Part 19 (1/2)

'The hand matches Il Critto's, I'll be bound,' said Scarlett, paging through the quire and eager to examine it further. 'This could only have been his work.'

Hawkwood towelled off. 'So what did our friend leave behind?'

Scarlett shook his head. 'Hard to tell, sire. Only one of these pages makes any sense to me. It's in Italian, if it even deserves the name.' Scarlett read it aloud. A short set of awkward sentences conjugating the verb nascondere. I nascondere, si nascondono, si nasconde ...

I hide my knowledge beneath my words.

You hide your ignorance beneath your power.

He hides his treason beneath his loyalty.

The fumblings of a man still practising a tongue not his own.

When Scarlett had finished reading through the grammatical exercise Hawkwood shrugged, reached for his hose. 'So he was honing his Italian. What does this prove, Adam? We've never had reason to doubt his loyalty.'

'Nothing, Sir John. Merely that he used this quire for casual writing in addition to his ciphers. As for the rest ...'

'Well?'

'It's like reading pebbles on sand. None of it means anything to me, and I don't have the quality of mind capable of sorting it out. Il Critto kept his ciphers to himself.'

'As I warned him he should, on peril of his life, and d.a.m.n me for a fool!' He laughed gruffly, then considered the matter. 'I suppose we need some help, then.'

Scarlett agreed. That afternoon he left for Siena, where he asked around at the studium. He was back two mornings later with the sharpest mind on the faculty. A purse, a polite request, a few vague threats: there had been little resistance. With Hawkwood there rarely was.

In the gallery the condottiero invited the dazed man to sit with him on the padded bench he used at his desk. The wide surface was taken up in large part with a marked-up map of Tuscany, Lombardy, Romagna, and the Veneto: troop movements and garrisons, debts owed to the company, the intricate web of Hawkwood's empire. He liked to hold his strategic conversations here, where his power could be spread out before him for the benefit of his visitors.

'In what discipline is your training, Maestro Desilio?'

'Law, Ser Giovanni, at Bologna. Though logic is my greater strength.'

Hawkwood glanced at Scarlett. 'Well good, then. We need a logician's mind to crack these rocky nuts. Did my man Scarletto explain all this to you?'

'He did not, Ser Giovanni.'

So Hawkwood did. 'What you see before you, sir, this mess of scorched parchments and half-burned papers? This is all that was left behind by one of my a.s.sociates.'

'a.s.sociates, Ser Giovanni?'

'He left our service earlier this year. His mother dies, he's the sole heir, he thinks of home the details don't particularly matter. Though his profession mattered a great deal to me, as it soon shall to you. You see, this man was my cryptographer, Master Desilio.'

'Your your cryptographer?'

'Il Critto, we called him,' said Hawkwood. 'The man responsible for taking my dispatches and letters and casting them into cipher for delivery abroad. To my garrisons, to my contacts in Rome, Paris, London. You are familiar with cryptography?'

Despite the peculiar situation the logician looked intrigued, provoked by the intellectual challenge. 'I am, Ser Giovanni. At the studium we have several books on this craft. By Master Roger Bacon, by al-Kindi the Moor, the latter translated into Latin. I've not studied them carefully, but I know the rudiments, and I can certainly loan you these books.'

'Excellent,' Hawkwood said, nodding eagerly. 'Though I have a different sort of loan in mind.'

Scarlett watched them for a while, the way Hawkwood had of warming up his visitors, making them feel comfortable in his presence, even when he was delivering unwelcome news. Yes, you will be my guest here at San Donato, at least for a time. No, you won't be going back to Siena today, nor tomorrow. Better to write a letter, requesting that the books in question be sent back with my man. You will certainly be paid well, and the studium compensated for your absence, however extended it should prove.

'Do you have any further questions or concerns about this arrangement?' Hawkwood asked him.

The man paged through the quire, his mouth at a rueful slant. 'Only that this task, Ser Giovanni ...'

'Yes?'

'These sorts of ciphers do not lend themselves to expediency. Breaking them could take it could take months.'

Hawkwood's smile stiffened. 'Months I don't have. Weeks? Perhaps. Days? Even better.'

The logician, knowing better than to shake his head, took a heavy breath. 'I will do my best, Ser Giovanni.'

Scarlett watched Hawkwood incline his head. 'I know you will, Maestro Desilio.'

THIRTY.

Paternoster Row From the northwest corner of St Paul's churchyard Edgar peered across the busy lane, his head filled with the muddle and din, his stomach rumbling with hunger. He'd hardly eaten in days, relying on the spa.r.s.e alms of the parishes as he skulked around the city, trying to elude the constables, and that hook-scarred man on Gropec.u.n.t Lane. Swyving was a hard business, yet it was nothing compared to the week he'd experienced as one of the city's thousand beggars: sleeping in abandoned horsestalls, mouldy bread plucked from gutters, the cold anonymity of London's poorest souls, trying to stay invisible or feign lameness so they wouldn't be put out at the gates. Yet now it was time.

He pushed himself off the booth and walked toward Paternoster Row, past several parchmenters' shops. Halfway down the street a shop matron, hair tied back in a simple scarf, bargained with a neat-looking man over a bundle at her feet. A reeve or steward, Edgar guessed, commissioned to purchase parchment for his employer.

'That's too high, Mistress Pinkley,' the man wheedled. 'The brothers of the Charterhouse toil for the Lord, not for themselves.'

'The sum wasn't too high for my late husband, nor too high for me. You should get a smell of what I charge the friary.' A harsh cackle. 'But for this stack of lambskin? Four s.h.i.+llings a dozen is pa.s.sing fair for the holy disciples of the Grand Chartreuse, and I'll have not a penny less. The finest lambs of Sunbury-on-Thames in these skins, nor will you find a thinner lot on Paternoster Row.'

Edgar waited while the man paid and trudged off with the parchments. The parchmentress turned to him with a ready smile which faded somewhat when she saw this vagrant at her shop door.

'What is it?'

He looked down at his hands. 'A book, mistress. A book to sell.'

'A book to sell, eh?' She took in the shoddy hose, the frayed cap. 'Most come to Paternoster Row looking to purchase books, not sell them. And what's a bairn like you doing with a book?'

'Came into my possession, willed me by my mother, bless her,' he lied. 'I have no reading to speak of and don't know the matter of it but I believe it's a valuable thing.'

The parchmentress grinned. 'A primer is it, a painted book of hours that's been in your family? A Bible perhaps, or the blessed Psalter?'

Edgar held it out. The parchmentress looked down at the book and took it briskly. Untying the thong with an adept tug, she gave the embroidery an admiring glance, handed the cloth back to Edgar, then smoothed her hands over the volume's covers.

'Thin little thing.' She flipped through the pages without, it seemed, reading a word, inspecting the thickness of the parchment, fingering several of the leaves with an expert feel for quality. 'Heavy, the skins are. Could be sc.r.a.ped, I suppose, yield a clean book to write anew.' She closed the ma.n.u.script and slapped it against an open palm. 'Six pence.'

Edgar felt his jaw slacken. Six pennies, for a book sought by half of London? He shook his head. 'Not for this book, madam. Five nay, six n.o.bles, and I'll have not a penny less.'