The King James Conspiracy Read online

  The alleyway was short, the space of three horses. The stones underfoot were ice between two grumbling shops in this poorest part of Cambridge. One shop was a butcher’s, fouling the air with rank decay. The other was a tinsmith’s hovel. Cheap pots hung everywhere.

  Jacob had forgotten where he was. He could feel nothing. He could only smell an overwhelming scent of nutmeg coming from his assailant.

  “You may wonder why I have chosen this method of execution,” the killer continued, his blade still in Jacob’s chest. “I had a fondness for you, and my studies have indicated that you should feel nothing from this particular kind of wound. Ancient Greek doctors tell us that when a man experiences a sudden shock of this magnitude, his body refuses to believe it, and all senses are shut for a short span. You will soon sleep, never having felt anything more than the first brief insult of this dagger. I have offered you, Jacob, the only kindness I know how to give in a circumstance such as this.”

  Jacob’s eyes rolled back in his head.

  “Ah.” Timon withdrew his blade.

  Jacob’s corpse slumped toward the stones of the alley floor just as Timon fancied he could see a burst of white steam fly upward.

  “Good-bye, Jacob,” he said to the steam. “I shall, alas, not see you again. We shall be spending eternity in separate quarters.”

  Just then a dog leapt out of the shadows, released from a side door at the butcher’s.

  “Get him, boy!” a voice growled. “He’s killed Jacob!”

  The dog went for Timon’s throat.

  Without a thought Timon swept his dagger forward, slashed deep, and sliced the dog’s throat, nearly cutting its head off. The dying carcass continued to fly through the air before it fell to the ground beside Jacob.

  Timon strode three long steps forward calmly and found the butcher crouching in the shadows, eyes bursting from their sockets.

  Without a word Timon grabbed the man by his apron and thrust him backward through the side door, into his shop. The butcher crashed against a wooden table before crumpling onto the floor. In a blur Timon moved back into the ally to grab the dead dog by its tail, dragging it into the shop behind him.

  “This will be a bit uncomfortable,” Timon said calmly, tossing back his hood once more.

  Immediately the butcher began to scramble backward. “Poor old Jacob. Villain! I saw what you did.”

  “I know,” Timon answered reasonably. “That is why I must kill you as well.”

  Without another word Timon picked up the butcher’s largest meat cleaver. The butcher froze. Timon raised the cleaver high. The butcher shrieked a sound so high-pitched that it was nearly inaudible. Turning the cleaver, Timon brought the flat part of it down savagely upon the man’s head, only knocking him unconscious.

  Carefully Timon placed the cleaver into the butcher’s right hand. Then he picked up the dog, pulled open its throat, and drained a bit of its blood onto the butcher and the cleaver.

  Timon cast his eye about the dark street for a moment. His ears strained for the slightest hint of any other witness. Satisfied that he was alone in his task, he wrenched open the dog’s mouth, shoved it onto the butcher’s ample neck, and clamped it down until the dog’s lifeless teeth drew blood.

  He searched the other knives in the shop until he found a long, thin fillet blade. He used it to carve several deep holes in the butcher’s neck, holes that seemed to be the teeth marks of a dog. Two of them tapped the jugular vein, and blood immediately fountained, spreading dark red decoration over the floor.

  Tomorrow people will say this was a shame, Timon thought to himself, standing back to admire his tableau. The butcher’s dog attacked him and he was forced to cleave the dog’s throat. Alas, the butcher bled to death before anyone could rescue him. Ironic in a butcher shop, was it not?

  Timon watched for a full five minutes to make certain that the butcher had died. Only then did he examine his own robe for stains—but the advantage of wearing black was that blood rarely left any noticeable trace.

  Without another thought for the dead men, Brother Timon turned toward the street and began to recite, from memory, the entirety of Aristotle’s Poetics.

  5

  The next afternoon was warmer. Cambridge was verging on springtime, at least out of doors. The air inside the stone walls of the Great Hall was still bitter winter. Even the candle flames trembled, shivering.

  The place was a cavern. High windows, softened by decades of dust, seemed designed to keep out the light. The walls showed evidence of moss in the shadows. Its scent hovered in the air. Floors as gray as rain clouds only sealed the chill.

  Wooden beams the color of a crow’s beak shouldered a high ceiling of fifty feet or more, urging it heavenward. Gravity, alas, did the devil’s work, sagging the rafters and threatening to pull down the roof.

  Brother Timon, easily six feet tall, his rough black robe almost a parody of an ascetic monk’s, drank in—and memorized—everything. The placement of each man, each desk, the arrangement of candles, the small box by the door, a scent of brandy, all were cataloged in his brain. He found he was most fascinated by the sound of the huge room: a constant low humming. It was the product of whispered voices combined with the scratching of quills on paper.

  Deacon Marbury led Timon past desk after desk. Many were empty; some were occupied by rapt scholars, seven in all. The men were scattered here and there among the fifty desks in the hall. The enormous study cubicles were arranged in rows of five, and no man sat directly next to nor across from any other man.

  Timon followed silently behind Deacon Marbury to the appointed place, counting his footsteps and feeling the contours of the floor as he walked.

  “Here we are,” Marbury said at last. “I present my daughter, Anne. Miss Anne, this is your new tutor, Brother Timon.”

  The monk’s eyes rose to meet Anne’s.

  He first noticed that her posture was perfect. The structure of her bones was a study in right angles, allowing a grace or easy comfort to relax her muscles. She sat at a small, rectangular table, not at a desk. Her ears were too small, eyes too big, lips too full, cheeks redder than fashion dictated. Taken together, these parts composed a whole that was strangely enchanting. She wore a black dress that choked at the neck, a clearly defiant gesture in a culture where courtly colors ran more to pale blues and bruised purples.

  Without realizing it, Timon brushed back his hair, scrutinizing her every feature as if he were reading a difficult passage of Greek. He tapped his right thumb rhythmically with the fingers of his right hand over and over as he stared.

  Anne had not yet recovered from the argument she’d had with her father earlier that morning concerning this new tutor. Her face remained stony.

  The three stood silently for long moments before the young woman said, “Your staring, sir, is stark; quite disconcerting.”

  Instantly Timon looked down. “Forgive me. I was trying to memorize your features, and my first impression of you. It is an older man’s foible: memory is essential to my work, of course, and memory fades. I find I must exercise mine constantly for fear of losing it altogether.”

  “You do not appear to be monstrously older than most men, only taller,” Anne said plainly, “and certainly not in danger of losing your mind.”

  “I have, to my credit, over fifty years,” he sighed, “and many of them were long ones.”

  “I have only twenty,” she responded, “and yet, they are a lifetime to me.”

  “I told you she was clever,” Marbury piped up. “I am blessed.”

  “My father loves me.” Anne smiled, but barely.

  “Brother Timon comes to us recommended by no less than the estate of Sir Philip Sidney.” Marbury blinked.

  “I had occasion to offer a groat’s worth of assistance,” Timon suggested, eyes downcast, “with a few of the more complicated structures of Arcadia. This was technical help, research, I hasten to say. I have no ear for poetry. And, of course, this was some years ago.”
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br />   “Yes, as Sir Philip has been dead for twenty years,” Anne answered steadily, only a lilt of suspicion in her voice. “Still, to be associated with the poet’s greatest work . . .”

  “Has it been so long?” Timon’s voice softened. “The span of your entire life and yet only a moment ago to me. I count myself fortunate that his heirs have remembered, recommended me after so long a time.”

  “Here is a man of learning, years, and modesty, Anne,” Marbury said briskly. “Highly recommended, indeed. Not to be taken lightly.”

  “Then he should realize,” Anne began, speaking to her father, eyes on Timon, “that he is to be more my keeper rather than my tutor.”

  “Hush.” Marbury shook his head.

  “These great men.” Anne’s eyes drank in the entire hall. “All these great men are here in this place doing God’s work—and the King’s. I am not to distract them, so I have been told. My father hires a tutor to keep me occupied. I have bested seven other such men. Did he tell you that, Brother Timon?”

  Marbury sighed. “She has done that,” he confided to Timon. “Over the course of her younger life, seven men tried and failed to think faster than my Anne. They resigned—or were dismissed.” Marbury’s voice was clearly filled with pride. Not a hint of regret was in his words.

  “Excellent.” Timon leaned toward Anne. “Then I shall dispense with the basics altogether and select something to study which will amuse as well as enlighten.”

  “I like the theatre for amusement.” Anne closed the book she had been reading. Her syllables were ice. “Shall we discuss your favorite play?”

  “Good, I am away, then,” Marbury said quickly, “leaving you two—”

  “A moment, Father. If I know more about this monk’s favorite play than he does, you will escort him back the way he came.” Anne’s eyes burned into Timon’s.

  “Daughter,” Marbury admonished.

  “In truth,” Timon said evenly, “I do not attend a great deal of this modern theatre, and—if you will forgive me for saying so—only a weak mind has a favorite of anything. But I am quite fond, at the moment, of a certain comedy. Perhaps you know it for the beautiful lines ‘O suffering mankind, lives of twilight, race feeble and fleeting like the leaves scattered! Pale generations, creatures of clay, the wingless, the fading.’”

  Marbury looked to Anne.

  Anne’s face flushed, cheeks aflame, eyes black.

  “A thousand pardons,” Timon said, unable to prevent the touch of a smile at the corner of his mouth. “I thought you might know The Birds. It is the greatest comedy of the Greek playwright Aristophanes. I read it in its original language, quite naturally, but I am certain the passage I have just spoken in English is accurately translated.”

  Marbury let go a long breath. “And now,” he said firmly, “I am gone.”

  Marbury turned at once and headed toward the door of the hall. Anne opened her mouth to voice further protest, but something in Timon’s face made her stop short. It was a face devoid of any expression at all. It was the mask of a man who had something to hide.

  6

  Timon drew a chair to the side of Anne’s table, opposite her, and sat.

  “The play was first performed,” he continued, not looking at Anne, “at the Great Dionysia in late March over four hundred years before the birth of Our Lord. If you like, I can recite the entire work. I have committed it to memory.”

  “You have cheated me!” Anne exploded. “This is not a real play!”

  “It is, in fact, more real than your contemporary plays because it contains the basic building blocks for nearly every comedy written in the two thousand years since its production. You have, one assumes, studied Aristotle.”

  Anne’s face cooled, as did her voice. “You must be proud,” she sneered, “besting a girl.”

  Timon bit his upper lip for a moment, then leveled an icy eye at his adversary.

  “Hardly a girl.” Timon’s gaze narrowed; his voice was barely above a whisper. “I have chosen to consider you a fellow scholar. And as I am a man of the cloth and have been celibate some thirty years, I scarcely consider your gender. You have a mind; it wants to learn. Acquire an arsenal of knowledge with which to arm yourself, Anne, if you are to be anything more than a distraction to the great men in this hall!”

  Anne blushed to have been so easily read. Still, her mind caught fire at the prospect of learning from this man, though she could not determine exactly why at that moment.

  “Yes.” She nodded once.

  “Then you must understand,” he told her, pronouncing each word with great precision, “that our modern age is a time when learning is power. Every man in this room can translate Latin, write a poem, fight with a rapier, paint the dew on a rose, and sail a battleship if need be. Every man must know every thing. Ignorance is the curse of God, knowledge the wing we use to fly. You live at a unique moment in history, one that shall pass away all too quickly, I fear. You occupy an England that loves learning. A time like this? It comes but once in a thousand years. Your brain must hurry to eat all the facts it can hold, before the next age of darkness.”

  Anne was momentarily hushed, eyes a bit wider, by the urgency of Timon’s speech.

  Only when Timon read that awe on Anne’s face did he realize that he had been making the speech as much to himself as to Anne.

  She took that moment to study Timon’s features. The eyes were not windows into the man, but mirrors, keeping everything out. The mouth appeared to be smiling even when it was a straight line parallel to the eyes. A mask, his expression revealed nothing of the inner content of the mind. And yet Anne knew, from experience, that such an expression always hid a secret.

  She shifted in her chair. Finding out that secret would be her challenge.

  “We shall begin with Aristotle’s Poetics.” Timon cleared his throat, as uncomfortable at her staring as she had been at his.

  “Aristotle, then, wrote plays?” Anne’s voice failed to hide her embarrassment at asking such a primary question.

  “He did not, but his treatise is a clear set of directions for building a play. His rules are followed to this day.”

  “Then I must know of him, and his work.” Anne brushed back a lock of errant hair. “Ours is a time when language dominates; men and women choose words over actions. Our tale unfolds in dialogue, and I must have direction from Aristotle.”

  “Yes, you must,” Timon said softly, leaning forward onto the table between them. “To begin at the beginning, Aristotle tells us that the plot is primary to all dramatic effort. Our theatre exists to tell a story. However, that story must be told, of course, almost exclusively through the dialogue of the characters.”

  A small spider had achieved the tabletop and was making its way across, toward Anne. She did not appear to notice it, but Timon could see nothing else. Frozen, he stopped talking. He stopped breathing. His heart seemed to pound at his eardrums.

  The spider was dark blue. A crimson pattern on its back was so intricate it seemed to be a tapestry. As Timon watched the progress of those eight legs, the tapestry undulated, making moving scenes. The images expanded, though the spider did not, and hung in the air, a sheer curtain, a bright fog whirling each scene until it threatened to break apart.

  Without warning, Anne’s milk-white hand brushed the spider off the tabletop. It was a single gesture, fingers perfect, as in a dance. The vision was gone.

  Timon blinked. Suddenly remembering to breathe, he gasped, swallowed suddenly, and coughed.

  “I have an aversion to spiders,” Timon managed to explain. “Or rather, I had a fear that the spider might be of the poisonous kind and would do you some harm. Certain spiders can kill.”

  “It is the curse of this room.” Anne scanned the huge room with a withering eye. “So many shadows and cold places for something poisonous to hide.”

  “Indeed,” he answered, collecting himself. “But to return to Aristotle: his concept of any plot dictates that it must begin at a very
specific moment, it must not have a haphazard—”

  “I understand,” Anne interrupted. “Let us say that our plot begins with the nexus of two characters. A young woman and a strange monk meet.”

  “Possibly.” Timon allowed himself to smile. “The first moment of their meeting might be interesting, though the larger plot must include many characters.”

  “But, then, how does Aristotle introduce these further characters?” She leaned forward, locking Timon in her gaze.

  “He does not,” Timon insisted. “Aristotle tells us that they must introduce themselves.”

  Close by, a book slammed shut. A slap of thunder echoed through the hall. Everyone was startled by it. All activity ceased.

  “How is a man to concentrate when monks and women are allowed to cavort freely about him?” The voice was pinched to the point of snapping off the tongue it used.

  Timon turned to its source. He found a rail-thin, gaunt man—eyes gray, shoulders bent—seated at the desk closest to Anne’s back. The man’s eyes avoided contact, but his face was contorted by rage.

  For a moment, there was not a sound in the room.

  “Silence in this hall,” Timon observed, turning back to Anne, “is louder than any sound, do you agree?”

  “And yet I dare brave its oppression,” she answered under her breath.

  “Is that wise?”

  Timon barely had time to ask the question before Anne stood.

  “A thousand apologies, Mr. Lively.” Her voice was not the least bit apologetic. “I know my enthusiasm must be a vexation. I shall withdraw.”

  She gathered the few items—pen, paper, several books—that were before her on the table.

  “The fault is entirely mine,” Timon insisted, also standing. “I am Brother Timon, newly established as tutor—”

  “I must listen to more idiocy?” Lively stood with such fury that his chair toppled, clattering noisily on the stone floor. “How can I possibly work? God in heaven!”