The King James Conspiracy

by Phillip DePoy

  “I do not know this man,” Marbury said slowly. “I found him through the auspices of other men I met while doing the King’s work. More than that I cannot say, by royal decree.”

  “But you must surely admit the possibility,” Spaulding continued, a bit less steadily, “that a man of his sort might have murdered Harrison and then put himself in a position to be assigned the task of finding the killer. It would be the perfect post from which to carry on his mayhem.”

  Timon picked up his egg, burning his fingers, and began to blow on the shell. “You must decide, Dr. Spaulding, if I am not clever enough or too clever. What you suggest would require a significant degree of planning and intelligence.”

  “Yes.” Marbury’s face had changed.

  Timon began to peel his egg, placing the bits of shell neatly on the table, watching Marbury, wondering what he was thinking.

  He is remembering my blade as it cut into his skin, Timon guessed. He is thinking how easily I discussed cutting a heart in half while it was still beating in a living body. He believes that I could, in fact, be murdering the translators. Perhaps he is even wondering how I knew Pietro Delasander.

  Timon watched as those thoughts played across Marbury’s face. It was not difficult to read. Timon’s mask was better armor. He had long ago trained himself to reveal nothing. But he was surprised to find that he wanted to tell Marbury his true mission. He had not been sent to kill anyone. He was merely to memorize the King James translation by the time of the early wheat harvest. He could also, in fact, solve the murders and was willing to do so. How much of that could he tell Marbury?

  “Dr. Spaulding,” Timon said after a moment, “you may certainly fetch whatever local men you feel might confine me. It certainly would not be you and Deacon Marbury. But when I am gone, the murders will continue, you will be the next victim, and I will be deprived of the satisfaction of pointing out your error—at least to everyone else. You, of course, will be dead.”

  Spaulding shivered at the sound of ice in Timon’s voice.

  “By all means, Dr. Spaulding, seek out the town guard,” Marbury added, eyes on Timon. “I will wait with Brother Timon. Despite his opinion, I may be able to hold him here until you get back.”

  “I—,” Spaulding began.

  “Go!” Marbury snapped.

  Spaulding jumped. He turned to see Timon staring at him and biting heartily into the egg. Spaulding took two steps backward, felt for the door, and flew from the kitchen. Timon listened for a moment to the sound of Spaulding’s running.

  “Will he bring back the guard,” Timon asked, mouth full, “or not?”

  “Difficult to say.” Marbury grinned. “How are my eggs coming along?”

  Timon finished his egg and was seized by a sudden, inexplicable desire to tell the truth.

  “I was a prisoner of the Inquisition five years ago,” Timon blurted, startling himself as much as Marbury. “I was released on the condition that I perform certain tasks. One of those tasks was to train men in the art of murder; one of those men was called Pietro Delasander, the man who tried to kill you on the road home from London.”

  Marbury stared.

  Timon could see that the deacon had been utterly disarmed by his obvious candor.

  Marbury began to speak several times and stopped, clearly considering and then discarding questions.

  “I have caught you off guard,” Timon said softly. “Under other circumstances, I would have done this as a ploy, to gain some advantage. In this particular instance, I cannot say why I am being honest with you. It is unlike me. I had a difficult night and was troubled by dreams, of a sort. Still.”

  He waited upon Marbury’s response.

  Marbury seemed at last to settle on one, possibly at random, doing his best not to sound as astonished as he was.

  “How did you acquire such ability at this art, as you call it, that you could instruct other men?”

  “I have not always been a monk,” Timon said quietly.

  “No.” Marbury found the sound of Timon’s voice heartbreaking. “I suppose not.”

  “I have told you too much, but I have done so in a spirit of honesty.” Timon glared at Marbury with such intensity that his face ached. “I want you to believe me: I am not the man who is murdering these translators.”

  “Who is the killer?”

  “That,” Timon assured the deacon, “I shall discover.”

  “But it is not your only duty here in Cambridge.” Marbury sat back in his chair.

  Timon finished his ale and said nothing.

  “I wonder if you would tell me something else.”

  “I wonder,” Timon answered.

  “There are three dead bodies very near this little kitchen,” Marbury said softly, all his previous mirth washed away. “Lively is waiting, Thom is taken care of, but what, I wonder, have we done with the body of Pietro Delasander?”

  31

  Three minutes later, with a pocketful of hardboiled eggs, Marbury was moving as quickly as he could to keep up with Timon. They raced toward the stables.

  “After you left me with the assassin Delasander’s body,” Timon said over his shoulder, irritated at Marbury’s slower pace, “I examined it most thoroughly. Then I moved it back to the stall.”

  “You found nothing, of course,” Marbury said, breathing hard, “or you would have told me in the cellar, over Lively’s body.”

  Timon heard the tone of Marbury’s voice: sounds that defined Marbury’s suspicion. Marbury was certain that Timon had in fact found something he was not revealing.

  The two men arrived at the courtyard of the stables. The smell of hay, the distraction of wrens hopping about the cobblestones, the warmth of the sun—all combined to offer Timon another vision, a ghost of his own boyhood.

  “Have I told you that I was a stableboy when I was nine or ten?” Timon’s voice had grown with a warmth to match that of the sunlit air. “Or that I fell into—into another line of work when I became a driver for a certain man? I was a boy not unlike the one whom took you to London.”

  Marbury had pulled an egg from his pocket, but it was frozen in his hand. Timon’s voice was so filled with the longing for days gone by that Marbury was momentarily unable to move.

  “Ah.” Timon rubbed his face with the palms of his hands. “What would make me think of that boy? Delasander’s body is this way.”

  Timon moved more slowly into the stall where the royal coach was kept. The coach had been cleaned and the harnesses were gone. A pile of horse blankets was at the back of the stall. Timon knelt and flung them aside, revealing the dead body in its plain red robe. Two black beetles, interrupted in their own examination of the dead man’s face, skittered away into the straw on the floor and waited.

  Marbury looked away. “Why did he take his own life? Did he think I would kill him?”

  “This man?” Timon shook his head. “You could not have killed him.”

  “Then why . . . ?”

  “He killed himself so that he would not have to endure, in a wounded state, an encounter with me.”

  “You?” Marbury swallowed.

  “He knew I was working with you. He knew who you were.”

  “How could he possibly—wait. Was that the nature of the secret missive you say you discovered on his person?”

  “You observe that this man is dressed in red,” Timon sighed, as if he had not heard Marbury’s question.

  “What?” Marbury asked, confused by Timon’s apparent change of subject. “They are his priestly robes, are they not?”

  “Not exactly.” Timon assumed a tutor’s tones. “The average red kite has a breast that looks covered in blood. Its pale gray wings are knife blades that slice through the air. They are carrion birds. This man, this dead man, loved those birds. He thought of them as his colleagues, his collaborators. That is why he wore red.”

  “Who was he?” Marbury asked softly, standing over the body, egg still in hand. “Will you tell me more about the man?�
�

  A wren just outside in the sunlight found a worm, swallowed it, sang out, and darted away into the air.

  “What if I told you,” Timon began slowly, “that this man was Queen Elizabeth’s chief physician.”

  Marbury dropped his egg. “Lopez?”

  “Dr. Rodrigo Lopez saved the life of the Queen on numerous occasions and then was convicted of trying to poison her. Lopez was hanged, drawn, and quartered in the streets—to the delight of a cheering throng who continually chanted, ‘Jew, Jew, Jew.’”

  “Dr. Lopez was a Jew,” Marbury insisted. “Though no one believed him guilty of the crime for which he died.”

  “But I am asking you to consider a hypothetical question.” Timon sighed. “What if he did not die that day? What if he died yesterday on the road from London?”

  “No. This is not Lopez.” Marbury collected his wits. “Thousands saw Lopez die.”

  Timon looked up at Marbury. “You must believe me when I say that it is possible to substitute one man for another in such executions. The head of the man whom everyone thought was Dr. Lopez was covered with a black sack. He was dressed in the favorite color of Dr. Lopez: bloodred.”

  “But who would save his life in such a manner?” Marbury found he had to lean against the royal carriage for balance. “And why?”

  “Many powerful men,” Timon answered steadily, “find it useful to recruit from among the dead.”

  “I do not believe that this man was Dr. Lopez!” Marbury snapped. “And even if I did, I do not believe that he would be an agent of the English Crown. Lopez was a Jew and a man accused—however wrongly—of an attempt on a royal personage. An English sovereign would not recruit such a man. Such a man, likewise, would neither trust nor serve an English sovereign. And who else but a king could be powerful enough to take a man out of a death cell—”

  Marbury stood bolt upright. He was afraid to look at Timon. Timon too looked away.

  “What is it, Deacon Marbury?” Timon drew the horse blankets over the face of the dead assassin.

  “The Pope.” Marbury’s lips barely moved. “Are you trying to tell me that this creature was an agent of Pope Clement?”

  What am I doing? Timon thought to himself, sitting down on the hay. Am I trying to lead him to know what I truly am? Why would I do such a thing?

  32

  Shortly after midnight that night, Timon found himself walking past a certain butcher shop in Cambridge. A hastily written sign told everyone that it was closed until further notice. A funeral wreath was on the door. In sympathy, it seemed, the nighttime sky above the shop was black. No moon, no star, not a single light in heaven shone down upon that street.

  The day had passed in a blur for Timon. Marbury, he supposed, had spent the morning wondering how to tell Lively’s eleven children that they were orphans. Timon had spent the same hours wondering why he felt more affinity for Deacon Marbury than his student Pietro. In the end, Timon buried Pietro Delasander in a shallow grave and did his best to forget him.

  By nine o’clock that night Timon had gone to his bed hoping for sleep, but found instead a note on his blanket.

  “We await, praying.”

  It might have appeared, to anyone else, a message from one of the translators, or even Marbury. The meaning was obscure, but the note seemed innocuous. Timon knew better. He recognized the handwriting. When the hands of a clock are pressed together at midnight, they appear to be praying. Timon knew that three men would be waiting for him after that hour at a prearranged meeting place: a public house on the most disreputable street in Cambridge.

  Little minds think words like these are clever, Timon had thought as he’d stared at the note.

  He knew he should have rested or prayed for the few hours before he was to meet with these men, but instead he had taken out his pipe and breathed in a bit, just a bit, of the devil’s foul breath.

  The visions were gone by the time he walked past the stinking butcher shop. Timon was left with a burning tongue and a frightening mood, an air of reckless abandon. Every possible circumstance was equal in Timon’s fiery brain. A pint of ale down his throat or that same throat sliced open, it just didn’t matter. Whatever awaited him at the public house, his meeting with the demon trinity, was of little consequence to him in such a mood.

  When he arrived at the tavern, he shoved open the door and cast a careless eye about the room. No one looked his way.

  He hid his angular grace, walking a bit stooped to appear shorter until he sat at the wooden bar. He leaned on it and caught the eye of a young woman in a gingerbread dress. She was, he knew from previous visits, the daughter of the owner. Jenny was her name, and she was barely sixteen, the object of many a furtive glance in the room.

  “Ale, please,” Timon said in a hoarse voice that barely rose above the din. He thought, I am certainly not going to face those men back there with a dry mouth.

  “Please?” The young woman’s eyes met his. “A gentle soul in a wooden city. Ale it shall be. I’ve seen you before, Father. Not many dresses in black around here.”

  Without another word, she turned, scooped up several tankards from the bar, and slid away. He watched her go, aiming toward the kitchen. Her body moved like a skater’s over frozen water. He thought it possible that her feet never touched the floor. Her skin was alabaster with a blush of pink. Her hair was plaited gold silk.

  She vanished into the kitchen and returned almost instantly with a tankard. Timon handed her twice the amount that was due.

  “You gave me too much,” Jenny stammered.

  “Little enough for such service.” Timon had no idea why he had given her the money.

  “I mean to say,” she went on uncomfortably, as if she’d done something wrong, “it’s the biggest bonus I ever got in this place. In my whole life.”

  “That’s hard to believe,” Timon told her, smiling, “a girl with your charms.”

  Her shoulders relaxed. That was the sort of comment she understood.

  “Go on.” Her eyes flared bright. “You a priest, flirting to a young girl like that.”

  “Not flirting,” Timon said plainly. I am deliberately delaying my meeting with the men in the back room, he thought.

  Jenny’s eyes welled with a certain softness that had not been there before. “I’m not meant for a life in this place,” she said, a slow yearning taking hold of her voice. She leaned forward, her face only inches from Timon’s. She rested her elbows on the bar and her head in her hands, staring out across the foul smoke, the grimy faces, the filthy floor. “I was to be married, you see. But that’s off now.”

  “I am very sorry to hear that. The man was a fool who left you.”

  “Oh,” she sighed. “He didn’t leave, not like you mean it. He’s dead. Killed by his own dog whilst he was working late—only a few nights ago.”

  Timon’s hand stayed on his cup of ale. He stared down into the brown foam at the bottom and let go a long breath.

  “He was a butcher,” Jenny went on. “Made a good living. I would have been mistress of his shop.”

  “Yes,” Timon managed to say softly.

  “Funny thing about that dog,” she mumbled. “He was so friendly. But there’s life: everything turns on you in the end. Something bright as the morning star can burn your face by noon and leave you cold by the end of the day.”

  “I am heartily sorry, Jen,” Timon said softly.

  Jenny seemed to rouse herself from her mood. “Tosh. Don’t waste your sympathy on me. I didn’t love him—nothing like that. It was just a way out of this room. You know.”

  “Still,” Timon mumbled.

  “More ale?”

  “No, alas.” Timon cast his eyes toward the squat door at the back corner of the room.

  “Well,” she said, smiling, “don’t be a stranger.”

  Before Timon could respond, she vanished into the throng. Try as he might, he could not even see a bit of her gingerbread dress.

  33

  Timon d
rained his cup of ale at one swallow. He stood and aimed for the dreaded door. In ten steps he grabbed the cold iron handle. He held his breath, felt for his knife, and threw open the door.

  All three men jumped. The two wearing masks, the ones with the penchant for code names and secret messages, recovered quickly. Cardinal Venitelli, however, continued to shake while Timon eased the door closed behind him.

  “So,” Timon said before anyone else could speak, “what are we calling ourselves tonight?”

  “Please be seated, Brother Timon,” Samuel said crisply. “You will remember Brother Isaiah, to my left, and at the far end Brother Daniel is—”

  “Good evening, Cardinal,” Timon said, staring into Venitelli’s eyes.

  Venitelli looked down at the table in front of him.

  “I prefer to stand,” Timon said softly. “I may have to pace.”

  Isaiah looked as if he might protest, but before he could voice his objection, Samuel forged ahead.

  “Very well,” Samuel growled irritably, “but this is of the utmost importance. Please try to concentrate.”

  Timon’s right hand shot forward until his fingers were less than an inch away from Samuel’s eyes.

  “You have no idea what powers of concentration I can muster,” Timon whispered. “These fingers, for example, can move with the speed and precision needed to pluck out a human eye. I can do it so suddenly as to show it to my victim before he faints away.”

  Venitelli feared he might faint at the mere suggestion. Samuel, to his credit, Timon thought, barely flinched.

  “I am well aware of your gruesome magic tricks, Brother Timon. Those abilities are, in fact, the primary reason for this meeting.”

  Timon’s hand disappeared into the sleeve of his robe. “Yes, why have you called me here?”

  “You are to give us anything you have memorized,” Samuel answered quickly. “Write it down, what you have committed to your brain, and we will take it to His Holiness.”

  “Write it down? When?”