Interred with Their Bones

by Jennifer Lee Carrell

  Opening the diary, I looked again at the sentence Ophelia quoted from Jem’s letter, exactly as he’d written it: Ps. Lest you doubt me, in my Jacobean magnum opus, I have ciphered the location—1623, the signature page. I bit my lip. We were missing something.

  What?

  I’d have given anything for another look at Ophelia’s letter to Emily Folger. But I’d left that letter, and all the others, with Barnes in Stratford. Damn Sir Henry. I closed my eyes and tried to picture it. Ophelia had written “Jacobean magnum opus, c——— 1623”—with the word following that c smudged out. That sounded right, but without the letter, I couldn’t be sure.

  Abruptly, I set my wine down on the table and bent to the diary again. In her note to me on the back of the catalog card for Chambers, Roz had written “Jacobean magnum opus, c. 1623”—indicating the First Folio, and I’d never rethought it. Not a bad assumption, given the subject of Shakespeare, a Jacobean magnum opus, and the year 1623.

  But of course, she’d been wrong about assuming that Ophelia’s c was the abbreviation for “circa.” And if you put in the word ciphered where Jem had it, the phrase was no longer so clear-cut.

  In Roz’s construction, 1623 referred to the magnum opus. But in Jem’s, it could just as well refer back to the ciphering. And if it was the ciphering that was somehow dated 1623, then the book was not—or not necessarily so. The book in question did not have to be the First Folio.

  “Is there a cipher dated 1623?” asked Matthew, looking over my shoulder.

  “That’s the year that Bacon published De Augmentis Scientiarum. The Latin edition of his Advancement of Learning.”

  Matthew’s eyes widened. “Bacon’s cipher,” he said.

  “Sir Francis Bacon?” asked Athenaide sharply.

  I nodded. The same Sir Francis Bacon beloved by Delia and others as the man behind Shakespeare’s mask—the man I had identified as one of the boars in the chimerical beast. His Advancement of Learning set out a system for classifying, studying, and mastering the entire body of human knowledge. And in 1623, the Latin edition, longer than the original English, presented to the world a whole section on ciphers and codes—including one that Bacon had devised himself.

  My voice cracked. “Did Granville own a copy of The Advancement of Learning?”

  “No.” Athenaide was adamant.

  “Or anything else by Bacon?”

  “Just the Essays.” She went back to the case and pulled out another book, slimmer. I paged through it quickly. To use Bacon’s cipher in a book already printed meant that Jem would have had to make some of the individual letters stand out from others. He would have had to mark the book.

  But the Essays were empty of markings.

  I wheeled around the table. “Is there anything else from the Renaissance?”

  “Come and look.” Pulling stacks of books from the case, we hauled them back to the table, systematically riffling through them all. Jem Granville had been a rake and a scoundrel of the first order, but he had also been a well-read man of his time. His collection included volumes by Tennyson and Browning, Dickens and Trollope, Darwin, Mill, and Macaulay. But nothing else from the Renaissance. Nor had anything been marked up in any obvious way, save for his signature on the frontispieces. Unlike Roz, he had not made a habit of writing in books.

  My hopes rose when we came to Walter Pater’s The Renaissance, but that, too, turned out to be blank. “There has to be something else,” I said in frustration as I reached the last page. I turned to Athenaide. “Did you buy all of his books?”

  “Everything that Mrs. Jiménez knew had been Granville’s.”

  What if he had not signed the book in question? What if it had been mislaid? Given away? Read to tatters, or donated to a church rummage sale? It could be anywhere. I leaned across the table. “Ask.”

  “It’s four o’clock in the morning, Katharine…. Three o’clock, over in Arizona.”

  “They’re ranchers. They’ll be up. Or almost up.”

  Athenaide pulled out her cell phone. Taking a long sip of wine, she dialed. Somebody answered. “Yes…no.” Athenaide’s eyes gleamed. “Just a minute….” Muffling the phone, she said, “One book. The family Bible.”

  Light began fizzing and popping through my veins. “Which version?”

  “She doesn’t know. An old one.”

  “Ask her to look.”

  In her ranch house in Arizona, Mrs. Jiménez went to look. Leaning against the table, barely breathing, I squinted up over the fireplace at the unseeing eyes of Millais’s Ophelia.

  “The title page,” said Athenaide, “reads, Set forth in 1611 and commonly known as The King James Version.”

  I gripped the edge of the table to stay upright.

  “The Jacobean magnum opus,” said Matthew, his eyes shining with sudden comprehension.

  It was; it had to be. Literally, since Jacobean means “Jamesian” in Latin. The King James Bible, went an old adage, was the only masterpiece ever written by committee. One of the first things King James had done upon ascending the throne was to command his bishops to do something about what he regarded as the deplorable state of the English Bible. There were too many of them, to his thinking, and none of them took the latest Hebrew and Greek scholarship into account. Priding himself as an intellectual and a poet, the king wanted a Bible both accurate and sonorous—suitable for reading aloud from the pulpit. A Bible that all his fractious subjects could share.

  The bishops had done their work better than anyone could have dreamed. For three centuries, the King James Bible had ruled English-speaking church services. It was, in large part, why Shakespeare had not sounded foreign in Britain or her colonies until well into the twentieth century, when other translations had finally gained currency and churchgoing began to drop. Up till that time, churchgoing people heard Jacobean English spoken aloud every Sunday in ritualized readings whose vocabulary and cadences had twined their way deep into habits of language and thought. Phrases like Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…Honor thy father and thy mother…Thou shalt not kill…Blessed art thou among women… and Fear not: for behold, I bring you tidings of great joy sounded—if not quite everyday—yet neither strange nor difficult. To millions of English speakers, Shakespeare had sounded like the Sunday-finest of their language.

  “How long does it take to get to the Jiménez ranch?” I asked.

  “Two hours,” said Athenaide. “We’ll gain one, going into Arizona.”

  “Tell her we’ll be there at five, then.”

  “It’s not for sale,” warned Athenaide.

  “We don’t need to buy it, Athenaide. We need to see it.”

  She hung up. Picking up her glass, she raised it in a toast. “Vero nihil verius.”

  We clinked glasses and drank. Scooping up a pile of books from the table, I carried them back to the locked case. Matthew did the same.

  Behind me, I heard a cough and a gurgling. I looked back. Athenaide’s face had gone red. Her mouth moved, twice, but no sound came out. The glass dropped from her hand, shattering, and she slid to the floor.

  We reached her in an instant. Her pulse was weak, but still there. I could not tell if she was breathing or not.

  “Call nine-one-one,” I said, sinking to my knees.

  “I know CP—” offered Matthew.

  But I had already started. “Go!” I barked. “And find Graciela.”

  After an instant’s hesitation, he picked up Athenaide’s phone. At that moment, the lights went out.

  “Are you—?” started Matthew.

  “Graciela.”

  He left.

  Blindly, I pumped Athenaide’s chest, and then I bent to breathe for her. My eyes began adjusting to the darkness. I pumped and breathed again. Breathe, goddamn it.

  I stopped to listen for a heartbeat, trying to feel for a pulse at the same time. No pulse. No breath. No, no, no life, Sir Henry had said, looking at Mrs. Quigley.

  This was different. Athenaide
lay as if stubbornly sleeping, blue-and-white glass in shards around her, a puddle of Pinot on the floor. Faint light glimmered on the shattered goblet.

  Where was Matthew? Where was Graciela? Somebody, anybody.

  Another voice floated up from memory. The drink, I heard a woman’s voice cry. The drink! Oh my dear Hamlet—I am poisoned. Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother, the words gasped under a warm summer sun at the Globe.

  I sat back, enveloped in horror. Inside Elsinore, the Queen lay on the rush-strewn floor, a goblet of wine spilled at her feet.

  No. I would not believe it. Not Athenaide. Not now.

  I bent back over her. Breathe.

  Crouched over Athenaide, I heard a faint grinding and a click. The door. Matthew was back. I was opening my mouth to tell him, when a wave of forebading stopped me. When he’d left, he hadn’t closed the door. So it wasn’t the hall door that had opened. And then I remembered that sound: the door in the fireplace.

  I stood up. Slowly, praying to avoid the crunch of broken glass, I crept through the darkness toward the side of the room. Somewhere over here was another door; I’d seen Graciela use it.

  The beam of a flashlight shot into the center of the room, and I flattened myself against the wall. Athenaide lay spread-eagled on her back, her suit rumpled and wine-stained. Something soft brushed my hand, and I froze. I glanced right. A tapestry. There was nowhere else to go; I slid behind it. In the darkness, I had to hope it would be enough.

  Footsteps moved out toward the center of the room.

  The glow of the flashlight skimmed across the fabric in front of me and disappeared. Try as I might, I could hear nothing.

  A blade drove through the tapestry just to the left of my shoulder. I spun away, but the knife slashed through the fabric again, grazing my arm. I backed and kicked, and the curtain rod holding the tapestry up came crashing down, winding both me and my attacker in cloth.

  He grabbed me through the brocade. I kicked, but hands gripped my neck, winding the cloth tighter. He began to squeeze. I flailed blindly, feeling myself going under in a flood of darkness; hot spots like bursts of lava exploded through my vision. I fought to stay conscious. I would not let him turn me into Lavinia. I would not. My hand struck something hard on the floor. The knife.

  Fumbling for the handle, I seized it and struck with all my force, feeling the blade sink in to its haft. Still he did not let go. I struck again. There was a guttural grunt, and he fell against me.

  I rolled over him and floundered loose from the tapestry. Moonlight lay pooled about the floor like ice. The knife in my hand was slippery with blood. More welled from the man’s shirt at my feet.

  More footsteps behind me. I spun, brandishing the knife.

  It was Matthew, the phone still in his hand. “I couldn’t find—Jesus.”

  I backed off, still brandishing the knife.

  “Kate, it’s me. It’s okay.”

  I began to tremble.

  He walked forward and took the knife from me, enveloping me in his arms. “What happened?”

  “He tried to kill me.” I motioned at the body on the floor.

  Leaning down, Matthew pulled the tapestry back, and I saw a strand of gray hair.

  It was Sir Henry.

  I stumbled back.

  Matthew knelt, feeling for a pulse. Looking up, he shook his head. “Were you behind the tapestry?”

  I nodded.

  “Polonius,” he said. The king’s counselor, whom Hamlet stabs behind an arras.

  I barely heard him. I had killed a man. I had killed Sir Henry.

  “Athenaide?” asked Matthew.

  I looked at him, wild-eyed. “Gertrude,” I whispered.

  He got up and moved swiftly to Athenaide. But she, too, was gone.

  “Kate!” A roar reverberated through the walls.

  We both froze. It was Ben.

  “Where the hell is he?” breathed Matthew.

  Ben yelled again, and it sounded as if the house itself were roaring. He was inside the tunnels hidden in the walls of the house, which meant that he could be anywhere. He could come out of any wall, any door. Most of all, he could step out of the fireplace at any moment.

  “Bring the phone,” I said. Grabbing Ophelia’s diary from the table, I headed for the door. Matthew followed. Running down the corridor, we made our way back through the house, tensing at every open door-way, every shadow that shifted. We came at last to a curtain, moving slightly, that led from Elsinore into what looked like a western saloon. Matthew stepped forward and ripped it aside. There was no movement in the bar.

  I strode through the door. Outside stood a car, its engine purring—but no one appeared to be in it. I went around to the driver’s side and stopped again. Graciela lay on the ground by the driver’s door. Her throat had been cut.

  Matthew was beside me in an instant. Dragging Graciela from the car, he slid into the driver’s seat. I slid in after him, forcing him over to the passenger side. Shifting to drive, I accelerated so quickly that the wheels spun on the gravel as we roared into the night. The gate at the top of the hill was open. We rattled through it.

  Then I heard the sirens. Turning off the road, I drove around the hill, past a stand of mesquite, and switched off the ignition and the lights. Not much cover, but it was the best there was in this open country. Dawn was already lightening the sky; if anyone paused for a good look, they’d see us.

  “Did you call the police?” whispered Matthew.

  “You had the phone.”

  He frowned. “Maybe Graciela did, before…” His voice trailed away.

  A few moments later, an ambulance sped by us, followed by police and sheriffs. No one stopped.

  I waited three minutes. Then, without turning on the lights, I eased back onto the road. Five minutes after that, we were on the interstate, headed toward Arizona.

  41

  “WHERE ARE WE going?” asked Matthew.

  “To the Jiménezes.”

  “Do we know where they live?”

  “We have Athenaide’s phone.”

  He found redial, and I spoke to Mrs. Jiménez, explaining smoothly that Athenaide had been detained, but that we were coming on ahead…. Nothing I told her was exactly a lie, but nothing was exactly true either.

  It was enough for Mrs. Jiménez. She gave us directions.

  “You want to talk about it?” asked Matthew as I hung up.

  “I won’t know any more until I see that Bible.”

  “I meant about Sir Henry.”

  My palms were sweating, and I could feel my own heartbeat pounding in my temples, but I shook my head. I had killed a man. I had killed Sir Henry…. He—or Ben—or both—had somehow poisoned Athenaide and stabbed Graciela, and Sir Henry had tried to kill me. We had found the Jacobean magnum opus—or we were fast closing in on it.

  I had killed Sir Henry.

  I watched the road roll past beneath the car. Across southern Arizona and New Mexico, small mountain ranges crisscross the earth, encircling vast valley basins that were once shallow seas or immense lakes. We drove west around the northern end of the Chiricahuas, and then across the northern flank of the Dos Cabezas range. As those mountains crumbled and sank into the plain, the freeway curved south. In the east, a silver line fired at the upper edge of the Dragoons. Above that, night slowly drained to a dark bruise. As the freeway bent its way east toward Tucson, we kept heading south, veering onto Highway 80. In the flat farmland around St. David, we overtook a tractor and sped on.

  The land rose again as we headed toward Tombstone. Just before we reached the town, we turned back northeast, rattling up a washboarded dirt road, back toward the southern edge of the Dragoons. The eastern sky fired a deep blood red. Below, the mountains thickened blacker than black. They were hulking and heavy, the sullen remnants of an older world.

  We rumbled over a cattle guard and bounced across a road meant for trucks, passing a barn dark with age, corrals of woven mesquite, and rusted bits of farm machinery, old
trucks, and riding tackle. Under a stand of cottonwoods, we came to a long pink adobe house with a pitched tin roof. Attached to the front, as an afterthought, was a whitewashed porch that would have looked more at home in Iowa. Dogs yapped and barked, nipping at our wheels, and chickens squawked as we drove up. A plump, dark-haired woman with soft brown skin came out on the porch, wiping work-worn hands on a kitchen towel. A lanky, bow-legged man in a cowboy hat and jeans followed, stepping down the porch with a steaming mug of coffee. He had a big old six-shooter strapped to his hip. Doffing his hat, he swatted at the dogs, telling them to let be, and then he introduced himself and his wife as Memo and Nola Jiménez.

  Mrs. Jiménez looked at us with anxious eyes. “The Bible is not for sale,” she said, in the soft lilt of someone more accustomed to Spanish than English.

  Mr. Jiménez nodded. “It belonged to Nola’s great-grandmother.”

  I leaned forward. “I only want to look.”

  The rancher contemplated the dark mountains. His gray hair was flattened around the crown of his head where he’d worn a hat for most of his life. “No one’s interested themselves in Mr. Granville for a hundred years. Now there’s been three of you in two weeks. Seems fair to ask what you might be up to.”

  “He found something.”

  “The gold mine,” whispered Mrs. Jiménez. “My great-grandmother always believed he found one.”

  “There is no gold mine,” said Mr. Jiménez sharply. He looked from his wife to me. “Not up there. Gold, yes. But not enough to be worth extracting. Two or three big operations listened to the old stories and tried. But they made their money on less flashy metals.”

  Gold mining is destructive work. Dynamiting and tunneling. Scraping huge pits in the earth. Please, I prayed, though I didn’t know to what power, please don’t have ruined it. Aloud I said, “Not a mine, though he may have given that impression.”

  I held up the brooch on its chain and opened it to the miniature. As quickly as I could, I told them the story of Father William Shelton, sent to the wilds of New Spain in 1626, when he disappeared headed southwest out of Santa Fe with a company of Spanish soldiers.