The Shakespeare Cod-Piece
(with apologies to Dan Brown)
Chapter 45
Robert Langdon tried to breathe deeply and ignore the searing, stabbing pain which he had just experienced yet again. This was even worse than the cracked rib he had endured in his fall down the stairs at Antoni Gaudi’s Casa Mila at 92, Passeig de Gracia in Barcelona. He knew that he would have to have these haemorrhoids seen to once he returned to Harvard. His old friend Doctor Armando Casey was the only man whom he could trust with a scalpel in such a tender area, though Langdon could only think of the renowned surgeon as “man” since Casey’s surprising gender re-orientation when she had changed her name from Amanda. Casey taught at the Cambridge Hospital at 1493 Cambridge Street, which had been founded in 1917, which was not coincidentally the date when the United States had entered the First World War.
Sabrina screamed suddenly, ‘I’ve been bitten!”
Langdon paused to admire the sun streaming brightly through the trees and creating dappled patterns on the grass. Then he looked down at her open toed Gucci gold grained leather sandal, and at the snake coiled on the lush turf of the Shakespeare Memorial Garden here in Stratford-upon-Avon, in England. He realized at once that it was Vipera berus, or the common European adder, and remembered the lecture on venomous snakes in Zoology 101 during his first year as a student at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He knelt and pulled out his EvoGrip S54 Swiss Army Knife, made by Victorinix, and left to him by his father along with his original Mickey Mouse watch.
‘Just a little slit, and I’ll squeeze the venom out. The yield for a twenty-four inch vipera berus is a mere 10 to 18 milligrams, as I recall. It’ll be painful for a while, and you may see reddish lymphanatic lines and bruising, but you’ll live.’
He paused for thought, ‘But how did a Vipera berus get onto this sylvan spot, and just as we arrived?’
Sabrina di Stefano was perhaps the only ex-Miss World with a Yale doctorate who had been Women’s Lawn Tennis Champion at Wimbledon. Since her engagement to Crown-Prince Victor-Emmanuel of Italy, the Vatican’s agents had been investigating every aspect of her past, seeking a scandal that might annul a future marriage, and she knew the only way to placate them was to produce irrefutable proof that William Shakespeare, the world-famous British poet who lived from 1564 to 1616, had been an old Catholic. Victor-Emmanuel’s father, King Umberto III, had spent his days in exile researching Shakespeare’s Catholic links until his sudden and unexpected invitation to return to the Italian throne in 2019. It had been a thankless task, severely hampered by Umberto’s total inability to understand English.
They glanced back at the pale blue Bell 407GXi helicopter, hovering over the River Avon. The rays of the sun reflected on its turning blades, casting dappled patterns on the water below. It paused then hovered again. Robert Langdon saw the coat of arms painted on the side. ‘Sabrina, do you see that?’ he paused, ‘The blue shield with four crosses pattée fitchée.’ Sabrina’s eyes swam with tears. Robert paused again, ‘Do you understand the symbology?’
‘I don’t believe it,’ said Sabrina, ‘Surely those are …’ she paused.
‘Yes, black crosses with a pointed base, and those gold episcopal staves beneath the blue shield mean only one thing. That is the coat of arms of the Archbishop of Canterbury! The Anglicans know we are here!’
Robert reached into the pocket of his basil brown wool Dries Van Noten jacket and found an empty space! He had left hisiPhone 8S in the glove compartment of Sabrina’s Bentley Bentayaga Mulliner V8. He could see the metallic claret bulk of the car at the junction of Mill Lane and Trinity Street. A beam of sunlight was streaming between two rooftops, causing dappled shadows on the bonnet. A traffic warden was noting details of the smoke grey Audi A8 55 TFSI Quattro parked behind it. The traffic warden stared across the park at him. Langdon noted the bulge beneath his shoulder and the lumpy fit of the trousers around the man’s hips. The Pontifical Swiss Guards had been founded by Pope Sixtus IV who had built their barracks in the Via Pellegrino in Rome. The Swiss Guards swore a holy oath never to remove their Renaissance style blue, red and yellow trousers, which had been introduced by Commandant Jules Repond in 1914. The traffic warden must have the smooth silky trousers on beneath his rough serge Stratford-upon-Avon town council official uniform, both as a matter of duty and perhaps comfort. So, they were still being followed.
‘This way!’ Robert called. Sabrina paused. She held her injured foot hovering above the ground. The Collegiate Church of The Holy and Undivided Trinity in Stratford-upon-Avon had been founded in 1210 on the site of an Anglo-Saxon Monastery. Robert and Sabrina hurried through the porch, and along the ancient flagstones of the aisle towards the 15th century chancel, which had been built by Thomas Balsall, the Dean of the Collegiate Church, and who had been buried there in 1491. Robert had once written a definitive study of the symbols on the twenty-six 15th century misericord seats in the chancel.
Shakespeare’s grave stood before them. The sun was streaming through the stained glass window, casting dappled patterns on the ancient stone floor. Langdon knew the epitaph by heart, having lectured on it at the International Shakespeare Forum in Basingstoke, Hampshire three years earlier:
Good friend for Jesus sake forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here
Bleste be ye man yt spares these stones
And cursed be he yt moves these bones.
‘Robert, why is it spelled yt?’ asked Sabrina.
‘That is not a y, but a thorn,’ explained Robert Langdon, ‘It is a written symbol for the letters t and h in pre-modern English. It means “the” and “that.” Count the letters. The forty-sixth one is C. That’s the clue we need.’
‘C?’ exclaimed Sabrina, ‘Oh, Robert! What can it mean?’
‘C is not only a letter of the alphabet, but it is also the Latin symbol for 100, as well as the symbol for Celsius or Centigrade, used for measuring heat. All will become clear.’
Robert led Sabrina to a glass-covered lectern on the right hand side of the chancel. The sun was reflecting from its glazed surface, casting dappled reflections on the walls. He remembered it clearly from the excursion he had taken from Basingstoke with Professor Carmela Dos Passos, Head of the Department of Phonetic Symbology at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, in Spain. Carmela had driven him there in her cream coloured 1934 Hispano-Suiza H6B Million-Guiet Dual-Cowl Phaeton automobile, and after a splendid cup of Darjeeling tea with cucumber sandwiches, scones and home-made raspberry jam with clotted cream at the Arden Hotel in Waterside nearby, she had pointed out its contents to him. That had been on February 15th … which he instantly recognized as the 46th day of the year.
But what was that noise? He could hear the distinctive note of the Bell 407 GXi’s Rolls-Royce M250-C47E/4 engines as it hovered above the transept. Was there time before the dreaded Anglicans got them?
The door creaked open. The traffic warden stood there, holding a Samsung Galaxy S3 9.7 inch tablet with a stylus.
Chapter 46
‘This is an original King James Version Bible,’ Robert explained, then paused.
‘Oh, Robert! It’s so old!’ exclaimed Sabrina.
‘It is old,’ said Robert, and paused, ‘Otherwise known as the Authorized Version. It was commissioned by King James I of England, or James VI of Scotland and written between 1604 and 1611. Most interestingly it includes the 14 books of the Apocrypha, and Robert Barker, by whom it was printed, was the King’s Printer. Copies were sent to every important church in the country of England, including The Collegiate Church of The Holy and Undivided Trinity …’ he paused significantly, ‘So this is the bedrock of the Anglican faith!’
‘Oh, Robert!’ Sabrina exclaimed, “I cannot understand how you separate important narrative from seemingly dull and irrelevant facts so easily.’
Robert could hear the Bell 407 GXi hovering even lower now, ‘This must be why the Anglicans are pursuing us!’
Robert indicated the bible, permanently open below the museum-grade glass of the antique oak case at Psalm 46, and blinked at the reflected light from a shaft of sunlight streaming through the stained glass window from the east, turned and rubbed his eyes as another sunbeam flashed into his eyes from the window to the west opposite. The first window must be the famed “Mocking of Christ” window, he mused, which had been blocked over in 1895, and only rediscovered in 2011 when the organ pipes were being serviced. The subject dated from the 1850s and had been made by William Holland of Warwick, which is a nearby town, 10.5 miles away via the A46 road … forty-six, thought Langdon, what a strange coincidence, though he knew well there was no random element in these apparent coincidences.
‘Psalm 46!’ exclaimed Sabrina, ‘Robert! That’s why you were interested in the 46th letter.’
‘Exactly,’ said Robert Langdon, ‘Let us think about those dates of translation 1604 to 1611. Shakespeare was alive at the time.’
Robert read the psalm aloud in his deep and sonorous voice …
GOD is our hope and strength : a very present help in trouble.
Therefore will we not fear, though the earth be moved : and though the hills be carried into the midst of the sea;
Though the waters thereof rage and swell : and though the mountains shake at the tempest of the same.
The rivers of the flood thereof shall make glad the city of God : the holy place of the tabernacle of the most Highest.
God is in the midst of her, therefore shall she not be removed : God shall help her, and that right early.
The heathen make much ado, and the kingdoms are moved : but God hath shewed his voice, and the earth shall melt away.
The Lord of hosts is with us : the God of Jacob is our refuge.
O come hither, and behold the works of the Lord : what destruction he hath brought upon the earth.
He maketh wars to cease in all the world : he breaketh the bow, and knappeth the spear in sunder, and burneth the chariots in the fire.
Be still then, and know that I am God : I will be exalted among the heathen, and I will be exalted in the earth.
The Lord of hosts is with us : the God of Jacob is our refuge.
‘That was so moving, Robert,’ she sighed, and her eyes swam.
‘I want you to count the 46th word from the start …’
Sabrina started counting in her warm melodious whisper, ‘The 46th word, Robert? It’s “shake.”
‘Now count 46 words back from the end …’ he listened to her … ‘You can skip the odd ampersand. Don’t be too finicky about it. What is it?’ he paused, ‘Approximately.’
‘Robert … the word is “spear.” Shake, and then spear? What can it mean?’
‘Shake and spear…’ he paused, ‘You are the one with the doctorate in Mathematics.’
‘And another in Molecular Biology,’ she reminded him, ‘And as a child I once came to England to play Ophelia in Hamlet, which was a play written by William Shakespeare, at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre here, which was directed by Sir Laurence Olivier. I once dreamed of becoming an actor before I studied at M.I.T and then Yale. So I can see immediately that it is the name of the Bard of Avon himself!’
‘Exactly!’ said Robert, ‘Shakespeare must have written this psalm in the Authorized Version of the King James Bible, which is one of the finest examples of writing in the entire English Language. He has left us a clue, just as he did in the inscription which was inscribed on his tomb. Somewhere in all this, we can find the whereabouts of the most sought-after artefact in all of English literary history. The ornate and legendary embroidered garment which protected William’s very own willie. Yes! Shakespeare’s cod-piece!’
Chapter 47
In the dark episcopal confines of Lambeth Palace on the South Bank of the River Thames in London, England , where the rays, beams and shafts of light from the sun rarely penetrated the ancient windows to cast dappled shadows, Archbishop Cyril Jones, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Supreme Head of the Church of England, loosened his gold robes and smiled as he felt along the lurid red scar on his inner thigh, left by the barbed wire whip from his bathroom. The pain was no longer sharp or searing. It was time to rub some powdered bleach into the wound.
The Archbishop allowed himself a further smile as he thought of the palace’s postal code. SE1 7JU. If you re-arranged the letters you get to J-E-S-U, ‘God and the post-office work in most mysterious ways,’ he murmured.
The gilt telephone on his George III satinwood writing table, which had been made for Archbishop John Moore, by James Baillie in 1798, rang once. As he lifted the receiver, he mused that John Moore had previously been Bishop of Bangor in Wales.
‘Yes?’
‘This is Number three.’
‘Go on.’
‘The professor is very near the cod-piece, my Lord Archbishop. Just 46 yards away, in fact.’
The archbishop inhaled through his yellowing and decayed teeth, wincing at the fetid odour of his own molars, ‘Is the helicopter there?’
‘Our Bell 750 GXi is hovering over the The Collegiate Church of The Holy and Undivided Trinity in Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire as we speak. It has paused to hover. But there is a complication.’
‘What?’
‘Hans-Jurgen Staehli, the Swiss Guard, is already in the church, disguised as a traffic warden.’
It was time for decision, ‘Initiate the action.’
‘Just like that?’
‘Yes. Unlike Mr Dan Brown, I am not paid by the word.’
Holy Trinity Church, Stratford. And yes, a King James Bible is open at Psalm 46 is in a glass case
If you enjoyed this pastiche, see: The Curse of The Crawleys: Downton Abbey Series 10
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