London’s taverns and sat at tables beneath a painted rose. They combined a belief in alchemy with a burning desire for scientific and cultural freedom. Sizeman suggests this philosophy found its clearest expression in dramas performed abroad by troupes of English actors. Now, here’s the crunch, he claims several Shakespeare plays were included in their repertoire, which opens out the possibility that these plays were designed to educate as well as entertain.”

Milton was anxious to nip this in the bud. “Look, Manley,” he said emphatically, “I’ve spent almost thirty years researching Shakespeare. If he’d been a Rosicrucian I would know it.”

Seeing his colleague’s discomfort, the Folger Director went for the kill. “You’ve probably heard about Jason Bettany’s article on Rosicrucian emblems and watermarks in Shakespeare’s works. It’s going to be in the next issue of
Early Modern Literary Studies.”

By now Milton was profoundly irritated. The librarian was trying to rile him. “For Pete’s sake, Manley, Bettany is an absolute nobody! Nothing he says should be taken seriously.”

“I don’t agree. He’s a professor at Duke University. He’s Ivy League like you.”

“Minor League,” Milton corrected, “his reputation is hardly comparable with my own.”

The time had come for Elliott Manley to resort to flattery. “Of course you’re right,” he said smoothly. “As a Shakespearean scholar, no one can hold a candle to you.”

Milton wanted to believe this but deep down he knew it wasn’t true. His academic achievements were a distant memory. He hadn’t written anything truly groundbreaking since
Shakespeare’s Mind Games
catapulted him to fame twenty years ago. Since then he had free-wheeled, collecting honorary degrees, sitting on committees, making after-dinner speeches, constantly polishing his celebrity status.

“OK, let’s forget it.” He didn’t do contrition. Elliott Manley had a unique ability to get under his skin and did so deliberately.

“I simply wanted to acquaint you with Bettany’s argument. According to him, the Rosicrucians adopted Egyptian hieroglyphs and occult symbols like the rose of secrecy and the cross of suffering. They also illustrated their books with emblems – a covert form of communication rather like a Freemason’s knotty handshake – and several of these turn up in Shakespeare’s quartos and the First Folio.”

This was the last thing Milton Cleaver wanted to hear. He had written half a dozen books on Shakespeare, none of which mentioned his allegiance to a secret society.

“Look, everyone illustrated their pages with fancy designs in those days. Bettany is trying to make his name with this greatly exaggerated garbage. I’d stick his article in the trash can if I were you, Manley.”

Elliott Manley flushed at the rebuke. “Hear me out, you wouldn’t want people to say that Mather professors had short attention spans, would you?” he said waspishly.

“What the hell has gotten into you?” Milton asked, suddenly furious.

Jealousy was the short answer. As Knight Kadosh, Master of the Royal Secret, Supreme Commander of the Southern Jurisdiction and Librarian Emeritus, Elliott Manley was a man of many parts that had never quite come together to earn him the respect he felt he deserved. If Shakespeare scholars weren’t sniggering about his lack of inches and unfortunate eyes, they were dismissing him as a mere conduit through which their scholarship flowed. Yet he knew more than any of them.

“Do I attack you personally? Do I make cutting asides about your little flaws?”

“What are you talking about?” Milton retorted.

“Your aggression whenever you are confronted with ideas that contradict your own.”

The Folger Director pointed to the middle finger of his left hand. “See this,” he said.

The gold ring was a triple one, three small rings forged together, encrusted with diamonds and a black enamelled triangle into which the number 33 had been cut in gold.

“So what, it’s just another piece of Masonic costume jewellery,” Milton said airily.

“Really, is that what you think,” Manley sneered. He was about to cut the overbearing academic down to size. “You may be interested to learn that this ring dates back to 1616. The hallmark and the date letter tell you that. It was discovered in Canonbury Tower in London.”

By now they had reached the Jefferson Memorial. Manley gazed at its neoclassical structure and spoke in little more than a murmur. “This is in the strictest confidence. As a Thirty-Third Degree Mason you have sworn to defend our hidden agenda. There are, how shall I put it, complexities attached to this which we, as Shakespearean scholars, would not want to become common knowledge. As you know, I keep in touch with librarians overseas and word reaches me that a certain Dr Brett of Oxford University is taking an unhealthy interest in the invisible brotherhood. My sources tell me Brett has identified the giveaway sentence in
Instauratio Magna
where Francis Bacon mentions a movement to reorganize the sciences and restore man’s mastery over nature and is also aware that Bacon actually finished his Rosicrucian novel
New Atlantis
before his death and that the missing chapters were brought to Virginia by his descendant Nathaniel Bacon. He is approaching dangerous ground and needs to be stopped. Do I make myself plain?”

“Let me get this clear. You want me to use my influence to keep the genie in the bottle?”

The diminutive Supreme Commander nodded his head. “That’s about the size of it. Will you do it?”

Milton made a little bow. “It will be my pleasure.”

Hi Sam, I hope you had the time to read the story I sent you about Bacon’s visit to Mortlake which explains why Dr Dee took so long to communicate his decryption of Trithemius’s ingeniously disguised number substitution cipher.

We now know the cipher’s transmission route but have no idea how it connects to Shakespeare. What we need is a crystal ball. Talking of which, and we storytellers do love cunning men, you may be interested to hear what happened to Edward Talbot a few years later. Imagine the scene: a castle in Bohemia, alchemical experiments to create gold, an impotent Bohemian noble hoping that magic might make him fertile, spirit actions in which angels advocated wife-swopping and a lustful medium anxious to impregnate the magician’s tasty wife. Yes, Talbot, now calling himself Kelley, actually managed to persuade Dee that wife-swopping was God’s will. It was only afterwards that the doctor had serious misgivings. For some reason the spirits wanted to know about his intercourse with Kelley’s wife. What had Joanna been like in bed? Instead of answering questions, the angels were now asking them. But what finished off the relationship was news of Jane Dee’s pregnancy. She was carrying Kelley’s child. Yet even then, the magus clung to his belief in divine providence, christening the baby Theodorus Trebonianus, gift of God at Trebon. What world was Dr Dee was living in? I hear you ask. To which the answer must surely be, the next one. Even the wise are often foolish.

With that in mind, how about coming to Stratford? Donald Strachan wants us to visit the Shakespeare sites and I’d like to take up the challenge. You wonder why I set such store by Strachan. Yes, he’s self-educated and has a huge chip on his shoulder but he possesses extraordinary insight; a bit like Dr Dee’s scryer but without the crystal ball.  So could you meet me in the Bard’s backyard on Monday? Say the word and I will book a hotel and arrange theatre tickets through a friend of mine who works for the RSC. I think the trip might be rewarding although I must confess my real motivation is to see you again before you leave for the States.

Kindest regards, Freddie.

28 APRIL 2014

The rain had passed and a west wind was stretching thin clouds across a bright blue sky as Stratford’s Birthplace Trust gift shop opened for business selling such collectibles as the Stratford Heritage Tankard, the Shakespeare Insults Mug and Anne Hathaway’s Cottage Teapot. Elsewhere in town, souvenir shops offered rugs, ties and even underpants embroidered with the Bard’s effigy.

Outside the actual birthplace Samantha Dilworth cast an appreciative eye over the detached two-storied timber-framed house on which groups of tourists were training their digital cameras. It was the best looking Elizabethan town house she had ever seen.

“I’m impressed,” she said.

“Don’t be,” Freddie told her, “it’s largely a fake.”

“Oh, come on, this is my first visit to Stratford and you hit me with that.”

He shook his head in mock disbelief. “It’s pretty late to be making your first pilgrimage when, as a Shakespearean scholar, this is your prime source, your ultimate context.”

“You can be a Muslim without making it to Mecca.”

“A good Muslim makes at least one Haj in a lifetime. Anyway, you’re here now.”

“Yes, and I want to know why you say this place is a fake. Give me the evidence.”

“Y-y-your wish is my command,” Freddie accepted the challenge, stuttering into the bargain.

As usual he had done his homework, tapping into the recorded memories of Stratford. His principal source of information was an eighteenth-century periodical called
The Gentleman’s Magazine
which contained a steady stream of blistering reviews from disappointed pilgrims who had travelled to the Warwickshire town to pay homage to England’s playwriting genius.

He told her about the disgruntled Georgians who had visited the Henley Street birthplace and found it ‘shabby’, ‘mean’ and ‘dilapidated.’ The American Shakespeare critic Richard Grant White thought it was ‘almost a hovel, poverty stricken, squalid, kennel-like’ while another of her countrymen, the author Washington Irving, dismissed the dwelling as ‘a small, mean-looking edifice of wood and plaster’ in which he encountered a ‘garrulous old lady’ who showed him Shakespeare’s chair, tobacco-box and even the shattered stock of his poaching matchlock. It was, Irving wrote despairingly, a typical commercial shrine.

“They must have been looking at a different house – that’s what I think,” Sam said dryly.

“They were looking at a different house in a very different place. It was the lure of tourism that persuaded Stratford to clean up its act.”

A Birthplace Trust had been set up in 1847 and given the money to buy the shop and inn in Henley Street that had Shakespeare associations. The Trust had restored and altered these properties, knocking down buildings on either side to create a free-standing Tudor mansion.

“What you’re looking at is in part a nineteenth-century construct erected by Victorian entrepreneurs whose desire to embellish the past was in keeping with their bushy sideburns.”

Freddie bought tickets for a guided tour that took them through an open-hearth kitchen and into a bedroom where he hit his head on the low, timber-framed ceiling. As the usher talked about Tudor midwives and wet nurses, Sam peered at the wooden cradle on the floor.

“Is this where Will was born?” she whispered.

“No,” he replied. “They stopped making claims like that long ago when one of their custodians went public about the birthplace’s phoney remains. Now the contents are said to be representative of the period in which Shakespeare lived.”

“You’ve certainly got a way of shattering a girl’s illusions.”

“What if I told you Shakespeare may not have been born in this house at all?” 

He became aware of the poisonous looks he was getting from their guide. “Look, how about a tea break. What we English call Elevenses.”

Sitting in a café in Bard’s Walk Sam poured out the tea. “You were saying before ...”