Weaver

AMEN

'Why, so it does.' He smiled.

'But I can't make sense of the rest of it.'

'Let's have another crack. I rather enjoy ciphers and such. Got me into Bletchley for my sins.' Still walking, he wrote down the leading letters of the verses, omitting the prologue and epilogue:

'Nothing,' she said. 'Told you.'

'Yes, but look – there's some redundancy here.'

'Redundancy?'

'A coder's term. Repeated letters. Each verse, save the last, begins and ends with the same letters, T and N. If you were encrypting this lot for transmission you'd put in some kind of summary cipher and cross the lot out. Suppose I try that.' He took an eraser and went through the line, removing the first and last letters each time:

Mary considered this. 'Is that another AMEN at the end?'

'No,' he said softly. 'Look – if you group the letters differently – ' He wrote out the line again.

'Ben Kamen,' she said 'Oh my.'

'He's sent us a message,' Mackie said. 'A message through history. Clever boy, clever boy indeed. This will do the trick, I think. I must call Lindemann.' He turned on his heel and trotted back towards the farmhouse.

She followed more slowly.

She admired Mackie's pragmatism, his determination to deal with this extraordinary problem, his ability to absorb this astounding new development and act on it decisively. But she felt only profound shock at this latest discovery. Could it really be true that this message from Ben Kamen had been waiting, embedded in a document from the fifth century, written down in whatever original had existed and then transcribed into copy after copy – waiting for her to detect it, on this fall day in England?

She shivered, and hurried after Mackie, not wanting to be alone.