“I don’t suppose you have a map,” I joked, after he’d led us back.

“Of course, sir. Would you like a copy?”

I blinked. “Really?”

“His Majesty had a floor plan commissioned. Helps sort things out, you see. I’ll bring it at once.”

We waited, me thinking about ciphers and Tom admiring his hat, until the man returned. He handed us a broad sheaf of blank paper and, as promised, a map of the palace.

“It only shows the ground floor, sir,” Dobson said, “but perhaps it will be of use.”

“What do all these numbers mean?” Tom asked.

“An indication of who is lodged where.”

He used my quill to mark our quarters for us. We were on the east side, beside the Thames, in a little room numbered 40. “Who’s that?” I asked.

“Sir William Killigrew,” Dobson said. “The Queen’s Vice-Chamberlain and member of Parliament for Richmond in Yorkshire. Bit of a playwright as well, I understand.”

“I’ll have to thank him for allowing us to use his parlor.”

“Hm… perhaps not.”

In other words, Sir William Killigrew was furious that we’d taken some of his space. “I see… In that case, we’ll avoid him at all costs.”

Dobson nodded sagely. “Wisdom is a blessing, sir.”

I needed a desk. Tom and I pulled a table from the pile of furniture in our room and righted it. Bridget marched in front of the window as I wrote out Vigenère’s square.

“Now we need to figure out what the key is,” I said. “The message says it’s about the truth of what happened in Paris. So what is that?”

“Finding the Templars?” Tom suggested.

As good a place as any to start. I wrote out the cipher, then repeated the key above it.

T E M P L A R S T E M P L A R S T E

M O I U R H J B X A M G X B H B L L

“I don’t remember how the rest of this works,” Tom said.

“To decipher something,” I reminded him, “we start on the row with the first letter of the key: T. Then we search to the right, until we find the letter of the code: M. Then we go up to the top of the column… and that should be the first letter of the message.”

“T,” Tom said.

“Yes. And we write that down.”

T E M P L A R S T E M P L A R S T E

M O I U R H J B X A M G X B H B L L

T

“Now we just keep doing that for each letter. Next in the key is E… go across to find the O… and up to get…”

“K,” Tom said.

T E M P L A R S T E M P L A R S T E

M O I U R H J B X A M G X B H B L L

T K