A storm whistled throughout the night, wrenching leaves from trees and filling Mortehoe with sea-spray.
Although safe in the cellar, Priya could feel the wind outside pushing at the building above. The beams of the foundations groaned, and the rafters above trembled. With every gust Priya stopped her writing and tentatively looked up, expecting the entire pub to fall on her like a stack of cards.
It was three in the morning, and she had completed over half of the transcription. It spoke of paid men coming to attack the village, and though it didn’t mention of whom it spoke, it alluded to the suspected enemy.
Camberwell, for all the ciphers available to him, didn’t have one to describe aptly who would be coming, and so he had seemingly attempted to cobble codes together. He spoke of ‘backward accomplices’, and of ‘before companions’, and Priya supposed that this meant they would be attacked by someone they trusted.
She had put this to Semilion, though he didn’t know who Camberwell could have meant.
‘There’s no-one in the south. No-one. There are the men who fish over by Putsborough, but it wouldn’t be them… and they’re not in the south anyway. Camberwell mentioned that he met with people on a tour of some university’s in Europe. They would be south, but friends? Friends to him maybe, but I wouldn’t know them from a shitty stick!’
‘It’s possible they’re not from the south, simply coming from the south?’
‘We’re on the north-westerly coast. What would be the point of coming from the south?’
‘You’d never expect it. You watch the sea, whoever is coming knows that.’
Semilion fell quiet, and pondered on who he could afford to send to guard the south and southeast. He had men enough, but sending them out to defend meant the end of secrecy. He would have to tell them, and he wasn’t ready for that yet. Once Priya had completed the transcript and he knew all the details he would convene the council and tell them everything he knew.
‘I’d like you to work on this until it’s finished, Priya. Forget the crèche.’
‘Forget the crèche forever?’ She thought of Rosa and Briney, and the children she looked after. They drove her mad, and although they were an exhausting problem – they had become her problem, one that she felt was her own to resolve. Her question was somewhat anxious, though Semilion misjudged it as excitement.
‘We’ll see.’ He replied. He couldn’t help but smile.
‘Where I come from that means yes.’ She said almost indignantly, turning back to the books strewn across the table.
He turned to leave though she called him back. ‘What are these dots?’
He looked over the page. ‘I hadn’t translated them myself but they look like a simple break in the transmission to divide up the broadcast.’
Priya shrugged. ‘Never mind, I’ll work it out, I just thought you might know.’
He stepped back and left her to it, knowing that when she was finished with him she was truly finished with him, and would appreciate distraction like a wasp sting.