by AM Kirkby
***
Jamie Manners came into his service with the manor of Felstead, almost unnoticed. He didn't manage to get to Felstead till three years after he became archbishop; three years in which he owned Jamie body and soul, and didn't even know of his existence. He had work to do; work in Canterbury, where the dean and chapter were, he thought, too prone to ceremonial and too little given to godliness; work on his visitations, in dioceses where the bishops were too old and infirm to keep order in the parishes; and work at court, steering his Church safely between contending ideologues and those who were out for whatever they could get. Felstead was a place where archbishops went to rest; but for Tobias there was no rest, till late in his third year he caught a chill, and then a fever, and in the end his physician told him to go to Felstead and take better care of himself for a few weeks.
He came to Felstead late, having been held up on the road by quagmires of slippery mud and fallen trees. There had been storms for weeks; the ripening crops had been flattened, and where they still stood, farmers were gathering in what they could in fear of worse weather. People said it was an omen, divine displeasure, like the birth of a two-headed calf in Patrixbourne. Tobias dismissed such nonsense; none the less he suffered from the withdrawal of the sun, feeling sluggish and uninspired. He'd insisted on riding, not taking a carriage – he always did – but for once the physical exercise didn't warm him. He couldn't tell whether it was the rain making his eyes sting, or the beginnings of a cold.
The court at Felstead was dark when he arrived, and only a thin sliver of light from the door slanted across the stamped earth.
"Ho there!"
The echo of his own voice sounded weak and high, as if he'd expected no one to answer. But the sliver of light widened for a moment, then narrowed again, and footsteps answered his call.
He meant to swing his leg over and dismount; he'd give the horse over to whichever servant had come to meet him, and make straight for the house. But he was so chilled his muscles had seized up. When he pushed his leg straight, all he got for it was the burning, prickling pain that always succeeded that warm, numb, empty feeling (that wasn't quite an absence of feeling, but rather a leadenness, a heaviness that he'd ignored, finding it comfortable at the time, and now he was paying for his sloth. He was putting a hand down to massage his calf back into life, knowing it would hurt even worse, it always did.
Then he felt the servant's arms around him, and he was being lifted up, like a child being taken off his first pony.
"Lean against me, it'll be easier," the lad was saying. It was easier, too, since he could walk without putting any weight on his cramped right leg; but he knew what a poor figures he was cutting, if anyone looked out. At the same time he felt some embarrassment at his closeness to this young man, even a little irritation at his lack of the usual deference.
"I was expecting Thomas Bedell," he said, once he'd been helped into a chair in the dimly lit hall, by a fire that burned low, but hot.
"Ah, he's gone over to Thaxted; his wife's in labour, and we are in disorder here with the harvest to be saved if we can, and I'm the only one left to welcome you, my Lord."
"And who are you?"
"Jamie Manners," the tall young man said; "I'm your huntsman."
"I don't hunt," Tobias said, and felt for some reason embarrassed.
"Men of the cloth often don't."
"I ride though."
"So I see," said Jamie, with a half-closing of one eye that wasn't a wink but might have been insubordination, if a master had a mind to see it as such.