Read Online The Simeon Chamber by Steve Martini - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Steve Martini
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up Broadway, the large dark car pulled out of the parking lot and followed the bus up the street.
Nick Jorgensen wasted no time in tracking down Jasper Holmes on campus to show him the parchments from the Davies case. Holmes was an eccentric Englishman on a one-year sabbatical with the English literature department. After getting a glimpse of the documents, he insisted that Nick bring the parchments to his apartment that evening where the two of them could study them more thoroughly after dinner. Holmes was considered a foremost expert on Elizabethan prose, having published a two-volume translation of the official papers of Elizabeth Tudor.
Nick jumped at the invitation, and by seven that evening the two had the papers spread out across the large dining table and a smaller card table, examining every letter with magnifying glasses, Nick writing and making notes as Holmes deciphered the script. Jasper kept tripping over piles of books that he had taken from the table and laid on the floor to make room for the large pieces of parchment. His wife, Molly, worked in the kitchen cleaning up after dinner. She was a matronly woman who was used to her husband sticking his nose in some book till all hours of the night.
Holmes mumbled in a low monotone as he examined the parchments with an oversized magnifying glass under the bright glare of a desk lamp he had brought from the study.
“Gothic cursive script. I would say fifteenth, maybe sixteenth century,” said Holmes. “The trick”—he paused in mid-sentence to focus the light of the desk lamp directly over the page—”is to know the common stumbling blocks, to train the eye
to appreciate a range of visual distinctions with which we are unfamiliar today.” Without looking up at Nick, Holmes pushed one of the parchments to the other side of the table, stretching across with a ruler pointed to a single word on the page. “See that?”
he looked at Nick. “It’s spelled three different ways just in the four pages we have here.”
“What do you think?” asked Nick. “a sloppy forgery?”
“Not likely. An amateur forger would have at least taken care to conform all the spellings. If these are a fraud they were done by someone who knew what he was doing. The fact is that the writings of Elizabethan England bridged a period between the medieval and modern. There were virtually no common rules of punctuation, spelling or grammar.
If it sounded right it was right,” said Holmes.
“No, the author either understood the grammatical chaos of the times and took pains to mimic it or …”
Holmes took a considered pause and straightened up, arching his back.
“Or what?” asked Nick.
“Or the man who wrote these wore short baggy pants, tight stockings—and has been fertilizing the seabed with his bones for the better part of four centuries.”
“You mean they’re authentic?”
“I can’t say that with certainty. I’m no documents expert, but the style and prose sound like Drake. The man had what the Spaniards could only characterize as a morbid wit. He could never be satisfied with a simple entry in his log. His correspondence to the queen was usually filled with barbs about the Spanish, whom he genuinely hated. Here, look at this passage.” Holmes pointed to a spot on one of the parchments. “The writer describes an eagle of gold with an emerald clutched in its talon, apparently part of the booty they took from a Spanish merchantman. He says, `We relieved the overwrought friar of his responsibility for the bird.` That is precisely how Sir Francis might tell the world that he and his band robbed some poor cleric. All I can say with certainty is that the tone of the writing is on the mark from my earlier readings.”
Unsure how much he should reveal to Holmes and without thinking Nick asked, “Do you know anything about Drake’s journal?”
Jasper Holmes looked up, arching an eyebrow. And as if a signal had suddenly been tripped, the Englishman’s
Nick Jorgensen wasted no time in tracking down Jasper Holmes on campus to show him the parchments from the Davies case. Holmes was an eccentric Englishman on a one-year sabbatical with the English literature department. After getting a glimpse of the documents, he insisted that Nick bring the parchments to his apartment that evening where the two of them could study them more thoroughly after dinner. Holmes was considered a foremost expert on Elizabethan prose, having published a two-volume translation of the official papers of Elizabeth Tudor.
Nick jumped at the invitation, and by seven that evening the two had the papers spread out across the large dining table and a smaller card table, examining every letter with magnifying glasses, Nick writing and making notes as Holmes deciphered the script. Jasper kept tripping over piles of books that he had taken from the table and laid on the floor to make room for the large pieces of parchment. His wife, Molly, worked in the kitchen cleaning up after dinner. She was a matronly woman who was used to her husband sticking his nose in some book till all hours of the night.
Holmes mumbled in a low monotone as he examined the parchments with an oversized magnifying glass under the bright glare of a desk lamp he had brought from the study.
“Gothic cursive script. I would say fifteenth, maybe sixteenth century,” said Holmes. “The trick”—he paused in mid-sentence to focus the light of the desk lamp directly over the page—”is to know the common stumbling blocks, to train the eye
to appreciate a range of visual distinctions with which we are unfamiliar today.” Without looking up at Nick, Holmes pushed one of the parchments to the other side of the table, stretching across with a ruler pointed to a single word on the page. “See that?”
he looked at Nick. “It’s spelled three different ways just in the four pages we have here.”
“What do you think?” asked Nick. “a sloppy forgery?”
“Not likely. An amateur forger would have at least taken care to conform all the spellings. If these are a fraud they were done by someone who knew what he was doing. The fact is that the writings of Elizabethan England bridged a period between the medieval and modern. There were virtually no common rules of punctuation, spelling or grammar.
If it sounded right it was right,” said Holmes.
“No, the author either understood the grammatical chaos of the times and took pains to mimic it or …”
Holmes took a considered pause and straightened up, arching his back.
“Or what?” asked Nick.
“Or the man who wrote these wore short baggy pants, tight stockings—and has been fertilizing the seabed with his bones for the better part of four centuries.”
“You mean they’re authentic?”
“I can’t say that with certainty. I’m no documents expert, but the style and prose sound like Drake. The man had what the Spaniards could only characterize as a morbid wit. He could never be satisfied with a simple entry in his log. His correspondence to the queen was usually filled with barbs about the Spanish, whom he genuinely hated. Here, look at this passage.” Holmes pointed to a spot on one of the parchments. “The writer describes an eagle of gold with an emerald clutched in its talon, apparently part of the booty they took from a Spanish merchantman. He says, `We relieved the overwrought friar of his responsibility for the bird.` That is precisely how Sir Francis might tell the world that he and his band robbed some poor cleric. All I can say with certainty is that the tone of the writing is on the mark from my earlier readings.”
Unsure how much he should reveal to Holmes and without thinking Nick asked, “Do you know anything about Drake’s journal?”
Jasper Holmes looked up, arching an eyebrow. And as if a signal had suddenly been tripped, the Englishman’s
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