Splintered Icon (3 page)

'They didn't get to it. Sir Toby, I think I'm entitled to know what I'm getting into here.'

'Getting into? I don't know what you mean.' The man was lying. I knew it, and he knew that I knew it, and he didn't give a damn.

His arrogance was getting to me. I said, 'I guess I'll go to the police.'

Tebbit's response was gratifying. 'No. On no account.'

'Oh, but I will, Sir Toby. Unless you tell me what's going on here.'

This time the silence was longer. Finally he said, 'I would like you to trust me on this. I really cannot tell you what this is about.'

'When I put this phone down, Sir Toby, I'm going to pick it up again, report a burglary and mention your journal.'

'I'm not used to begging, Mr Blake.'

'Talk, Sir Toby. Either to me or to the police.'

'Whatever fee you had in mind, I'll double it.'

'That would make things damned expensive for you. We're dealing with some sort of Elizabethan shorthand. It'll take me days to transcribe it into modern English, even if I can track down the shorthand system, and that may no longer exist. There was a lot of secret writing in those days.'

'Look, just do it, will you? Triple your blasted fee. And for Christ's sake keep the manuscript secure and your mouth shut.' The line went dead.

I gave it a minute of serious thought while the black cloud approached. Then I lifted the phone again and dialled another number.

*  *  *

Janice was used to my sudden absences and could be trusted to look after the shop for a few days. All right she didn't need the money, but she was long overdue for a salary increase and I kept waiting for that elusive rarity, a map or a document that would fetch half a million at Christie's. I filled a holdall, tossed it in the boot and took the Ml past Nottingham. Mozart took me on a long, slow crawl around Birmingham and on to the M40, and some mid-Atlantic DJ with ten times my income drivelled me towards Oxford. The road was congested and I kept clearing greasy spray from the windscreen. I also kept having fantasy thoughts about being followed, but there was no sign of anything odd in my rear mirror. But then, I wondered, would there be?

In Oxford I trickled along Woodstock Road, parked in St Edwards School and made my way diagonally across the quad in the rain, past the school church. The man waiting for me at the entrance to the common room was about fifty, with a haphazard mop of white hair which offset the formality of his suit. He grinned at me over the top of his half-moon spectacles. 'Harry, good to see you again. Well, what have you got? Let's be at it.'

We sat on soft armchairs in the upstairs gallery, next to the bar. It was just after two o'clock and the common room was deserted. I sat down and took the journal from my briefcase. He turned over the pages, his eyes scanning them carefully.

'Fascinating. You're right, Harry, it's Elizabethan, no question, and written in an early system of secret writing.'

'Can you identify the system?' I was speaking to one of the world's authorities on Elizabethan secret writing.

Fred Sweet grunted. 'It looks like a very early one. Very like that of Timothy Bright himself, which would put the manuscript at 1588 or later. Except that there are minor differences. He might have been using an earlier version of Bright's system.'

'But look at the watermark, Fred. It's Spanish Netherlands. What's an Elizabethan journal doing written on Spanish Netherlands paper?'

He held a sheet up to the window and peered at it through narrowed eyes. 'You're right. The paper comes from the Spanish Netherlands.'

'That's weird. Like seeing a 1940 British government memo written on Nazi notepaper.'

He shrugged. 'Maybe, maybe not. The Dutch had more or less loosened their Spanish chains by the late 1500s. And the Netherlands was crawling with agents of the English. But I agree, it's odd.' He looked at me curiously. 'Where on earth did you get this?'

'Sorry, Fred, but my client wants to stay anonymous.' It came out sounding excessively conspiratorial. 'But I do need to crack that code.'

'Try Bright's
An Arte of Shorte, Swifte and Secrete Writing by Character.
The Bod's bound to have it.'

I thanked Fred, left the car in the school car park and took a crowded bus into the centre of Oxford. Normally my reader's card took me into the Map Room in the New Bodleian, but Timothy Bright would come into the Rare Books category and hence the Old Bod, across Broad Street. I passed through the first security point and climbed the spiralling wooden stairs into the Arts End, a hundred feet of light, airy Gothic fantasy. Through a second security barrier, whose guard was struggling with the
Daily Mirror
crossword, and I was into the inner sanctum, forever beyond the Great Unwashed: Duke Humphrey's Library, almost as old as the book I was seeking.

I ordered Bright in the Graduate Study and waited for an hour at the reserve counter, soaking up the grotesques, the coats of arms in the ceiling, the light smell of ancient books. It was dark by the time the woman arrived with a small, leather-bound book and a smile. I found an empty chair in one of the narrow alcoves and sat down between an elderly scholar with a nervous tic and a miniskirted girl with a pink laptop computer. I laid out the book on the long, narrow shelf. I carefully turned its pages. And I recognised words. My old friend Fred had been right: Bright's system was the secret key to Ogilvie's journal.

Strict rules are enforced within this
sanctum sanctorum.
Conversation is strongly discouraged. A manuscript older than 1901 may not be photocopied. Hand-held photocopiers are strictly forbidden. Photography likewise, even of the library interior itself. Pens may not be used. This means that if something is to be copied, you are down to a laptop computer or a pencil. I decided on a pencil and settled down to a long slog. The professor disappeared about six in the evening, and the girl shortly thereafter. I was alone in the alcove.

Just after nine o'clock, with my bladder beginning to complain and my fingers aching, I became vaguely aware that someone was standing next to me. I paid no attention until he cleared his throat apologetically. 'Mr Blake?'

A young man, with short, neat black hair and a brass earring. Smartly dressed in a three-piece suit and green tie. A stranger addressing me by name. Again. My stomach flipped. 'Yes?'

'You have some papers that don't belong to you. I want you to hand them over.'

I tried to suppress the sudden rush of alarm. 'Forget it, chum.'

'I don't think you grasp the situation. I'm instructed to retrieve it by whatever means.'

'And I suppose you have a shoulder holster with a Beretta automatic pistol?'

'No, just a pen with a poisoned tip.' His expression didn't change. 'We're serious people, Mr Blake. We're not even asking you to do anything wrong. Just stand up and walk away, leaving the manuscript where it is. Go back to your flat in Lincoln, and there you will find an envelope whose contents will give you a great deal of satisfaction. It's in your own interests to do this, believe me.'

'If you're a
bona fide
scholar, I'm a monkey's uncle. How the hell did you get in here?' I was drawing bravado from the security of the library.

'Ssh!' A white-haired old woman was glaring at us from the alcove across the passage. We were breaking the rule of silence and her face was lined with indignation.

The young man stared at me with ice-brittle eyes, then left as silently as he had come. He was gone by the time the shaking started.

I gave it five minutes and returned Bright to the reserve counter. A quick check with the guard confirmed that he had never set eyes on the gentleman before, but we get so many foreigners these days sir and he did have a reader's card. I quickly retrieved my bag from security and mingled with the students on the wet, shiny pavements of Broad Street. I crossed and recrossed roads, doubled back, dived in and out of narrow lanes and the side entrances of pubs and generally behaved like an idiot before making my way to Gloucester Green bus station. It was standing room only on the bus but it quietened after a few stops and I took the opportunity to look at the assorted passengers, every one a heavy from a gangster movie. In dribs and drabs the heavies got off at various stops. At St Edwards School I reached my car safely, gratefully sank into the seat and took off smartly, heading away from Oxford. I found a hotel near Bicester, some miles out of town. I grabbed a beefburger and ate it in my room with a chair jammed up against the door. The food lay like a heavy lump in my stomach the whole night.

The next day I left my car and took a bus into Oxford. There was no sign of the polite thug from the previous evening. It would have been easy to dismiss him as a fantasy. At lunchtime I sat with my back to the wall in the Kings Arms. By the end of the evening I was through copying Bright and my hand ached from writing. I repeated my backtracking routine and shared the Thames Transit bus with a handful of tired travellers.

Bicester was almost deserted apart from a few harmless drunks. I turned left off Sheep Street onto a quiet lane. A young couple about twenty yards ahead of me suddenly seized each other and began to waltz. I thought this was strange until the edge of a hand hammered painfully into my kidney and a heavy fist smacked into my eye a second later. I collapsed in agony just as my briefcase was snatched from my hand. As I lay groaning on the pavement I thought it had been a fine piece of distraction.

I heaved myself up, using the wall of a house for support. I thought I'd better get to my hotel quickly, before they discovered that the briefcase was empty. I returned the receptionist's welcome with grunts, covering my bruised eye with my hand. Hopefully she thought I was drunk.

In my room I went through the routine of jamming a chair up against the door handle. My mouth was dry and I was shaking, but mainly there was an intense pain in my kidney. I eased Ogilvie's manuscript from inside my shirt and tossed it onto the bed.
Something.
Somewhere in its pages was
something.
The cold water stung my eye and there was more pain as I patted it dry. I phoned down. Sandwiches were off but the bar had crisps and soft drinks. After they had arrived I threw off my clothes.

Now at last I had everything I needed for the long, slow business of turning Ogilvie's shorthand into English. I fired up my laptop. I saw no point in writing Elizabethan English and put the words into modern form for Sir Toby's benefit, even changing phrases where things would have sounded too archaic.

It was a diary, or at least a journal. The writer was a boy, James Ogilvie. Here and there he had written poems, verses and Latin script in longhand, and I copied them down just as they were, Shakespearean spelling and all. I ignored the shaking, I ignored the pain. And as I rattled away at the keyboard, hovering somewhere between determination and anger, a few packets of crisps and cans of Seven-Up dwindling at my side, the 21st century began to dissolve and a time machine gradually transported me four hundred years into the past, into the strange and dangerous world of the young James Ogilvie.

CHAPTER 5

Do not think that I am the ignorant son of some poor shepherd, driven by starvation to seek my living in distant realms. My father was a shepherd, yes. But he was also a farmer who owned much of the valley of Tweedsmuir. When he died, my mother married in indecent haste to a man who was dour, unpleasant and low of stature, in mind and body. He came from a Drumelzier family, some leagues to the north, who were reputed to cut the throats of passing travellers for their purses. He was barbarous and foul-smelling, like many of my countrymen. But my mother was a shallow creature, vain and easily led by his flattering words. And so it happened that this unworthy man, by a low form of cunning, became heir to the land which should have been my brother's and mine.

No, I am not an illiterate herder of sheep. In fact I had, through industry and with immeasurable help from the Dominie of our church, gained the ability to read and write. Dominie Dinwoodie was a strange man. He was not of these parts. Some rumoured that he had been a pirate, others that he was a refugee from the English Queen, having failed in a plot against her. Others again saw in his long, sad face some tragedy in his past. His sermons were full of gloom, but then, I believe, so were those of all men of God in those days. But he was also a learned man who, for whatever reason, seemed to draw comfort from the solitude of our valley.

It was through the Dominie that I became familiar with Euclid's
Elements Geometrical,
and with the writings of the Greek and Roman scholars. My father's will had put money aside for an education, and so, with my brother Angus, and with the smiddy's four daughters, we learned to read, write and count. Often I would stay on after the lessons, and the Dominie and I would talk of many things. He had travelled, that was sure, but he never revealed why or in what capacity. He was fond of the bottle and sometimes, in evenings when his tongue was loose and the peat threw a red glow around his room, he talked of matters which, I suspect, could have had him hanged for heresy. All of this I absorbed like a parched plant absorbs water. I confess that, in my enthusiasm - even desperation - for learning, I many a time took one of the Dominie's books into the hills when I should have been looking after the sheep.

It was a strange irony (a word often used by the Dominie: it comes from the Greek
eironeia
and means the unexpected opposite; Socrates made use of irony in his speeches) that the Dominie, a man of great learning, chose to hide himself away in the valley, while this same learning gave rise, in my soul, to a growing sense of dissatisfaction. I began to feel that the hills were prison walls, closing me off from a great world outside. In truth, I began to think that to spend my life tending sheep was to do little with it.

My increasingly unsettled state was not helped by my stepfather. He turned out to be as ignorant a man as any you could ever meet. Not only that, but he was also one of the most violent, especially after whisky. He would often beat me for little reason or none, although never when my brother was nearby; Angus, stronger and bigger than me, he left alone.