Chapter 16
“Here you are.” Pen had been looking around the room, not trying to be too nosy. Constance Hill had been putting together a tray, leaving Pen in her study. The rooms themselves were not particularly elegant, but they had the casual, lived-in comfort of any academic study.
Constance was some ten years older than Pen, now a private tutor in maths for people who needed that sort of thing or who wanted to come up to Cambridge. “Gregory should be asleep for an hour. The others won’t be back until teatime.”
The others here were unspecified, but Pen had gathered that it was some combination of Constance’s husband, a lodger, and perhaps one of her older children. The older woman had not actually explained that part, and Pen had been uncertain how to ask.
Pen hadn’t known her particularly well— they worked in different huts, and often on different shifts.
But they’d both turned up at the folk dancing meetings when they could, and they’d chatted a bit there.
Pen knew Constance was also magical, though she’d not gone to Schola.
More importantly, Constance had gone to Girton, and thus understood the complexities of making a professional life in mathematics as a woman.
And specifically, Pen hoped, as a woman interested in cryptography.
Pen nodded pleasantly, taking a cup of mint tea. “I appreciate the time. I couldn’t think who else to talk to who’d understand all the different pieces of it.”
“Ah, well. Now, that’s flattering. You’ve been up at Oxford, of course, since we last were together.” Pen had kept up a light correspondence, of course, most recently a Christmas card, but that sort of thing didn’t get into details.
“I am. And I’m feeling somewhat stuck, both about what to do now, and about what to do later, if you see the combination?” Pen let her voice trail off expectantly.
“Perhaps.” Constance smiled, though, and that softened it. “I don’t want to make assumptions, though. So why don’t you tell me?”
Pen lifted her teacup in acknowledgement, then took a breath. She’d thought about how to say this most of the way here. “The problem is, I want to keep going with cryptography, but the idea I have is magical. I don’t know how to do it, and I don’t know how to find someone who can help me.”
“The idea?” Constance leaned forward. “Or are you not telling anyone yet?”
That was the trick. If she told people, they might take her idea and run with it.
On the other hand, it was a complex bit of magic.
Constance might get somewhere with it, but she hadn’t had Schola’s training.
The silence drew out a little before Constance cleared her throat.
“I can make oath to keep it private. And it’s not as if I’m doing anything actively with that sort of work right now. ”
Pen nodded once before asking a little cautiously, “What are you doing?”
“Besides keeping track of the household?
Honestly, marriage has a number of virtues.
But I am entirely done with having children of Gregory's age. I much prefer them older, but of course you have to go through the younger bits first.” It was good-natured exasperation, fond and yet entirely ready to be done with certain nonsense.
“I tutor pleasant young men and young women, especially for the Mathematics Tripos.”
Those were the key exams for Cambridge, a somewhat different system than Oxford.
Pen knew Constance had done extremely well, via gossip at Bletchley, where that was a mark of particular esteem.
Though she could have guessed, because she’d been pretty sure Constance had been working with the other mathematicians on actual design and development.
Constance gave it a moment, then shrugged. “I hope to get back to research work sooner than later. I read the journals, I keep up conversations here and elsewhere. You have an idea of how it is. Do you want to work rather than marry?”
It was a blunt question, but it was the question all university women came back to, fundamentally.
Some women came up to university more to find a husband than to contribute to the scope of human knowledge.
Pen twitched a shoulder. “I haven’t met anyone yet I’d consider marrying.
Whatever else, I’d want to keep up with my own work somehow.
Less, if there were children, I suppose, there are practical issues. ”
“Oh, that’s right, you’re a vicar’s granddaughter. You’d see enough of the range, then. No little brothers or sisters of your own, do I remember that correctly?”
“I’m an only child. And my aunt’s not married, so no cousins on Mum’s side. Dad’s got a brother, but he—” Pen took a breath. “His son, my only cousin, was killed in 1942.”
“I am sorry.” Constance nodded silently, the measured sombre pause that they all had down pat by now, that gave the grief the exact right amount of space.
Then there was the comforting sip of tea, and Pen echoed that.
Finally, Constance went on. “Well. It is a challenge, yes. And you’ve seen how some men are about women being clever. Especially more clever.”
Pen had, yes. Both the quieter forms of it and the louder.
The quieter had to do with clever women being ignored socially, not chatted up as others were.
The louder version often involved arguments and disagreements.
People persisted in lecturing wrongly and with utter pigheadedness.
Pen had kept her head down, done her work, and ignored both rounds of it, not that men had been particularly lining up to walk out with her.
“I have, yes. Of course. And I don’t want the awful parts of that, if I can give them a miss. ”
“The trick is always spotting it in advance, but no, I agree.” Constance glanced up to the stairs.
“Now, Oswald is quite a sweetheart, honestly, and vastly more supportive than the average, but it took us a while to figure out. And the war didn’t help, of course.
We picked up habits. But you don’t care about that. Where do you think I could help?”
Pen was actually rather curious, but of course she would not pry. “Part of it is figuring out if there is anyone— in the magical community, I mean— I could talk to.”
“Mmm. There are a few cryptographers. Major Lefton is known for it, has been for decades, since before the Great War, but I don’t know what he’s doing these days.
One of those who disappeared into parts unknown, hasn’t published anything since— no, that must be 1938.
You know the signs of someone doing secret work as well as I do. ”
“Well, and probably safer to assume that anyone with interests in cryptography who was competent was doing secret war work than otherwise,” Pen agreed.
“I’ve read his work, of course, and he used to take apprentices.
No one at Oxford since then, either. Not tutoring, nor at the Academy, though I might have missed something there. ”
“You might— no, you went to Schola, you probably can arrange this. Do you know someone who knows Cammie Gates? She apprenticed with him. I remember seeing a note about that. Nearer my age than yours.”
Pen frowned, considering. “I knew she was doing analysis. But she wasn’t at Bletchley.” And honestly, anyone actually good at cryptography had been at Bletchley. Or so Pen assumed. Maybe the assumption was wrong.
“No, she wasn’t. But she’s a Schola woman, isn’t she?” Constance leaned back. “I forget the details, though. She’d know other people, probably.”
“Her mother’s married to one of the Heads of House, Professor Ward.
Materia. She runs the bookshop in the village.
” The question was whether Pen was brave enough to ask someone— Professor Acharya, most likely— whether writing would be all right.
“The problem is, if I ask someone to make an introduction or whatever, it makes it clear what I’m doing. ”
“Ah. And that is a trick, isn’t it?” Constance tapped her fingers on the table.
“I’m almost certain there’s some magical underpinning to the oaths at Bletchley, though I haven’t remotely the background to figure out how they did that.
But don’t you think it’s curious how firmly all of us keep to it?
The same way the Pact holds us. It’s not the warning if we get too close to the line but we’re simply not inclined to go there.
Here’s safe, obviously, we’re in the house, Gregory’s asleep, never mind the charms to keep noise from the house out of the nursery. ”
Pen had noticed the same effect, but not questioned the reason before.
Now she sat back and blinked. “That makes sense. I don’t know who to ask about it either, but it explains some things.
I’ve felt very reticent not just about saying anything directly, but about gesturing at that space, if that makes sense? ”
“Very much. Ah, well. Not like anyone’s likely to explain the mystery, not to the likes of us. You think about whether you can arrange an introduction. If I get a chance— something comes up organically— I’ll let you know if I can pass a query along. How’s that?”
“Exceedingly kind, thank you.” Pen took a breath. “I’d feel better if you made oath on it, but I think I’d like to talk out what I’m thinking with someone who’d understand enough of it. If I’m completely up the wrong tree, best to know sooner than later, right?”
It earned her a broad smile from Constance.
She promptly repeated one of the standard oath forms about keeping this conversation private between the two of them.
It included that the specifics were not to be discussed with others, or written down in a way others could access.
It would permit discussions in the journal or by magically sealed letter.
Then she added the clause that would prevent her from making use of the ideas discussed without Pen’s active cooperation.
Pen repeated her part of it, shivering a little at the brush of the magic of the Pact that bound them both to the oaths.
There was another pause for tea, for the restorative and human parts of having tea.
Then Pen cleared her throat. “What if you could add a layer of chronological and locational magic to the randomisation of something like Enigma?”
She pulled out her notes, sliding them over so Constance could see them.
The older woman took a few minutes looking through the pages, tapping a finger here or there as she counted out in her head.
Then she looked up. “It would solve the problem of people beginning with the same word, yes. But wouldn’t it be possible to break it if you knew where the message came from? ”
“That’s the part about the chronological layer as well.
If you coded it to the moment of beginning the transmission, not the end, or— I don’t know.
That’s the part I need to figure out. How to make it random enough.
Maybe the chronological layer sets one set of randomisation, locational does another subset.
Then there’s overlap, so you can’t predict both of them. It needs work, obviously.”
“I am fairly certain no one’s ever actually proposed anything like this.
And...” Constance went more carefully here, as if she were uncertain if she’d hit other previous oaths.
“I think it’s worth exploring. That it could do some significant good.
Even just within Albion, if they couldn’t come up with an explanation that would fly for Britain. ”
“Worth my time, then.”
“Yes.” Constance’s voice was firmer. There was after a short silence a noise from above. “Blast, that’s Gregory. I’ll have to go get him. Glad to keep chatting about maths in general. And I want to hear what you come up with when you have more to share, please. This is an interesting problem.”
Pen ducked her chin. “Of course.” Constance stood, disappearing upstairs.
She came back down a few minutes later with a toddler in her arms, setting him to play on the rug.
Then she picked up a more ordinary chat about the lectures Pen intended to go to in Trinity Term, what she’d thought of the Waynflete lectures, and what her tutor was focusing on.