The Scar-Crow Men

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN




THE THUNDEROUS KNOCKING HAD AN INSISTENT EDGE. WILL opened the door to find an unsettled Nathaniel, who pushed his way into the chamber without waiting to be invited. From the shadows in the corridor, a solitary pikeman watched, as he had from the moment Sinclair had bustled the spy into his quarters.

‘I thought I was going to be locked out of the palace. They questioned me at the gatehouse for near an hour,’ Nathaniel said, taking off his cap and running a hand through his hair. ‘What has happened? Is the Queen’s life under threat?’

Will closed the door and guided his assistant towards the table where a meagre portion of bread and cheese and some wine had been placed by a servant. He was not in the Tower yet, so the spymaster had to treat him with a modicum of dignity. ‘The Queen is well, but it appears Sir Robert has taken my warnings to heart. Some small good may come from this night.’ He carved himself a piece of cheese and spiked it with his knife. He sighed. ‘I fear I have let my mouth run away with me.’

Nathaniel eyed his master askance as he removed his cloak. ‘You speak those words as if they are somehow new to you.’

‘This time there may be more at stake than hurt feelings. In anger, I revealed a secret I have carried with me for several years. A secret that goes to the very heart of England and the Queen’s security – and, in truth, what it means to be an Englishman and how we perceive ourselves in the world.’ The spy made to eat the cheese, stared at it for a moment and then tossed the knife and morsel on to the table. ‘And I, God help me, must defend the ideal, knowing the darkness and violence that lies behind it. Am I then as tarnished?’

‘You are too hard on yourself, as always.’

Smiling at the young man’s loyalty, Will poured Nathaniel a goblet of malmsey wine. The assistant, who rarely drank to excess, took the offering hesitantly.

‘There are plots upon plots unfolding all around us, Nat, and we can no longer trust all that we once held close. You must be on your guard,’ Will said, his face serious.

‘Is this why you are held prisoner?’

Will poured himself some wine and rested one foot on a stool as he drank. ‘It takes more than one guard to hold me prisoner.’

‘Ah, yes, I forget myself,’ the assistant said. ‘England’s greatest spy. The great Will Swyfte towers above all normal men.’ His gaze fell on the sheaf of papers set on the table in a pool of candlelight. ‘You have been reading Kit’s play.’

Will traced his fingers across the surface of the wine-stained first page. ‘Kit was a greater man than even his most ardent supporters believed,’ he said. ‘There are deep messages in this play, about our propensity for pride, certainly, but also the lengths we will go to to fulfil our own personal quests, even when we know to do so will damage us or those around us.’ Though Will knew Marlowe was writing about himself, the play was unsettlingly apt for his own situation; he could no more give up on his search for Jenny than Faustus could walk away from his deal with the Devil. He found a page and read, almost to himself,

‘Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.

Think’st thou that I, who saw the face of God,

And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,

Am not tormented with ten thousand hells

In being depriv’d of everlasting bliss?’

‘Unlike you, I am a God-fearing man,’ Nathaniel sniffed, ‘and I do not like all this talk of devils and hell. Remember: speak his name and you will summon him.’

‘You are a fortunate man, Nat, for you have found your own private heaven in employment with me,’ Will said, lightly.

Nathaniel snorted.

Will tapped his finger on the papers. ‘But in his cleverness, Kit has hidden messages here on two levels. The one in symbolic form, in the themes of the play, and that will be hard to decipher without knowing the author’s intent. But look here for the other.’

On a line halfway down the page, Will pointed to a letter O with a barely visible dot beneath it. He flicked on two pages and let his finger trail down the lines until he located a W marked with another dot. Three pages on, another highlighted letter appeared.

‘A code,’ Nathaniel said.

‘A cipher, to be exact. A code involves the substitution of words or phrases, a cipher the substitution of letters.’ Will pointed to a page where he had copied out marked letters – E, T, M, I, T, O, W, R, W, E. ‘I have not yet collected all Kit’s hidden marks, but even then I will not be able to understand the meaning.’

‘The cipher is too hard to break?’

Moving the quill and ink pot to one side, Will sat on the stool and found a clean page. ‘Kit always used what is known as a Vigenère Square,’ he said. ‘Vigenère was a French diplomat who studied the codes and ciphers of the great masters Alberti, Trithemius and Porta and then developed their work into his own system. It is remarkably strong because it uses not one but twenty-six separate cipher alphabets to conceal a message.’

Will took the quill, dipped it in the pot of ink and proceeded to draw a grid of twenty-six by twenty-six squares. Above the grid, he inscribed the alphabet, and then numbered each row from one to twenty-six down the side. ‘This is the plaintext,’ he said, pointing to the alphabet at the top, ‘where we choose the letters we want to encrypt.’

Along the first row of the grid, he then wrote the alphabet beginning with B and adding A in the twenty-sixth box. On the second row, he began the alphabet with C, adding A in the twenty-fifth box, and B in the final one.

‘The system continues, shifting the letters one space to the left on each line,’ he explained. ‘Then it is a matter of using a new row of the grid to encrypt each new letter of the message you wish to send.’

Nathaniel puzzled over the Vigenère Square for a moment and then concluded, ‘But how does the one receiving the message know which rows have been used? You have twenty-six different choices for every letter. It would take a lifetime to determine the true choices from the multitude available.’

‘Nat, you are cleverer than you appear,’ Will said with a warm smile.

Nathaniel gave a dismissive shrug.

‘The hidden message can only be understood with the use of a keyword, known to both the sender and the receiver,’ Will continued. ‘Pay attention now, for even the cleverest may stumble here.’

‘Speak slowly, master, for I am but a thick-headed country boy, and not someone who keeps the wheels of your complicated life spinning,’ Nathaniel said archly. He sipped his wine in a studiedly aloof manner.

‘Let us say the keyword is BLACK, and our message begins, Marlowe says.’ Will wrote the message and then above the first five letters wrote BLACK, and the same over the second five. ‘We repeat the keyword across the entire message. Then we take our Vigenère Square. See, the first row begins with B. That means the first letter of our message must be encrypted with this row.’

He traced his finger along the plaintext alphabet above the grid until he found the M of Marlowe and continued down to the first line to find the letter N. ‘N is the first letter of our coded message. Then we proceed to the row beginning with L, then A, then C and so on until the entire message has been encrypted.’

Leaning in, Nathaniel thought for a moment before circling the keyword with the tip of his index finger. ‘And you are about to tell me Master Marlowe uses a different keyword for every message, and you have no knowledge of the current one.’

‘Remember, Nat, before you outgrow your boots, a little intellect is like a little gunpowder – enough to blow your hands off, but not enough to achieve anything worthwhile.’ Will poured himself another goblet of wine, realizing how much he valued the company of his assistant. He had taken it for granted for a long while, as he had so many other things in his life.

Tearing off a chunk of bread, Nathaniel chewed on it lazily. ‘I am warmed by the knowledge that you always have my best interests at heart, and I am duly chastened,’ he replied in a tone that dripped acid. ‘Why, if I got ideas above my station, I might demand a higher wage and then I would be beset by the problem of how to spend my earnings, instead of bare survival.’

With some of the tension relieved, Will returned his attention to Marlowe’s play and the secretly marked letters. He could try to guess the keyword, but he knew it would be a futile exercise; Kit would never have chosen anything obvious. But the fact that he had sent Will the annotated play in the first place indicated that he expected Will to break the cipher.

The defacement of Walsingham’s grave was part of the puzzle, Will was sure. In the beginning was the Word. The easiest answer was that the keyword was God. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God. But it was too short to create an effective cipher, and Marlowe always revelled in double meanings; the one on the surface meant one thing, but the one beneath was more important, more profound. The answer lay there somewhere. Why that biblical quotation? Why Walsingham’s grave? The clues and hints had been sent through different channels so they would not all be intercepted, each one only beginning to make sense when they were viewed as part of the whole. There were still pieces missing, but Will was convinced he was drawing closer to the solution.

‘This puzzle will not be solved without a great deal of thought,’ he mused. ‘Nat, you appear troubled by your own discoveries. Tell me what you found out about the origin of Kit’s play.’

Suddenly weary, Nathaniel leaned back and sighed. ‘I spoke to scholars aplenty, labouring away in their dusty rooms. I did not rest. And now I rather wish that you had not given me this task.’ The assistant steadied himself with a gulp of wine. ‘I am told Master Marlowe’s story of Doctor Faustus is based upon a much older one of a man who sold his soul to dark powers for knowledge. This is detailed in Latin pamphlets that have been preserved for many years. There was also another fiction, in German, based upon this legend and published six years ago, and some feel Master Marlowe may have had a translation and used this as the basis for his play.’

‘A story circulating for years, told and retold … That is not the answer I needed, Nat.’

‘There are many elements of Master Marlowe’s play that are not apparent in the original story,’ the assistant continued. ‘It is believed that he also drew upon another tale, one that is founded in truth. You have heard of Wykenham?’

‘I know of children’s fairy stories. A village of ghosts. Empty houses where the living dare not walk.’

‘Ghosts! Would that that were the only horror.’ Nathaniel grew animated, his eyes widening. ‘Yes, that is the story they tell in the inns and markets to frighten the gullible, but the truth is worse. Wykenham is in Norfolk, a hamlet not far from the coast. Secluded. Little more than one street of pretty houses and a church. Empty houses, yes. Empty houses now.’ Nathaniel eyed Will suspiciously to see if the spy knew more than he was saying. ‘I heard tell that the truth was hidden by Sir Francis Walsingham, God rest his soul, to keep the peace in Norfolk, and farther abroad, I would wager.’

‘If that is true, Nat, I have not heard it. Sir Francis ensured a great many things were kept secret for the security of the realm, and it is certain he would not have shared them with me unless I needed to know.’ Intrigued by the unfolding story, Will leaned across the table. Shadows cast by the candle distorted his features and Nathaniel briefly trembled.

‘This business concerns one Griffin Devereux, a distant cousin of the Earl of Essex.’

Will hadn’t heard the name at court and his brow creased in doubt.

‘You will not have heard of him, for, with Essex’s complicity, Sir Francis spread untruths and rumours and false information until all who might have known the truth doubted the existence of Griffin Devereux. Even Essex denies him. Even Devereux’s own father denies he exists,’ Nathaniel stressed.

Will thought for a moment. Was this the man Kit had identified in the name scratched into the table in his lodgings – not Essex, but his cousin? ‘What did he do to deserve this treatment?’

‘Why, he set himself up as Faustus. I do not know if he had experience of those Latin pamphlets, or those books that Dr Dee kept under lock and key at the Palace of Whitehall and in his library in Mortlake, which the mob destroyed all those years ago, but Devereux had occult knowledge. He spoke to devils.’ The assistant laid the palms of his hands flat on the tabletop, steadying himself. ‘He bartered with them, and tried to control them. And on a November night four years ago, he travelled from his home to Norfolk to complete his bargain with Lucifer. They say the storm that swept in from the sea was the worst in living memory. Thunder so loud it made a man deaf, and rain like stones. Lightning shattered the steeple at Wykenham where Devereux was completing his incantation, unbeknown to the good people of the hamlet.’

Will smiled.

‘What?’

‘These stories always have these atmospherics. Would it be as good a tale if it happened on a summer’s day?’

‘I was told!’

‘I do not doubt you, Nat. But I take nothing at face value. People embellish these tellings to help them understand, or to cover up their own fears.’ Will pressed his fingers together and peered over the tips at the frightened young man.

‘Perhaps you are right,’ Nathaniel accepted, running a trembling hand through his hair. ‘For if Devereux had completed his foul act on a summer’s day, without the Devil whispering in his ear … If it had been Devereux and nothing more, it would have been too much for any man to bear, for then it might mean that we are all capable of such things.’

‘Go on, Nat.’

‘I will tell it as I was told, and leave it to you to judge the truth of it,’ the assistant replied, his unease bringing a crack to his voice. ‘Devereux called down the Devil to Wykenham, but Old Hob demanded more than the paltry offerings Devereux had brought with him. His incantation failed. He was forced to swallow the Devil whole, and with the thing inside him he went out into the night and killed every living soul in that place. He slit the throats of children in their beds, dashed in the heads of babies with a rock, set fire to farmers’ wives as they ran screaming from their homes, put out eyes, pulled out lights, hacked and cut and slaughtered all who moved like they were animals in the field. And when he was done, not a single man, woman or child lived in Wykenham. He had murdered the entire hamlet.’

‘What happened to him?’ Will still could not mask his disbelief.

‘He was found the next day, naked, in the churchyard, covered with the blood of his victims, wearing a hat of skin. His wits had been driven from him, and the Devil lived inside him.’ Crossing himself, Nathaniel bowed his head.

‘There was no trial? No execution?’

‘No. Sir Francis, Essex and the Queen herself felt the truth would cause even more damage. We were facing uprisings within and invasion from Spain without. Better to shut Devereux away and pretend he never existed. Then it would be as if the things he did had never taken place either.’

‘If Sir Francis destroyed all signs that this happened, how does your informant know?’ Will pressed.

Nathaniel took another sip of wine and closed his eyes for a moment as he drove the terrifying visions from his mind. ‘A vicar from an adjoining parish was there on the day Devereux was found,’ he replied in a small voice. ‘He wrote a pamphlet. When it was published, all copies were seized and destroyed, and the vicar silenced. Most were destroyed. One or two found their way out, as these things do, and they are now kept in the libraries of scholars and debated at length, in secret to avoid the attention of your own kind.’

Will still wasn’t sure he believed the story. It sounded to him like a blood and thunder tale for a dark night, but if there was truth in it, it would certainly be the kind of thing that intrigued Marlowe. ‘And you say they let such a monster live? How? Where?’

‘Why, in London.’

Will laughed. ‘Where in London could such a man be kept without everyone knowing?’

‘In Bedlam, of course.’