The Lady Knight

Chapter XX: Codes and Comprehensions

The Lady Knight

11 October, Year 1 of King Alfonso XI of Vantauge's reign

Granada Castle, Madriga

Vantauge

Dearest Julia,

Of course I will aid you in your cause. I will have my late Uncle Ferdinand's chambers to be searched for the letters of the sort you described to me, and I will conduct discreet inquiries among my other relatives as well, as soon as possible.

However, you should know that my Uncle Ferdinand was very possessive over the royal seal when he lived. If you say that the late Lord Lucas of Anchorvale had received coded letters bearing the royal seal of Vantauge, then they must have been sent by my Uncle Ferdinand only, for he allowed no one else to use that seal. Not even me, when I had been a Crown Prince at that time.

Fear not, my friend. I will make sure that every truth my Uncle has tried hard to conceal regarding this case is revealed to you, and I will take especial care to remain discreet about it. In the meanwhile, I would humbly suggest that you try and decode the messages that you already have in your hands at the present. They may be helpful in telling us where Uncle Ferdinand has hidden the rest of the letters he received from this Lord Lucas, and could also speed up your investigations.

You may trust me that I will remain loyal to you and uphold the promise I made you. All the best, and I will write to you as soon as I find out anything. Keep faith, and God go with you.

Your most loyal friend and humble servant,

King Alfonso XI of Vantauge

That was what Lieutenant Raleigh had also told me. Decode the letters, decode the letters, decode the letters.

I groaned loudly, snapping the huge, fat book shut, extremely annoyed. Truly, I was this close to giving up and leaving everything up to fate to solve for me.

There were only so much letters and numbers I could tolerate at a stretch, and I had already exceeded the duration of my attention span long ago.

Thick books, similarly sized to the one I was currently holding, if not bigger, surrounded me endlessly. Numerous, crushed pieces of parchment lay about all over the marble floor, as well as empty bottles of ink I had used during the last three days I had lived in this room.

Three days. I had spent close to 72 hours bent over these books, night and day, eating the bare minimum and hardly sleeping at all in the meanwhile.

I was very desperately trying to crack the code, and as both my friend King Alfonso and Lieutenant Raleigh had advised me, I was well aware that we were at a stalemate until we did so.

At the moment, there was nothing we could do but try and decode the messages and hope with all our hearts that those coded letters carry something of import.

That was why I had borrowed the whole mystery section of the bookshelf in Camille's library. In truth, I had no idea why she had books of such rare genres. Ladies these days hardly read at all, and even when they did, they preferred romance novels to books of non-fiction genre.

But then again, Camille read anything that was made from parchment.

Locking myself up in my study on the very morning after we had pranked Andrew, I had forbidden everyone from approaching me unless it was an emergency.

I even cooked my own meals and brought it to my study at dawn each day to last me for the entire day, so that I would not have to go outside during mealtimes and disturb my thought process.