Secret Breakers: The Power of Three

by H. L. Dennis

  Tusia nodded somewhat reluctantly.

  ‘It’s a theory we have to go with for now because it makes sense of what we know.’

  Trying to keep up, Brodie edged forward on her seat.

  ‘Now in order to make sense of the code we need to know what each symbol in the coded writing stands for. If we believe MS 408 is in code then there must exist, somewhere, a text showing what each symbol is and what it means. Like a sort of dictionary. You take a squiggle from MS 408 and look it up in this special book, which we now call the code-book, and we’d find out what the squiggle stood for.’

  ‘Like looking up a word in a French/English dictionary?’ called out Hunter.

  ‘Exactly. Without the code-book MS 408 makes no sense. With the code-book then we’d be able to read it.’ He smiled. ‘But of course so would anybody else who found the code-book which leads us back to the idea of hiding.’

  Brodie scribbled frantically in her notebook.

  ‘Remember Professor Leo Van der Essen?’

  ‘The Belgian guy? Obsessed with King Arthur? The one you said was friends with Voynich?’ said Hunter.

  ‘That’s the one,’ said Smithies, jabbing at his picture on the blackboard once again. ‘Well, he hid something too. That’s the link. But that’s racing on with the story.’ He paused as if trying to reorder his thoughts. ‘Years after his travels with Voynich we know the Professor kept a certain book particularly safely in the university library of Louvain.’

  ‘How on earth do we know that?’ asked Tusia.

  ‘Historical accounts,’ explained Smithies. ‘Writings about the time tell us that as the threat of war grew greater, Professor Van der Essen worried about a manuscript in his care.’

  ‘And you think this manuscript was connected to MS 408?’ said Tusia.

  Smithies shrugged. ‘Maybe. At least we do now, because of the new information we’ve received. We’re making a leap based on their friendship and something we know happened after the fire of Louvain. But it seems quite likely Professor Van der Essen had a code-book for MS 408. And if we find that we can read the code.’ He hesitated. ‘But so of course could anyone else who found the code-book.’

  ‘And what would be the problem with that?’ asked Tusia, chewing hard on the end of her pen.

  ‘It’s back to the hiding,’ pressed Smithies. ‘Whoever wrote MS 408 must’ve wanted it to remain secret.’

  ‘So who was the writer of MS 408?’ Brodie asked, growing in confidence.

  ‘We’re not sure. Attempts at dating the pages suggest it was probably written in the early 1500s. As for who wrote it, we’ve no idea. But whoever it was obviously felt it important the information remained secret. That’s why it’s written in code.’

  ‘Which only becomes a problem if the code-book is lost and then no one can decipher what was written. Even those supposed to read the code, can’t do it without a code-book,’ added Ingham.

  ‘But you think this Professor Van der Essen had the code-book?’ asked Hunter.

  ‘Yes. And that initially he kept it at the University of Louvain.’

  ‘But he didn’t tell anyone he had it?’

  ‘Not directly,’ said Smithies. ‘Finding the code-book would enable anyone to read the secrets of MS 408 and so we think Van der Essen did all he could to protect it.’

  ‘But hold on,’ said Hunter, horror sweeping across his face. ‘You said the library of Louvain was burnt to the ground in the war.’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘So the code-book the Professor was protecting would’ve been burnt too?’

  ‘Correct.’ Smithies nodded. ‘So we believed. Then several years ago we discovered a report which explained what Van der Essen did on the night of the fire of Louvain.’

  ‘What he did?’

  Smithies ploughed on. ‘Apparently he was away from home when the fire broke out. But he ran to his house and collected his family. He took no personal possessions with him as he escaped from the town. Except one. A single manuscript he had decided to withdraw from the shelves of the library.’

  ‘The book that could be used to translate MS 408?’

  ‘We can’t be sure. It’s a leap. But because of what Van der Essen did to save the book it seems a sensible leap to take.’

  ‘So what’d Professor Van der Essen do with the book?’

  ‘He hid it.’ Smithies beamed.

  ‘OK. I’m following this,’ said Tusia. ‘Two friends admit to finding one hidden book written in what looks like code. Then, years later one of the friends saves another book and hides it. And you think that second hidden book is the code-book to the first. Book two is the code-book to MS 408.’

  Smithies could barely contain his excitement. ‘See. They’re really good, aren’t they?’

  Ingham looked happier than he had for quite a while.

  ‘So where’d Professor Van der Essen hide this code-book then?’ pressed Hunter.

  ‘We don’t know.’

  Brodie felt the air of expectation burst like a bubble around her.

  ‘All we do know,’ Smithies continued, ‘is that as the flames raged in the library, the Professor rescued just one book and hid it in a metal box. He ran away from Louvain and hid the box under the ground in a garden in Ghent.’

  ‘And how d’you know that bit?’ asked Tusia.

  Smithies raised his hand. ‘Glad you asked. Let’s take nothing for granted here. Committees were formed to write about the destruction and rebuilding of the library. Van der Essen’s story is included in the report issued in 1917.’ He pointed to a stack of history books on the table and Brodie bristled with excitement.

  ‘And the reports give us the name of the book he hid?’ said Tusia. ‘Let us know it’s a code-book for MS 408?’

  ‘Ahh, not exactly.’ Smithies looked embarrassed. ‘This makes it all the more intriguing! He does say there was a manuscript, but he doesn’t explain why this manuscript of all of them was the one he was most keen to save. He talks about the metal box and it’s almost as if the box itself was special. But if he went to all that trouble, the manuscript must have been worth hiding.’

  ‘And this hidden book’s still there?’ said Hunter, dragging Smithies’ attention back to the discussion. ‘In some garden in Ghent. You expect us to go digging? Because as much as I’d love to help, digging’s not really my thing. Earwigs. Worms,’ he added by way of explanation. ‘Not guests I’d invite to a party.’

  ‘There’ll be no digging,’ Smithies said authoritatively. ‘The report made the Professor’s intentions quite clear. He intended to return to Ghent when the war was over. We believe he moved the secret code-book shortly before he died to a new and safer location.’ He pointed once more to the history books, pre-empting Tusia’s question about how they knew this.

  Hunter visibly relaxed. ‘So where’s this new location?’

  ‘With all due respect, if we knew the answer to that question we’d have found the book and translated the manuscript by now.’ Smithies paused and traced a finger across his brow. ‘For years it seemed the code-book was lost. No more mention of it in the history books, you see. The trail, as they say, ran cold. Until a few months ago when a letter was discovered. A letter written by Professor Van der Essen. He died in February 1963 and he’d left the letter in the care of his solicitors for release in the fiftieth year after the date of his death.’

  ‘How’d we get hold of the letter?’

  ‘The solicitors had instructions it was to be passed on to the Study Group at Bletchley. They had a name. Friedman. And of course it was the use of the name Friedman and the instructions to the solicitor to pass the letter on to the Study Group at Bletchley that let us link all the ideas together.’

  Brodie looked down at her notes. She’d written down Friedman earlier. He was an American. He’d come over to England to form the Second Study Group to try and read MS 408.

  Smithies straightened up and marked out the links with his fingers like a child counting, trying to
make everything clear. ‘First, two friends find a hidden book; second, one friend hides another book protecting it from fire; third, fifty years later, a letter arrives for a Study Group that were trying to read the first coded book. You see,’ Smithies paused, and Brodie tried to show that she did, ‘it’s all about making links.’

  ‘So when exactly,’ begged Hunter, ‘are you going to get around to telling us what this mystery letter passed on by the solicitor says?’

  Smithies began to pace. ‘The letter contains a puzzle. We believe if we can solve that puzzle, then we’ll be able to find the location of the missing code-book and therefore read the secrets of MS 408.’

  ‘Complicated, but really cool,’ let out Tusia. ‘Like the very best chess matches.’

  ‘So,’ Smithies said pulling his stomach in. ‘My task today is to share with you what’s known. What we’ve discovered so far. And it’s your job to listen and decide for yourself what’s important to retain and what information from everything I share with you could hold the answers.’

  Brodie thought this sounded like quite a task.

  ‘In the tradition of the best code-crackers,’ Smithies said briskly, ‘help yourself to a mint imperial as they’re passed around. Nothing makes the mind sharper than a good old-fashioned mint.’

  Brodie popped the offered mint into her mouth and took a deep breath. Hunter snuffled three into his mouth and popped a few spare into his pocket for later.

  In the corner the flame from the candle blazed.

  ‘A copy of Van der Essen’s letter,’ Smithies passed out sections of paper. Brodie laid hers flat in front of her as Miss Tandari read the script aloud.

  Brodie’s hand shot into the air. ‘I thought the Professor’s name was Leo, sir.’

  Smithies nodded appreciatively. ‘Well done, Miss Bray. Well done. You’ve indeed shown an eye for detail that’ll be very useful to us.’

  Hunter smiled at her reassuringly.

  ‘Our first clue is the use of the word Arthur.’ Smithies tapped the photograph on the blackboard behind him. ‘It’s obviously not a mistake. A slip-up with numbers, a misspelling of unusual words, they could all be errors. But the wrong name.’ He shook his head. ‘That’s got to be deliberate. And if it’s deliberate it’s got to be a clue.’

  ‘A clue to what?’ asked Tusia.

  ‘The puzzle,’ said Smithies. ‘The Professor must be hiding secret information by using that name.’

  ‘It’s all about the hiding,’ said Hunter.

  Smithies smiled. ‘So what was he hiding? In order to understand that we have to think about what we know about the Professor.’

  ‘Well, not that much, except he had a weird name,’ said Hunter.

  ‘Ooh, I know, I know,’ blurted Brodie, hardly able to sit still on her chair. ‘What you said about him being into myths and legends. That could be a clue, right? I mean, maybe he wants us to make a link with the stories of King Arthur.’

  ‘But it could be any other famous Arthur?’ asked Tusia.

  Smithies agreed. ‘It could. But in order to solve the puzzle we’re trying always to make links. And I think Brodie might be right. It’s a sensible guess to make. But we have to find other details to back it up if we’re going to go with that link completely. And if you look closely they might be there.’ He smiled reassuringly in Brodie’s direction. ‘The idea the puzzle leads us to ancient stories seems quite logical.’

  ‘Why?’ Tusia’s brow was now furrowed into thick lines of concentration.

  ‘Because,’ Smithies said, ‘if we’re to crack Van der Essen’s puzzle we need to find something called a “key”. Not a literal key,’ he said, miming the turning of a door key in a lock, ‘but a text that’s been used as the starting point to turn the message into code. With this puzzling letter from Van der Essen was a series of numbers. I’ve reprinted them for you on the back of your copies of the letter. We’ll call them the “handle with care” numbers because for some reason we don’t understand, Van der Essen wrote those words above them.’ Brodie flicked her piece of paper over and sure enough, under the words ‘handle with care’ was a series of thirteen numbers in a line that looked like an overlong mobile phone number.

  Hunter read aloud. ‘Handle with care: 41, 33, 57, 2, 24, 40, 3, 52, 23, 24, 23, 39, 29.’

  ‘We believe,’ Smithies said with a sigh, ‘that the Professor has left us a poem or story code. They were used extensively during the war so it seems to make sense.’

  Brodie wondered at this point if very much of what she heard was making total sense.

  Smithies continued. ‘If we find the right piece of writing, and the right section in that story, we’ll be able to substitute letters from the story or poem in the place of these “handle with care numbers” here, and eventually understand his message. And perhaps if we solve this puzzle we’ll be led to the location of the code-book that will allow us to read MS 408. Perhaps. It’s like links in a very long chain.’

  It all seemed rather overwhelming and for the briefest of moments Brodie thought fondly of lessons on long division back home with Miss Carter. She gave herself a shake and sat up straight. ‘There seems a lot of “perhaps”,’ she said quietly.

  Ingham beamed. ‘That’s the beauty of it all.’ His eyes seemed to be looking far away, his face open and unlined as if he was for once incredibly relaxed. ‘The beauty of it all is in the lack of certainty. The possibilities. The links we can try to make. It’s like building a house out of cards. All about balance and skill and at any time the house could come tumbling down. But if we manage to build. If we manage to connect the whole thing together, then …’ He didn’t finish his sentence.

  ‘So you think,’ Hunter said at last, crunching the remains of his last mint imperial, ‘that the piece of writing we need to understand Van der Essen’s letter could be a story or poem about King Arthur?’

  Smithies beamed. ‘Exactly, Mr Jenkins. You’ve got it exactly.’

  Tusia had begun to underline some of the words in her copy of the letter. ‘But there must be hundreds of things written about King Arthur,’ she said in a rather dejected tone.

  ‘There’s thousands,’ Smithies laughed. ‘Written in English and in other languages. The field of possibilities is endless.’ And here he waited. ‘But we believe the Professor left us other clues in his letter.’

  He turned his back on the waiting audience and jabbed the blackboard with the end of a long stick he’d obviously brought along for such a purpose. ‘Elfin Urim,’ he said theatrically. ‘Any ideas what they are?’

  Brodie looked along the line of listeners. ‘They’re lights, aren’t they?’ she said quietly. ‘Lights made by elves. Something magical. And beautiful.’

  Smithies clapped his hands in appreciation. ‘Spot on, Miss Bray. There’s debate, but we generally accept the term to mean jewelled lights made by otherworldly figures. And it’s this line about the “elfin Urim” that confirms for us we’re right to think the use of the name Arthur points us to King Arthur.’

  ‘Why?’ Tusia said, this time her voice sounding a little strained.

  ‘“Elfin Urim” is a phrase used in the stories of King Arthur. It crops up in the poems about him by the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson.’ At this point, at Smithies’ suggestion, Ingham limped to the end of the table and lifted a pile of dusty, green hardback volumes and began to pass them along the line. Brodie took hers and flicked through the pages.

  ‘The poetry of Tennyson,’ Smithies continued. ‘A copy for each of you.’

  ‘Great,’ whispered Hunter. ‘I needed something to lean my notes on.’

  Brodie didn’t like to remind him that any books of stories or poems made her excited.

  ‘Five hundred and six pages no less,’ Hunter muttered behind his hand. ‘That’s even if you exclude the index.’

  Tusia’s hand shot up into the air. ‘And the coded message could’ve been written using any part of his poems?’ she asked in a voice now about an octave higher than u
sual.

  ‘Quite right, Miss Petulova. Although of course, in our work so far on the code we’ve focused on the Arthur poems and in particular his use of the words “elfin Urim”. And that section involves the giving of the sword Excalibur to the king, by the Lady of the Lake. It’s the first chapter of Tennyson’s really long poem Idylls of the King. This bit’s called “The coming of Arthur”. Here.’ He directed them to a section of the poem by jabbing the stick once more at the blackboard. The picture of Professor Van der Essen flapped a little against the stand and it looked for a moment as if the old man was winking. ‘If someone would be so kind as to read this portion aloud,’ Smithies said, waving his hand in offer.

  Miss Tandari rustled her pages and began to read. It was a descriptive section all about how the bright ‘elfin Urim’ on Arthur’s sword blinded people who looked at it.

  Brodie slipped a page of notepaper in the book to mark the section as Smithies continued to explain.

  ‘So, we think the poem that’s been used to make the code may be Tennyson’s and we’re pretty sure the section we need refers to Arthur’s magic sword, but,’ and at this point two small pink circles lifted again on his cheeks, ‘in all honesty we are, as of this moment, completely stuck. Since Van der Essen’s message came into our possession, try as we might to arrange letters against the “handle with care” numbers, all we’ve discovered is,’ he appeared to search for a technical phrase that’d cover what he meant, ‘absolutely nothing.’

  ‘Our problem is being sure we’re using the right section of the poem,’ Ingham called out. ‘We risk wasting time if we don’t do things correctly.’

  ‘Indeed, indeed,’ Smithies said despondently. ‘That’s why you’re all here.’ He drew himself up straight. ‘It’s true our efforts have focused on Tennyson. But maybe we should look elsewhere.’

  Brodie traced the embossed writing on the poem book with the tip of her finger as Hunter shuffled restlessly beside her.

  ‘What about the numbers written in the letter?’ Hunter said at last, as if referring to familiar friends, and turning back to his copy of Professor Van der Essen’s puzzling message. ‘Not the “handle with care” ones. But the numbers he’s actually written in the letter. First and twenty-fifth? Why’d he do that?’