He stood so abruptly that the other three quaked. Isaiah struggled to produce his dagger once more.
“The truth is, remembering a Bible phrase, killing a butcher, standing idly by as men are murdered,” Timon sniffed, “it is all one to me. All one. Rest easy. Your orders are communicated.”
Isaiah had his knife in his hand. Timon stared down at it.
“My little speech meant nothing to you?” Timon asked Isaiah. “You must understand that I am not, at this moment, afraid of death. Throw your knife. Aim for the neck, though. Something that small would only be a nuisance unless it cut a vital vein.”
“Put that away!” Samuel ordered Isaiah.
Isaiah blinked.
“You shall have word from me soon,” Timon assured the men.
At once he turned his back on them—a gesture of clear, fearless contempt—and moved to the door with the grace of smoke.
If it had not been for Jenny and her butcher, Timon thought as he grabbed the door handle, I might have agreed to do their bidding. Now I am forming other plans—plans of my own. Why would this stranger, Jenny, have such an effect, instead of any other of a dozen human beings?
Timon was in the street heading back to his room, eastern sun in his eyes, before he understood that Jenny and her landlord father were the low-character equivalent of two high characters in the play in his mind: Anne and Deacon Marbury.
That sky is a backdrop, he thought. The things I have just said are lines written by God; the men I left behind in that room: minor players.
Understanding the characters, their relationships—in fact, the play as a whole—was the reason, somehow, that he would not kill the translators; that he would eventually confess everything to Marbury. It was the reason he would stop the murderer, defy his Pope, and see King James’s work to fruition.
He thought of Anne’s observation on the night her father had gone to see the King: “If the play is all talking and no forward action, then the plot lies dead upon the stage. And to provide us with that action, I believe, my father is away tonight—to London.”
When dialogue ceases and action begins, a character has made up his mind. All doubt vanishes. He may move forward toward his inevitable end with grace as well as haste.
Timon shielded his eyes from the blinding passion of the sunrise and thought suddenly of a hymn, his favorite when he was a stableboy.
Bright morning stars are rising, the song said. Day is awaking in my soul.
36
In a darker corner of Cambridge, Deacon Marbury was raked away from his dreams by a furious pounding on his door.
“Father! Quickly!”
Marbury sat up. His blue bedcovers were strewn about him, discarded after great abuse. The single window in his bedroom admitted ivory, slanting light through the rough glass. Beneath the window stood a washbasin, and on it someone had left a small pot filled with primroses to assure the deacon that, despite the cold in his room, spring had come somewhere. The oak bed creaked like an old boat when he managed to throw his legs over the side.
“A moment!” he hollered.
His feet hit the floor, and the realization crept upon him that he had slept all night in his boots and clothes. Though he had slept deeply, he was waking to an overwhelming exhaustion, conversations with Lively’s children still roaring through his brain.
He staggered out of the bedroom toward the hallway door, twice kicking things in the relative darkness of his parlor.
He grabbed the handle, threw open the door, and scowled down at his daughter.
“You dressed in a hurry,” she said.
“What is it?”
Anne was spotlessly attired: black dress from chin to floor, hair pulled back, face scrubbed.
“Timon was not in his room all night.” She started away from the door, down the hall.
Marbury stood in the entranceway. “Stop.”
She turned. “You must come and see what I have found.”
“Found where?”
“In Timon’s room. Did I not make it clear that he was gone the entire night?”
“You went into Brother Timon’s room?”
She sighed impatiently. “I saw you both come back last evening. I knew something was afoot. I heard you go to bed. Then, an hour before midnight, Timon left!”
Her face was flushed with a growing excitement. Marbury knew the look. It only meant more difficulty.
“You did not sleep?” he asked Anne.
“How can you sleep,” she answered breathlessly, “with everything that is happening in this place?”
“Was I ever as young as you are now?” he wondered, mostly to himself.
“No,” she answered curtly. “Now, are you coming with me to see what I have found or not?”
“Not.” Marbury began to pull the door to his rooms closed.
“Father! You must see quickly, before he returns. It is morning.”
Marbury looked through the high windows of the hallway. “Only just.”
“You will want to see what I have found. And you may want to call for the constable or at least the beadles.”
“What have you found?” Marbury asked, the door almost closed.
“Come and see!” Anne sang. “Brother Timon has stolen papers from the Great Hall!”
Marbury’s brain rid itself of the last dust of sleep, and he drew in a great breath. He squeezed his eyes shut tight for a moment to clear his vision, then he stepped into the hall, closing his door behind him.
Anne was already ten feet ahead, not looking back. She was halfway down the stairs before Marbury overtook her.
“I must severely protest your invasion—”
“I watched him leave by moonlight. I waited. I knew that he was gone and I might safely—”
“Your safety is hardly the issue! Propriety—why did you do this thing? Why would you presume—”
“He might be the killer!” Anne whispered harshly, pausing on the stairs. “So my safety might well be the issue.”
Marbury rubbed his forehead. “You’ve been listening to Spaulding.”
“One can scarcely prevent hearing him. He rails constantly.”
“Timon is not the murderer.”
“Please, Father,” Anne said softly. “Come and see what I have found. Perhaps you will be able to explain it to me.”
Marbury wavered between bed and daughter for only a moment before he descended the next step toward the ground floor.
Anne ran ahead of him and Marbury watched her, wondering when she would begin to behave as a woman instead of as a child.
It is my fault, he thought to himself. I could not be a mother to her. I was barely a father. And her earliest impulses were to imitate me. What could be worse for a young woman in England than to argue the virtues of Puritanism at the age of nine?
He did his best to keep up, but Anne had already weaved through the back halls of the downstairs. She was into the servants’ section, then Marbury saw her burst into Timon’s room.
He quickened his pace. By the time he stood in Timon’s doorway, he saw his daughter kneeling beneath the writing desk. Taper in hand, she was tearing up the floor.
“Anne! Stop it. What are you doing?” Marbury rushed into the room.
Anne tilted a single stone and held the candle closer.
There, on the floor under the stone, was a portion of a manuscript.
“That is in Harrison’s hand,” Marbury said slowly.
“I discovered it quite by accident,” Anne gushed. “I was standing at the desk looking for anything I might find interesting, and I was trying to pretend that I was as tall as Brother Timon. I stood on tiptoe and faltered. The stone came loose, and I saw this under it.”
Marbury knelt beside his daughter. “It is Harrison’s work.”
Anne bounded up, taking the candle with her. The manuscript pages that had been hidden under the stone were plunged into darkness. Anne was at Timon’s bed and slid her free hand under the cover.
&nbs
p; “Look!” she breathed.
The illumination from the candle showed a small wooden box.
“What is it?” Marbury mumbled, coming to his daughter. “And what in God’s name did you think you were doing when you were going through the man’s bed?”
“I saw a lump in the cover,” she answered defensively.
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“What is in the box?”
“You shall never guess.”
“Christ help me,” he said softly, taking up the box.
He opened it; saw the pipe and several vials. He was momentarily overtaken by the smell of burnt spice.
“I checked the vials,” she said excitedly. “They contain oil of nutmeg, that is my guess. Does he cook with it? Is that a clay pipe?”
“It is.” Marbury stared down at the box. “What can it mean?”
In the black hallway out of the candle’s influence, a hoarse voice answered, “Shall I explain it to you?”
Anne dropped the candle and fell back upon the bed, gasping. Marbury fumbled with the box, trying to hide it and wondering how quickly he could draw his dagger.
Timon stood framed in the doorway, stooping his head, the ghost of a shadow.
37
“You should pick up your candle, Anne,” Timon said calmly. “I only have one blanket, and if that one scorches . . .”
“Brother,” Marbury stammered, dropping the box onto the bed where Anne sat.
Anne’s breathing got in the way of her words, but she managed to make her accusation clear: “You have stolen documents from the Great Hall!”
Timon glanced once at the loose stone beneath his desk. “Also, Anne, would you mind rising? As a man devoted to celibacy, I am uneasy when there is a girl in my bed.”
Anne shot up from the place where Timon slept, glad that the dim light hid her crimson blush. She stooped, grabbed the candle, and held it close to the box on the bed.
“And what is this?” she demanded.
“Anne!” Marbury snapped.
“I do not mind,” Timon said. “She lashes out because she has been caught doing something she ought not to have done. It is a common human reaction—especially in the young. I assume she came into my room while I was gone, made her several discoveries, and fetched you.”
“Yes, exactly,” Marbury muttered.
“I have not slept this past night.” Timon blinked. “My moonlight work was taxing. I need to sleep, but perhaps it would be best for me to deal with matters at hand first.”
He moved suddenly. Anne held the candle in front of her as if it were a sword, her breathing more labored. Marbury planted his feet and felt for his knife. Timon’s hand shot between them and he grabbed the small wooden box. Anne stepped back, gasping. Marbury’s blade appeared.
“This box,” Timon announced, ignoring both blade and candle, “contains a world. In that world anything may happen, because it is a place unconfined by walls such as these stones around us. Its only borders are the limits of my brain. It is a land where I may fly, may distill and evaporate from my body entirely. There I am a king of infinite space. In short, this box is my best freedom.”
Anne lowered her candle. Marbury clutched his knife, but released his breath.
“But a more mundane explanation,” Timon continued, staring at the box, “is that the vials contain a certain oil of nutmeg, which may be ignited. The smoke may be drawn through a pipe into the lungs. The lungs take the smoke, absorb its chemical properties, and relate those properties to the brain. The brain interprets those elements in various ways, the way a man might interpret another language. In the details of that translation, I find the truth.”
Anne looked to her father. “I do not understand.”
“A man may drink wine,” Timon explained, “and become drunk. In that stupor he may perceive the world in a different light. He may see things that other men do not. You have witnessed this phenomenon?”
Anne’s brow furrowed. “Yes.”
“That is similar to my experience, except that mine . . .” Timon struggled to explain. “Ah! My experience, Anne, creates a theatre in the mind. My brain becomes a stage upon which many parts are played. In that theatre I am a playwright—as in this world God invents our parts.”
Anne stared at the box with new eyes.
“As to the documents you discovered in my hiding place, Anne,” Timon concluded, “they are Harrison’s. In my effort to investigate his murder, I found it useful to read a bit of his work. I believe that your father and I agree that the murders have more to do with the work of the translators than the translators themselves. It therefore seemed appropriate to examine that work more closely.”
Everything I have said is true, Timon thought to himself, but it is not the complete truth.
“Brother Timon,” Marbury said quickly, hiding his knife. “Our trespass has been inexcusable. Please do not think that Anne and I are the sort who—”
“Deacon,” Timon asserted, “we have matters of much greater import to discuss. This is your room; I only stay here at your whim. One cannot trespass property of one’s own.”
“How very gracious,” Marbury began.
“I do not fully understand about the oil of nutmeg,” Anne stammered.
“Daughter!” Marbury warned.
Timon’s head snapped in Anne’s direction. “Your father worries that my tutelage will explore areas of your education best left unrevealed.”
“But—,” she complained.
“There is a world of earthly endeavor from which every father would shield his child.” Timon held out the box. “It is unlikely that I shall ever understand that impulse. If your curiosity is of an overwhelming magnitude, please be my guest. You pour only a few thick drops of the oil into the pipe.”
Marbury put his hand on the box. “Brother Timon thinks that his confrontation in this fashion will cause you to demur. He does not know you.” He looked to Timon. “She would do it.”
Timon sighed. “I am tired in my blood and bones. Perhaps my judgment is compromised.”
“You wish to sleep,” Marbury said instantly, stepping away from Timon’s poor bed.
“Yes,” Timon said, staring down at his bed, “but I fear what dreams may come. And I feel an equal need to share information. There is a coming darkness. We must work quickly.”
“Something wicked this way comes,” Anne said softly. “I have felt it too.”
Both men stared at her.
“Something more wicked than two men murdered within view of my bedroom?” Marbury asked.
“There will be more killing,” Timon said. “But the murders are nothing compared to the treachery of—compared to the larger forces at work.”
Timon tossed the box onto his bed and rubbed his eyes with the cold palms of his hands.
“Christ,” Timon exhaled. “I must rouse myself.”
He stepped quickly to his basin, scooped his hands into the water there, and threw it against his face. “Chaderton,” he mumbled, again splashing himself. “Anne, would you mind fetching him? He told me certain things that must be examined further. We must do so immediately.”
“And then you must leave us, Anne,” Marbury told his daughter firmly.
“No, Father,” she responded reasonably. “The best way to keep me from breaking into strange rooms is to keep me well-informed. A mystery makes me curious. Remove the mystery and you remove the curiosity. The best way to eliminate my difficult behavior is to educate me. I must, therefore, come with you to this discussion or else prove a nuisance in so many other ways: crashing into more rooms, listening at keyholes, peeping over hedges.”
Marbury sighed, knowing that what she said was true. He struggled for a moment, trying to understand why her words seemed familiar—and so strange.
But Timon interrupted, saying with only a hint of humor, “As your tutor, I deem it essential to your education that you be present as we converse. Now off you go to find Chaderton.”
38
Marbury spent a useless few minutes trying to make amends with Timon for disturbing his room. Each time Timon protested that silence was a better ally to them both than any conversation could be. Timon seemed to need silence to absorb energy from the air. That same time seemed to tax Marbury to the point of pain, tensing his brow, straining his joints, adding brass weights to his lungs.
Chaderton arrived behind Anne at last, breathing heavily. He was dressed in a dark purple coat. A hat to match, faintly embroidered in gold, covered his head. Marbury nodded to Chaderton, who continued to gasp for breath trying to speak.
“No preliminaries!” Timon said loudly. “I believe that there has been a conspiracy since the death of our Savior to lie to all Christians. Some of these prevarications may have been the result of innocent mistakes. In the main, however, they represent a deliberate effort to pervert the life and death—the very meaning—of the man called Jesus. From this time forward, we must spend all our efforts to stop the forward progress of these lies. They are over a thousand years in the making. We must find the truth.”
Chaderton, without thinking, crossed himself.
Timon smiled sympathetically. Years of being a Protestant had not rid the old man of his father’s Catholic ghost.
“The lies of which I speak,” Timon continued, “are in the process of being sanctified in James’s Bible. No monarch on earth has ordained such an effort. Others have tried, to be sure, but they have proceeded grudgingly, or with half a heart or a third the scholarship of the present work. We must see to it that King James’s Bible tells the truth as it has never before been told. To do that, we must prevent the translators from being killed. Their deaths aid these ancient lies.”
The King James Conspiracy Page 18
