The Queen's Cipher (47 page)

A high-pitched whining noise made his heart leap in his chest. It took a while for him to register that his phone was ringing. Whoever it was would have to wait. As he clawed his way down the winding stairway, Freddie tried to stay positive; to ride the pain in his body. Every time he bent or twisted it felt as though he was being torn apart. He had to stop. In doing so he lost his footing, sliding down the worn stone steps, lacerating his knees, until with a resounding thump he landed at the bottom. He lay where he had fallen, winded but thankful to be in one piece.

“Are you all right?” Her trembling voice came out of the darkness above.

“You’re almost there,” he said encouragingly. “A dozen more steps to go! That’s all. ”

At which point the battery in his torch expired leaving them in total darkness and the pain returned, slicing through his body like red hot daggers. “Fuck,” he said loudly and felt better for it.

“Bloody hell, what do I do now?”

“I can see your feet, love. Let go and I’ll catch you.”

She fell into his arms, covering his face with kisses to celebrate their escape.

“It’s a bit soon for that,” he said, breaking off the embrace to explore their new surroundings. He stumbled over something. It felt like a heavy sack of cement. A pile of these sacks blocked his path. Moving around them he barked his shin on what he took to be a paint pot and cursed himself for a clumsy idiot. Then he saw a streak of light ahead. It was coming from under a door.

“I think we’re in a storage cellar,” he told her, “and I’ve found the way out.”

He had spoken too soon. The door was locked on the outside and no amount of yelling brought anyone to open it. Eventually they stopped shouting and faced up to the new terror of being locked in an underground utility room that might not be visited in months.

“OK, temporary setback,” said Freddie, on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Sticking his back against the door, he shuffled along the wall in search of a second exit. All he could see was his breath condensing in the cold air.

“Ouch.” He had collided with some kind of iron protrusion. The offending object turned out to be a heavy bolt. There was a loud scraping noise as he drew back the rusting lock. The door creaked open. Cheryl stifled her cry of joy when she saw what awaited them outside.

Rising above their heads was the roof of an egg-shaped brickwork tunnel illuminated only by flickering strip lighting that receded into an infinite darkness. They had found their way into a Victorian sewer and were standing ankle deep in a scummy brown liquid. It was like a Gothic horror story. They were entombed in a tainted watercourse, a cathedral of human waste.

“I know shit happens but this is ridiculous,” she wailed, inspecting her soiled feet.

“Don’t worry,” he said taking her hand, “we’ll be out of here soon. I think this is a floodwater relief sewer so if we start walking we should find a manhole cover.”

Cheryl wrinkled her nose. The place positively reeked.              

“Hold your nose and breathe through your mouth. You’ll get used to the smell. Watch out for rat urine though. You don’t want Weil’s disease.”

On that cautionary note Freddie set out, splashing his way through the free flowing murky water.

“Why is it running so fast?” she asked.

“It’s the best way of breaking down solid material. No, not what you think, mostly fat from local restaurants and kebab shops.”  

Disgusted and frightened, she tried to keep her spirits up. “Victor Hugo said sewers were very democratic. They were places without secrets, where class distinctions dissolved.”

“I’d say they had an immersive history …” A roaring sound drowned out the rest of the joke.

Freddie knew immediately what had happened. Someone had opened the diffuser pipes in the outfall tunnel and they were about to be engulfed by a tidal wave of fetid water. Could this really have happened by accident? Reason told him it was because of London’s torrential rainfall. His morbid imagination suggested otherwise.

“Run,” Cheryl yelled frantically, her eyes wild with fear. “You said there’d be an exit near here.”

For a split second he hesitated. He suffered from aquaphobia and his mind was overwhelmed with terrifying thoughts of drowning. Then he burst into action, pushing her ahead of him, but it was already too late. The force of the current swept him off his feet, tossing him around like a rag doll, dragging him under, filling his mouth with a vile, evil-smelling brown liquid from which he now and then escaped, coughing and spluttering, to yell for help, knowing none would come from the uncaring city overhead. What a filthy, abject way to die.

Through the sulphuric haze an abandoned escalator shaft came into sight. Gratefully he grabbed hold of it. There was still hope. But where was she? He had lost sight of her during his slalom ride through the sewer. He shouted her name and choked on the diluted sewage.

Dizzy and lightheaded, Millais’ portrait of the drowning Ophelia swam into his brain. But there was nothing serene or pre-Raphaelite about Cheryl when he finally saw her, arms and legs flailing in the churning water. Clutching the escalator shaft with one hand he lunged for her but missed by inches and had to watch helplessly as she swept past him.

The rising tide was carrying her towards the sewer wall. At any moment, her brains would be dashed out. Then fortune smiled. The current tossed Cheryl into an alcove near a fixed ladder. Snatching a rung, she had the strength and determination to lever herself out of the angry swirling water. Once she had got her breath back she called for him to join her.

There wasn’t time to think. Instinct took over. Saying a silent prayer he let go of the shaft and tumbled into the raging torrent to be rushed forward until he smashed his shoulder on the brick wall. Dazed by the impact, he felt rather than saw the water close over his head. This is it, he thought, but at that moment his searching fingers encountered metal and he clung on for dear life.

Shoppers in Islington High Street stared in open-mouthed amazement as a manhole cover was lifted and two dishevelled figures climbed out and staggered along the pavement. Their clothes were smeared with excrement and they smelt to high heaven. The man’s stammered apologies were lost behind the girl’s belligerent challenge. “What are you looking at?” she shouted at shocked bystanders. “This is your shit we’re covered in and don’t you forget it.”

3 JULY 2014

What she had wanted was the certainty of love, the belief that there was no need to rush through life. Without that assurance, Samantha Jane Dilworth, the overachieving twenty-year-old editor of Mather’s student newspaper, had looked for peer group approval which had arrived in a most unexpected fashion. Her study door flung open by the captain of football shouting the words, ‘Pen and Sword, accept or reject?’ In accepting his offer, she became only the second woman to be initiated into the mysteries of one of the country’s oldest and most prestigious secret societies.

Attending what would otherwise have been an all male reunion in the dimly lit Glowworm Room, Sam had spent the evening thinking what a travesty it was. Because of their exclusivity, the Swords frequently featured in conspiracy stories that linked its members to the CIA, the Illuminati or even the Nazis when, in reality, it was no more than a stupid club that just happened to have former Presidents of the United States and Supreme Court judges among its alumni.

She still shuddered with embarrassment when she remembered her initiation ceremony. Held in the so-called Inner Temple, a small square room locked by an iron door, the rite involved kissing an imaginary pope’s slipper and signing their name in blood. Once these tasks had been performed initiates met ‘within the tomb’ on Pen and Sword time, one minute ahead of the rest of the world, where they could network to their heart’s content.

Tonight’s five course dinner had been a long drawn out affair. Afterwards, Sam accepted an invitation to join her more boisterous colleagues for a night on the town and had ended up in the sweaty heat of a dance floor where a hip-hop DJ was playing vinyl loudly enough to awaken the dead. Hypnotized by the beat of the music she was slow to realize that ceiling sprinklers were dousing the dancers with a misty spray.

“They’ve got a nitrous cooling system,” her dance partner was telling her. He was a tall, muscular young man with broad shoulders who had once been a champion swimmer. While admiring his outer shape, Sam reckoned he had chlorinated bathwater on the brain.

“Would you like to dry off at the bar,” he yelled above the music.

“No thanks.”

A hand tugged at her elbow. She shrugged it off. But the tug was repeated. Turning to face her molester she stumbled into the small well-dressed man behind her. Under the strobing lights, all she could see was a goatee beard and gold rimmed spectacles.

“Hi,” he said. “What are you doing here?” It was Elliott Manley’s harsh, nasal voice.

“Enjoying getting wet after a Mather meal,” she replied sweetly.

“Don’t tell me you are a Swordsman? I know they were having a dinner tonight.”

“Class of 2004, Elliott.”

“Goodness me, you must be the first women to see the inside of Room 233. I am impressed.”

“The second, actually,” she corrected him.

“Will you join me at the bar? It’s drier there.”

Sam hesitated. She could hardly refuse an invitation from the director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, the man who signed her cheques. “I’d be delighted,” she said.

Manley escorted her across the slippery dance floor to a bar stool where he ordered Manhattan cocktails. As they waited for their drinks to be mixed, he explained what a man of his seniority was doing in a discotheque. He was attending a librarians’ conference in the city and had felt the need for a change of scenery. In other words, he was looking for a bit of action.

The Manhattans arrived and with them came a rehearsed speech about the challenge facing modern libraries: how they were being rebranded as information resource centres but were struggling to keep up with the explosion in published data. She, in turn, struggled to stay awake as she listened to his monologue.

Eventually he tired of the topic and turned instead to gossip. “The word is you are dating Milton. Is that fact or fiction?”

“Fact,” said Sam brightly.

Manley’s thin lips compressed. “He’s a hard fellow to know and that wife of his – absolute poison!”

She stared at her cocktail glass. He had mentioned Winona Cleaver quite deliberately, to plant the idea in her mind that her partner couldn’t be trusted.

“Milton has everything worked out in advance,” Manley was saying. The envy in his voice was palpable. “It’s quite brilliant really. And he usually gets what he wants, although that wasn’t altogether true when he was an undergraduate at Mather.”

“What happened then?” Sam’s curiosity got the better of her.

“He was never invited to be a Swordsman and it still irritates him.”

“Why didn’t he get asked? What was wrong with him?” Sam was genuinely surprised.

“Oh,” said Manley, swaying slightly, “the story was his family background didn’t measure up. Old Man Cleaver was in trade. Still a buck’s a buck, if you get my meaning.”

Manley gave Sam’s bare arm a squeeze. The alcohol was beginning to take effect.

“Is that why Milton went to Harvard to do postgraduate work.” she wanted to know.

“He told me he was tired of Mather but the truth was he couldn’t cope with rejection. He had to be top dog.”

“I thought you were his friend?” she asked sharply.

“I am an admirer, you might say, but I would like to be your friend.”

The head librarian’s face cracked into what he hoped was a winning smile which she returned.

“Tell me what you admire about Milton.” Make him say something nice for a change.

“His flexible principles and his amazing luck, I suppose. Back in the eighties, when he was an assistant professor, no-one thought he would become a world authority on early modern drama.”

“That was before he wrote
Shakespeare’s Mind Games
?”

“Yes, the book transformed his career. It sold half a million copies and was hailed as a masterpiece. Can you recall the central thesis?”

“How could I forget? Life is an absurd comedy to be bravely born and Shakespeare’s deepest insight is that God has a sense of humour. ‘He that made us’ is a jester.”

“Now here’s the rub,” Manley polished his spectacles with a silk handkerchief. “The ‘fortune’s fools’ argument appeared in an article Barker wrote in
Renaissance Quarterly
– what do you think of that?”

“That it’s very hard to have a truly original thought.” She disappointed him by appearing unruffled when what he had obviously been looking for were signs of outrage, even an outright admission perhaps that she was wasting her time on Cleaver.

Burying his disappointment, Manley asked Sam if she would like another cocktail. While it was being mixed at the bar she took stock of the situation. Her employer was coming on to her; that much was clear. Perhaps she could turn this to her advantage.

“There’s something I wanted to ask you,” she said playfully, sipping her dry martini. “Milton is being very mysterious. I suspect he’s working on another book. Has he discussed it with you?”

Manley looked at her over his bifocals, relishing her ignorance. “He hasn’t told you, has he? Maybe I shouldn’t say anything either.”

“You can trust me, Elliott.”  She crossed her legs and lent forward to give him a better view of her cleavage.

“Let me ask you one question, Sam – may I call you Sam.”

“That’s me.”

He bowed unsteadily before continuing. “Now that you are editing the Bell’s Acting Edition can I take it you’ve got over your wobbly period on Shakespeare?”

“Absolutely, it was only a temporary loss of power that has since been repaired.”

“Don’t worry, we’ve all had our doubts about the Bard,” Manley confided. “I sometimes think we Shakespeare scholars are rather like priests whose faith has to be tested.”

Sam gave him her wide-eyed innocent look. There was a price to be paid for her flirting. She could feel Manley’s hand sliding across her knee. She steeled herself to leave it there.