The King James Conspiracy

by Phillip DePoy

  Timon sighed, set down his candle, and bent to take hold of Andrews’s ankles. “You are correct, of course. My mind is a fog. Let us take this body to the cellar. And let us also secure the secret door down there once and for all.”

  Marbury nodded. He had other ideas about the tunnel, but held them in abeyance until a more opportune moment.

  He helped Timon lift the corpse of Roger Andrews from its place on the floor. Grunting and knocking into desks in the dim light, they made their way to the cellar door.

  “Wait,” Timon said once the door was open.

  He rested Andrews’s feet on the top stair and disappeared into the black cave. An instant later, flickering light washed the walls of the stairway, and Timon reappeared.

  Without a word he lifted the dead body’s feet once more and backed down the stairs. Marbury, holding the body by the arms, lurched after him.

  Once in the cellar, they laid the body of Roger Andrews on the floor beneath the table where Lively’s corpse rested. Timon then moved to the storage bins that hid the secret door.

  “Ah!” His syllable stabbed the air; he pointed to the floor.

  “You detect something.” Marbury stared at the place where Timon pointed.

  “This is fresh.” Timon tapped his toe near a pattern in the dust and dirt on the cellar floor. “This is different than before. The killer did enter the hall this way. We must find nails and hammers.”

  Marbury sighed. “In the first place, let us reiterate the need for sleep. In the second, I find your suggestion a bit like closing a stable door after the horse has gone. And finally, if we know the killer’s preferred method of entry into this hall, that gives us an advantage we might not want to eliminate by blocking his way, if you understand—”

  “What is the matter with me?” Timon’s face betrayed genuine confusion. “I am not myself. You are exactly correct in your thinking. We may safely assume that the killer will come through the passage when he tries to kill again. This is an enormous tactical advantage. Why am I—my God. I do need sleep.”

  “As do I,” Marbury said gently. “Shall we convene in the morning after sleep knits up our raveled sleeve of care? Over a good hearty breakfast in my kitchen?”

  “That—quite suddenly—sounds like heaven. Do you know what a fine cook Anne is?”

  “Yes.” Marbury turned clumsily to trudge up the stairs.

  As Timon moved to follow, he brushed the dead body of Roger Andrews, and the lifeless arm flinched, falling onto Timon’s foot. The corpse’s hand clutched at his ankle. Marbury saw it.

  “There’s a sign,” Timon mumbled.

  “A sign?”

  “The dead are summoning me. Perhaps I am soon to join the men I have killed.”

  48

  The next morning came late for Timon, nearly six o’clock. The sun was beginning to rise outside, though his room was still pitch.

  He lit the candle next to his bed and was startled to see a bundle wrapped in an ice-white cloth just inside his door. He could detect the aroma of warm bread. His muscles could barely keep pace with his eagerness as he scrambled for the prize.

  To his delight, when he had unwrapped the package, he discovered an entire loaf of bread, a corked jug half the size of his head—and something else. Tucked neatly into another cloth wrapping were page after page of ancient Greek—the hidden texts that Anne had kept in her room. At last he would be able to read them!

  What would prompt Anne to deliver such a gift eluded Timon, but he sprang back to his bed as delighted as he could ever remember being. He sat upright on his planks, back against the wall, with the bundle in his lap. He uncorked the jug and drank heartily, to his surprise and delight, of good red wine. He tore nearly half the loaf and stuffed it into his mouth.

  As he chewed, he turned to the top page in the stack of papers, held them closer to the candle, and read.

  There are powers which contend against man, not wishing him to be saved in order that they may feed. These powers do not see those who are clothed in the Perfect Light and consequently are not able to detain them.

  Those lines were attributed to the apostle Philip. Timon set the page aside. Unable to content himself with slow and careful study of each page, he longed to take them all in at once, devour them as if they were his loaf of bread. He turned to the final page in the stack and his eyes fell upon the last words there.

  He who would know our great Power will become invisible. His soul will be released from punishment.

  Timon’s fingers began to tremble. He laid aside the bread and set the jug of wine on the floor, holding his breath. He was suddenly seized by a feeling he had not known for thirty years or more. He felt his faith might save his life, and his soul.

  He held the bundle of pages tightly, as if he might absorb nourishment simply by touching the letters written there.

  Why did my eyes fall upon these particular lines? he asked himself feverishly. And why this moment for me?

  Before he knew it, he was on his knees, hands clasped so tightly that they began to ache. How, exactly, to pray? Was there, indeed, a power so perfect that it could make him invisible, that it could release him from punishment? He had once believed so.

  Eyes closed, his mind was suddenly assaulted by strange images.

  There, beside the candle in his room, stood a boy of seven years, smelling sweet hay as he hitched two horses to a carriage. Beside him stood the man who was waiting for the carriage, a kind man—in many ways the only father Timon had ever known. He smiled and showed the young boy a silver dagger, small, just his size. It was a gift—and it came with instruction.

  Suddenly, as Timon knelt praying, another vision attacked. Timon was a young man, perhaps seventeen, crouching low with his back against a wooden post. He was surrounded by half a dozen armed men, and his instructor/father lay dead on the floor beside him. The sight of blood pouring from his beloved teacher so enraged the seventeen-year-old Timon that his own blood became molten iron. Nothing within reach would survive his rage. Walls, posts, arms, eyes, great fat bellies—all tore open, savaged by Timon’s impossible blade. When everything around him was dead, Timon collapsed into a heap beside his dead comrade and died himself.

  The flood of memories continued. True to his faith, Timon’s mind insisted on resurrection. In the memory that followed his collapse, he awoke in a monastery, in a large, clean room filled with books.

  Rose light pouring in through the windows like miraculous water. Outside there were grapevines, sheep grazing, a sky wild with high, white clouds in the morning air.

  Unannounced, a dark figure entered, carrying a tray, and said, “Do not be afraid. I bound your wounds. We took you in according to your teacher’s wishes.”

  The tray was laden. There was an entire loaf of bread filled with snipped rosemary, also fresh water, soft cheese, barley-scented broth, and grapes dark as midnight.

  Timon roused himself from the vision, rubbing his eyes and taking in a deep breath. What could have prompted such a flood of images from his past?

  He stood, steadied himself with his hand against the wall, and reached for the rest of the bread before he realized the obvious similarity between the bundle Anne had left him and the tray of food delivered by the young monk so many years before.

  God often works in circles, Timon thought to himself as he took a delicate bite of bread. And that work pays no attention to time. An abbey room from so long ago is, indeed, this same room in which I now stand.

  He reached for the jug on the floor beside him.

  Before he quite realized what he was doing, he had swallowed the bread and taken a sip of wine, crossing himself. The Eucharist had been completed. All the blood in his veins had been replaced by white light.

  He stood, gathered up the pages of manuscript as if they were a delicate child, wrapped them in their pale cloth, and headed toward the door of his cell.

  49

  Moments later, clattering into the small kitchen in the Deaconage, Timo
n was surprised to find Marbury seated at the table there. It was obvious from his expression that something quite serious occupied his mind.

  He had changed clothes, dressed in his clerical garb: black robe over black britches, high white collar, skullcap—a stern costume. He sat with his hands folded, an empty plate in front of him, a crumpled white napkin to one side. He was a composition of immaculate decorum.

  Timon, on the other hand, was a wreck. His hair was wild, eyes red, robe disheveled. He was clutching loose, random papers to his breast as if they were armor.

  “Good!” Marbury said sternly as Timon walked into the room. “I see you have been reading.”

  “Yes,” Timon answered, making his way to the table. “Anne left me these most delightful—”

  “Take a seat.”

  Timon set all the pages down on the table and began to arrange them into a somewhat neater bundle. When he saw the look in Marbury’s eyes, he stopped fussing with the pages. “What has happened? You are discomforted.”

  “I was arrested yesterday by Lancelot Andrews. He thought I was Pietro Delasander. I had to fight my way out. I came home to find another murder has happened while the man who is supposed to prevent them was, as I learn, asleep in this kitchen! Of course I am discomforted!”

  “But—,” Timon began, staring down at the papers on the table.

  “I have not told you the worst of it,” Marbury interrupted. “Strange news flies up and down the streets of Cambridge, even this early in the morning.”

  “People have heard of the murders,” Timon guessed, taking a seat.

  “No.” Marbury’s lips thinned and his eyes darted about for a moment. “The reason Roger Andrews was working so feverishly last night when he was murdered is that he, and all the other translators, have been informed that His Holiness Pope Clement VIII has condemned the King James Bible translation as heresy; the devil’s work, in fact.”

  “I—this was to be expected,” Timon said slowly. “Surely you knew that the Pope—”

  “The rumors have quoted passages from the new translation, from work done here in Cambridge—word for word. Whole pages from Harrison, Lively, Chaderton, have been exactly duplicated. Everyone is talking. The remaining translators have turned upon one other—each suspecting the other of betrayal. There is even talk, once again, of demonic intervention. They have decided to halt their work indefinitely.”

  “Oh,” Timon whispered.

  “That was the reason Chaderton was in the hall last night,” Marbury rasped. “He not only suspected Andrews of the murders, but of betraying the work. He suspected that Andrews had revealed our work to Rome. But I believe that you know differently.”

  Timon’s mind raced. He had only given his transcription to the Pope’s men two nights ago. There had not been time to get those pages to Rome, let alone time for a response and a campaign of rumors to begin. This was local work. The Unholy Trio, the men in the back room of the pub, had taken it upon themselves. Perhaps Venitelli had authorized some quick venom that would spread about the streets of Cambridge even as the actual translation was on its way to Clement. It was, he found himself admitting, a clever ploy. It had done its damage. The work on James’s new Bible had come to a halt.

  Marbury leaned forward with a look of such rage upon his face that Timon knew what he would say next.

  “I have surmised that the only way the Pope could know the work of these men in such detail,” Marbury began, his words carefully controlled, “is if someone, some Catholic spy, had come into our midst and somehow memorized large portions of the work and later written it all down for the Pope to see. How would a thing such as that be accomplished? I wonder.”

  Marbury’s eyes pierced Timon’s brain, and Timon looked away. He tried to recall everything he had said to Anne the night before, what he had given away. She had obviously told her father of his allegiance to Clement.

  Timon laid his hands on the pages and tried, for an instant, to reconcile the revelation he had experienced in his room, his waking Eucharist, with his current dilemma.

  A year ago, he thought to himself, I would not have hesitated to kill Marbury simply because he knew my true mission here. But today I cannot consider killing him, and I have altered my mission.

  Decisions collided, each wrestling the other, until Timon found, once more, that his hands were shaking and his mouth was dry as ancient paper.

  Marbury seemed to sense that something had changed in Timon’s demeanor. It provoked a choice in Marbury’s muscles, if not his mind: a response born of fear.

  Marbury stood so suddenly that his chair flew backward and the table lurched forward into Timon’s ribs. The blade in Marbury’s hand was small, but he held it by the tip, ready to throw it.

  Timon took in Marbury’s face, the hand that held the blade, the arm that trembled, ready to strike. He could see that Marbury was perfectly prepared. If he threw his knife, it would hit its mark.

  Timon sucked in a sudden, loud breath and shot from his chair. As he did, the kitchen table flew upward and into Marbury’s arm with such force that it knocked the knife out of Marbury’s hand and drove him several steps backward.

  Timon leapt over the still-moving table and landed within inches of Marbury. His hand shot into his robe. Marbury flinched backward. Timon grabbed a fistful of Marbury’s clerical garb and shuttled Marbury farther backward, all the way to the wall. With deadly certainty his hand snapped out of his robe once more.

  Instead of a knife, he held, high above Marbury’s head, a strange round instrument, some Inquisition torture device.

  Marbury kicked. Timon slammed him into the wall once more and shouted, “This is your answer!” Timon held the odd object directly in front of Marbury’s eyes. “This is to blame! This tool and my brain.”

  Marbury’s eyes focused on the instrument Timon held in his hand, a small wooden wheel bearing strange symbols and numbers.

  “This is my memory wheel, my own invention. With it, no one on earth has greater powers of memory than I do. It is my telum secretus.”

  “Your secret weapon,” Marbury said, swallowing hard, “is your memory?”

  “Listen.” Timon took a single step backward and released Marbury’s garment. “You believed that the trio of men in the public house in Cambridge were Anglicans who found me in order to help you catch a murderer.”

  Marbury exhaled, struggling to follow Timon’s words.

  “They are, you must now understand, Catholic agents who hired me to come to Cambridge and memorize as much of the Bible as I could. With the help of this wheel I wrote it down for them so that they could show it to the Pope. I have learned that the murderer we seek is also their agent. I have been instructed to cease my efforts to find or stop him. I am to allow him to finish his work, to kill everyone here. I have even been encouraged to help him. I completed part of this assignment the other night when I delivered to those men, in writing, everything I have memorized thus far. That was the morning I came back to find you and Anne in my room. Clearly the Pope has not yet seen any of the Bible. The Pope’s men here in Cambridge have spread these rumors to cause chaos among the translators. And the gambit seems to have been effective.”

  Timon carefully placed the memory wheel back into its hidden pocket and brushed a thick curl of gray and black hair away from his forehead.

  “Why are you telling me this?” Marbury said hesitantly. “Why am I still alive?”

  Timon gave Marbury a quick, irritated glance. “I am, it would appear, done with the Catholic Church. I have resigned. I wish to follow the dictates of my own heart.”

  “And those are?” Marbury steadied himself against the wall, still breathing heavily.

  Timon held up three fingers and counted them off as he answered Marbury’s question. “Stop the killer; renew the translation; reveal the Truth.”

  “You are going to catch the murderer.”

  “I am.”

  “And you would see to it that King James’s Bible is�
��”

  “My best hope,” Timon interrupted, his syllables clipped, “is that this Bible will be the first genuine book of its kind in the history of our religion. It will tell the story of our Lord from all points of view. It will give voice to the men and women who knew Him. It will emphasize the astonishing message that the true holy work of Christ begins and ends in love. Ours is the only religion on the globe that contains such a wondrous idea. I do not believe that I exaggerate when I say that every soul on earth is at stake.”

  Marbury glared at Timon’s face. “When converts first begin to sing, they are lost in wonder. What has brought about all this—what has newly baptized your—” Marbury struggled and failed to complete his question.

  “It is possible,” Timon whispered, afraid to look at Marbury, “that the Holy Spirit is making Itself known, even now, in this kitchen.”

  50

  Before either man could comment further, Anne charged into the room. She came to a halt, staring at the overturned table, the scattered papers, and the bare blade beyond. She had wrapped herself in an exquisitely quilted blue robe. It covered her from neck to toe. Her hair was down but tamed by a single clasp at the back of her neck. Her cheeks were flushed and her breathing was labored.

  “Your father enjoys challenging me,” Timon said. “He drew his knife, that one on the floor there. I toppled the table. But it was in sport. All is well.”

  He went to the table and took hold of the rough wood, standing it aright.

  “You have been fighting with each other?” Anne asked softly, eyes wide.

  Before either man could respond, a cry arose outside.

  “Deacon Marbury!” a shrill voice demanded. “Hello, the Deaconage! Are you there?”

  Timon and Marbury exchanged looks.

  “That is why I am here,” Anne said quickly, heading for the door of the kitchen. “I heard a strange voice calling. I wonder that you did not. It was coming from the stables, but now it appears to be just outside our door.”