by AM Kirkby
***
True to his word, Jamie joined Tobias on his walks around the estate. He showed him the warren, where he'd caught the rabbits he'd been holding that first day; they sat still in the ripening evening light on a bank of bracken, and watched the rabbits hop warily out to nibble at the short grass. They climbed the slope on the other side of the stream through briars hung with blackberries so fat and ripe they burst in Tobias' fingers when he tried to pick them. They went out to the copse where the pheasants roosted, and Jamie showed him how the corn was scattered for them; or through the orchards to the dovecote where there were still squabs for the table, and the rich stinking waste was being shovelled out for use on the gardens. Sometimes they rode, walking or trotting the horses quietly through the valley, once or twice racing against each other on the higher, open fields.
He'd only walked for exercise before, to stretch his limbs and force himself to breathe deeply, and sometimes to gain a height, for the view and the delight of feeling the wind – now Jamie taught him to see the hidden world of the animals; the bees' nest under the drifted leaves, the owl's perch in the roof, and the pellets it left under it, and the white streaks of its shit acrid on the wall underneath; the shy deer, and loping hares, and the elegant nuthatches, pale rose and slate blue. He learned how to track them, tried to call them (but he couldn't whistle as Jamie could, strident and long), learned how to melt into the trees so the deer couldn't see him, and came close, their eyes placid and unafraid.
In the evenings, Tobias read; not theology, not poetry, but the Bible, the pure word of God. He thought that before, he'd seen through a glass, darkly, as St Paul said, but now he came back to the scriptures, cleansed and pristine in their original Greek and Hebrew, with no man's thoughts or words standing between him and his truth. Just as no priest should stand between a man and his conscience, he thought, just as no man should stand between another man and his wife. And then he thought how the Evangelists, all but Luke, spoke Aramaic, and knew Hebrew, so that the ancient language ran like a hidden river through the gospels; and he wondered, too, how much Wycliffe's translation, and Tyndale's, echoed in his head even while he was reading the originals. But there was something bold and simple about this effort; the simplicity of childhood, of spring water.
It was refreshing, after the years of struggle in the church when every word was twisting or twisted in the mouth; when men used a word as a weapon or a flag of battle. Sometimes he wondered if he should make a new translation, or even suggest it to the King; but then he would himself be stepping between other men and the word of God...
Mostly, he read on his own; but sometimes Jamie would come to his study after dinner, and he would read to him, even though sometimes he wondered whether the huntsman's presence had more to do with the warmth of the wood-panelled room with its tiled fireplace than it did with piety or a desire for learning.
"Which now of these three was neighbour unto him that fell among thieves? And he said, he that showed mercy on him."
"Mercy is a difficult virtue," Jamie said, looking up from his low stool by the fire; his eyes caught the firelight, and his hair burned with it, now red, now gold.
"Micah says: to act justly and love mercy. Khessed, in the Hebrew; eleos, in Greek; mercy, in our tongue."
"The two aren't the same. Justice and mercy."
"But they should be."
It wasn't so long since men were being burned for daring to read the Lord's word in English; he'd seen boys hanged for stealing, in the years of famine at the turn of the century. Was that justice? What would the Christ have said to the extinction of a soul in recompense for a heel of stale bread? He thought of all the souls of the dead, scattered across the heavens like stars, suddenly winking out.
"You're sad?"
Tobias fingered his beard. It needed trimming. He thought of Prynne. (How could a man spend his entire life driven only by a sense of the injustices done to him? Wouldn't it drive you mad?) He thought of Prey, restive like a sparrowhawk in Convocation.
"I had to kill one of the bitches last year," Jamie said.
Tobias looked up.
"She was wasting away. She ate like a hog but her ribs stood out, you could see all her bones, she was dying slowly. That night she whimpered with pain and I thought, God in your mercy, let her die. The next day, she couldn't stand up, she was so weak. I held her in my arms. She never saw the knife."
"That thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes," Tobias said, wondering.
And then he remembered what Jesus had also said; I am come not to bring peace, but a sword. He shivered. Ague ran through him like the archangel's fiery sword.
"You are ill?"
"No. No, not ill," Tobias said, but he had a headache, the dull pain like biting your own tongue that began behind one eye and would slowly, inevitably spread to his entire forehead, making him nauseous.
Jamie got up then, and bent over Tobias, to touch his forehead. The touch of his hands was cool but dry; Tobias shivered again.
"You're hot."
"I'm not ill."
"You will be, if..."
It was Jamie who helped him up, Jamie who supported him through the dark house to his bedchamber; Jamie who checked the bed was warmed, and who made him drink a cordial before he slept. He didn't remember Jamie's going, but in the morning he woke with a fever, and wondered where his man-nursemaid had gone.
