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By Root 492 0

not. Maybe that first series of characters was Ptmmg or Ptmng. He found it impossible to derive even the actual ciphertext accurately, because deciphering secretary hand depended so much on context, on knowing what English word was meant. Or at least it was for him. He imagined that the original recipient was familiar enough with Bracegirdle’s hand to read the ciphered letters and actually decipher it into plaintext. Crosetti knew little about ciphers except what he had picked up from movies, spy novels, and television. He knew what a ciphertext message was supposed to look like: equal blocks of five or six letters or numbers marching across the page. This didn’t look like that at all. It looked like regular writing, with “words” of differing length. Maybe that was how they wrote cipher in Jacobean times. He knew nothing of that subject, yet by analogy with other technical progress, such a cipher must have been fairly primitive. As he considered this, he recalled the difference between a cipher and a code. A code required a code book, or a memorized list of words that meant something other than what it appeared to be. But then it would have looked more like plain English, something like “the parson failed to buy the pig” might mean “the subject suspected of hiding a priest.” And that would limit what an intelligencer could relate. No, he simply knew that this was cipher; indeed, Bracegirdle had called it a cipher in his final letter.

The alarm rattled and Crosetti hurried over to squelch it. In the bed, Rolly turned over murmuring. Her eyes flicked open. Crosetti saw an expression of terror cross her face and her whole body jerked. He was about to say something soothing when she closed her eyes again and turned away, pulling the duvet over her head.

“Carolyn? You all right?”

No answer. Crosetti shrugged and went to change the diapers. The blotters. They were barely damp now and the pages seemed almost dry to the touch, maybe a little cool: the miracle of capillary action. They were still buckled along the edges, in the way of paper that has been wetted, and the gilt edges of the text block no longer had the perfect smoothness of the pristine book. He wondered how she was going to fix that.

As he worked he heard sounds from the sleeping zone: throat clearing, the swish of fabric, the sound of running water, a toothbrush in action, more cloth sounds, the water again, the clunk of a pot, openings of cabinets. He was just finishing the last of the volumes when she appeared at his side, dressed in yesterday’s overalls and black Converse high-tops with bright blue socks; she held two mugs of aromatic bad coffee, one of which she handed to him.

“I’m sorry I don’t have any cream. Or milk.”

“That’s okay,” he said. “I’m sorry I startled you when the alarm went off. You looked like you were going to jump out of your skin.”

A blank look here, a small shrug. She opened a volume of the Voyages and felt the paper. “This is good. It’s almost dry.”

“What are you going to do about the buckling?”

“Press it out, or use heat. This kind of linen rag paper is a lot like cloth. I’ll iron every edge if I have to and then trim and regild.” She turned to face him and smiled. “Thanks for the help. I’m sorry I was cross with you last night. I’m not very social.”

He said, “You let me sleep with you on our first date. I’d call that social,” and instantly regretted it when her smile faded, replaced by a wary look and a very proper sniff. Then, in her characteristic way, she pretended nothing untoward had been said and announced her plans for that day. She had to go out and buy leather for the covers and arrange for the patterned endpapers to be re-created; there were specialty shops in New York that did this sort of work.

“You want me to come along?” he asked when she had finished.

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary. It’s going to be quite tedious. A slog, really.”

“I’m a slogger.”

“No, thanks. I think I have to do this by myself. And, ah, I’d like to get started right away.”

“You’re booting me out?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way. I’m sure