As I said in the introductory summary, I was immediately drawn to Edmund Blair Leighton's 1901 painting, "Adieu". But, this picture presents us with a bit of an enigma.
The painting shows a man in a captain's uniform - the two epaulets on this coat show us that he is a captain who was 'posted' at least three years ago, and the rest of his clothing is consistent with that idea. In the background, we see a large and beautiful ship. I am fairly certain that the model the artist used was HMS Victory, Nelson's flagship at the battle of Trafalgar. If you go to the Wikipedia page on Victory, you can see a photo of her taken in 1901, where she is shown at the exact same angle as in this painting.
So, we have a captain, and we have a large ship - the natural conclusion is that it is his large ship. But, look at the man - he is young, and looks inexperienced, innocent and naive. Would you trust this man with the command of more than 100 guns and nearly a thousand people? I don't think I would! So, either he is captain of a far smaller ship - but none is shown - or he is working under someone's close supervision. Hence, he's captain of an Admiral's flagship, and the Admiral is keeping a close eye on his newest protegee.
The code in the story is a simple digraph Substitution Cipher. I originally wanted to use a Playfair Cipher, but unfortunately, in the real world, Playfair Ciphers were not developed until the 1850s. As for using the spelling "cypher" instead of the more common "cipher", that was the spelling the British Royal Navy used for their codes not only during the Napoleonic Wars, but up until World War II. As such, it was the spelling that James and Charlotte would most likely use themselves. Interestingly, the word "code" would not be used in the sense of "secret code" until quite late in the century, which made some of the dialogue rather difficult to write!
A pair of somewhat archaic terms are the use of "flirt" to mean "to flick open a fan", and "flurry" to mean "confuse and annoy". Both words were far too fantastic not to use.
Finally, so far as I can tell, there was no ship during the Napoleonic wars called HMS Reckless. However, "reckless" is a perfectly good English translation of the French word "téméraire" . . . the significance of which is left as an exercise to the reader.
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Charlotte and the Cypher
Historical FictionWhen Charlotte's husband presents her with an unexpected gift, she finds she has been presented with a neat intellectual puzzle - but what does it all mean? This story is a submission for the Spring 2013 Historical Fiction Smackdown (Round One). For...
