by Ross King
By two o'clock I had tried a great number of likely-and, increasingly, unlikely-words and phrases, beginning with Sir Ambrose's name and eventually even Alethea's, which I realised with a start must have been derived from alhqeia or a-letheia, the Greek word for truth, a concept which for the Athenian philosophers meant a process of unveiling, of flushing something into the open from where it lies coiled in hidden crevices. Yet even this promising name revealed no hidden truths as far as the cipher was concerned, only further nonsense, and I barely stopped work long enough to contemplate the curious irony of its connotations when applied to Lady Marchamont, who was hardly one to unveil anything. Hour after hour I hunched over the desk, humming and cursing, doodling endless figures, lighting the wick of each new candle from the stump of its predecessor. This was impossible, I kept telling myself, absolutely impossible: all of these hair-pulling labours. The decipherment could take months, and even then the scrap of paper might not have anything intelligible to say.
At last I had leaned back in the chair, exhausted, and watched the latest candle expend itself, hissing and spitting like a kitten. A warm wind was gusting through the window, rattling the shutters and guttering the flame. All at once I felt more tired than ever. I closed my eyes and for an instant, half asleep, glimpsed rising before me the outline of Pontifex Hall framed in its monumental arch, the inscribed keystone above cast in shadow and maculated with moss and lichen, the words barely visible beneath. ITT. LITTE. LITTER…
In retrospect-in the days that were to follow-the keyword would strike me as almost too easy and obvious. After all, it seemed that almost every second stone at Pontifex Hall was carved with Sir Ambrose's peculiar motto, which had also been stamped on to his many thousands of books. But for the moment I was merely disappointed not to have discovered it hours or even days earlier. From that point onward, deciphering the paper became a simple process of filling in the blanks, of finding the intersections between the cipher-text and the keyword and then watching the plain-text-the hidden message-steadily emerge. I took the letters from the motto, that is, and superimposed them on those in the cipher-text, like so:
L I T T E R A S C R I P T A M A N E T L I T T E R A
F V W X V K H W H Z O I K E Q L V I L E P X Z S C D
And so forth, one letter of the epigraph for each one in the cipher-text. Using Vigenère's table, I then substituted the letters in the plain-text alphabets suggested by the legend for those in the cipher-text, converting the values of each of them until a pattern soon emerged-one so tantalising that, after the first few words appeared, I could barely hold my quill steady in order to continue the task:
L I T T E R A S C R I P T A M A N E T L I T T E R A
F V W X V K H W H Z O I K E Q L V I L E P X Z S C D
U N D E R T H E F I G T R E E L I E S T H E G O L D
'Under the fig tree lies the gold.' I stared at the words, incredulous, wondering if there was a fig tree at Pontifex Hall and if perhaps my first instincts had been right after all: that at the start of the Civil War Sir Ambrose had concealed his treasures somewhere on the estate, leaving behind only this piece of paper, carefully coded and hidden, as the indicator to their whereabouts. Well, if there was a fig tree at Pontifex Hall, then Alethea would undoubtedly know something about it.
But as I made further substitutions the clues grew less and less intelligible as a reference to a trove of buried gold. I worked quickly, feeling like Kepler or Tycho Brahe bent over his scribbled calculations, seeking through an endless series of mathematical combinations the universal laws of cosmic harmony. At the end of forty-five minutes the following four lines had appeared:
UNDER THE FIG TREE LIES THE GOLDEN HORN
FABRIC OF MYSTERY AND SHAPES UNBORN
THAT SETS THE MARBLE ON ITS PLINTH
AND UNTWISTS THE WORLDS LABYRINTH
My elation at the discovery of this peculiar verse was diminished only by the fact that-beyond the heart-stopping allusion to The Labyrinth of the World-it made little more sense than the group of scrambled letters from which it had been extracted. The fig tree, the golden horn and the labyrinth obviously constituted another code of sorts: a contextual one for which, alas, the great Vigenère had no methods or answers, and one which referred to the topography of Pontifex Hall, if at all, only in the most elliptical fashion. Before going to bed I spent another hour trying to make sense of the lines. At first I thought they might be from a poem or play and went scrambling for Jaggard's folio edition of Shakespeare and then Ovid's Metamorphoses with its story of the Labyrinth in Crete. I could not recall a golden horn, however, in the story of Theseus and the labyrinth. A golden thread, yes, but a horn? Still, the reference to the labyrinth made me suspect that the message had something to do with Sir Ambrose. The golden horn-the skein that the bizarre verse promised would 'untwist' the labyrinth-also seemed to strike a familiar chord. It appeared to be, like the fig tree, an allusion to some episode in classical history or mythology.
It was only the next morning, as I awoke from three hours of scratchy sleep, that I remembered where I had seen a reference to a golden horn. In a cursory search through various editions of the Hermetic texts I had come upon enough references to Constantinople-that magnificent centre of learning where the monk Michael Psellos had compiled from Syriac fragments most of what we now know as the Corpus hermeticum-to become curious about the city. I had begun rooting about on the shelves devoted to geography and travel, where at last I found what I was looking for, Strabo the Stoic's gargantuan Geography. I had leafed halfway through the enormous volume, as Monk prepared a breakfast of kippers, before I finally found the passage I was looking for. In Book VII, part of which describes the geography of the borderlands between Europe and Asia, Strabo alludes to the 'Horn of the Byzantines', a gulf of water shaped like a stag's horn, one whose topography and location he depicts with reference to another harbour called 'Under the Fig-tree'.
I read and reread the passage for a good five minutes. Surely these references were more than mere coincidence? If so, the horn in the decrypted verse referred to the harbour at Constantinople, to what was now called Istamboul: a harbour also known as the Golden Horn. And it did so especially when one took into account the other, wholly unexpected allusion to the harbour named 'Under the Fig-tree'.
But these discoveries, like the actual decipherment, led to no immediate answers, nor prompted any further ideas. The reference to ancient Byzantium did not exactly elucidate the four lines, much less untwist the labyrinth; nor did it explain why the Golden Horn-a body of water-was called a 'fabric', as if it were a tapestry or even possibly a building. I could only begin to guess why the intricately coded verse between the pages of an edition of Ortelius appeared to lead to a quotation describing the meeting-point of two continents, a harbour some fifteen hundred miles distant from Pontifex Hall. At the time I had no idea whether Sir Ambrose had travelled as far as Constantinople in his quest for books, though I seemed to remember how one of the patents granted by the Emperor Rudolf-one of the dozens of parchments in the coffin at Pontifex Hall-had been for a voyage into the lands of the Ottoman Sultan.
So, as I ate my kippers, I wondered if the cipher had something to do with Sir Ambrose's library, or even with the missing Hermetic manuscript itself. It was impossible to be certain on so little evidence. But I decided the manuscript might well elucidate the verse, and so before I had finished my breakfast I was resolved to venture outside in search of it.
***
But my elation soon disappeared, for my quest among the shops and stalls proved as unhelpful and unpleasant as I feared it would. In Smithfield the stench had become so overpowering that as the orphans in Christ's Hospital began their first lesson of the morning the sashes in their classrooms were lowered despite the heat. Beneath the Hospital's east wall the booksellers in Little Britain had draped their windows with curtains soaked in chloride of lime. As I arrived they were holding handkerchiefs to their noses and setting out stalls of books whose covers would
have to be dusted of soot three times before the working day was over. But after three hours of poking round in these stacks I had succeeded only in tiring my feet, burning my nose and neck in the sunlight-which was scorchingly hot whenever the coal smoke cleared enough to admit it-and attracting blank stares from disinterested shopkeepers who claimed never to have heard of either a book or a manuscript called The Labyrinth of the World.
A pint of Lambeth ale at lunch revived me, and I caught a hackney-coach to Westminster Hall, where, of course, I had no better luck than in either Little Britain or Paternoster Row. Yet the day was not an utter loss, for I did manage to learn something about the Prague edition of Ortelius's Theatrum orbis terrarum, though nothing that seemed to chime with anything I had so far discovered about either Sir Ambrose Plessington or his missing parchment. All of the booksellers and stallholders stocked copies of the Theatrum, and one even held the rare 1590 edition printed in Antwerp by the great Plantinus. But none had ever heard of the Prague edition, much less sold it. They were as puzzled by the edition as I had been. I therefore decided I must have misread the tailpiece; either that, or the 1600 edition was a forgery. I was about to return home, when I spotted, beneath the arcade of the New Exchange in the Strand, the shop of a map-seller, Molitor & Barnacle. I knew the establishment well. As an apprentice I always found it the most intriguing shop in London, for in those days I still dreamed of travelling the world, not fleeing from it, as I do now. Despatched on an errand by Mr. Smallpace, I sometimes used to duck inside and browse for hours among the maps and metal globes, my task completely forgotten until Mr. Molitor, an indulgent old soul, would chase me from the premises at closing-time.
Now it was almost closing-time as I stepped through the door to see that most of the globes and astrolabes had disappeared, as had the maps of the world, beautifully engraved reproductions of Ptolemy and Mercator that Mr. Molitor would pin to the walls like charts in the cabin of a ship. Eight or nine years must have passed since my last visit. Mr. Molitor, alas, had also disappeared-dead of consumption in '56, I was told by Mr. Barnacle. I was sorry to see that the shop had fallen on hard times and that Mr. Barnacle, now an elderly gentleman, failed to recognise me. Seeing him stooped behind his counter, breathing heavily, I had a chastening vision of myself twenty or thirty years hence.
But Mr. Barnacle knew his business as well as ever. He informed me that he knew of the Prague edition of the Theatrum but had never actually seen a copy. They were, he explained, exceedingly rare and even more valuable than the editions published by Plantinus, for only a very few copies had ever been printed. But this scarcity was not the sole reason for their great value. The edition was the first posthumous one, since Ortelius had died a year or two before its appearance. He was Flemish, suspected of Protestantism, but for a quarter of a century he had been Royal Cosmographer to the King of Spain. After Philip's death in 1598 he travelled to Prague at the invitation of the Emperor Rudolf II, but died before he could take up his post as Imperial Geographer. Mr. Barnacle alluded to a legend among map-makers, thoroughly unsubstantiated, that he had been poisoned. The Prague edition appeared a year or two later. The legend further suggested that it included some sort of variant, though Mr. Barnacle could not say precisely what. But it was for the sake of this new detail that the great cartographer was murdered.
'A variant? What do you mean?'
'I mean that the 1600 edition was different from all of the other editions, including those printed by Plantinus. Mr. Molitor had his own theory about it,' he said in a confidential tone, producing from his shelves a copy of the atlas. When he opened the cover I could see a plan of the Pacific Ocean and, inside a cartouche, the words NOVUS ORBIS. 'It involved the particular method of projection that Ortelius uses for the Prague edition.' He turned round again, suddenly spry, and reached down another text. The scale of latitude and longitude. 'All of the other editions use Mercator's projection. You know about the Mercator projection?'
'A little.' I was watching as he creaked open Mercator's famous atlas-an atlas whose maps I used to study with especial delight during my daydreaming apprenticeship. I am not mathematically inclined; far from it. Words, not numbers, are my métier. But I was able to appreciate a little of Gerardus Mercator's feat in representing a sphere, the earth, on a plane; in flattening the world and putting it in a book, its proportions more or less intact.
'His projection was created for the sake of navigators,' Mr. Barnacle was explaining as he tapped one of the sheets with a cracked yellow fingernail, then readjusted his spectacles-a pair with lenses almost as thick as my own-on the bridge of his nose. 'It was devised in 1569, during the great age of exploration and discovery. His scales of latitude and longitude form a grid of parallel lines and right angles that make it possible for mariners to plot compass courses along straight lines instead of curves. Most helpful, of course, for voyages across the ocean.'
He was tracing a thumbnail diagonally across the sheet, along a thumb-line that stretched like a spider's web across a grid of squares. Then abruptly he pushed both atlases aside and reached for one of the globes, an enormous paste-board model, some four feet in diameter, which he spun on its lacquered pedestal. Blue oceans and mottled land masses flashed past beneath the brass horizon-ring on the equator.
'But a map is not a globe,' he continued, peering at me over the top of the great spinning ball. 'All maps entail distortion. Mercator makes his meridians run parallel to each other, but everyone knows that meridians are not parallels like latitudes are.'
'Of course,' I murmured, made dizzy by the sight of the globe, which was still revolving swiftly, its axle squeaking as seas and continents reeled past. 'Meridians converge at the poles. The distances between them shrink as the lines extend north or south of the equator.'
'But Mercator's meridians never converge.' He was pecking at the map once again. 'They remain parallel to each other, something that distorts east-west distances. So Mercator changes the distances between the latitudes as well, increasing them as they move away from the equator and towards the poles. We therefore speak of his "waxing latitudes". The result of these alterations is a distortion towards the poles. Landmasses in the far north and south are exaggerated in size because the parallels and meridians are distended so that the grid of parallel lines and right angles can be preserved. Mercator's projection is therefore well and good if one is sailing along the equator or in the lower latitudes but not much use to someone exploring the high latitudes.'
'Not much use,' I was nodding eagerly, 'to someone exploring the northwest passage to Cathay.' I was remembering how, as a boy, I used to trace the voyages of Frobisher, Davis and Hudson-those great English heroes-through the ice-ridden Arctic seas and labyrinths of islands represented at the top of Mr. Molitor's globes.
'Or the sea route to the northeast through Archangel and Novaya Zemlya. Yes. Or the southwest passage to the South Seas through the Strait of Magellan or round Cape Horn.'
He was turning the sheets of the atlas and jabbing with a forefinger at the passages. When he raised his head and squinted at me I could smell his decaying teeth along with the fustiness of his threadbare garb. And for a second I thought I saw, reflected in one of his spectacle lenses, a shape in the bow-window behind me: a lone figure leaning forward as if to peer through the glass. But then Mr. Barnacle lowered his head and the reflection was lost.
'You see, all of these new sea routes, if they exist, will be found in the high latitudes, near the poles, places where Mercator's projection is next to useless. For this reason mariners have never discovered them. It's also the reason why the Spaniards and the Dutch have been at work on new and better methods of map projection. In 1616 the Dutch discovered a new route into the Pacific between the Strait of Magellan and Cape Horn, the so-called Le Maire Strait'-he was licking his finger and fumbling to unfurl another sheet-'which lies along the fifty-fifth parallel. Their fleets used the new passage to sail into the Pacific and attack the Spaniards at Guayaquil and Acapulc
o. So such routes were of obvious strategic importance,' he said, 'but a clue was needed to find them, something that would guide navigators through the labyrinths of islands and inlets.'
Such, then, was the legend that had been favoured by Mr. Molitor: mathematicians and cartographers in Seville, in the service of Philip II, had, round about the year 1600, perfected a new method of map projection, one that preserved Mercator's grid while doing away with its distortions, so that navigation became easier in the higher latitudes. New and shorter routes to Cathay and India might thereby be discovered, along with the famous lost continent, Terra australis incognita, which was thought to lie somewhere in the South Seas, in the high latitudes south of the equator.
'And Ortelius?' I was studying the upside-down atlas, hoping to guide him back to the matter at hand. 'He would have known about this new projection?'
Mr. Barnacle nodded vigorously. 'Of course he would have known about it. He was the Royal Cosmographer, after all. He may even have helped devise it. But when Philip died in 1598, Ortelius left Spain for Bohemia. Possibly he hoped to pass the secrets of the new method, for a price, to the Emperor Rudolf, or even to someone else. Prague was filled with fanatical Protestants in those days, enemies of Spain and the Habsburgs. And so perhaps he was murdered by Spanish agents as his reward.' He shrugged and clapped the volume shut. 'The rumour is compelling but impossible to verify as the plates have since disappeared. Some say they were stolen, but that cannot be verified either.' He smiled, thinly and helplessly, then shrugged again. 'Nor do any of the books themselves survive. The few copies ever printed are all thought to have been either lost or destroyed when Prague was pillaged during the Thirty Years War.'
