The Queen's Cipher Read Free Page A

on red-top hatred of students by telling reporters about a grave miscarriage of justice in which an ambitious graduate had stolen his professor’s ideas before accusing him of plagiarism. Caring not a jot for the truth, the paparazzi had hounded Freddie, picturing him ‘scurrying off in shame.’ Humiliated by the distorted revelations and punchy headlines of the tabloid coverage, he had blockaded himself in his flat until, suddenly, the scandal went away leaving its protagonists to get on with their lives. Cartwright took a job as a television presenter while Beaufort College awarded Freddie a doctorate and a research fellowship. But this second skirmish with the mass media left its mark on him. Once again he had been stripped bare and misrepresented, making it difficult for him to adjust to other people or, more precisely, to what he believed they saw in him.
    It was time to change the subject. “I thought your paper was absolutely first-rate.”
    She raised an eyebrow in what seemed like a wary gesture. Then her face relaxed. “You wouldn’t be flirting with me, would you Dr Brett?”
    He could feel the heat rushing to his face. “No, honestly, I thought you were t-terrific.”
    Dr Dilworth looked pleased. “Tell me about Oxford. What does a British Research Fellow do?”
    “Not a lot. It’s a temporary academic post which involves a certain amount of teaching but most of your time is supposed to be spent on research.”
    “And what are you working on at the moment?”
    “Actually I’m between projects.”
    Freddie fell silent. Finding something new to say about Shakespeare was like a coal miner chipping away at a worked out seam. Not that anyone else in the Sanmecheli Suite seemed to share his opinion. The room was positively buzzing with delegates boasting about their achievements.
    “Shall we wander around a bit,” she suggested. “Find out what’s going down.”
    They moved around the room, eavesdropping on what their colleagues were saying. A Scottish professor was holding forth on Shakespeare and national identity only to have his carefully crafted argument interrupted by someone from Azerbaijan who claimed the Bard’s republicanism transcended state borders. Further off, a gaggle of Latin American academics were debating the principles of proportionality and balance in drama while a bearded man in a black beret raised his voice to whip up support for his internationally acclaimed ‘Shakespeare behind Bars’ programme.
    “Is that what I think it is?” Freddie whispered.
    “Sure, it’s a Kentucky prison theatre group whose year-long tour with The Tempest was turned into an experimental television documentary in which actual prisoners were allowed to cast themselves in the roles best reflecting their personal history and crimes.”
    “I rather like the idea,” he said. “I believe in storytelling.”
    “And what kind of stories do you tell?”
    “Oh, they are mainly about historical figures. It’s revisionism really. I don’t believe there is any single, lasting truth about past events and their meaning. It’s a question of how you join up the dots.”
    Dr Dilworth raised her eyebrows. “I don’t follow that.”
    “Historical evidence is fragmentary. In putting the pieces together, professional scholars tend to ignore oral history and concentrate on the written record. Yet the human memory is story-based, not data-based. History is the interaction of people in their social context and, to understand that, you need to know their personal stories, what makes them tick. It’s an observational science.”
    “That’s interesting,” she said in response to his tirade, “you used the present tense. Do you turn these powers of observation on the people you meet?”
    “Sometimes, but I’m no Sherlock Holmes.”
    The beautiful American seemed to be studying him through her champagne flute. “What, I wonder, have you discovered about me.”
    It was a challenge he couldn’t ignore. “That