Dark Matter

by Philip Kerr

  “Y occurs after E, which causes us to increment the keyword by one letter to F This is true of T, Q, and U, but not H, so that our next keyword becomes FMMJS. This gives us:”

  “In the same way X, Q, and V modify the first three letters of our new keyword, FMMJS, so that it becomes G, N, N. But C and F being before L do not cause it to be incremented, and so we have a new keyword, GNNJS. Finally we end up with this:”

  “To undo the cipher you subtract the numerical values of the keyword from the numerical value of the cipher and add 26 each time. For example, Y equals 25, minus E equals 5, gives us 20, plus 26 makes 46 which makes the letter T; similarly, the last letter of our cipher A equals 1, minus G equals 7, gives us minus 6, plus 26, makes 20 equals T.

  “It was a most brilliant mathematical variation, for the system becomes almost inscrutable.”

  “How did you solve it, sir?”

  “Thanks to Mister Scroope’s ignorant variation, I almost did not solve it at all,” confessed Newton. “He was clever enough to introduce a small mathematical series into the sample he chose from the first message he had from George Macey. He simply added one to the first letter, and then subtracted one from the second letter; then he added two to the third letter, and subtracted two from the fourth letter; and so on. It was some time before I perceived that the message chalked upon the wall near Mercer’s body was also the first line of the letter we found in Macey’s message. And having seen this, I recognised how the cipher had been used ignorantly, without apprehension, and was intended but to further darken my own understanding. It was only when I dispensed with this message altogether that the other letters began to demonstrate some mathematical consistency.

  “As to solving the rest, I must confess to an element of good fortune that came my way. Nothing works more to undermine the secrecy of a code than man’s own frailty. For man is the natural enemy of mathematics, being most prone to error and habit. The plotters have consistently used two phrases as an exhortation unto their own inordinate zealotries and fanaticism. For, as you shall soon see, that is what they are: zealots and fanatics of a most egregious variety, mighty dangerous to the safety of the realm.”

  Newton tried to show me the many differentiations he had made during his months of work, but there were so many quadratic expressions that he only very slightly demonstrated to my understanding how the cipher had been solved. Later on I understood it better, for I copied a letter that Newton did write to Wallis, in which he explained the workings of the code in detail, but not his mathematics, for he said that would have been to show Wallis the workings of his own mind, and he had no mind at all to do that.

  But at the time all that algebra made my head ache as if I had been back in school, or in my sickbed the time Newton had thought to stimulate my recovery by explaining to me his system of fluxions; and yet the messages were clear enough and revealed a glimpse of something dreadful that was still very much afoot in the Tower.

  “The two phrases they used regularly and to their eventual detriment were ‘Remember Saint Bartholomew’s’ and ‘Remember Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey.’”

  “That was the sentiment on Mornay’s dagger,” I cried.

  “Exactly so,” said Newton. “It was also part of the phrase that Scroope chose to embellish. Now the first message we had was upon Mister Kennedy’s dead body, put there by Mister Scroope, who had it from Mister Macey, neither of whom had any apprehension as to what it meant. I do not suppose we shall ever know how Mister Macey came to intercept this message. But I suspect that the men who have been using this cipher are so confident of its Sphinxlike imperspicuity that they have taken few precautions with where they left their correspondence. And so Macey may simply have stumbled upon it accidentally.”

  Newton read out his translation: “‘Remember Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey. Dear Doctor Davies, I do not think we should meet as you suggested. If you were recognised visiting my house, or we were ever seen together, the news might appear in every farthing paper in the land. But I would wish to know from you by what method Roman Catholics are to be identified. You may communicate with me by letter as always through Major Mornay. Remember Saint Bartholomew’s. Yours, Lord A.’

  “I believe ‘Lord A.’ is none other than Lord Ashley, the Member of Parliament for Poole, whom our spies reported that Major Mornay visited. He is the grandson of the Earl of Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, who once led extreme Whig opposition to the King. He was a notorious Green Ribboner and republican who fled to Holland after the Rye House Plot against King Charles.”

  “I have heard that phrase,” said I. “Green Ribboner. My father used it as a term of opprobrium, but I never knew what it meant.”

  “During the reign of Charles II, the Green Ribboners posed more of a danger to this realm than the French,” explained Newton. “They were a group of extreme Whigs who hated Roman Catholics almost as much as they hated monarchs, and wished to see the extinction of both in England. They would have restored the Republic and made Richard Cromwell Lord Protector once again.

  “It is certain that the Green Ribboners fomented a number of plots to kill King Charles, or Roman Catholics, of which the Popish Plot of 1678, led by Titus Oates, that manufactured a false Catholic plot against the King, was the most vile—for many Catholic priests were falsely accused and put to death.

  “But little or nothing has been heard of these Green Ribboners since Shaftesbury’s death, in 1683, and the Glorious Revolution that deposed the Catholic King James. With so many real Catholic plots to depose King William—first Ailesbury, then Sir John Fenwick—what need would there be to create rumours of false ones?”

  “Perhaps,” I suggested, “Lord Ashley and his correspondent have endeavoured to discover if there are any more Catholics who plot against King William. I should think that every patriotic Englishman would wish to identify potential traitors among us.”

  “Suspend your judgement just a short while longer,” counselled Newton. “Consider next this message we had from Doctor Wallis, which Macey gave him. I believe it provides the answer to the first message.

  “‘Remember Saint Bartholomew’s. Milord A. We shall identify Roman Catholics as were the French Huguenots. From the tax rolls. Also I have lists from the last time that were made by constables for the justices of the peace; also a guide made by Mister Lee, a map by Mister Morgan, and a scheme by Mister King that shall show us where all these nests of Catholic vermin are to be found. None shall escape us. Your servant, Doctor Davies.’

  “Now what is your opinion?” asked Newton.

  “I confess it sounds like another Popish Plot,” said I.

  “It is much more serious than that,” Newton said gravely. “‘None shall escape us’? Is the matter not yet clear to you?”

  “Yes, only I am afraid to say it, Doctor.”

  “Then I will say it for you, my young friend. It is a plan to massacre London’s Roman Catholics that is here revealed. The tax rolls were how the Huguenots of Paris were identified on Saint Bartholomew’s Day, in 1572. It was said that some ten thousand Protestant men, women and children in Paris were murdered in one night. And yet more in the country at large.”

  “But that was more than a century ago,” I objected. “And Englishmen are not like Frenchmen. We do not murder people in their beds. Besides, there are not so many Catholics in London as there were Huguenots in Paris.”

  “Do you think so?” scoffed Newton. “London has many secret Roman Catholics—Church papists who pay only lip service to the Anglican Church, and celebrate their mass in private.”

  “But does not the Test Act demand that they take the oaths of loyalty to the Anglican Church? A man may be fined for recusancy, after all.”

  “And yet few are fined,” said Newton. “The law is a poor one, being seldom enforced.”

  “I still say that in this country people are not murdered in their beds, whatever their religion.”

  “Were not the Jacobite MacDonalds of Glencoe coldbloodedly
slaughtered by King William’s troops in Scotland? That was but five years ago, as I recall.”

  “They were Scotch,” I said, as if that explained how such a terrible thing had taken place. “Scotch victims and Scotch soldiers. What else is to be expected of the Scots? Londoners are not so intolerant. Nor are they so barbaric.”

  “But if Londoners are provoked, albeit falsely,” said Newton, “what then? You are too young to remember how the Great Fire of London was blamed upon a Catholic named Peidloe, who was hanged for it, although as every schoolboy knows, it was started accidentally by a baker in Pudding Lane. As was the Southwark Fire of 1676, although another Roman Catholic, this time a Jesuit named Grove, was blamed for that. Indeed the Southwark Fire was generally perceived to have been planned by Catholics as a prelude to a massacre of London’s Protestants. And during the Revolution, did not Londoners expect to be massacred by King James’s Irish troops with whom he hoped to keep his kingdom?

  “No, Ellis. Londoners are like the people of any great city: most credulous and mad. I would as soon trust a dog with a foaming mouth as depend on the varied and inconstant opinion of a London mob. I wonder that any man who has been to an execution at Tyburn could hold such a good opinion of the populace as you seem to.”

  “I agree, sir, if the mob is provoked, then it is most ungovernable. But I do not see Englishmen being led by French Huguenots. How is the mob to be provoked?”

  “It would not be difficult,” said Newton. “But we must find out more, and quickly, too, for we have lost much time while I have been solving this cipher.”

  “I still find this hard to accept,” said I.

  “Then read the message that we found on Major Mornay’s body.”

  To Sergeant Rohan.

  If I am killed in this duel, which I did not seek, I ask only that my murderer, Christopher Ellis, be slaughtered with the rest, for among so many, one more will scarcely be noticed, and it will doubtless seem that he was but a secret Catholic. I did my duty as a Protestant.

  Remember Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey. Remember Saint Bartholomew’s.

  Major Charles Mornay

  “Does that not put it beyond any doubt?” asked Newton.

  “Yes,” I heard myself say. “And to think that I felt sorry for him.”

  Newton nodded silently.

  “But were there not four messages, master? What about the message we recovered from poor Mister Twistleton? Did you not decipher that one?”

  Silently, Newton handed over the decipherment and let me read the plain text for myself. It made alarming reading:

  Remember Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey.

  Mister Twistleton,

  In this great religious enterprise, blessed of God, you are to assist Sergeant Rohan in devising a plan to assassinate Doctor Isaac Newton, the Warden of the Royal Mint. All blame must be seen to fall upon Old Roettier, the engraver, and a much suspected Catholic, and upon Jonathan Ambrose, the goldsmith, who is a secret Roman Catholic, and who is know greatly to resent Newton. Upon the return of King William from the war in Flanders, this will help to stir up strong feeling against all Catholics, as did the death of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey before. Therefore, acquaint yourself with Newton’s habits, and inform me by letter of how you propose to carry out this deed, which will be at a more suitable time yet to be decided.

  Remember Saint Bartholomew’s.

  Yours,

  Doctor Davies

  “I must confess that this one gave me a little trouble,” explained Newton. “’Jonathan Ambrose, the goldsmith, who is know greatly to resent Newton’? That’s bad grammar. Such a thing makes a decipherer’s life most vexatious.”

  “But, sir, you understate the matter most egregiously. For, according to this letter, you are in mortal danger.”

  “I think that we are probably both in some danger,” said Newton.

  “But in my own case, I should only be killed with the rest. You, however, are to be killed first of all. Which might be at any time.”

  “Not until the King has returned from the war,” said Newton. “That is what the message says, Ellis.”

  “It would explain why Sergeant Rohan was so curious about you,” I said, unhappily.

  “You spoke to him?”

  “Once, when I had followed him to Westminster,” I confessed. “I lost him for a while and then bumped into him. He was most affable. We had a drink together. At the time I thought that I might acquire some information about him.”

  “And now you discover that he may have gained some information about me, is that it?”

  I nodded miserably, ashamed to confess that I had the suspicion that I might even have let slip Newton’s address.

  “No matter,” said Newton. “Information about me is not so difficult to obtain. He would have found some other means, had you not told him what you did. Therefore, calm yourself. We are prepared for them and know them for what they are: ruthless men. Doubtless Macey was tortured and killed when he tried to understand their messages. Even Major Mornay, who was one of them, was not safe when the scandal of a duel threatened to compromise their plans. We must move very carefully.”

  “I wonder why they left Mister Twistleton alive,” said I.

  “Who listens to a madman?” said Newton. “You said as much yourself. It is a measure of their confidence in this stratagem and their cipher that they left him alive and in possession of a coded letter. It also explains why Mister Twistleton wished to attack me. But I wish I had possessed the wit to copy down what he said to us. For I’ve an idea that he actually told us the keyword to the code himself, when we visited him in Bedlam. Do you not remember what he said when I asked him the meaning of the letters?”

  “Blood,” I said. “‘Blood is behind everything,’ he said.”

  “He meant it literally and cryptically,” said Newton. “For blood is the keyword to this code.” He shook his head sadly. “There are times when I seem very stupid to myself.”

  “But one thing I still do not understand,” said I. “Why should this be happening here, in the Tower?”

  “I have given this matter some thought,” admitted Newton. “And I have concluded that if a mob must be armed, where better to do it than from the Royal Armouries?”

  “Yes, of course,” I said. “There are enough swords and guns here to equip a whole army. But what are we going to do?”

  “We must insinuate ourselves into this secret correspondence,” he explained. “Only then will we find the evidence to take to milord Halifax. To do that, we must know more about our plotters. Not least when they plan to commit their treason. I would know more about this Doctor Davies. Did not one of our spies follow Sergeant Rohan to the courts at Westminster Hall? Perhaps he was the man the Sergeant met there. Once we have discovered that, we shall play one against the other.”

  Our spy, Humphrey Hall, was a most diligent fellow, as I have said; and the next day I went to Westminster Hall with him to see if he could identify the man whom he had seen meeting with Sergeant Rohan. But the man was not there; nor the day after that. And it was Friday, September the third, before Mister Hall spied the man he had seen meeting with the Sergeant.

  I had a good look at the fellow when we followed him to The Swan with Two Necks in nearby Tuttle Street. About fifty years of age, he was a tall man but bowlegged, with a bull neck, although not powerful, so that his head scarcely protruded from his body, and his abnormally large chin, which was equal in size to the rest of his peculiar face, seemed permanently bowed toward his chest. His eyes were small and quite feral, and his brow as low as his great hat, which darkened an already purplish complexion that was clearly the result of an overfondness of wine. Above one eyebrow was a large wart. His mode of dress was not only clerical but Episcopal, for he wore a cassock and, but for a long rose-coloured scarf and a way of speaking that better suited a costermonger or a Southwark porter—for we heard him speak to the tavern’s landlord in a strident sing-song voice, so that he seemed permanently to complai
n rather than to speak—we might have taken him for a man of some learning, or even a lawyer, whose presence in the courts of Chancery was upon the instruction of his client, for there were many who attended that were never heard.

  We followed the strange Doctor Davies to his place of lodging on the north side of Axe Yard, and collected some facts upon him from Mister Beale, who was the most talkative landlord at The Axe Tavern, farther along the street, and whose family had been in Axe Yard since before the Great Fire. He told us that Doctor Davies was a Cambridge man and the son of an Anabaptist chaplain in Cromwell’s New Model Army; he had been a chaplain in the navy; he had written a book; he had been recently married to a wealthy widow who was away visiting her relations; he enjoyed a government pension; and he was a Baptist minister in Wapping.

  Having thanked Mister Beale with five shillings for his information and his silence, it was to Wapping we now went to find out more.

  I have never much like Ranters, and Baptists least of all, for what kind of sect is it that follows the precepts of a man as mad as John the Baptist, who lived in the desert and ate locusts? They must surely have been mad at Wapping, for only the Lord’s fools and mad folks would have freely confessed that their minister’s real name was not Paul Davies but Titus Oates, he of that notorious Popish Plot that had fabricated allegations that Jesuit priests were planning to assassinate King Charles II in order to place his Roman Catholic brother, the Duke of York, on the throne.

  It was a great shock to Mister Hall and me that a man as malign as Titus Oates was at liberty, let alone that he was preaching the word of God; and Mister Hall was so shaken by this discovery that he felt obliged to go to a church and pray. Before Oates’s vile lies were revealed, some thirty-five innocent men were judicially murdered.