My Brother's Crown (52 page)

“My company has a branch in Seattle, actually,” he added, causing my pulse to surge. “You never know. I could end up taking that promotion and talk them into basing me out of there. Under Eagleton's tuition reimbursement program, I've also been planning to go to UVA law school, but I could do the University of Washington instead.”

I gaped at him, astounded that he would even consider such radical changes to his life for a woman he'd known less than a week. Then again, he seemed to understand, as I did, that this might not turn out to be an ordinary relationship.

“Maybe the first step would be for you to plan a trip out there to see what you think,” I said evenly, not wanting to get my hopes up.

“Already working on that,” he replied with a grin. “How's two weeks from Friday? There's a conference in Tacoma my boss has been wanting me to attend. Maybe I could add on a few extra days after and shift myself up to a hotel in Seattle. Get a peek at your world.”

I gazed into his deep green eyes. “In other words, you're willing to do what you can to give this a shot.”

“To give
us
a shot,” he replied softly with a nod.

That's when he kissed me at last, moving his lips to mine ever so slowly, pausing partway to gently cup my cheek in his hand. When our mouths finally met, we were tentative at first and then quickly grew more passionate. As he slid both arms around me and pulled me even closer, we kissed hungrily, as if we couldn't get enough, could never get enough. My hands pressed to his rock-like chest, my heart pounded with a fierce rhythm, and all I could think was,
I have found you at last.

When it was over, we sat back against our seats, our fingers entwined. The current continued to carry us slowly along, but inside my heart was coursing through rapids—and I was ready for whatever lay ahead.

“So what do you think of the scenery through here?” Blake asked suddenly, gesturing toward the overgrown bank on our right.

“Beautiful. Lush. Verdant. Just like the rest of the river.”

He nodded. “Good. Because that's the Dark Woods.”

“What?”

“Beginning right about there at that dead tree and running all the way to the bend. That's one reason I wanted to bring you out here, to give you some perspective.”

“How incredibly sweet,” I replied, squeezing his hand, “but to be honest, all of that changed last night the moment the luminol began to glow.”

“Oh, I'm sure it did. But I thought you should see the place from here too, to understand that these woods are neither foe nor friend. They're just another stretch along the river.”

After gazing at the dense foliage for a long moment, I settled into the curve of his arm, realizing he was right. This place that had loomed so large in my mind for so long was simply one more scenic element in a region filled with beauty. That was all.

We drifted on past, and once we'd made the curve it was my turn to point something out to him. Gesturing toward the left, I told him I was pretty sure we were looking at the original land grant where sixteen-year-old Emanuel Talbot first got his start in Virginia more than three hundred years before. Of course, the acquisition of his own property on the opposite side of the river, the eventual building of the paper mill, and then the family printing business came later. But this was where it all began.

“Wow, that's really something,” Blake said, scanning the wooded shore. Then he turned to me, eyes sparkling. “I don't know about you, Renee, but I don't want to wait till dinner. You feel like decoding right now?”

I laughed, gesturing at our surroundings. “Sure, though it might be kind of hard to concentrate. I don't want to crash into a downed log or something.”

“No problem. I got this.” He turned on the motor and brought us downriver a short ways, around a bend and then over to the left bank, where we puttered to a stop at an abandoned dock. Most of the horizontal slats were gone, but the vertical posts remained, and that's all
we needed. He tied the boat to one of those and then settled in beside me, our little vessel held fast as the water lapped gently at the hull and the breeze kept us cool.

As Blake dug in his bag for the printout, I told him how I'd done some research on breaking simple codes. I began rattling off some of what I'd learned online this afternoon, describing grid ciphers, the Cesar shift, and polyalphabetics. But then he interrupted me to make one very good point.

“Remember what the journal said? Jules designed the code to help Catherine with her counting, handwriting, spelling, and reading. To decipher it, she had to count off and cross out certain letters. That's not a substitution cipher. That's an elimination cipher.”

“Elimination?”

“Yeah.” He finally produced from the bag a pencil for each of us and not one copy of the list but an entire stack of duplicate copies. “Here's how I see it. The reason there are so many letters is because we're going to be crossing most of them out, until all that remains are the letters that make up the words. Like this.”

Across the margin on the top page, he wrote R W E O N P E M E L.

“Now, assume this is an elimination cipher, and your instructions are to delete every other letter. What does that leave you with?”

I did as he said, reaching out with my pencil and crossing off the W, O, P, M, and L.

“Oh.” I laughed. “It says ‘RENEE.' ”

“Exactly. That's what we're dealing with here. Except that it won't be as simple as every other letter. The pattern will be more complicated than that, like count five and cross out one, then count three and cross out one, then count one and cross out one, and so on. Or it could require multiple passes, like go through and cross out every tenth letter, then go through the remaining letters and cross out every fourth. Like that.”

I sat back, exhausted at the very thought.

“How can you say this will be a piece of cake? Do you know how many potential patterns there are for counting off and crossing out? Good grief, Blake. This could take forever.”

He smiled, clearly enjoying the moment. “First of all, you don't have to try out patterns on the entire thing. You just do the first line or two, enough for a potential word to stand out. Once you have that, then you can try feeding it through the rest to see if works.”

I shook my head. “But I wouldn't even know where to start.”

“Well, think about what you learned online. What's one of the first things to look for when decoding?”

I thought for a moment. “You determine
e
. That is the most frequently used letter, so you look for whatever seems to be popping up the most and assume that particular letter probably stands for
e
. But that's with substitution ciphers.”

“True, though the same principle can apply here. Try to find counting patterns that allow most of the
e
's to stay. Of course, that's for English. I'm not sure about letter frequency in French.”

I pulled out my phone, did a quick search, and we looked at the results together. In the French language, the most frequently used letter was also
e
, followed by
s
and
a
.

With that in mind, we divvied up the pile of copies and then set about trying various patterns, counting off and crossing out to see if what remained made any sense. I didn't have much luck, but eventually Blake seemed to hit on something promising.

“I have words,” he said excitedly. “I tried a one, one-two, one-two-three, one-two-three-four, one-two-three, one-two, one pattern and that left this.”

I looked at his page, where he'd written down the letters
nousavons
. With a space, that made
nous avons,
French for “we have.”

I gasped.

“Keep going,” I said, watching as he counted and crossed, counted and crossed. Excited, I flipped my stack of papers over and wrote down each of the uncrossed letters from his page. Soon I had added a long string, which I broke down into words.
Nous avons tous nos croix à porter.
“We all have our crosses to bear.”

My pulse surged. “That's it! That's it! Keep going!”

Eventually, we got through the whole list, and for the most part were able to figure out the correct spacing that would turn the remaining
string of letters into words. There were five places, however, that made no sense, three
vvv
s or three
ppp
s in a row. Stumped, we both stared at those for a moment until it hit me.

“Punctuation. What's the French word for ‘period'?”

“
Point
,” he said, so quickly that I shot him a glance.

“Did you major in French or something?”

He smiled. “No. We lived in Marseille for a few years when I was a kid.”

“Well, there you go.” I changed each trio of
p
s to periods. That seemed to fit. “So what's French for ‘question mark'? Does it start with a
v
?”

“
Point d'interrogation
. No
v
.”

I thought for a moment. “How about ‘comma'?” As soon as I asked the question, I remembered the answer.

“
Virgule!
” we both cried at once.

Then I made the change, replacing each of the triple
v
s with a single comma. Together we gazed down at what our efforts had wrought. Two sentences, one short and one long. Forty-four words total.

“Okay, Mr. Marseille,” I teased. “Why don't you say it for us in English.”

“Sure. So this was the secret message that Jules gave Catherine via the Persecution Pamphlet. Ready?”

I nodded, handing him the page.

His face grew serious as he took it from me, held it high, and began to translate. “ ‘We all have our cross to bear as well as our crown to cherish. My cross is light compared to the sacrifices of many, especially our Savior, and my crown is filled with many jewels, including having you as my sister.' ”

“Okay, so this is Jules's parting message to his sister.” He held up the page and began to read in his deep baritone. “ ‘We all have our crosses to bear as well as our crowns to cherish. My cross is light compared to the sacrifices of many, especially our Savior, and my crown is filled with many jewels, including having you as my sister.' ”

I breathed in the words like fresh air.
My crown is filled with many
jewels, including having you as my sister.
How wonderful to know that, after all their conflicts, in the end Jules and Catherine parted lovingly. I wasn't sure what happened to him after that, but given that the Talbots were able to come to America and eventually set up a paper mill here in Virginia, my guess was that Jules Gillet and his descendants continued to have an ongoing influence within the family, including the branch that immigrated to America.

Taking back the page, I folded it up, tucked it carefully into my pocket, and then helped him gather the other pages, which he returned to his bag along with the pencils.

“Thank you for helping me,” I said earnestly.

“Thank you letting me help,” he replied.

We shared another long, deep kiss, one that somehow managed to pull me in close and send me somewhere far, far away all at the same time.

With a sigh, I settled back against the seat as he untied the boat and brought us out to the middle of the waterway. As our journey continued downriver, hands entwined, we alternated between chatting and laughing and falling into comfortable silences. How
easy
he was to be with, I thought. How perfectly suited our temperaments were.

It wasn't until we were nearing our destination that Blake mentioned he'd recently given this vessel a name. “It had one on it when I bought it,” he added, “but I've been trying to think of something different, something of my own. Then this morning, it came to me.”

Intrigued, I turned in my seat and got up on my knees, leaning toward the back until I could see where he'd painted it on. There in black hand lettering was the new name:

Cu(NO
₃
)
₂
4Ever

Copper nitrate forever.

A laugh burst from my throat. Turning, I gave him a big kiss on the cheek.

“Like it?”

“
Love
it.”

“I wasn't trying to be presumptuous with the forever part,” he added, looking a little embarrassed. “It worked with the formula.”

“Works for me too,” I said, hugging him again. I hoped it just might prove to be true.

Looking ahead, I could see the restaurant up on the right, its outdoor deck sparkling with twinkle lights in the gathering dusk. As Blake reached behind us to turn on the motor and putter in toward shore, I couldn't help but gaze at him and at the beauty that surrounded us.

Events of the past week had served to remind me of my eleven-greats grandmother, Catherine Gillet, and the treasure that was her journal. Though she lived more than three hundred years ago, her actions and honesty inspired me.