Page 72 of The Spy Who Loved Her
Lydia sat abruptly, as if her knees had buckled beneath her, only managing to find half her seat in a chair as she wilted into it. “Do youthink?” she whispered.
Emma could only hope. Nothing else had worked thus far. “Hannah,” she said. “Tell Miss Finch I require every book of sonnets she has got on hand, and bring them here at once. And you may keep one for you and Dannyboy to read together for your troubles.”
With a gleeful squeal, Hannah dashed for the door, dragging Dannyboy along in her wake.
Lydia reached for a blank sheet of paper and took up Emma’s discarded pen as she repositioned the abandoned inkwell near her elbow. “Which number have you got?” she asked, with a nod toward the small section of the journal from which Emma had been working.
“Seventeen,” Emma said. “Why? Have you got them memorized?”
“Nearly all of them. Some better than others.” Lydia dipped the nib in the ink and began to write out the first line. “Just to verify,” she said, her voice squeaking across a full octave. “I shouldn’t think we’d require more just to—to becertain.”
To be certain that it—like everything else they’d tried—wouldn’t produce only nonsense, she meant. Emma took the page that Lydia offered and blew upon the ink to dry it. “I’m afraid to try,” she admitted. “I’m afraid to be wrong.”
Lydia placed one hand over hers. “You are so much braver than you know,” she said. “Be just a little braver now, Emma.”
Slowly, painstakingly, Emma copied the line Lydia had written and matched up the ciphered text beneath it, letter for letter. As she checked each pair of letters against the table that Neil had painted upon the wall, new text bloomed beneath her pen.
No, not simple text.Words.
Lydia gave a choked laugh, swiping at her eyes with the tips of her fingers. “It works,” she said. “Emma,it works. You’ve done it.”
And Emma collapsed into her arms and sobbed in relief.
∞∞∞
Things happened swiftly when the children returned, carrying some fifteen volumes between them. Not quite enough for every child within Emma’s care, but then perhaps half of the children were still learning their letters and could not be expected to appreciate Shakespeare just yet.
Not enough for everyone present to have a copy of their own. Still, with three or so sonnets printed per page, it would require only a handful of books to manage all the work, provided they received the same treatment as the journal.
“Here you are,” Emma said, sacrificing a single copy to Hannah and Dannyboy. “And now neither of you need suffer the fate of Rosencrantz or Guildenstern.”
Lydia had taken the opportunity while they had been waiting—and while Emma herself had taken a private moment to allow herself a good cry—to rouse those who had not yet risen and assemble their party together once more. Most had clearly seen better days, wearied beyond measure and in clothing wrinkled beyond repair. But the mood had made a notable shift for the celebratory as they clustered around.
“Thirty-three,” Phoebe said, muffling a yawn in her hand. “I have thirty-three.”
Emma spilled the armload of books across a convenient table, rifling through the pages of one. “Here,” she said, as she found the appropriate page and ripped it from its binding. “Thirty-three.”
The crowd descended upon the table en masse, books passing through hands quicker than Emma could blink, the rending of pages a constant refrain.
“Twenty-seven,” shouted someone shouted beyond her shoulder.
“And here! I’ve got fifty-six!”
“One hundred thirteen for me!”
Lydia clutched her own page in her hand, though Emma suspected she didn’t truly require it. “Poor Shakespeare,” she said. “To have his work destroyed.”
But it was for a just cause—a tragedy that had turned upon itself and discovered, Emma hoped, a happy ending hiding in plain sight. “I’ll buy new,” Emma said. “It will keep the booksellers happy, I imagine.”
Besides, many hands made light work. And so very many people had come to do it. Within hours, the journal in its entirety would be deciphered, an impossible task at last completed.
“What will you do?” Lydia asked. “When it is done, I mean. What will you do with the journal?”
There was only one thing shecoulddo. In so precarious a position, rife with uncertainty over who might be trusted, and with limited time in which to save two lives, there existed only one possibility that remained open to her.
“I suppose I must go to St. James’s Palace,” she said. With a wealth of evidence finally revealed for its true nature in hand, to have a proper conversation,queen to king.
Chapter Twenty Five
