The King James Conspiracy

by Phillip DePoy

  “Now. Tonight. Before you go.”

  Timon glanced at Samuel, who was studying his own fingernails. “Why?”

  “We would know of your progress,” Isaiah snapped.

  Timon smiled. “Surely you mean that Holy Father would know of my progress.”

  “There is another issue!” Samuel interrupted, nearly rising from his seat. “Without knowing it, you are threatening other plans we have set in motion.”

  “Go on,” Timon said steadily.

  Samuel cocked his head in Timon’s direction, like a dog. Cardinal Venitelli, it seemed, had stopped breathing. Timon’s reaction had not been what they had expected.

  Timon realized that he had been stooping since he had entered the public house. He straightened his posture slowly. Bones shifted; joints cracked. The men at the table watched as if it were a play—a play about a man who could grow five inches taller before their very eyes. Timon took in all three sets of eyes slowly. A satisfying snapping sound at his neck punctuated the final motion as his gaze returned to Samuel.

  “Go on,” Timon repeated, a slight smile at his lips.

  “You—you endanger the other half of our plan,” Samuel managed, the bite gone from his words. “We had no way of knowing—”

  “Why His Holiness did not leave the entire matter to you is a mystery to us,” Isaiah snarled.

  “No, but you see,” Venitelli broke in, laying a flat hand upon the table in front of him, “Brother Timon’s full powers of memory are required for his task. Holy Father did not wish to have him distracted—”

  “And yet he now threatens the entire—,” Isaiah began.

  “Stop,” Timon said calmly, still smiling. “You must tell me what the problem is.”

  Samuel swallowed. “You are interfering with the elimination of the translators.”

  Timon folded his hands behind his back patiently. The bulk of his dagger tugged at his forearm. “Yes.”

  “You must stop it.” Isaiah absently picked at the cuticle of his thumbnail.

  Timon exhaled, suddenly understanding. “The man killing the translators is also an agent of Pope Clement.”

  “He is emphatically not,” Venitelli insisted immediately. “Never would His Holiness command such a thing.”

  “Exactly,” Samuel joined in. “But we do not wish to interfere with this man or his divinely inspired work.”

  “‘Divinely inspired work,’” Timon repeated.

  “Surely God’s plan is to eliminate these so-called men of knowledge,” Isaiah sang out, “before they can further desecrate His divine word. This man—whoever he is—acts on God’s behalf.”

  “By killing the scholars,” Timon said, as if he were seeking confirmation.

  “Exactly,” Samuel said.

  “But surely you see the irony of the matter,” Timon continued, his smile growing. “I was brought to Cambridge for the express purpose of discovering and stopping those murders.”

  “Incorrect!” Samuel responded, drumming his fingers on the table, barely controlling his ire. “You were brought here to memorize what the translators were producing. You were brought here to be a human library, a repository of all the vile book that these Englishmen would compose.”

  “But you told Deacon Marbury that I could save them from the killer.” Timon began rocking, every so slightly, back and forth on the balls of his feet.

  “What does that matter?” Isaiah demanded.

  “What does that matter?” Timon spoke the words to himself as if they had been uttered by an idiot. “If I do not at least appear to be making some progress in that cause, Marbury will quickly dismiss me. If your man succeeds in killing all the translators soon, there will be nothing for me to memorize. And there are two other groups of translators. There are other men to keep the King’s work alive. I feel certain that Marbury would have heard the news if anything had befallen any of them. No such news has been reported to me. And these are only the first concerns that come to mind. If I take a moment, I am certain I could discover several hundred other holes in the fabric of your plan. Venitelli, you, at least, must realize the insanity of this thinking.”

  “Brother Daniel is only here in an advisory capacity,” Samuel snarled. “His opinions have no bearing upon our efforts.”

  “What would you have me do?” Timon asked, his voice aflame. “How, exactly, would you have me proceed?”

  “That is precisely why we brought you here tonight,” Isaiah sniffed. “To give you additional instructions.”

  “Stop trying to capture or kill the man who is murdering the Cambridge scholars,” Samuel began, as if he were reciting from a legal document. “Continue to memorize everything these men have written, and when you have done that, aid the killer in his work.”

  “What?” Timon’s shoulders sank. It was a barely perceptible motion. Only Venitelli noticed.

  “Finish them off,” Isaiah went on. “However many are left when your memory work is done, eliminate them as quickly as you can.”

  “Tonight, however,” Samuel broke in, reaching underneath the table, “you must write down what you have memorized thus far.”

  Samuel produced a bundle of blank pages, an inkwell, and a quill.

  “You may sit there.” Isaiah pointed to the chair in front of the table, the one in which they had expected Timon to sit from the beginning.

  Timon glared at the pale paper. “It may take some time to write down everything.” He did not move.

  “We shall watch.” Samuel sat back, offering a gargoyle’s grin. “And, praise God, here you will not be distracted by crawling spiders or the knotted lash. As you were on similar occasions in our mutual past.”

  Timon instantly locked out the memory of the spiders before its power could have any effect. The lash wounds, which he still carried, were unimportant. Samuel’s attempt at intimidation had completely failed.

  Timon felt the handle of his knife against his bare skin. His eyes moved across the faces of the men seated next to one another at the table. One move, sudden enough, could cut all three throats.

  “To clarify my task this night,” Timon said lightly, “you wish me to write down everything I have read that the scholars have translated thus far?”

  “Yes,” Samuel sighed, utterly devoid of patience.

  Then I may eliminate from my writing tonight anything that the scholars have not yet translated, Timon thought to himself. I shall therefore keep knowledge of the secret Gospels to myself. I need not report what Lively showed me from the ancient text.

  Timon then weighed his two choices carefully: kill these men and leave London or sit down and write out his assignment.

  If I kill these men now, he thought, the girl, Jenny, will have to clean up the mess. She has had a difficult week.

  Timon put his hand on the empty chair beside him.

  “Make yourselves at ease, gentlemen,” he said, moving the chair toward the table. “This will take the rest of the night.”

  34

  Morning came as a tap at the door. No one entered, but a man’s voice from the other side whispered, “It’s well past sunrise. Will you gentlemen be wanting the room for the day as well?”

  Timon did not appear to hear. Samuel groaned and scratched his cheek. Venitelli and Isaiah were asleep.

  At first there had been a fascination at the sight of Timon’s turning the strange wheel with his fingers. They watched if he were playing a musical instrument. He wrote for hours, mumbling to himself, without the slightest pause.

  But as the night had worn on, Venitelli had given up. He had long since retired to a corner of the room, curled up like a small child, and fallen asleep. Isaiah had followed him into the sea of dreams, laying his head on the table; snoring like a wild boar.

  Samuel was roused by the man at the door and called out, “Yes, we will be wanting the room a bit longer.”

  “Then . . . ,” the hesitant voice on the other side of the door began.

  Samuel yawned; managed to sta
nd. He shuffled toward the door and opened it a crack. He held out a hand filled with coins.

  The man at the door took them all. “Breakfast?”

  “Yes,” Samuel mumbled.

  “For three?”

  “Four.”

  The man stood at the door for a moment in silence. “Four?” he repeated at last.

  Samuel took a moment to rub his eyes before he realized that the man was waiting for more money. He reached into his pouch and produced enough coinage to feed ten.

  The man took it all and vanished.

  “Seven hours, Brother Timon,” Samuel said, clearing the gravel in his throat, “or eight. How do you do it?”

  “Perhaps the Inquisition was correct to think that I was in league with the devil,” Timon answered without looking up.

  Before Samuel could respond, Venitelli sat up. “Breakfast?”

  Isaiah awoke with a start, threw himself backward in his chair, and produced a small, thin blade, the kind generally used for gutting fish.

  “Brother!” Samuel snapped.

  Isaiah looked around the room, unable, for an instant, to remember where he was. When he did, he glared at his hand and seemed to wonder where the knife had come from.

  “Thus begins a morning for my Unholy Trinity.” Timon’s lips betrayed the ghost of a smile. “Hunger, fear, and greed.”

  “What?” Venitelli struggled to his feet.

  “I say, ‘Good morrow, gentlemen,’” Timon sighed, sitting back and pushing the thick stack of papers away from him on the table. “There you have it: the ancient ceremonial gesture of completion. I push these pages away from myself because I have done with them.”

  His memory wheel had disappeared.

  “You—you are finished?” Isaiah stammered.

  “You may put away your knife, Brother,” Timon said, his smile becoming more substantial. “I believe we will be having oatcakes and eggs for breakfast. Neither requires cutting.”

  Isaiah spent another foolish moment staring at his knife before he put it away. Venitelli came to the table, staring at the large stack of pages.

  “So much work already done in Cambridge,” Venitelli whispered.

  Timon licked his lips. “I shall be very happy to have breakfast. And a bit of ale. It is thirsty work, my labor.”

  “That you can concentrate for so long,” Venitelli began, still not himself, not quite awake, “it staggers the imagination.”

  “That you can sit at a table and write anything for so long,” Isaiah grumbled.

  “I tell you, Brothers,” Timon said happily, “I was not in this room for most of the night. I was in another country, a land whose map is made of words, whose boundaries are punctuation marks. I had no body in that other place, no weight. I had no sensation at all save the keen, constant shower of sentences, like a spring rain washing me over. I drank the sweet liquor of the mind and was refreshed, intoxicated but invigorated. I was, in short, a resident of my true home.”

  “I do not understand your meaning.” Venitelli again searched the room for answers. “You left the room while I was asleep?”

  A solid rap upon the door prevented further conversation.

  “Ah!” Timon stood. “A speedy landlord. What a rare creation.”

  “I paid enough money for it,” Samuel groused, pulling open the door.

  The landlord, along with a rounder, older version Jenny, burst into the room. Each bore two trays and busily set about transforming the writing table into a dining table. Venitelli barely had time to grab the manuscript of Timon’s work before it was used as a mat for tankards of ale.

  Timon stared at the woman. There was Jenny’s fate before his eyes.

  “We’ll be back in a nonce,” the landlord said briskly, “with manchet bread and some very nice apricots.”

  “Apricots and manchet?” Timon said to Samuel. “You did pay well.”

  “Always happy to have fine men of the clergy,” the landlord said with a slight, unconscious bow.

  Timon stood, seized by a sudden compulsion. “A moment, landlord. I understand that your young daughter Jenny has recently lost her husband-to-be.”

  “Well, news does travel,” the landlord sighed philosophically. “I expect everyone’s heard the story by now. Fancy his own dog going for him like that. Some say it’s the devil’s work. They found another body close by—looked like it was hit by a cannon shot. Nothing left but bones and guts. And not a cannon in sight. Not to mention the matter of the missing wheelbarrow and the baker’s assistant—”

  “Yes,” Timon interrupted, staring at Samuel. “As a token of Christian compassion, under the circumstances, Brother Samuel, here, would like to contribute to her welfare. What is the price of your finest room?”

  “Depends on how long it’s occupied,” the landlord said slowly, not quite grasping what was happening.

  “Shall we say two months?” Timon asked lightly. “That is often a customary period of grieving these days.”

  “Two months?” the landlord exploded. “That’s ten shillings!”

  “It is the least we can do for the poor girl,” Timon said briskly, holding out his hand to Samuel.

  Samuel stood frozen, wide-eyed in disbelief.

  “Their daughter Jenny,” Timon explained to Samuel, “was about to marry a butcher whose shop is not far from here, when he met with an unfortunate accident. He was killed by his own dog. Only a few nights ago. People are saying it may even have been the work of some dark demon—or an avenging angel.”

  Venitelli sucked in a breath. The Pope’s avenging angel, he thought, clutching the crucifix around his neck. Samuel’s eyes betrayed a dawning understanding of Timon’s choice of words.

  “Pray God that same angel does not take after us,” Timon concluded, his eyes boring into Samuel’s.

  “Ten shillings, was it?” Samuel said immediately, plunging his hand into his pouch.

  “God in heaven,” the landlord whispered.

  “There,” Timon sighed. “That’s better.”

  The wife crossed herself.

  The landlord grabbed the money and backed out of the room as if he had been drawn away by a typhoon.

  35

  Silence pervaded the room.

  Timon broke it by sitting back down. He dragged a tankard of ale across the table toward him. He drained it at once.

  “Now,” he said, dabbing the corners of his mouth with his index finger, “let us discuss the rest of our business.”

  Venitelli clutched the manuscript to his chest as if it might shield him from further realizations. The phrase avenging angel burned his mind. Isaiah reached for a hardboiled egg.

  Samuel remained standing. “The butcher,” Samuel began at last, “is another man you have killed?”

  “Do not proceed with your inquiry in that matter,” Timon advised. “I will not discuss the incident except to say that it occurred in conjunction with the disappearance of an old servant, Jacob by name, who once worked for the Sidney family. Looking back, I wish that events had unfolded differently, and second thoughts conjure old ghosts in this case. We can, however, discuss my other duties if you like.”

  Samuel seemed to waver in his opinion, but he sat down finally and grabbed an oatcake.

  “As to your other duties,” Isaiah growled slowly, “I think they were made quite clear last night. You must stop trying to capture the killer of the translators.”

  “No,” Timon disagreed, “your instruction went further. You said that you wished me to aid him.”

  “Yes,” Isaiah interjected quickly, bits of yellow egg yolk dotting his chin. “Once you have copied the translators’ work, you must eliminate however many that remain.”

  Timon grabbed another ale. “And then? You will send me to the Oxford group, or to Lancelot Andrews’s amalgam in London?”

  “Possibly.” Samuel did not look at Timon.

  “You will keep me working,” Timon continued, half to himself, “constantly exposing me to greater risk o
f capture myself, until I have done my work. Or until I have, myself, been eliminated.”

  “Hardly that,” Venitelli began quickly. “His Holiness has the greatest regard—”

  “I am already dead,” Timon said simply. “My life belongs to Pope Clement. He can do with it what he will.”

  “Brother Timon,” Samuel said earnestly, “you must realize that you work in the greater service—”

  “I shall tell you what I have realized,” Timon interrupted. “I have come to think of this body—this flesh, these bones—as a prison. And I know something of prisons, thanks to the likes of you three.”

  “Prison?” Venitelli stammered.

  “I am saying that I feel trapped in corporeal matter,” Timon explained calmly. “The sensation is terrifying if I allow it to be. I find that in my worst moments I can barely breathe, drowning in skin and blood and marrow. When that feeling overtakes me, I am in such a mood as to long for death. So your threats to that effect would not move me in the least. Alas, I lately also find myself wondering what will happen to my spirit once it is released from this earthly cell. Something needles my memory, raises the face of every man I have sent before me to the grave. When that happens, my only salvation is the daily exercise of memorizing other things. I must use so much of my brain that it crowds out the burning thoughts, eclipses them. True, that eclipse leaves me in darkness, but it is a darkness that is kind to me. Lately I find that I would rather bear the horrors of this life than endure the retribution that awaits when I have shuffled off this mortal coil. I fear my punishment will be Promethean. And so, Brothers, I am at a crossroads, you see. On the one hand, I can no longer bear another moment trapped in this living body, and yet something in my spirit fears the body’s death. How to proceed? You see my dilemma.”

  The room, the very stone walls, seemed staggered by the weight of Timon’s speech.

  Timon punctuated the end of it by peeling an egg.

  Samuel began to speak three times, each time taking in a breath and then thinking better of what he was about to say.

  “So,” Timon finally concluded after finishing his egg, “you would have me allow the killer in Cambridge to continue murdering scholars there. And when my memory work is done, you want me to help kill the rest. It is an ill-conceived plan. The timing and logic of which boggles the mind with its sheer incompetence, but that does not matter. I discover, upon reflection and a bit of egg, that I do not care.”