The Book of Air and Shadows - Michael Gruber [186]
“No, the only pages marked were ones with solid text. And of course every other page so they wouldn’t confuse the pinholes that came through the paper.”
“Of course. They’d only use the right-hand nontitle pages. So all we have to do is bring up the digitized version of the 1560, strip out the chapter title pages, and the left-hand pages, and then write a simple search to count and list just the characters the grille indicates. We can generate the key automatically. I have a Vigenère solver in there too. If this works, we could be reading Bracegirdle’s secrets by morning.”
“Could I take a nap while you do that?”
“Be my guest,” he said and turned back to the desk.
As with all projects involving computers, it took a lot longer than expected. The first of the dawn had appeared in the bay windows by the time Crosetti mashed the Return key and sent the long string of letters comprising what he hoped was the key into the virtual maw of the Vigenère solver, which had already been charged with the entire string of characters from the Bracegirdle ciphers. The program screen showed “SOLVING…” and in a long blank slit below that word a string of little rectangles appeared one after another like a line of boxcars on a track. Crosetti had been drinking the hotel’s do-it-yourself coffee all night and he was dry-mouthed and twitching with it.
“Crosetti…Christ, what time is it?”
This in a mumble from under the quilt.
“Almost seven. I think I’m done. Want to see?”
“I smell coffee.”
“There’s some left, but it’s awful. Come and see this. This could be the solution.”
She rolled out of bed and stood next to him, smelling of bed. The last little rectangle appeared and was replaced by a screen showing a single file title:
Bracegirdle cipher plaintext.txt
Crosetti placed the cursor on it and said, “You should have the honor. Hit the Return key.”
She did. The screen changed to a solid block of single-spaced text, the first line of which read:
mylfrdithdsnowpascedtwowereksandsomedaitssincgilefmyouphowsa
“Oh, no!” she cried, “it didn’t work.”
“Yes, it did. Remember they were working out of two different Bibles, Bracegirdle’s and Dunbarton’s, and the average print quality was pretty bad, especially with a mass market item like the Breeches Bible, so no two copies were exactly alike. And they must have had the same problem back in the day. The grille on Bracegirdle’s copy would give a slightly different key letter set than Dunbarton’s but it’s close enough. Here, let me copy this to a new document—so—and put in spacing and punctuation and correct the obvious errors—so—and…here’s the first line.”
My Lord: It has now passed two weekes and some daies since I left your howse
“Oh, God! Crosetti, you’re amazing.”
There was a smile of delight on her face, the same that had penetrated his dream life for these many months, and he felt a similar grin break out upon his own face. “Not really,” he said. “It was obvious to any really transcendent genius. Are you going to kiss me now?”
She did. Soon afterward, he was naked under the quilt and so was she. Crosetti pulled away from her and looked into her eyes.
He said, “I guess we’re not going to read the ciphers right now.”
She kissed him again. “They’ve kept four hundred years. Another hour won’t hurt. And you’re probably too tired.”
“Tired of looking at text on a screen, yeah, not too tired for this.” Some more of this followed and then he pulled away from her abruptly and met her eyes.
“You’re going to stay now, right?” he said. “I mean you’re going to be here tomorrow and the next day…”
“I think I can commit to those particular days.”
“But not additional days? Or is this going to be a continuing daily negotiation?”
“Crosetti, please don’t….”
“Ah, Carolyn, you’re going to kill me.” He sighed. “I’m going to be a dead person if you keep this up.”
And he would have gone on longer in this vein, but she stopped his mouth with her