The murderer responded to the noise by springing upward and producing a thick wooden cudgel. He backed away from Timon, swinging the hard blond wood like a windmill in front of his chest.
Timon hesitated.
The murderer bobbed like a madman, no pattern or method in his movements. Timon stood as still as he could, waiting for the cudgel to swing forward. When it did, he was ready. He needed only a single step to his left to avoid being hit.
Alas, he did not reckon on the murderer’s sudden backswing. The thickest part of the wood clapped Timon’s knee, and Timon felt the kneecap jar loose. A rake of white-hot fire shot up his leg directly into his brain.
Seeing the damage he had done, the murderer flew forward with the confidence of a man with the upper hand. He thudded against Timon and both men flew backward all the way to Spaulding’s desk.
The desk broke apart, sending white pages sailing through the air around the two fallen men.
Timon sucked in a quick breath and stabbed at the man on top of him. The man howled. The blade had slid across his ear, nearly cutting it in half.
Timon kicked his attacker and freed himself enough to roll away. He rose on one elbow in time to see the cudgel flying toward his head. He held up his right forearm and deflected the missile, but a bone in his arm cracked loudly.
Timon rolled once more and sprang to his feet.
The murderer stood too, holding his bleeding ear. Timon could see his face now, just barely. He was a man of thirty years, with rugged features. He wore an unusual briarwood cross around his neck.
Timon took a single step forward, and to his surprise, the murderer jumped away. He landed at a nearby desk that had not been toppled.
It was Harrison’s desk, and the man began to bash it with his fists, mumbling a strange incantation.
The murder had clearly lost his mind. Timon moved easily toward him, but before he could lay hold of the man, the desk broke apart and a hidden panel was revealed. Worse: hidden within that panel was a vicious claymore.
The sword’s double-edged blade was four feet long; the grip more than a foot. At the far end of the grip lay a wheel pommel, and close to the blade was a guard with a downward slope. The weight of it alone was enough to cleave a man’s skull in two.
The murderer held the thing as if it were an extension of his own arm and raised it high above his head.
Timon jumped backward, twisting in the air, and landed with his profile to the killer. He hesitated only a moment before collapsing in a heap on the floor.
From his place on the cold stones, Timon could see the killer lower his claymore. He rested one of its cutting edges on the nearest desk. He glared at Timon, a mass of robe and hands and knees on the floor.
In the next instant a formless demon flew upward at the killer and landed, covering him; smothering him.
Timon had thrown Spaulding’s coat.
The claymore thrashed upward once more. The killer’s audible breathing seemed to help fling the robe away. He crouched and stared up at Timon.
Timon stood before him a changed man. His hair was in utter disarray about his head, a devil’s halo flecked with gray. The whites of his eyes seemed to glow in the darkness. Several blades depended from a belt around his waist. He wore expertly crafted leather breeches and expensive boots. There was blood on his upper right arm in two places, and one of the boots bore a deep gash.
The killer blinked.
Timon’s hand flew forward and the killer shrieked with pain. The claymore dropped to the floor as if it suddenly weighed five hundred pounds.
The killer stared at his right shoulder in disbelief. Timon’s knife was lodged there, up to the hilt. It was so clean and deep a thrust that not a drop of blood flowed from the wound.
The killer smiled, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he fainted onto the floor.
Timon stepped cautiously toward the body on the floor.
When he was close enough to smell the killer’s breath, the claymore somehow managed to appear in the air before Timon, hacking a cut all the way to the bone on Timon’s right forearm, just above the place where the cudgel had landed.
The killer was on his feet once more, still smiling. He had pulled the knife from his shoulder, and blood bubbled down his chest. He was holding the claymore in his left hand.
Timon nodded his appreciation of the killer’s cleverness and backed away, reaching for another knife.
The killer exploded with incoherent screaming. He surged forward like a mad bull. The claymore was suddenly in both his hands, raised high enough to catch a bit of moonlight.
It was the glint of a death blow.
Timon knew he had no time for finesse. He threw his second knife underhanded and directly at the killer’s middle.
The knife found the man’s side and blood spurted, but the claymore continued to fall.
Timon crashed backward, trying to turn sideways again, but was blocked by several of the unused desks.
The blade fell toward Timon’s face, and he could see it as if in some half-dreamed recollection.
This is how I die, he thought, now I remember.
With the blade only inches from Timon’s face, a sudden flash of lightning struck the claymore.
Momentarily blinded, falling backward, Timon heard the killer howl.
Timon grabbed the leg of the nearest desk and pulled himself under it in an effort to protect his head.
From that vantage point he was astonished to see, through gunpowder smoke, Marbury’s face.
The killer lay on the floor, his face turned away, groaning.
Standing over Timon, Marbury shook his head. “I thought the plan was,” he said to Timon impatiently, breathing heavily, lowering a musket, “that I would get in place first. I would be hidden in the shadows before you came in here. I would never have known you had come early at all except that Anne told me she saw you. What were you thinking?”
“I wanted to start early,” Timon admitted softly, looking away. “I could not bear the idea that I might fall asleep again.”
“No one blames you.”
“Is that Lively’s musket?” was all Timon could ask.
Marbury smiled. “Yes. A bit of excellent irony, would you agree?”
“After a fashion,” Timon said, struggling to sit up. “You shot the killer?”
“No. I shot the claymore. It was about to cleave your head in half. I fired at the blade to knock it sideways. If I had shot the killer, the blade would have continued to fall, and you would be dead.”
“I might have dodged the blow.”
“Yes.” Marbury offered his clearest possible skepticism. “It did seem that you were about to do that.”
The killer groaned again and rolled a bit.
Shifting his attention to the killer, Marbury announced loudly, “At last I will see the face of the monster! What manner of demon are you?”
Marbury produced a candle and set the empty musket down. He illuminated the wick of his taper, and a pool of white light spilled onto the killer’s face.
Marbury gasped, nearly choking. He took an involuntary step backward.
“What is it?” Timon whispered to Marbury. He peered at the face of the murderer. The man was a complete stranger to him.
Marbury continued to gape, struggling, trying to force his tongue to loosen and his lips to move.
Finally he turned to Timon, eyes wide.
“This is Mr. Harrison!” Marbury gasped in complete disbelief.
“What?” Timon took a moment to realize what he was being told. “The first translator who was murdered?”
“Yes!” Marbury nodded, turning back to stare at the killer. “This man is Thomas Harrison!”
56
Harrison struggled to sit up. “Deacon Marbury?”
“Mr. Harrison?” Marbury answered, wonder in every syllable.
“Would you be so good,” Harrison strained to say, his voice gravelly, “as to reload that musket and shoot this other man
. He is preventing me from completing God’s work.”
Timon was surprised by the sound of Harrison’s voice. It was cultured but drenched in a thick Scot’s accent, harsh to some ears. The sound of it was surely an irritant to men such as Lively and Spaulding. Timon found it full of vigor; more genuine than those of most of the men he had met in England.
“It—it cannot be you,” Marbury stammered.
“And yet,” Harrison sniffed, “it is.”
“But—I saw your dead body,” Marbury rasped. “I helped to bury you.”
“I know.” Harrison grinned, obviously delighted with himself despite bleeding from two wounds. “It was rather a good bit of deception on my part, that was.”
“How did you . . . ?” Marbury could not find the words to complete his question.
“Damn this pinprick,” Harrison said, wincing as he touched his side. He stared down, trying to decide if he should remove Timon’s knife. “It hurts, but you missed every single vital organ, Brother Timon. Your reputation is vastly overrated.”
“I had no intention of killing you,” Timon responded, reaching for another of his knives, watching Harrison’s hand as it felt around the wound in his side. “Surely you can understand that I wanted to interrogate you.”
“You wanted to prevent me from killing you,” Harrison corrected.
“That too.”
“Which I would have done except for aid from Deacon Marbury,” Harrison sighed, taunting Timon. “I have watched you from the shadows. I have learned something of your life. You are alleged to be some sort of great assassin. But you fought me like a little girl.”
“An assassin, Mr. Harrison,” Timon protested, “kills people. I was trying not to kill you. Two separate skills.”
“Bollocks,” Harrison muttered.
“How did you rise from the grave to commit these murders?” Marbury demanded, eyes still wide. “This is demonic work.”
“No!” Harrison twitched. His eyes flashed. “Never say that. I devised a perfect plan. Perfect because it was simple. Simplicity is the best rule. Demons had no part of it.”
“Your plan does not appear to be quite perfect,” Timon corrected, “or you would not be lying here, about to bleed to death.”
“Chance,” Harrison declared. “Hazard. Nothing more.”
“Possibly.” Timon gave Marbury a casual glance. “Shall we bind this man’s wounds and have him arrested, or shall we simply let him die?”
“Your threats mean nothing to me,” Harrison said at once.
Mabury, still amazed, could only say, “How?”
Harrison’s eyes danced wildly, then he sighed and slumped forward. “In fact, you cannot imagine how I have longed to tell someone what I have done. A man of my intellect must have a certain degree of public acclaim.”
“An actor needs an audience,” Timon said softly.
“Exactly. I have so much to tell, and no one to hear it.”
“Then by all means,” Timon said, the gentleness of his voice surprising everyone, “let us have your soliloquy.”
Harrison looked between Timon and Marbury several times, obviously trying to decide what to do.
“Please,” Marbury said simply.
“Where to begin?” Harrison bit his upper lip for a moment. “Several nights ago, when my mind was made up to take final steps in my holy work, I went to a certain street in Cambridge. I think you know the one. On it there is a public house to which you have both gone.”
“How would you know that?” Marbury whispered.
“I was told, it does not matter,” Harrison said with a dismissive wave of his hand.
He is the other agent, Timon thought. He is the man of whom the Pope’s men spoke.
“What matters,” Harrison continued, coughing, “is that I stood there for quite some time in an effort to select the perfect victim.”
“Victim?” Marbury’s brow furled.
“Hush,” Harrison admonished. “I saw him at last, a drunken man who staggered from the very public house I have just mentioned. I followed him to the darker end of the street. The air was quiet and the doorways were empty. I seized him from behind, choked the life out of him, and stuffed him into a potato sack. I then stole a wheelbarrow and hauled him here.”
“You murdered a stranger at random?” Marbury gasped.
“Not at random,” Harrison answered impatiently. “He had to be of an exact size and shape.”
“Yes.” Timon leaned against the nearest desk, holding his right forearm. “That victim had to be the same height and weight as Mr. Harrison.”
“Exactly.” Harrison suddenly took hold of the knife that was in his side and with a wrenching spasm pulled it out.
Timon produced one of his knives and was on the verge of throwing it when Harrison dropped the blade he had just removed. He collapsed back on the floor groaning.
“Plague, that hurts!” he snarled.
“Why did the victim have to be . . . ?” Marbury stopped in midthought. “You brought him back here. You mutilated his face so that no one could recognize it.”
“And everyone would think it was me.” Harrison nodded, completing Marbury’s thought. “I gave him my clothes to wear. I even let him have my briarwood cross. That was a bit of a struggle in the mind. My mother gave me that cross when I was small.”
“You seem to be wearing it now,” Timon pointed out.
“I dug up my own grave,” Harrison responded cheerfully, “and got it back.”
“Well,” Timon said, his knife still in his fingertips, “it was a perfect plan. No one would ever suspect that the first victim was actually the murderer.”
“Exactly!” Harrison held his side. “After that, I could kill all the translators here in complete anonymity, one by one. Kill them as slowly or as quickly as I wanted.”
How could Harrison possibly be the other agent of the Pope’s men? Timon asked himself. How would he know them?
“But now,” Timon said softly, “you have been apprehended. You will shortly bleed to death. You are already weakening. You may as well tell us everything before you die.”
“Why would Mr. Harrison want to kill the translators,” Marbury asked Timon, “except that he is insane? He has lost his senses. Noble minds can be overthrown by excess taxation. Perhaps his work here was too much for his capacity.”
“My faculties have never been keener!” Harrison seemed to be insulted by Marbury’s contention. “I say I have holy work to do. Despite what Brother Timon says, I may yet have life enough to finish it.”
“No.” Marbury shivered. “No one but a madman would carve a face as you did. Horrible.”
“Delightful,” Harrison corrected, “and necessary. As I have said of course, I did it so that no one could recognize the face; everyone would assume that I was the dead man. As importantly: the sight of such a grotesque mutilation would terrify the translators and distract them from their work. And finally, with every slice I uttered a certain curse for King James. Those were also a gift from my mother: curses for his life, his work, his reign, his health, his family.”
“But James is your kinsman,” Marbury protested. “He is the man who secured your position here with the translators!”
Harrison managed to raise himself up again, red as a sunset in May, and spit on the floor. His face, his voice, his entire demeanor, had shifted. He did, then, appear to be mad, as Marbury had suggested. Clenched fists; halting, gasping breath; a head palsied and shaking, Harrison forced human language from his throat.
“James is Satan,” he said at last.
He said it with such rage, such venom, and such utter conviction that both Marbury and Timon were struck dumb.
“Perhaps if I explain it, you will help me,” Harrison gasped, exhausted from his bile. “You will aid me in completing my task. You will see the justice of my plan.”
Timon saw there was no need for the dagger at his fingertips and relaxed. A kind of pity welled up in his belly.
“
I was the child of a large Highland clan when James was King of Scotland. My family lived in a valley called God’s Garden, because Eden was all around us. Do you know the words of Jesus: ‘The kingdom of God is on this earth, but no one sees it’?”
“From the Gospel of Thomas,” Timon reminded Marbury.
“Yes!” Harrison rejoiced. “I hoped you might know the lines.”
“Your clan knew James’s family,” Marbury began.
“No. My clan were all believers of an ancient Way. My mother taught me to know the peace and power of the growing wood. The very earth around us had roots. Within a mile of my home there were a hundred pure water springs, and giant oaks, and scarlet heps. I knew that Nature laid her fullness before me on each bush and every bough. A hundred times or more I heard my father say, ‘Here we do not feel the penalty of Adam. Here we learn everything from the Great Mother. This life finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.’”
“But something happened to your family,” Timon said softly, “that ruined Eden.”
“We human beings are always losing Eden,” Harrison sighed with overwhelming sadness. “Over and over again the perfection slips away.”
“What happened?” Marbury asked in hushed tones.
“When I was twelve, James began his research concerning witches. He knew our clan, and he used our knowledge. That resulted in his book, Demonology. When it was done, he proclaimed that our family’s ways were a perversion of any true religion. He declared us a witches’ coven. Do you know anything of the Berwick trials?”
The Berwick trials. Timon shivered at their mention.
“Fifteen years ago,” Marbury said hesitantly, “Scotland—St. Andrew’s Church—”
“Seventy people were eventually tried. Most of them were from my clan. The first case convicted my blood relatives of using witchcraft to make a storm to sink a ship.”
Marbury gasped. “A ship on which James and Anne of Denmark were traveling. He was bringing his new bride home.”
“You have heard the story,” Harrison sighed.
The King James Conspiracy Page 28