In 500... (or less)

One Little Omission

The courier pounded on the door frantically.

"Mr. Barker!" he yelled. "You must come quickly, Mr. Lucas has something you must see."

Barker rousted himself slowly. It was still rather early in the morning.

"Come now," Barker said as he emerged from his home some time later. "What's all this fuss?"

The messenger stood bewildered, he was not given the reason why Mr. Lucas needed to see his partner right away, only that Mr. Barker must come with all haste.

Lucas sat nervously at his table as Barker entered the room, cantankerously bellowing at his partner.

"This better be important, Martin," Barker growled. "It's not even eight in the morning!"

On the table, Barker noticed a copy of the book the pair had recently printed. Lucas was pale and trembled as he looked up from the pages.

"Who...uh...who was responsible for proofreading this section?"

Barker walked around the table for a closer look. 

"Ah yes," he said. "I believe I read over that copy myself."

Lucas swallowed hard, trying desperately to keep his composure.

"This...this, you fool!" He tried to point at a passage, but his shaking was so violent Barker could not see what was troubling his partner so much.

"What?!"

"They'll have our license for this," Lucas said. "We've got to go collect them! We have to round them all up before someone sees our mistake!"

"For the love of God, Martin, what mistake?!" Barker was beyond annoyed.

"Read it. Exodus, Chapter 20, Verse 14." Lucas could barely get the words out.

"Thou shalt commit adultery. Wait, thou shalt commit adultery? Dear God, what happened to the 'not'?" Now it was Barker's turn to turn white as a sheet.

"You tell me!" Lucas thundered. "The king..." he had to stop to collect his breath, "The King James Bible!"

"I'm sure no one has noticed yet," Barker tried to reason. "I mean, who reads the Ten Commandments anyways?" The question sounded just as dumb to him as it did to Lucas.

"Seriously?" Lucas was beside himself.

"Well, I mean, who can read these days anyways?"

"I don't know, Robert, like every clergy man in the kingdom?!"

Both men stood for a moment, contemplating the error and how to fix it.

"Well," Barker said. "It's only one mistake in thousands of pages. No one is perfect."

"This is a pretty big foul-up, Robert," Lucas said. "We have to find a way to get all of the copies back."

But there was little chance of that. The pair had personally delivered a copy to the palace only a week prior. That would be the hardest one to retrieve.

"Perhaps the king hasn't noticed," Lucas said. The men prepared themselves for a trip to the palace to get the book back, taking turns fabricating lies for why they needed it back.

They made it no further than the door in front of Lucas' home when a palace messenger met them.

"You've been summoned to the Star Chamber to discuss your Wicked Bible with the king," he announced.

The men looked at each other nervously.

"About what?"

The messenger sneered sarcastically.

"The king wishes to express his appreciation at your sanctioning of his palace indiscretions."