The Ancient Nine

by Ian K. Smith, M. D.

  “Good news,” Peggy said, returning from the back with a thin manila folder. “They found this downstairs in the stacks.”

  She took a seat next to me, and I realized that she was equally intrigued by the mysterious circumstances surrounding The Christian Warfare. But before she could open the folder, the phone rang, and she reluctantly went back to the reference desk. The folder contained three old newspaper clippings. The first was from The Boston Globe, 1961.

  L.W. JENKINS,

  MUSEUM HEAD

  49 YEARS, DIES

  PEABODY, Apr. 21—Lawrence W. Jenkins, 88, director emeritus of the Peabody Museum in Salem, died last night at his home, 35 Newcastle Rd. Mr. Jenkins retired from the museum in 1949 after 49 years as its curator.

  A native of Salem, he was graduated from Harvard in 1896. He was a charter member of the American Assn. of Museums; a fellow of the American Anthropological Society; a member of the Society of Nautical Research of London, of the American Antiquarian Society and Massachusetts Historical Society; the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, and the New England Historical Society. He also was a member of the Essex Institute in Salem, serving as its vice president from 1925 to 1951.

  Mr. Jenkins enlisted in the First Corps of Cadets in Boston in 1892. In World War I, he joined the 15th Massachusetts State Guard, retiring in 1920 as a lieutenant colonel. He was also a member of the Sons of the American Revolution and clerk of the Salem Marine Society for 25 years.

  Funeral services will be held at 2 p.m. Monday at the First Unitarian Church, Salem.

  I read through the other obituaries, which reported similar information. On rereading the Boston Herald clipping, something caught my eye. In the third paragraph, the bit about the Colonial Society of Massachusetts stood out. I had seen that name before in another newspaper clipping. I kept repeating the name until the image popped in my mind. Collander Abbott’s obituary. It had been listed under his many civic activities. I remember wondering to myself if they reenacted events like the Puritans landing on Plymouth Rock.

  I walked over to a computer and started searching for information on the Colonial Society of Massachusetts. It didn’t take long for the computer to retrieve the information. The society was founded in 1892 as a nonprofit educational foundation to promote the study of Massachusetts history from the earliest settlement through the first decades of the nineteenth century. Its membership was originally limited to descendants of the Massachusetts Bay Colony or Plymouth colonists, and the number of resident members had been capped at two hundred. Its stated chief business was publishing documents related to the early history of Massachusetts. Much of its work was carried out in its headquarters in a Boston landmark building at 87 Mt. Vernon Street. It was one of only a few remaining private houses built by the legendary architect Charles Bulfinch.

  Then I thought about the passage engraved on Erasmus Abbott’s urn and the Ancient Nine creed. Was it just a coincidence that those passages came from a rare historical book that was once owned by Lawrence Jenkins, Collander Abbott’s fellow Colonial Society member?

  Peggy returned with the 1901 and 1906 class bulletins, two thin, cloth-bound books that had the years stamped on the cover. “Sometimes major gifts from alumni were announced at their reunions. So I thought these might help.”

  I turned the pages to the class of 1896 section, but there wasn’t any mention of Jenkins or his donation.

  “Bingo,” she said. She had been looking through the 1906 book. “It says here, ‘Mr. Lawrence Jenkins made the auspicious donation of a fully preserved 1604 first edition of The Christian Warfare on the event of his tenth-year reunion.’”

  I now could tighten the timeline by ten years. Someone had very neatly cut out those two pages between 1906 and 1936. But the two critical questions still remained: Who and why?

  * * *

  I CAUGHT UP with Dalton after practice that night, and we talked about everything that I had discovered. He was planning on flying down to New York the next afternoon to have another look around Wild Winds. After we had finished talking, I studied for a couple of hours in the room, standing up while I read Kant to keep myself from falling asleep. I was in a solid groove when Percy came home, eager to talk about how he had gotten into the Lampoon and how much better he was feeling about the Spee Club rejection. As happy as I was that his life had been restored, when he knocked on my bedroom door for the fifth time that night looking to chat, I decided to finish my reading at Lamont.

  Midterms were only ten days away, which meant a packed library. I found a tiny stall on the second-floor mezzanine and set up camp like everyone else. With my headphones blocking out the noise, I got through my Orgo problem set rather quickly before taking out my biology text and getting to work on Mendelian genetics. After reading a couple of chapters, Ashley came to mind, and I started thinking about her birthday in two days and what I would get her. Ms. Garrett had told me in confidence that Ashley had never wanted a party growing up, and how Ms. Garrett now regretted that she had obliged. I didn’t have much left in my bank account, but I wanted to somehow make this a memorable birthday for her.

  On my first hourly break, I went upstairs to find out whatever I could about Forde’s revelation that King James I was rumored to be bisexual. I looked through a couple of encyclopedias, but they steered clear of the topic of his sexuality, instead focusing on his political accomplishments and policy miscalculations during his reign. But then I came across a couple of essays and a book that had been written about his life. Unlike the encyclopedias and earlier writings, they confronted the issue head on.

  James I was suspected of being homosexual as early as his teenage years, when he supposedly entered into an improper relationship with his older cousin, Esmé Stuart—Seigneur d’Aubigny who was the Duke of Lennox and a French courtier. The Scottish nobility and court disapproved of the relationship and eventually arranged the kidnapping of King James, during which time he was forced to issue a proclamation against Esmé, who eventually fled Scotland. While James had seven children with his wife, Anne of Denmark, he was also known to have had close and intimate relationships with several men.

  The author went on to assert that one of the King’s closest advisors, George Villiers, whom the King made Duke of Buckingham, was the great love of his life. The King argued in front of the Privy Council that not only did he love Villiers more than anyone else, but he had the right to do so. King James put Villiers in charge of foreign policy, which according to most historians turned out to be a considerable mistake. Some accounts even had King James publicly calling Villiers his wife. I finished reading several more essays regarding King James’s sexuality, and returned to the reading room. I felt like I had done enough work to report back to Davenport. I was hopeful that he would now help me connect the dots.

  * * *

  THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, I found Professor Davenport sitting at his desk in the basement of Andover Hall, wearing what was most likely the same corduroy suit. As I walked into the cramped office, he was struggling to keep his balance as he reached for a book on the top shelf with his cane.

  “Let me get that, Professor,” I said, rushing into the room and leaping over the stacks of papers on the floor.

  When he turned toward me, he lost his balance and almost toppled over before dropping his cane and grabbing on to the bookshelf.

  “Perfect timing,” he said. “That book up there is giving me fits.”

  I helped him out of the chair, then stepped up and reached back to retrieve the book. It was a 1905 guide to early churches. I handed it to him before squeezing into a seat near his desk.

  “How goes the research?” he said after catching his breath.

  “I know a lot more than I did the last time I was here,” I said. “And I actually looked at The Christian Warfare.”

  He strained his muscles into a smile. “Indeed, you have made progress, young man,” he said. “And I would assume that you’ve answered some of your own questions.” He slid hi
s chair close to me with great effort. “Let’s talk about what you’ve found.”

  I pulled out my pad and quickly skimmed my notes. I had highlighted my short list of questions for quick reference. I decided to discuss my findings in reverse order. “I was looking into the life of King James,” I said. “I hadn’t known that he was bisexual.”

  “A fact that has been known since his reign,” Davenport said. “And he was not the first monarch to have such a liberal sex life. The monarchists of the day were scandalized by the public revelation of the King’s personal indiscretions. He had become, by default, the symbolic leader of Christianity. Ironically, his aberrant behavior flew in the face of Christian principles as spelled out in the Bible. You must also remember that King James had been baptized Catholic but raised by tutors, the most influential being a staunch Protestant Calvinist by the name of George Buchanan. He was kidnapped early in his reign for a year when his sexual relationship with Stuart was discovered. His captors forced him to denounce his lover, who was a Roman Catholic and believed to be influencing his policy. History shows that James was one of the most intelligent men ever to ascend the throne, and he immortalized his legend by commissioning a new Bible translation bearing his name. To this day, the King James version is still one of the most widely used Bibles in the world.” Davenport took a sip from a coffee-stained mug on his desk. “So, what did you make of the book?”

  I looked down at my notes. “I found out that the 1604 edition of the book was donated by an alum named Lawrence Jenkins. He was a graduate in the class of 1896 and the former curator of the Peabody Museum in Salem.”

  “Good work, Mr. Collins,” Davenport said. “Yes, Jenkins was a great historian in his own right and an immense collector of historical documents, books, and artifacts. I had the opportunity to meet him once. He was an extremely prominent and philanthropic man who served Harvard and this state very faithfully.”

  Davenport explained that Jenkins was aware that the John Harvard book wasn’t a first edition. As a serious collector, with tenacity and deep pockets, he finally tracked down and acquired a first edition for his personal collection. I shared my discovery that Jenkins was acknowledged for his book donation on his tenth reunion. I didn’t share with him how I had triangulated the dates the pages must have gone missing, because if he asked me about the 1936 date, I’d have to reveal the Ancient Nine’s succession book.

  “The reunion bulletin said that Jenkins donated a fully preserved book,” I said. “Do you think that was accurate?”

  “I’d bet my life on it,” Davenport said confidently. “It’s unlikely a collector of Jenkins’s stature would purchase a book with missing pages, especially since there are other complete copies in existence.”

  “I looked through the 1604 edition,” I said. “From what I could tell, it looked like someone had meticulously cut those pages with a razor. The other pages before and after it were in perfect condition.”

  “Those pages were definitely targeted, and whoever did it knew what they were doing,” Davenport said.

  He talked about the infamous Williams case and how he had met the man on several occasions in the library. Then he recounted the attempt on the Gutenberg Bible. “And those are just the cases we know about,” he said. “With a library system that has over six million books, I’m sure there have been probably hundreds, if not thousands, of thefts.”

  I looked down at my list of questions. “That explains opportunity,” I said, “but I still have a problem with motive.”

  “I’m listening,” he said.

  “There are seven other copies of the first edition.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “And there are microfilm copies of the first edition available to everyone.”

  “That’s correct also.”

  “Why would someone steal those specific pages when other copies of those pages existed?”

  “Very nice, Mr. Collins,” he said. “You’ve arrived at one of the most critical questions. You must stretch your mind.” He tapped his arthritic finger against his temple. “You’re halfway there. There’d be no reason for someone to steal those pages, since the text could be acquired elsewhere. So why take them?”

  I shrugged. “It wasn’t a random act of vandalism. Maybe there was something on those specific pages that wasn’t in the other books.”

  Davenport nodded slowly, and the aged leather seat squeaked underneath his frail bones. “Someone must’ve gone through considerable effort and risk to steal those pages. You’re asking the right questions.”

  “This book is special for two reasons,” I thought aloud. “First, it was King James’s personal book, and second, two pages have been stolen from it. There must be a connection.”

  “You’re thinking.” Davenport smiled. “How about this? A book from a private library might mean that private notes were written in it.”

  “King James wrote something on those pages,” I said.

  Davenport nodded with another easy smile.

  “What do scholars think he wrote?” I said.

  “Depends on whom you ask.” He reached down to his desk for another gulp of coffee. “I’ve spent a great deal of my professional life pursuing those two pages and their importance,” he said. “My first wife almost left me over them, but that’s another story for another time. I believe the King wrote a poem on either one or both of those pages.” Davenport leaned forward in his chair, nostrils flared. “Make no mistake, young man,” he said. “This poem was like no other. Many of us believe that this poem could’ve been his own admission of sorts of his homosexuality. A very valuable piece of history that scholars have been seeking for centuries.”

  36

  I WAS FEELING proud of myself as I boarded the train in Harvard Square with a dozen pink roses, a box of Godiva chocolates, and Prince’s Lovesexy CD. I had called Ms. Garrett to set it all up. Ashley wouldn’t be getting home from class until seven thirty that night, which meant I had more than enough time to get to her place in Roxbury before she got home. I purposely hadn’t called her earlier in the day, hoping that she would believe I had forgotten her birthday. I could barely contain my excitement thinking of the look on her face when she walked through the door and saw me sitting there with her birthday presents. I had willingly emptied my bank account, knowing that the smile on her face would be worth every penny.

  I had carefully written down the directions from Ms. Garrett. I took the Red Line to Park Street, made a couple of transfers, and then got off on a busy street on the edge of Roxbury. As I found myself on a five-minute walk through a run-down neighborhood of vacant lots and dilapidated tenement houses, I started worrying that I had either made a mistake in taking the directions or missed a turn. I couldn’t imagine Ashley living in this kind of neighborhood. It reminded me of the toughest parts of southwest Chicago that even I had always avoided. Stripped, rusted cars sat on lopsided cinder blocks, and groups of teenagers in baggy coats and tilted baseball caps clustered on the corner, staring menacingly as I passed. I was about to turn around and walk back to the train station, but then I saw Shirley Street and hooked a right as Ms. Garrett had instructed.

  Multifamily shoebox houses lined the narrow sidewalks. They looked old and badly in disrepair, chipping paint on crumbling façades, hanging wood slats blowing in the wind, holes in windows closed with black electric tape, and many of the front doors reinforced by a heavily fortified exterior screen door. Most of the streetlights were out. The farther I walked, the more I understood why Ashley had always been so determined that I not escort her home.

  I finally reached her house, a modest two-story building with yellow vinyl siding whose color had faded in some places and thick patches of dirt had collected in others. A broken-down van sat in the alley adjacent to the house, and the front porch listed slightly to one side. I climbed the uneven steps and found her last name underneath the second of two buttons. I pushed it, and moments later a faint buzzer sounded. I opened the front door and e
ntered a dark, cold foyer. A steep set of rickety steps led to a door on the second floor. I scaled the steps with their worn carpet and as I neared the top, the door quickly opened. A tall woman in a simple black skirt and red blouse stood framed in the entrance. She and Ashley could’ve easily passed for sisters.

  “Nice to finally meet you, Spenser,” she said. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

  “Thanks for allowing me to come over,” I said, stepping into the apartment, where I was immediately filled by the sweet aroma of a freshly baked cake. The rooms were tiny, but they were immaculate and filled with pride. It suddenly dawned on me that in many respects, this four-room apartment had more dignity and grace than any of the mansions I had visited the last couple of weeks. The Garretts made the most of what little they had, and for that I had enormous respect.

  I immediately felt comfortable with Ms. Garrett, which was unusual for me since I had never been big on the parent thing. I always believed that once you met the girl’s parents, if anything went wrong in the relationship, the guilt would only be magnified. But Ms. Garrett reminded me a lot of my own mother, young and attractive, left alone to raise a single child under difficult financial circumstances, yet hopeful that hard work and strong faith would lift her family beyond their present condition.

  By the time we heard Ashley putting her key into the door, Ms. Garrett and I had become fast friends, and our small surprise party had been arranged. The chocolate cake with twenty candles had been placed in the middle of the kitchen table surrounded by my flowers and gifts. I squeezed into the living room and waited while Ms. Garrett met Ashley at the door.