When he recovered, Timon had vanished.
The intruder turned in wild circles, his lungs blasting out involuntary noises. He squinted desperately, but his pistol could find no target. Before he could realize what was happening, Timon appeared at his back. A razor’s edge slid along the man’s gullet, just enough to draw a thin line of blood.
The man froze and lowered his gun.
“Good,” Timon told him soothingly. “Nothing sudden, that’s the safe path when a man’s got a razor at your throat.”
The man’s breathing was like a blacksmith’s bellows.
“Now would you mind moving slowly toward Harrison’s chair, just there?” Timon continued. “I believe you know the one. He was seated there when you murdered him and destroyed his face.”
Still, the man did not move.
“I’m going to ask you some questions,” Timon insisted, muscling the man forward. “It may take awhile. You want to sit down.”
The man resisted, and Timon was about to slice deeper into the throat.
Behind them there was an explosion at the door of the Great Hall. A man holding a lantern plunged into the room.
“What is this noise?” the voice demanded, top volume. “Do not move. I have a musket!”
His attention momentarily drawn away, Timon lowered his knife. The intruder seized the opportunity, sank to his knees, and quickly slithered away. Too late, Timon lurched forward to grab him, but missed. Behind him, the man at the door called out.
“You there, I see you! Stand!”
The intruder slid farther into the shadows and rolled away. Before Timon could take a single step in pursuit he heard the unmistakable sound of a musket cocking.
“Do not move again,” the man at the door called, “or I shall dispatch my weapon!”
Timon thought he recognized the voice; confirmed his guess as the man drew near and the candlelight revealed his face.
“Mr. Lively.” Timon shook his head slowly, hiding his knife. “Excellent work. You have just allowed Mr. Harrison’s murderer to escape.”
9
Lively slowly lowered his rusted musket. His chapped lips fell open. He seemed to be trying to form words. Timon glared with all the revulsion he could muster, allowing his accusation to sink into Lively’s brain.
“Murderer,” Lively finally managed to sputter. “Escaped?”
“In fact, I had him well in hand,” Timon sighed tensely. “Did you not see the man run from me?”
“I did see someone—”
“But the notion of firing your hopeless weapon at him seemed inappropriate?” Timon folded his arms. “You thought it a better plan to threaten an old monk, a young woman’s tutor? It is an interesting choice.”
“No,” Lively began.
“If you will refrain from shooting me, I will follow after the killer at once.”
Without further pronouncement, Timon turned to dart after the killer.
“I do not think it wise to run from me,” Lively shouted. “Stand as you are until I can determine what has happened.”
Timon sighed, looked back, and found that the yawning barrel was only several feet from his chest.
“I have told you what happened.” Timon shook his head in disbelief. “What has happened is that you have let Harrison’s killer escape. I can still catch him if you will—”
“I will pull this trigger if you move another inch!” Lively insisted.
Timon closed his eyes, mustering patience. “Have you ever shot a man, sir? At this distance, a gun like yours makes a hole in a man larger than a melon. Bits of bone and gristle fly in every direction. One finds these tidbits on the clothes and even in the hair for days afterward.”
“I often shoot wild boar,” Lively said unflinchingly.
In a blur Timon’s hand flew out of the darkness. He grabbed the barrel of Lively’s musket and pushed it once. The stock struck Lively savagely in the stomach. Lively staggered backward, losing his grip on the musket. Timon pulled hard, dislodging the weapon from its owner.
Lively regained his balance just in time to see Timon hold the musket up by its barrel as if it were a dead rat. Then the gun was tossed onto the empty desk next to Harrison’s.
In three quick steps, Timon was beside Lively, a dagger in his hand. Lively found the point of the blade under his jawbone. He barely understood what had happened.
“You are, among the scholars who work in this hall,” Timon whispered, “the chief suspect in Harrison’s murder. Marbury has told me as much. He will want to know what has happened here—that the killer has escaped; that you helped him. I know you are not the murderer, but it would appear that you are in league with him. Now, come with me. We must disturb the deacon at once.”
Lively closed his eyes and offered up a sigh to creak the rafters. “If I do not, do you think you will kill me? Because if I am not dead, I will only pick up my musket again.”
“I have never shot a wild boar,” Timon offered reasonably, “but I have slit the gullet of many a man like you—without regret, remorse, or recrimination.”
To Timon’s surprise, his words did not seem to alarm Lively.
“You have no idea what goes on within these walls.” Lively’s posture, demeanor, even the sound of his voice had changed. “Murder means nothing—even my own. We work in mysteries here that are known to fewer than twenty men in the world. The loss of any one scholar is absolutely inconsequential compared to the magnitude of the secret things we do as a group. Would you not like to know those secrets? Would it not be wise, before you kill me, to know the truth? If, as you say, the man who just fled this chamber was the murderer, you might wish to know his true motives in that matter.”
The way Lively’s voice had changed gave Timon pause. He was no longer the effete and offended scholar. He was a man who might know something important. That possibility kept Timon from dispatching the man and running after the murderer—for the moment.
“I have found,” Timon said slowly, “that truth, in its purest form, does not exist in England.”
“Then perhaps you should be seated at my desk,” Lively said, having completely gathered his wits, “as I am about to offer you a purity of truth that will silence your impudence once and for all.” Lively was the sword arm of God. That power was clear in his voice.
Timon hesitated, an event so rare that it momentarily confused his senses. He found himself baffled by Lively’s demeanor. Other men might be quivering with fear. Lively was offering forbidden information.
“You will allow me to see your work?” Timon asked plainly.
“No,” Lively said, his stare undiminished. “I will reveal to you a greater secret.”
Timon’s blade vanished and he clasped his hands in front of his chest. “Why?”
“Because when you know this truth,” Lively said softly, “you will leave us to our work and never come back. That is what I want you to do, and I can accomplish it by sharing with you only a few of the terrifying facts at my disposal.”
Timon understood the ploy. Show any ordinary monk some bit of secret information about the Church, and that monk would run, terrified, back to his abbey. Timon had, of course, seen so many hidden, illegal instructions from so many men of the Church that he was entirely immune to such a ploy.
“Allow me.” Lively moved toward his desk in a stately, foolish fashion, as if he were headed for coronation.
Timon watched.
“Please.” Lively indicated his own chair, a mask of solemnity pasted across his face.
Timon allowed himself the whisper of a smile. He deliberately took louder, slower steps than his usual gait. Gray stone walls amplified the insult.
If Lively understood Timon’s intent, he did not show it. Instead, he lit three thick candles on his desk. Circles of dismal light surrounded the papers there.
Timon sighed as he lifted himself into the tall, straight-backed scholar’s chair. An embroidered pillow was on the seat.
“What you are about
to see,” Lively rasped, “is known only to a handful of scholars in the world. I have no fear that you will reveal it, just as I have no need to hear you swear an oath. This single, ancient page reveals a hidden truth so completely unbelievable that you would be the object of wild ridicule if you mentioned it and arrested if you insisted upon it.”
“Will you be making a very long speech, Mr. Lively?” Timon interrupted again. “I might still be able to follow the murderer’s trail if—”
“Silence!” Lively blasted.
Without further ado, and with much heavy breathing, Lively produced a key and unlocked the drawer in his desk. He withdrew a sheaf of papers. They were clearly very old, greatly damaged; nearly transparent.
He placed a single tattered page before Timon, laying it on the desk with a delicacy Timon would not have thought possible from Lively.
“You can read Hebrew, one imagines?” Lively sniffed.
“I can.” Timon allowed his smile to grow indulgently.
“Then read here.” Lively’s index finger fell to a single line in the middle of the page.
Timon moved a candle closer, squinted at the line. It was difficult to read. The page was torn and scarred.
“Read it aloud, would you mind?” Lively said plainly.
Timon thought he understood: Lively was testing his Hebrew.
“Very well.” Timon sighed and focused on the letters. “Let me see. It says, ‘And when eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the child, his name was called Yshua, which was so named of the angel before he was conceived in the womb.’”
It only took Timon another second to recognize the text—or most of it. “This is the Gospel of St. Luke, chapter two, verse twenty-one. I have only read it in Greek”
“This is, we believe, the original text.” Lively’s voice quavered. “It was written in the same century as Our Lord died.”
“But,” Timon began, slowly realizing Lively’s awe, “there is a very significant difference between this and all other versions of Luke I know.”
“Exactly,” Lively whispered desperately, afraid of the sound of his own voice.
“The name Yshua,” Timon heard himself saying, temples pounding. “The Hebrew form of Joshua. Which means—it cannot be.”
“The text is correct.” Lively’s voice was a wisp of smoke.
“This is a passage about the circumcision of Our Lord. His name—”
“Christ’s name,” Lively stammered, swallowing, “was not Jesus.”
Timon sat frozen for a moment, not allowing the revelation to sink in. The hall seemed colder and more hollow than it had moments before.
“No.” Timon finally slid the page away from him, sneering. “This is an obvious forgery.”
Lively’s answer was strained. “It has been authenticated to the satisfaction of every scholar here.”
Timon quickly found the weight of those words sinking into his heart. All eight Cambridge scholars had agreed that the document was genuine. Eight men who could not agree on the best way to dip a quill had confirmed their belief in that page.
“Where did you get this?” Timon demanded, tapping the page with his index finger. “Why has no one else seen this?”
Lively looked about, pulled a chair from across the aisle toward him, and collapsed into the seat, weary beyond comprehension. He absently laid his hand upon the musket. It was still cocked.
“A Catholic archivist named Padget stole it from Rome many years ago. He had defected from his Church and was hiding in Scotland when James was king there.” Lively avoided Timon’s stare. “This man Padget sold it to James. That was the sort of man he was. Then he disappeared, perhaps to London. This was the first document that provoked our King to investigate certain . . . mysteries of our faith. This investigation eventually inspired him to commission the new translation. James is a man in search of answers. God help us all.”
Timon studied Lively’s face. The man seemed on the verge of collapse. This single Gospel, Timon reasoned, unsupported by any other evidence, would not be sufficient to disturb Lively so deeply. The conclusion was obvious.
“You have other such secret documents.” Timon folded his arms across his chest.
Lively closed his eyes, nodding once. “Padget stole three, but eventually fifty-seven such secret texts were acquired by our King. I am in possession of them all.”
In the silence that followed, Timon fancied he could actually hear Lively’s heart thumping inside the bars of his chest. He wondered how much more agitated Lively would be if he knew that Timon was no stranger to the name Padget. That was a secret worth keeping.
“And over the course of these few months since the beginning of your work in this hall,” Timon said, deliberately steadying his voice, “you have compared these ancient texts to a more current Bible—the Bishops’ or the Geneva.”
“Yes.” Lively nodded, eyes wild. “Both.”
“And you have discovered other such . . . anomalies?” Timon had to hold his breath to keep from exhaling too harshly.
“Yes, but how can it be?” Lively shuddered. “The Bible was written by God! It is infallible!”
“Yes.”
“Then how,” Lively croaked, barely audibly, “can there be over five thousand errors in translation?”
The cold in the hall seemed to press Timon’s bones. “Five thousand?”
“More. We’ve stopped counting. Many date to the first Council of Nicaea.”
Timon struggled to comprehend the information, hoping that his discomfort would not show in the dim light. Slowly, as he began to grasp the enormity of what Lively was trying to tell him, he fought a dull sensation of being dropped into a bottomless hole. In fifteen hundred years of the Christian Church, no human being had even considered questioning the veritas of its Bible. Yet here was proof that somewhere between the life of Christ and the reign of King James, that Bible had been changed—an unspeakable heresy.
If what Lively was saying contained even the whisper of truth, it would stagger the foundations of their religion. Small wonder that the Pope wanted to see what these men in England were doing. Conclusions were self-evident. If the Word of God could contain mistakes, what good were any other words? Where was there an atom of trust or faith in the world? What pope or king could hope to maintain any semblance of authority?
“Well.” Timon drew in a long breath. “If you thought, Mr. Lively, that I might panic at this discovery, it was a well-founded attempt. No one I know would believe me if I repeated this information. Nearly any other man in Christendom would fly from this hall in terror. If my blood had not already been washed cold, if my heart had not been scrubbed empty, I too might have fled.”
Lively recoiled, eyes wide. He was clearly stunned that his scheme had not produced the desired terror.
Timon was regaining his equilibrium. “The advantage of shedding one’s soul, you see, is that no fear is of any consequence. The meaning of everything evaporates. All events are the same.”
But here was information worth knowing, Timon thought, and terror worth exploring. The absolute necessity of knowing the truth of this matter was suddenly more vital, all at once, than water or air. Though Timon was uncertain of the exact reasons, he had heard in Lively’s words the faint stirring of wings, the sound of his salvation. It was the first such sensation he had known in over twenty years.
“I must see them all,” Timon buzzed.
“What?” Lively’s head snapped back.
“I must see the other documents. All of them.”
“N-no!” Lively’s momentary incoherence betrayed a stark astonishment. “You cannot . . . I would never allow . . . God in heaven, have you not heard what I was saying?”
“I must have access to the ancient Greek and Hebrew texts which you possess,” Timon whispered, his wits nearly restored. “I must see these errors for myself.”
“No, I say!” Lively stood, his hand accidentally disturbing the musket on the desk.
T
he musket clattered to the floor, miraculously unfired.
In the silence that followed, both men could clearly hear a rustling in a far corner of the hall. It sounded very much as if someone had been frightened by the sound of the musket.
Lively froze.
Timon moved his finger to his lips. “The assassin.”
“He is still here?” Lively’s eyes darted everywhere.
“Shh,” Timon insisted. “He may well be.”
Timon crouched low to the floor, one knee on the cold stone. He took out his knife, inching forward, straining for any visual evidence of the killer.
Why is the man still here? Timon wondered. Is he so bent on killing that he will not escape?
In a far corner of the room, a scraping sound rang out. It sent Lively ducking under his own desk.
Timon peered through the forest of desk legs and saw a flash of movement caught by a sliver of candlelight. Gauging where the man might be, he rolled slightly in that direction on the icy floor.
Willing his movements to be silent, Timon eased himself in the direction of the corner where the killer hid. Once again Timon concentrated on all five senses, crawling slowly, slowly toward the killer. A sip of breath, a smell of rum, a feather of air, all betrayed the villain.
Suddenly a short gasp from Lively, the involuntary noise of dread, drew the killer’s attention. Timon could make out gray motion in a blur of black air.
The man was headed toward Lively.
Timon drew himself into a crouching readiness; judged the distance between his place and Lively’s.
He was about to pounce when Lively suddenly shot from his hiding place and seized the musket on the floor.
“Ha!” he exploded triumphantly, standing upright. “I have the musket! Show yourself!”
Without hesitation, a deafening blast and a flash of powder savaged the air. Smoke rose from the killer’s pistol. Lively grunted and fell backward, crumpling onto the floor. Even by the dim illumination of the candles, Timon could see blood beginning to spot Lively’s chest.
The killer was on the move, racing toward Lively’s desk. Timon seized the legs of the tall chair closest to him. When he was certain that the killer was near, he burst upward, raising the chair with him.
The King James Conspiracy Page 5