The Cipher at Court

In 1582, when a night watchman discovered a loosened gate beside the royal apartments, Chancellor Ortez opened an inquiry into a suspected palace conspiracy. The passage below the gate was fetid, for stagnant water and refuse had collected there, yet investigators searched it until dawn. Among the mud they found a courier's seal and a scrap of cipher, evidence that persuaded the reluctant king to accede to Ortez's request that favored courtiers be questioned.

The inquiry initially centered on Captain Varo, whose sentries had been remiss in recording visitors; their neglected ledger enabled rumors whose pernicious spread steadily eroded public trust. Although a censorious magistrate called every lapse proof of corruption, Ortez distinguished incompetence from treason. Then a servant recalled Lord Soria's impudent reply when an elderly chamberlain asked him to leave the queen's antechamber: Soria laughed and remained. A search of his rooms uncovered payments to dismissed officers and a map marking the guards' nightly positions.

At trial, prosecutors argued that Soria was culpable because he had financed the plot and supplied its leaders with access to the palace. His defense claimed the payments were charitable, but a perfidious secretary admitted that he had sworn loyalty to Soria while secretly delivering messages to foreign agents. Most damaging was a letter from Soria's sister, whose prescient warning stated that an attempted seizure during the harvest festival would fail once Ortez changed the watch. That change had occurred two days before the planned attack.

The conspirators considered the festival propitious: crowds would conceal their followers, while fireworks covered the clash of weapons. Yet the court treated the cipher, payments, and altered guard routes as one design rather than unrelated offenses. After six days, judges convicted Soria and two officers, though they acquitted Varo, whose carelessness was serious but not treasonous. Later accounts praised Ortez for resisting the baleful pressure of nobles demanding mass arrests; by punishing only those tied to the scheme, he prevented a purge.