“I only—”
“Hush,” Chaderton commanded. “I must think for a moment.”
Several large crows sat in the bare hazel that stood on the other side of the path from the Great Hall’s wall. They appeared to be listening. Timon indulged Chaderton and remained silent, attempting to stare down the black birds.
“You believe that there is something about our translation, our work here, that provokes these murders.” Chaderton’s eyes were narrow, his breathing shallow. “You wonder if a Protestant might have reason to object so vehemently that he would be driven to madness. Such a man would perform Satan’s task.”
“Mine is a much larger question,” Timon snapped back. His eyes bore into Chaderton’s. “I wonder if a conspiracy of lies has shrouded our Bible since its origin. Only last night did Lively show me evidence of this grand deceit.”
That should pop his eyes, Timon thought.
Chaderton, however, smiled and took in a long, slow breath. “Well, Brother Timon,” he answered at length, “it would appear that we have much to discuss.”
The cold wind picked up. Timon barely noticed. Chaderton knew something. It was written on his face.
“We must not speak here,” Chaderton whispered. “Anyone could be listening. What we have to discuss is of the utmost secrecy. I would never consider sharing certain information with you unless you had already begun to suspect. What we are about to explore is of paramount relevance to the recent savage events in this hall, these murders.”
“Where—”
“If you are not too cold,” Chaderton suggested, “we ought to stay out of doors, someplace where we can see for ourselves that no one is about.”
“I am indifferent to the weather. And you are warmly dressed.”
“Still,” Chaderton sighed, “I wouldn’t mind if we found a place out of this wind.”
“Can you suggest such a spot?” Timon asked patiently.
Without another word Chaderton strode toward the walls of an inner courtyard garden. Timon followed.
“When it is convenient,” Timon said, catching up with Chaderton, “you might show me the piece of paper you picked up a moment ago and deposited in your pocket.”
“Ah, you observed.”
“I did.”
Chaderton fished for a moment and produced the shred in question. “You must believe that I intended to share this with you.”
Timon took it. “This is the same type of paper used by all of the scholars in the hall. It is on every desk.”
Timon studied the scrap with the intensity of a hawk watching a mouse. He held it up to the light and nodded. “This piece is freshly torn,” he said steadily, “and was stuck to the bottom of a boot.”
Chaderton slowed his pace. “How could you possibly—”
“See here.” Timon held out the shred. “The tear is still ragged, not smoothed. That’s fresh. And this corner has the distinct imprint of the heel of a boot.”
Chaderton squinted, zigzagged his neck, and at last agreed. “I believe you are correct.”
“This could be a portion of the same piece upon which the odd quotation was written before it was placed into Mr. Lively’s mouth.”
“I suppose that is possible,” Chaderton said, picking up his pace again, “but what does it matter?”
“We might find, in the hall, the page from which this was torn. It could be matched, if we do not wait overlong. That, in turn, might lead to other discoveries.”
Chaderton shook his head, smiling. “Marbury was right to place such faith in you. You will find this killer.”
23
They reached the end of the stone pathway and arrived at an arched opening in the wall. The wall was perhaps fourteen feet high, the archway half that height. Through it Timon could see a small, perfectly patterned garden with several stone benches at the center. Those benches surrounded a circular pool, five feet or so in diameter, that was partially frozen. Several wrens were scraping delicately across the ice to sip water from the pool.
Variegated privet had been planted in concentric circles around that small body of water. Beyond lay four flower beds whose base was curved, parallel to the outermost rim of privet. In those beds, thickly planted crocus bloomed bloodred.
The two men walked quickly toward the benches.
“In less than a month,” Chaderton said, his words rapturous, “hyacinth and tulip will overtake that crocus. By spring who knows what delights our gardener might plant there. Last year: nasturtiums!”
“I fear that the love the English bear for this style of gardening is a primary cause of fear in the rest of the world.”
“You really think so?” Chaderton seemed genuinely surprised.
“Bending nature this far from its true course,” Timon answered, “makes everyone suspicious. It seems a metaphor, begging the question, what else might England do to subvert the world to its patterned will?”
Chaderton stopped dead still. “Spoken like an Italian.”
Timon too came to a halt. “I beg your pardon?”
“I have studied languages for fifty years. Your accent is nearly flawless, but you are not English. I wonder if Deacon Marbury knows this fact.”
“I could not say what Deacon Marbury knows,” Timon said calmly, “but despite your years of learned study, I must report that my father was in diplomatic service when I was young. I spent formative years in Genoa. This scarcely makes me Italian, though it may have had an effect on my speech—and my appreciation of wilder horticulture.”
“A fine answer,” Chaderton shot back. “I wonder if I believe it.”
“I wonder if it matters at the moment. We have larger issues to explore.”
“I wish I were certain—”
“Then I shall begin.” Timon headed for the closest bench.
“Yes,” Chaderton said instantly, “perhaps you might tell me about the evidence that provoked you—”
“Lively showed me, shortly before he was murdered, the most ancient text of St. Luke—that the very name of our Savior has been incorrectly translated for well over a thousand years.”
“I see.” Chaderton drew in a breath. “For me, it began with a camel.”
Chaderton reached the bench and seemed happy to sit down.
Timon stood, waiting for the scholar to continue.
“Perhaps you are familiar with our Lord’s admonition that ‘it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God’?”
“Matthew nineteen, verse twenty-four.”
“And did you never wonder at the strangeness of the image?” Chaderton could not contain his grin.
“It seemed to me that our Lord was attempting to illustrate the impossibility—”
“No,” Chaderton snapped. “Nowhere else in the Testaments does He use such far-fetched imagery. His words are simple. His analogies are plain. That is the beauty of His words. That passage alone provokes the senses. I was quite young when I surmised that something was amiss.”
“But—”
“And so I turned to the original Greek—copies of St. Matthew’s testament. I discovered, my dear Brother Timon, that the first testament speaks of kamilos—not kamelos.”
Timon caught himself taking in a sharp, sudden breath. “Kamilos is ‘rope’—kamelos is ‘camel.’”
“An absurdly easy error to make. I could almost see the bent monk, the darkened chamber, the single candle by his table. There he was, working past midnight, eyes bleary, mistaking an i for an e—and an image more appertaining to strange dreams than the words of Christ is introduced into our Bible.”
“It is easier for a rope to pass through the eye of a needle,” Timon said to himself. “This is the metaphor of a desert messiah.”
“It was innocent, surely, an error of this sort. But it made me wonder. And when I wondered, I became hungry. And when I became hungry—”
“Has it not been argued that the phrase eye of a needle,” Timon
offered, “referred to a city wall in Jerusalem, a narrow gate?”
“In Mark the word for needle is a rafic; in Luke it is a belone. Both are words for sewing needles, not architecture. But what does that matter when the word our Savior used was rope, not camel?”
“Yes.” Timon found he could not stand still. He resumed pacing aimlessly.
“That discovery—a single letter out of place in the ocean of words—began an adventure for me,” Chaderton continued. “How could I have realized I was opening a door that would close behind me? I have been in a labyrinth of doubt now for some thirty years.”
“Because you have discovered other errors—less innocent.” Timon slowed his pacing for a moment. “Lively told me that the group had uncovered some five thousand errors in translation. He said that they dated to the first Council of Nicaea.”
“What many of my brother scholars seem to ignore”—Chaderton cast his eyes downward, suddenly weary—“is that the first Council of Nicaea was, in fact, something of a battlefield. In the year of that council, 325, the Christian Church was little more than an aberrant sect of Judaism. Some erroneous choices were made. Some of the documents we now possess were the casualties of that conflict. Many were destroyed. Others were hidden by men—and women—who believed that they were valuable. Nicaea determined the direction of the Church. I believe it led us away from Christ.”
“Spoken like a Protestant.” Timon smiled. “The primary function of the Nicene Council was to determine the exact nature of Christ, not to destroy books of the Bible.”
“You must realize the magnitude of this,” Chaderton insisted. “In deciding the nature of Christ—whether He was primarily a spiritual entity, or essentially a physical being—the council created a filter. That filter was used to expurgate ideas. When they decided that Christ was a man, with a body that died and rose intact from the grave, nearly half of Christendom was excluded.”
“The half that believed Christ was primarily a spiritual being.” Timon nodded. “The half that found the reanimation of dead flesh abhorrent, even pagan. The Resurrection was, to them, a mystical event.”
“That half is the source of the secret texts.”
“You have studied them all.”
“And I believe that they are more accurate,” Chaderton answered vehemently, “and more particular to the true words of our Lord than any Bible currently in existence. There are secret teachings that have been deliberately kept from us by the popes!”
Before Chaderton could continue, both men were startled by a sudden figure bounding into the garden.
24
“Brother Timon!” the shadow called.
“Anne?” Timon could scarcely believe his ears.
Anne was running, her black cloak fanning out behind her. When the wind blew back her hood, it revealed a pale face, a mask of desperation.
“You must come at once,” she demanded, stopping at the outermost circle of hedges. Her eyes implored. “My father is in the stables. He is in a desperate state. Something terrible—you must come now!”
Without waiting for a response, she turned and fled, clearly expecting Timon to follow.
Timon turned to Chaderton.
“Go,” the older man said. “Did you not say that Marbury had gone to London only night before last? If he is back so soon and Anne is distressed, there must be grave news. I shall follow as quickly as these bones allow.”
Timon nodded and set off. Once out of the garden, he saw Anne flying across the stone path toward the stables. He raced after her.
They both ran madly between tall buildings, past bare trees, and at last into a cobbled courtyard surrounded by stalls. The yard itself was only a hundred feet across, a circle open on two opposite sides for entrance and exit. Around each half circle sat four stalls, a total of eight barely nine feet tall, but one was larger than the others. It was a coach house with an odd insignia over the entrance. The stable wood was a whitewashed gray, and the unmistakable scent of new hay and old manure filled the air. That smell assailed Timon’s senses and dug into some long-suppressed memory.
Most of the stalls were empty, or quiet, but the coach house was crowded and noisy. Anne, barely out of breath, stopped suddenly a few steps shy of the open door. Timon caught sight of Marbury inside, unharnessing the horses.
“Deacon Marbury?” he called out.
Marbury froze. His head shot out from the shadows of the stall and he said quickly, “Brother Timon. Good. Help me with this, would you?”
“Father—,” Anne began.
“Please!” he shot back. “I have asked you twice already. Stay out!”
“You want me to help you with the horses?” Timon asked, confused.
“God,” Marbury swore, and moved instantly out into the courtyard.
Anne took a quick step backward.
“Anne,” he said, the sound of her name straining the air around it, “would you mind very much going to find the stable master. We need him. Brother Timon, I need your assistance in here—”
“But are you all right?” Anne insisted. “And where is Thom?”
At the mention of Thom’s name, all energy seemed to abandon Marbury. His shoulders sagged and his eyes closed.
“Was he not your driver?” she asked, her voice less vigorous than before.
“He was,” Marbury choked.
“What has happened?” she whispered.
Marbury found himself without words and nodded in the direction of the coach.
Timon stepped into the stall. His hand felt its way along the side of the coach until he found a handle. He turned it and drew open the door.
Even in the shadows he could tell that the occupants of the coach were dead. He could also see, out of the corner of his eye, that Marbury was watching him with a curious intensity.
“Might I speak freely?” Timon asked with a slight glance in Anne’s direction.
“Is Thom in that coach?” Anne asked, her voice icy.
Marbury nodded, his eyes still locked on Timon.
“And the other man?” Timon asked calmly.
“There is another?” Anne interrupted.
“Can you not see who he is, Brother?” Marbury did not move.
Timon moved a step toward the back of the stall and pulled the door of the coach open wide. A bit of sunlight found its way into the gloom where the bodies lay. It was only a candle’s worth of light, barely enough to discern the features of the other man’s face.
Timon bent down. Before he could prevent it, a shock of recognition played across his face, and he took in a sudden breath.
Marbury folded his hands across his chest and clenched the fingers. “I have no idea what made me consider that you might know the man. I gambled—or, more than gambled, really. At times I have an intuition for this sort of thing.”
Timon stood, pinching his lips together. “And this, it would appear, is one of those times. I do, in fact, know the man. He is Pietro Delasander—an assassin.”
Disarm suspicion with the truth, Timon thought. Though perhaps it would be best not to mention that I taught the dead man his craft.
“Assassin?” Anne exploded. “What has happened? I demand—Thom?” She rushed forward.
Marbury caught her arm. “He is dead.”
“As is Pietro Delasander,” Timon sighed. “Which is a shame. He could have told us many things.”
“He is dead by his own hand,” Marbury blurted—and instantly regretted it.
“Why would he do that?” Timon stared down at the body. “You must tell me everything. And I have news to report as well. There has been a lamentable occurrence in your absence.”
“Anne,” Marbury said calmly, eyes locked on Timon’s, “you understand now why we must fetch the stable master. Please find him and bring him here.”
Anne knew the tone of her father’s voice—knew it was an absolute command. Without a word she turned and headed for the stable master’s room.
As soon as she was gone from s
ight, Marbury grabbed his dagger. He moved slowly, as if he were joining Timon in the stall to further examine the dead bodies.
Without warning his hand flew out toward Timon’s throat, the blade flashed in the dim light, and the cold cutting edge drew a thin line of red across Timon’s gullet.
“Who are you?” Marbury demanded, his voice a guttural, animal sound. “What are you doing in my house? Why did you try to poison me at Hampton Court?”
“I am called Brother Timon,” Timon responded, dead calm, full-voiced. “You hired me. I did not try to poison you. And if you do not take your knife away from my throat, I will be forced to make Anne an orphan, which I would not relish.”
Marbury felt a sudden pain in his solar plexus and looked down. Timon held a dagger that seemed nearly as long as his forearm. It was pointed almost straight up. Its tip had cut through Marbury’s expensive doublet. It was piercing the skin beneath it.
“At this angle,” Timon continued, “the blade will slide beneath the rib cage and very nicely into the heart. Once there, if I twist it just right, I can actually cut the heart in half. Apparently the heart keeps pumping; fills up the chest cavity with so much blood so quickly—”
“Enough,” Marbury barked, stepping back and withdrawing his blade. When he looked down, Timon’s blade had vanished.
“I must assume that your journey to London was not a pleasant one,” Timon sighed. “You return with a sickly pallor and two dead bodies in the royal coach. You are exhausted, that much is clear, and apparently you have been poisoned. For these reasons I forgive your temporary lapse in manners. Though I must assure you that no other man has held a blade so close to me and lived. I am uncertain why I did not dispatch you. I have an inexplicable fondness for Anne, and a somewhat grudging respect for you. Or perhaps it is the smell of these stables. It reminds me of my boyhood home, a place I had all but forgotten until a moment ago. Who can say? These are puzzling days for me in general. I am not myself. And, incidentally, there has been another murder here.”
The King James Conspiracy Page 12
