1 Soul Bound
1.3 Making a Splash
1.3.2 An Allotropic Realignment
1.3.2.16 Cardano
Manutius broke the silence, speaking with approval.
Manutius: “You read it well. Keep the book. Perhaps one day poetry will bloom inside you too.”
Manutius: “A good poem can cut deeper than any knife, ensnare longer than any spell. Lines headier than wine, sweeter than sweets; flowing from page to lips. Then dying, weary, in still air; or growing, fair, in living hearts; and minds that nourish them with sips of attention, warmth of emotion and morsels of memory. Lines that live and grow do finally unfurl in bloom, cast adrift upon a page; a new flower imperfect, unique, fragile; standing alone, but shaped by all that came before.”
Manutius carefully put back upon its shelf the beloved proof copy of her dead husband’s favourite book before removing her kid gloves, leaving Kafana holding the small collection of Petrarca’s courtly love sonnets.
Courtly love? What did the court of Mezelay find romantic about the idea of a stalker spending his life pining over the untouchable, rather than taking “no” for an answer and getting on with his life? Good grief, were Alderney’s audience enjoying the fact that she still had feelings for Tomsk, and that her stupid heart would never settle for having only part of him? He was happy as he was, and if he still had feelings for her, well, he also had feelings for Columbina and probably many others in arlife, all far prettier and more accomplished than her.
The widow led them out of the store room and back into the daylight of the room where Cardano worked. Kafana shook her head to clear it. She was going to be adult about this. The idea that a maiden or swain could turn a polyamorous person into one happy about monogamy, if they could only become worthy enough, was a fantasy. She just hoped her inadvertent magic use hadn’t damaged the good platonic relationship they’d forged over the years, or harmed his chances to find happiness with other women. She’d have to check in with him. Later.
Manutius brought them over to the composition desk, where Cardano had removed his grille and was poring over the resulting half-filled galley tray with Wellington, who stood next to him pointing something out. Cardano had short curly hair and a high forehead, which drew attention to his sharp beak-nosed face and deep-set eyes. He had a neatly trimmed moustache and beard surrounding a small tight-lipped mouth; no smile lines appeared on spare planes of his face, though squinting and frowning had both left their marks.
Manutius: “Suor Kafana, I leave you and your friends in the capable hands of my master of the press, who I am sure can answer any remaining questions you may have, and arrange for an apprentice to show you the other rooms. I have enjoyed your company, and you are welcome to return another time, but if books from the Aldine are to arrive in the hands of ship captains before the tide turns, I needs must strike some deals and deal with messengers. Good day to you.”
And with that she turned herself, her departure as stately and inexorable as that of any ship, the anchor of duty weighed and and mooring lines of convention breezily cast off.
Cardano, long accustomed to the widow’s imperious manner, looked resigned to the interruption. Bungo stepped into the conversational breech, effecting introductions all around. Kafana considered suppressing her titles and aura again but, on consideration, decided to leave them active. They’d been earned, and if she were going to level up her Rulership profession, she’d need to get used to handling them properly. No going back to being an anonymous bard. Well, not unless the Wombles were up to something sneaky, at any rate.
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Kafana: “What are you working on at the moment?”
Cardano and Wellington gave each other a look, then both turned to face her and spoke in unison.
Cardano: “Secrets.”
Wellington: “Secrets.”
Cardano: “Suppose I want to send a message to several Bembist friends still living in Mezelay, announcing the time and location for them to meet up at. If I write a letter with the details in plain text, it will get read by the Cardinal’s censors, who will then be able to arrest anyone turning up.”
Cardano: “Now, I can use a substitution cypher to produce an encrypted text. But even if I vary the encoding with every line, using a repeating key such as those wrapped around a scytale, the Cardinal might crack the key or send priests to search the lodgings of anyone receiving letters with suspicious sections full of nonsense words.”
Bulgaria: “So ideally you want to hide not only what the plain text of the message says, but also the fact that the letter contains a hidden message?”
Cardano held up his grille, with its oval perforations.
Cardano: “Exactly. If I am hand writing a letter to a friend I’ve already given an identical grille to when I met them in person, I can write the hidden portion of my message on the parts of the page exposed through the perforations, and then compose the rest of the letter in such a way that those words or fragments of words flow naturally. It can take a little re-drafting, but it makes for a fun word puzzle.”
Bungo: “How do you hide ‘meet at midnight beneath the Hôtel de Chevreuse’ ?”
Cardano: “Poetry can conceal a multitude of sins, as people are used to it containing strange words and grammar. Replace distinctive words with allusions to features of their family coat of arms or events they are associated with. What will be understood varies with the mutual acquaintances you share with your correspondent.”
An apprentice came through from the print room, carrying a box of mixed up metal type pegs, presumably the results of emptying the galley trays of a page that had just been printed a thousand times. Kafana noticed he was young and that he walked a little awkwardly but, as he sat down on the far side of the turntable to sort each peg from the box into its correct receptacle, what she chiefly noticed was his skin - it was sky blue.
Wellington: “But that’s just to one person. The Gazzetta has a far wider audience, and the copies carried each week by trading ships to cities in every region, would be a far better cover.”
Cardano: “Finding a journalist willing to hide a message in a news article isn’t a problem. The problem is that The Gazzetta is printed rather than handwritten. Making use of a grille would require cooperation from the person who sets the type and adjusts the spacing between the words. It is possible, as I have just demonstrated, but my new friend has a different suggestion.”
Wellington: “You could eliminate the fixed position requirement of a grille if you used a different typeface to indicate which letters are part of the hidden message. Italics would be too obvious, but a font designed to appear like your normal one except worn and distorted through long usage, would pass without comment except by someone who knew to look for it.”
Tomsk: “Wouldn’t that still need the cooperation of the type setter?”
Cardano: “Normally, yes. But I know the setter for Rustichello; we both play and make bets at the Fiorio. If I send him a galley tray with the words already on it, he’ll alter the spacing but he’ll rarely change the text. And if he does, well, that’s what hidden checksums are for. Now, if I used the fonts to create a binary encoding…”
Kafana cleared her throat. Loudly and pointedly.
Kafana: “I should, perhaps, have asked what book you are working on. But first, aren’t you going to introduce us?”