The Queen's Cipher (51 page)

Sunday 6 July 2014

For Dr Brett’s attention

I had another emphysema attack yesterday. It was worse than before. Antonia was at her wretched zumba class. I used the hospital respirator and things calmed down after a while. In case anything happens to me, I want you to know about a little discovery of mine.

A couple of weeks ago I represented our proposed publisher, Jack Van Horn, at a book auction in London. The American media tycoon wanted to acquire a draft copy of Bacon’s ‘Cogitata et Visa’ which the author had amended in his own handwriting. With dollars to burn I won the bidding and set about reading my purchase. What intrigued me was a section devoted to the ‘visible representation of nature’ (i.e. drama) that was later omitted from the printed version. In the draft text Bacon said he would be keeping this work to himself until ‘the treatise intended for the people should be published.’

One has to assume that this most secretive of men had had second thoughts about declaring his intention. I can’t help wondering whether this so-called treatise was some kind of personal statement in which Bacon explained the role he had played in the writing of the Shakespeare plays. I need hardly tell you how valuable such a testimony would be.

What we have to decide is whether to hunt for this codex. I am gripped by the conviction that we should do so, particularly as I have a good idea of its possible hiding place. From the start of our quest we have been examining the relationship between two like-minded noblemen with Rosicrucian leanings. And there’s another hint in Bacon’s will when he talks about leaving ‘his name to the next ages, and to foreign nations.’ Doesn’t that tell you where to look? I’m not saying more than this. Not even in my own diary.

11 JULY 2014

The early morning sunshine was already baking Wolfenbuttel’s pavements as he crossed the Leibnizstrasse. Ahead of him, little eddies of dust were lifting off the tarmac. Freddie’s heart was pumping with excitement. With its huge collection of medieval books and manuscripts, the Herzog August Bibliothek was one of Europe’s finest libraries.

He watched his fellow pedestrians hurrying to work in their neat German town and tried to rationalize his feelings.
A treatise intended for the people
. With these words, Freddie’s world had shifted on its axis. Instead of decrypted messages, literary speculations and long lists of coincidences, there was now the possibility of solid evidence, a personal statement from the pen of Francis Bacon. What he would give to possess it. He had to admit, of course, that the chances of tracking down such a document, even if it existed, were virtually non-existent. The trail must have gone cold centuries ago. It was absurd to think otherwise.

So what, he told himself, crazy ideas aren’t always as crazy as they might appear to be and, in truth, he had nothing better to do with his time now that the college year was over. Besides which, a call from the dead deserved to be taken seriously.  Strachan may have carried a large chip on his shoulder and been obsessive, but his instincts were sound. He reckoned Bacon had sent his treatise to one of his fellow Rosicrucians, Duke August of Brunswick-Luneburg. Who better to look after such a document and decide when the time was ripe for its publication? Where better to bury a book than in the biggest library in Europe? Bacon had talked at length about the ‘durable part of memory’, his writings, going overseas.

When he told Simon what he planned to do, his flat mate had laughed in his face. “To think I chained myself to the Master’s railings on your behalf and, look at you, you’re as mad as a hatter. Only crazy conspiracy theorists look for needles in haystacks!” “You’re probably right,” he’d admitted. “But it’s a pretty amazing haystack.”

At the end of the street Freddie had a choice to make. A signpost pointed in three different directions, each indicating a part of the library campus. The right turn led to an imposing building which had the graceful proportions of a Florentine palazzo. The flight of steps in front of the main entrance was swarming with casually dressed grammar school children taking part in a library project. As if in revolt against German neatness and efficiency, most of the boys had long unkempt hair and sported garish T-shirts and leather jackets while the girls wore lipstick, camisole tops and mini-skirts. In one way, however, they conformed to the national stereotype, standing courteously aside to let older people enter the building.

It came as a shock therefore when someone barged into Freddie, doubling him up in pain. “
Schauen Sie, wohin Sie gehen
!” a muscular German in blue overalls muttered as he ran down the steps. A winded Freddie limped to the information desk to display his credentials and be escorted to the Assistant Director’s office.

Its occupant was a bespectacled middle-aged woman with severely cut brown hair and a dark blue suit sitting behind a huge walnut desk but when Heike Mittler stood up to shake his hand he realized she was far from ordinary. In high heels she was as tall as he was and her smile radiated intelligence.

“Dr Brett, a pleasure to meet you,” she said in faultless English. “I know the Director would have liked to greet you. Unfortunately, Professor Kaufmann is on an archaeological dig in Pylos.”

“Thank you for seeing me at such short notice. As I said on the phone, I am researching the relationship between Duke August and our English philosopher Francis Bacon and hope to find fresh evidence of this in your library.”

The Assistant Director invited him to sit down. She spoke English with a precise accuracy. “Don’t raise your hopes too high. We have almost a million books here, 135,000 of which date back to Duke August. So there’s a lot to get through. You do appreciate that, Dr Brett?”

Dr Brett appreciated it. He gave her his lopsided grin. “I know it’s a long shot but new historical evidence does surface from time to time.”

“There was a recent case, I believe, in your National Archives when a historian unearthed a coroner’s jury report into the death of Leicester’s wife.”

“That’s right. It had been misfiled. Things turn up in the most surprising places. Bacon’s
Abecedarium Naturae
went undetected for four hundred years in the French Bibliotheque Nationale.”

Heike Mittler stared at him over the top of her steel spectacles and leaned forward, her leather chair creaking as she did so. “What do you hope to find here?”

It was a question he couldn’t evade. Not if he wanted this brisk woman’s cooperation. “How much do you know about Duke August’s political and religious beliefs?” he asked.

“August was a learned man who inherited Wolfenbuttel during the Thirty Years War. He brought a huge collection of books with him. He may also have been the head of a Rosicrucian organization called the Societas Christiana but the evidence is sketchy.”

“That’s what I’m exploring,” he said. “It’s a tangled tale.”

“I bet it is.” She gave a schoolgirl giggle before reaching for her phone to cancel her next appointment. “Right, you have my full attention.”

Freddie told her about Bacon’s correspondence with the German duke. The two men shared similar ideas. They wanted to create an international brotherhood of learning. Bacon had written about this in his utopian novella New Atlantis which was acknowledged to be a Rosicrucian tract.

There was a knock on the door and a library assistant entered with a pot of coffee and two Dresden cups and saucers.

Once she had served her guest, Heike Mittler took off her spectacles and rubbed them vigorously with a cleaning cloth before looking up at Freddie. Her eyes had narrowed to almond shards. “Get to the point, Dr Brett. Tell me what you’re up to.”

He could feel his face reddening. “I’m looking for an autobiographical treatise which Bacon failed to publish in his lifetime. I have reason to believe that he gave it to Duke August for safekeeping.”

“And why would he do that?” she asked evenly.

“This is largely guesswork. I don’t think Bacon got round to writing his treatise until he was an old man in political disgrace. By then, the Thirty Years War was raging in Europe and Catholics and Protestants were at each other’s throats. Not the best time to be releasing a radical apologia calling for intellectual freedom and church unity.”

“Perhaps not, if that’s what this treatise really contained?” Her arched eyebrows suggested otherwise. He would have to do better than that.

“You’re right. There’s more to it than that. The treatise is supposed to contain a scathing attack on James I and his son Charles,” he lied. “He felt that England was treading water under the Stuart kings, losing the chance to be a great imperial nation.”

“Is that so?” The librarian stretched out the last word as far as it would possibly go. “But why give this highly sensitive document to Duke August? He must have had trustworthy friends in his own country.”

“August was younger than Bacon, a fellow Rosicrucian, pretty liberal-minded apart from his obsession with witches, and, crucially, he was a bibliophile with a huge library. What better place to conceal a codex than in a room full of books. In his will Bacon commends ‘his name to the next ages, and to foreign nations.’ Duke August would hold on to his personal testimony and then release it when the time was right.”  

“
Per aspera ad astra
, through harsh lands to the stars – that’s one of the duke’s mottos. But he didn’t publish Bacon’s treatise, did he? So someone else must have taken possession of it.”

“And August knew just the man – Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the first computer scientist, who joined the Societas Christiana and was a Rosicrucian lodge secretary before becoming librarian here. Your library was a Masonic stronghold in the seventeenth century.”

Heike Mittler blinked but said nothing.

“Will you help me,” he blurted out.

The Assistant Director drew herself upright: guardian of all that was orthodox and proper; enemy of anything inaccurate or abnormal. He could see a refusal forming on her lips. Yet, as Professor Kaufmann’s stand-in and an advocate of International Library Cooperation, shouldn’t she try to help this weird English scholar. Good manners and the spirit of European unity won the day.

“It’s an interesting theory you’ve got there, Dr Brett, and we will do all in our power to assist you in your quest,” delivered in a soothing monotone. “But, before we begin, perhaps you would like a short tour of the library complex.”

“That’s very good of you. I’d love to see your library. That’s if you can spare the time.”

She could and did. As they walked down seemingly endless corridors she told him about a proud moment in the library’s history. The great Venetian lover Casanova had visited Wolfenbuttel and much preferred the duke’s book collection to the local frauleins.

“And here we are,” she announced. They had entered a marble rotunda that turned out to be an optical illusion. The effect was created by thirty thousand white vellum volumes, shelved by size between marble pillars. “The White Library, just as August left it. Do you know what he said about it? ‘There is not a mountain range in which it is more pleasant to hunt.’”

“Why are they all the same?” he asked.

“That’s because the bookbinding was done here. Duke August purchased his imprints as unbound quires and shipped them to the library where they were given the same leather hides.”

He was shown an engraving of a plump whiskery old chap trying to crank up a revolving book wheel’s gearing system. It was the duke himself.

A polite cough reminded him of the need to press on. They moved into a locked down area where some of the library’s most precious possessions were on display – a handwritten ninth-century gospel book and the extremely rare thirty-six line Gutenberg Bible printed in an ink made out of linseed oil and soot. After a short briefing on the library’s buying policy Freddie was shown a mounted display of maps, sextants and astrolabes.

Looking beyond these ancient navigational aids, his eye was taken by what appeared to be a storeroom for baroque furniture. In a flight of fancy he imagined these fixtures and fittings to be stage props awaiting the appearance of the actors, preferably whiskered and in breeches and sleeved doublets. His guide told him they were the foundations for a future exhibition on the life and times of Duke August.

“There’s some pretty expensive junk stored here,” she said dismissively.

It was certainly an eclectic hoard: a seventeenth-century iron box with an intricate locking system; a veneered rosewood writing desk; an Augsburg ivory jewel cabinet; a large dower chest and a carved walnut refectory table with a gaming box on top of it.

“Look, I’m awfully sorry but I’ve a meeting I must go to. Let me drop you off in our digital library. I suggest you start your research by examining our Leibniz project which includes all his research papers.”

“Didn’t Francis Bacon outline the binary number system Leibniz later documented?”

The Assistant Director frowned. “All Bacon did was to show how letters of the alphabet could be reduced to sequences of binary digits, which was child’s play. Leibniz really understood binary arithmetic and invented the number system used in modern electronic digital computers. He also came up with infinitesimal calculus, although followers of Sir Isaac Newton might argue with that.”

She leaned forward, her collarbones showing through her prim blouse, like a large bird about to take wing. A mathematical flashpoint had been added to the already chequered history of Anglo-German relations, soured by two World Wars, penalty shootouts in football competitions and the single currency.

Good manners prevailed once again. “Forgive me,” she said. “We’re very proud of Leibniz. Here’s out digital library. Just go in. They’re expecting you.”

He was soon lodged at a computer terminal scrolling through the Leibniz papers. The hours passed and he found nothing. Although Leibniz had hero-worshipped Bacon, saying his thoughts ‘soared to the heavens,’ there was not a single mention of him here.

But what had he expected? Blinded by science, he was looking in the wrong place. If any Bacon correspondence had been digitally filed everyone in the library would have known about it. Cursing himself for a fool, he retraced his steps to the White Library and approached the main desk where a lean female librarian was waiting.