Letters from the Tower
Unlocking the musical ciphers of a queen's secret messages, smuggled from her prison cell to her last loyalists.
This record consists of twelve small slips of paper, originally hidden inside the lining of a silk doublet. They are the final correspondences of a queen in exile, written using a 'substitution cipher' involving musical notes. The description delves into the political desperation of the messages—appeals for foreign intervention and coded instructions to loyalists in the capital. Unlike formal state papers, these letters are brief and urgent, showing signs of being burned at the corners to prevent discovery. They provide a deeply personal look at the vulnerability of power, capturing the moment when a sovereign becomes a fugitive. Our digital restoration has finally cracked the cipher, revealing a plot that could have rewritten the history of the European succession.