The King James Men

by Samantha Grosser

  The Kemps’ windows were brightly lit when he got there, welcoming him in from the biting dusk of the street. From inside the house looking out, night seemed already fallen, and he was glad to be indoors in the warm. Ellyn ran down the hall to meet him.

  ‘We’re building a bonfire in the garden. Come and see!’ She was breathless, her cheeks brushed with pink, though whether it was from excitement or the heat of the fire he could not say.

  He smiled, her mood infectious, building on the delight he had seen in the street. Emma Kemp appeared, brushing stray strands of hair back under her cap. ‘He has just stepped through the door,’ she chided. ‘Let him rest a moment and warm himself before you start to bother him.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ he replied. ‘There are bonfires all the way from the Abbey. It’s very festive.’

  ‘You see?’ Emma Kemp turned to her daughter. ‘He’s already seen a hundred bonfires. He doesn’t need to see any more.’

  Ellyn’s look threatened sullenness.

  ‘I will come,’ he said. ‘I like bonfires.’

  ‘As you like,’ Emma Kemp answered. Her efforts wasted, she turned away, and as she disappeared along the hallway he felt ungrateful: she had only been trying to be kind. He stood with Ellyn for a moment watching her go, her skirts sweeping over the woven mats with a whisper as she passed. Then they followed her, through the house and out to the garden behind, threading their way past the kitchen garden with its high protective wall and on to the bare patch beyond the trees where a fire was burning brightly. Sparks flew up as new wood caught and popped, flames leaping up with a whoosh.

  Ben was squatting close beside it, poking at the base with a stick to arrange the pyre and spread the flame more evenly. He looked up at their approach, nodded a greeting, then returned to his task. Ellyn drew closer to the fire beside him and hugged her shawl around her shoulders. Beyond the flames Alice was busy with one of the servant’s children, keeping him away from the fire.

  Satisfied with the fire at last, Ben stood up in one languid movement, throwing the brand he was holding onto the pyre. Richard remembered unfolding his own stiff limbs in the Abbey library earlier that day and felt the usual prick of envy. It was hard to imagine Ben with an aching back, the feline grace diminished, and all the certainty of that moment in church on Sunday left him, brought up short by the reality of Ben in all his errant human beauty.

  ‘It’s a good fire,’ he said.

  His friend was silent, still staring into the flames. Richard followed the gaze. The new timber cracked and ignited, flaring before it settled, and he found himself thinking of William Tyndale, dying in the fire for Englishing the Bible, the same work that he was doing now. Would he do it still, he wondered, if he had to live in hiding for it, an exile always fearful for his life, dependent on the charity of strangers? Would he have the courage of his faith to keep on going? No, he thought. Probably not. He would be too afraid of the fire. He stepped back a pace from the heat, his face beginning to scorch, and the movement drew Ben’s attention.

  ‘Too hot for you?’

  Richard started, the question too close to his private thoughts. ‘A little.’

  ‘It would be a painful death,’ Ben said.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘I have thought so myself.’

  Ellyn moved between them. ‘Stop being so morbid. No one dies at the stake any more.’ A pause. ‘Do they?’

  The two men exchanged a glance, but Richard could not read the light in Ben’s expression.

  ‘Not many,’ Ben said.

  The fire began to die, the wood dry and light and burning hard. They moved closer to its fading warmth, stretching out their hands towards it. Ben turned to his sister.

  ‘Go inside now. It’s cold.’ He raised his voice to Alice on the far side of the fire. ‘You too, Alice. Take young George in. It’s late and wintry for him to still be outside.’

  Ellyn regarded her brother with a long cool look. ‘And you?’

  ‘We’ll see the fire safely out first.’

  Her gaze shifted to include them both and Richard turned his face away from the hostility.

  ‘Come, Alice,’ she said, turning abruptly from the fire, skirts swirling out behind her. ‘We are no longer wanted.’

  The women disappeared with the child through the bushes in the darkness, sure-footed, the way well known. Richard stretched out his hands once more to the hypnotic shifting light of the flames, and as the heat ebbed he felt the coldness of the night at his back. He could sense Ben’s scrutiny, and doubt touched him once again.

  Richard said, ‘Have you thought more about your father’s offer? To go back to the East?’

  ‘I’ve thought,’ Ben replied, turning his eyes back towards the dying pyre. ‘But what does it matter to you?’

  ‘I am your friend and I would see you safe.’

  Ben withdrew his gaze from the flames and regarded him once more, appraising. Richard averted his face, uneasy under the other man’s judgement. The pause lengthened. Then finally Ben spoke again.

  ‘Why did you come here?’ he asked. ‘Why would you choose to stay in this house after all that has happened?’

  Richard inclined his head. ‘It is very convenient. Just a short walk to the Abbey …’

  ‘But still …’

  ‘You wish me to leave?’

  Ben hesitated. ‘We are both of us safer apart.’

  ‘Then go to the East.’

  ‘You need me that far away?’

  ‘It’s a long way from Bancroft.’

  Ben half smiled his agreement across the last of the flickering light, embers sparking at their feet. Then he said, ‘It’s a long way from everything.’

  Richard said nothing, and felt the weight of his task harden in his gut. He had hoped he might be spared the need for betrayal after all, Thomas Kemp’s wish to send his son away again an answer to his prayers. But Ben’s mind was made up and he would not go.

  The two men remained at the fading fire, watching the smouldering embers catch light and die. Only when the last of the sparks had dwindled into darkness did they turn away from the ashes and walk back towards the house through the cold winter night.

  Richard worked in the library at the Abbey, leaving the house before first light for the short walk through the predawn streets. Torches burned low on the buildings, and he could see the shadows of others moving in the greying light. The business of the day started early in London, the streets already lively. Artisans and apprentices had begun their day; braziers were lit in the streets, groups standing round them, talking. A washerwoman bumped his arm with her basket, and two young gentlemen wove an uncertain path towards the river on their way home from a night of debauchery.

  He paid them no heed, his thoughts already turning on the words of the Translation as he reached the Abbey door, the great Gothic towers looming dark above him. Inside, candles flickered in the draughts, shadows spinning across the marble columns. He crossed the nave and drew his cloak tighter about him – it was colder in the shelter of the walls than in the soft damp of the winter morning – then bent his steps towards the East Cloister and the sanctuary of the library.

  Inside was silent, the old, heavy door at the base of the steps shutting off the hubbub from the cloister, and he set out his papers on the long table in the centre of the room, the bookshelves with their heavy tomes lining the walls around him. The fire had not yet been lit but candles burned along the length of the table and a couple of torches flickered on the wall at his back. Wandering along the shelves, he lifted down the Bibles one at a time, heavy and awkward, and took his time to arrange them to his liking on the table. Then he laid out his own precious Hebrew grammars and his lexicon and set himself to work.

  He worked for an hour before matins, oblivious to his fingers growing cold, hunched over the desk, books spread before him and the pages shifting in the candlelight as the sky lightened slowly unseen behind the walls. But he was no longer there in the Abbey, his soul, his mind, wa
ndering instead through the pages of the Garden of Eden, God’s voice in his heart and a light within to guide him through the sacred words. All around him was forgotten. Ben, Bancroft, Ellyn – none of them existed: there was only the search for the truth of the words.

  He turned first to Tyndale’s translation. It was beautiful in its language, the man’s feel for the Hebrew sublime in its expression, and the lightness of his English a faultless touch.

  And the woman sayd unto the serpent of the frute of the trees in the garden we may eate but of the frute of the tree yt is in the myddes of the garden (sayd God) se that ye eate not and se that ye touch it not: lest ye dye.

  Then sayd the serpent unto the woman: tush ye shall not dye.

  Next he turned to the Bishops’ Bible, the version they were to alter as little as the truth of the original permitted:

  And the woman sayde unto the serpent: We eate of ye fruite of the trees of the garden. But as for the fruite of the tree which is in the myddes of the garden, God hath sayde, ye shall not eate of it, neither shal ye touche of it, lest peradventure ye dye.

  And the serpent sayde unto the woman: ye shall not dye the death.

  Then he surveyed his own attempt to marry what was best in both against the sacred truth of the Hebrew.

  And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden. But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die.

  The verse was a straightforward one: a few changes to word order, the addition of verbs that English requires to make sense. Only the Hebrew double use of the verb to die in the serpent’s sweet talk posed a challenge. Tyndale had solved it beautifully with tush, catching the serpent’s mocking tone with the speech of the common man. But still, it was an addition to the text and could not remain, though it saddened him to lose it. He had always loved the serpent’s tush: it brought the scene alive for him in English, the serpent’s character contained within that gentle chiding, clever and persuasive.

  It was how the Devil worked, he supposed, with charm and guile, leading us along the road to Hell unaware and willing, enchanted, believing in his wiles. Most of us would turn from evil if we saw it as it really was – such trickery was Satan’s way to lure us from the path of righteousness without us really knowing.

  An image of Bancroft trod across his thoughts, drinking cool sweet wine in fine Venetian glass, and he shook his head at himself for making such a link. But the thought remained, a memory of the deal that was struck at Lambeth – Ben’s head in return for a place on the Translation.

  Tush, he reproached himself, using the serpent’s word. It was God’s work he was about, not the Devil’s: the English Church, God’s Church, under threat from Separatists who would see it smashed to rubble. Then how could he doubt the rightness of his path? But still the image lingered, an apple in Bancroft’s hand; and somewhere in the background of his thoughts the voice that feared for his eternal soul asked again, What if I am wrong?

  The toll of the bell for matins called him back to the world of the Abbey. He blinked, gazing round him as though he had woken from a dream and was surprised to find himself awake. The library walls with their burden of books, the high-beamed ceiling, the chill of the as yet unheated chamber slowly permeated his reality, and he laid down his quill with reluctance. He was happier in the world of the Word.

  Flexing his stiffened fingers, he stood up, straightening his back with a grimace. When had study become so hard on his body? he wondered. It seemed no time at all since he could work all day without respite, then get up and walk with no stiffness. He was getting old, he reflected, and the letters were becoming harder to decipher.

  He finished stretching and tidied the pile of papers, moving the Bibles into neatness with gentle, reverent fingers. Hurrying out and down the stairs, he ducked his head through the low door that led out into the cloister, before he turned into the tiny ancient chapel of St Faith’s for morning prayers.

  ‘Ben has left?’

  ‘Indeed he has,’ Thomas Kemp replied, stretching out his legs before the hearth at the end of the day. The women of the house had already retired for the night and he was enjoying the precious moments of peace before bed. ‘He left before dawn this morning, before even I was out of bed. His sister is furious that he didn’t wait to say goodbye.’

  Richard smiled and helped himself to wine before settling into the empty chair by the hearth. He was tired after a long day at the library but pleasantly so, and the room was warm against the night outside. The old greyhound lay spread out at their feet, uninterested in the two men who weren’t her master. It was a good house, he thought, and Ben should be thankful to come from such a family.

  ‘Though of course it wasn’t his sister he wanted to avoid.’ Thomas Kemp took a satisfying mouthful of wine and sank a little lower into the chair.

  ‘How so?’ he asked, thinking it might have been himself Kemp meant, that Ben suspected the truth.

  ‘He was avoiding me.’

  Richard was silent, relieved. But he knew all the same that Ben had been doubtful, a natural misgiving that Richard had renewed the contact between them when it had seemed he was at last free of taint. He, Richard, had expected no less – a life lived in danger breeds suspicion in us all.

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask me why?’ Kemp said.

  He smiled. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I want him to go back to Aleppo and he wants to stay here.’

  ‘He was never one to listen to reason.’

  ‘Now there’s an understatement if ever I heard one. Even as a child he was the same – a passion in his heart he would follow no matter what. In all my years I’ve never met anyone, boy or man, with more determination to follow his own will. I suppose it should be no surprise the way he turned out.’

  ‘Perhaps not.’ He remembered Ben at Cambridge, arguments between them even then as Ben discovered his new-found faith and sought for his salvation in the teachings of reformers.

  ‘Has he talked to you?’ Kemp asked. ‘Has he told you anything about the people in Nottingham? What he’s doing there?’

  ‘He hasn’t said a word. I think perhaps he no longer … regards me as a friend.’

  ‘Nonsense. You’ve been a truer friend to him than he has ever had any right to expect. I’m aware that it has cost you, Richard. His mother and I appreciate every moment that you’ve spent with him. I know it can’t have been easy.’

  Richard shrugged. ‘I was his friend.’ But no more, he thought, and unworthy of the older man’s praise.

  ‘I had hoped,’ Kemp began, ‘that the years in the East might soften his views a little, that he might come back less … fervent in his beliefs, but I’m not sure he’s changed at all.’

  ‘So you think he is …?’ He was reluctant to say the words and put a name to Ben’s crimes, as though to do so would make it true. But the meaning was clear enough to Kemp. They had spent many evenings like this when Ben was in prison, talking about his beliefs.

  ‘Yes,’ Kemp answered. ‘I fear I do. Why else would he choose to live so far from London? Why else would he be so determined to stay in England?’

  ‘A woman perhaps?’

  The older man smiled. ‘Now there’s a possibility I hadn’t thought of. In the midst of all the danger of his religion it’s easy to forget he also has an eye for the ladies.’

  ‘Or used to anyway,’ Richard qualified. He had spent too many hours with Ben after Cecily’s death to believe his friend would easily love again. But it was ten years since then, and seven years in the East must surely change a man somehow.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘he might consent to go to Europe to live. The Levant is a long way from England and it’s not a Christian place. But he’d still have friends in Holland, would he not? And he could worship there unhindered.’

  Kemp nodded and his mouthful of w
ine went down the wrong way, leaving him coughing and spluttering. Richard half rose to help but Kemp waved him away with his hand and the younger man sank back in his chair, playing gently with the empty glass in his fingers while he waited.

  When Ben’s father had recovered he spoke again, his voice hoarse, his eyes still watering. ‘I blame myself, you know. I should never have allowed him to go to Cambridge. That’s where it started. When he met that Francis Johnson …’

  ‘You couldn’t have known where it would lead,’ Richard said. ‘And to be fair it has never been only learned men who dissent. Tradesmen, artisans, merchants …’

  ‘You know this?’

  ‘The London congregation was composed of such. I imagine things are little changed.’

  ‘He’ll end up in prison again. Or worse.’

  Richard was silent: it seemed Thomas Kemp knew more than he was saying, for all his assurances about Ben’s friendship. A log cracked and fell in the grate and the flames licked at it, cold blue before settling back to orange and warmth.

  ‘What did I do wrong with him, Richard?’ Kemp asked. ‘What did I do to make him so uncompromising?’

  ‘It was nothing you did. Ben has always been his own man.’

  ‘Why can he not just accept what cannot be changed like the rest of us? Why can he not accept the Church as it is?’

  ‘But you don’t know for sure that he’s still …’ He stopped, searching for an apposite term. ‘… living dangerously?’