Rise Above

by AM Kirkby

  ***

  The ague lasted only a few days; it was a vicious but fast illness, that had him sweating and crying out, and throwing off his coverlets at night when he had nightmares of being smothered. For those few days he didn't know what was true and what was dream; he saw devils in the fireplace, and angels with flaming swords, and rivers of blood, and he woke with a nosebleed; or he found his head had swollen to an immense size, and his hands were so puffy he could no longer move his fingers. Then one morning he woke, and the room was light and the bedclothes were cool, and he knew he was well again.

  He remembered, then, that the last thing he'd said to Jamie the night before his illness was "Don't leave me," and he hoped the youth hadn't heard. Perhaps he hadn't; their walks continued as before, and if Jamie sensed a new reserve in his master, he said nothing.

  Tobias had been at Felstead three months when Robert came to visit. Tobias wished it had been a brotherly visit, but it was more the encounter of one bishop with another. Robert held himself away from his brother, and when he spoke, it was without warmth.

  Well, there was a lot to discuss, Tobias thought. He'd let the church run itself for three months; he'd given the bishops guidance, but the political situation had changed, of course, and there was a vacancy for the see of Sodor and Man, for which the bishops had identified three candidates, but they wanted to know his thoughts. And far too many prosecutions against publishers and writers of books, he thought, though he knew better than to voice that particular thought in front of his brother.

  "Then there's the new translation," Robert was saying. "They'll want you to work on that."

  "The new translation," he said dully.

  "I told you all about it. Weren't you listening? You never did listen." Robert was tetchy.

  At least it would be something Tobias could do in reclusion at Felstead; Robert would want him back at Lambeth, but he wasn't ready, wondered whether he ever would really be ready to go back. He suggested as much; perhaps Robert could arrange for a case of his books to be sent, he'd draw up a list of the titles he needed before his brother left.

  "You're not coming back to Lambeth? I thought you were better."

  "I get tired easily."

  "Well, when wasn't that the case?" He'd never noticed before how Robert's mouth had developed a sideways twitch, as if he was always biting something back. When had that happened? "I always thought it was odd they made me the bishop and you the archbishop, when you hate the work so much. It's not about scholarship and saintliness, you know; the returns have to be done, tithes accounted for, the preachers and lecturers kept in order."

  "I know." Tobias sighed; they'd had this conversation before.

  "Well, you'll have your translation to do, at any rate."

  But even the translation Robert managed to make sound unappetising, a matter of committees and instructions and protocols, of edition and re-edition and further revision, and the careful management of the post. All, it was implied in his tone, matters which his brother the Archbishop thought were beneath him, a thought which was itself culpable and demonstrated Tobias' utter unsuitability for the post.

  They rode out the next morning, the air as frosty as Robert's manner. Jamie, as was his custom these days, helped Tobias on to his horse, but he dropped back, riding behind the two brothers, as they climbed out of the valley on one of the wider tracks.

  "You're letting your horse wander," Robert said sharply.

  Tobias was startled. If he'd done something wrong, he thought, surely Jamie would have told him? But then, perhaps not in front of his Grace the Bishop of Salisbury, he wouldn't. He looked down; he'd let the mare move very slightly towards the middle of the track, where the ground was better. But then he let her have her head, most days; she was a sensible beast, the white mare, which was one reason he'd picked her out of the stable as his usual ride. No point reining her in hard; "spoil mouth, spoil mare," Jamie sometimes said. And she went, more or less, where he wanted.

  He said as much to his brother.

  "Well at least don't let your horse bang into mine." Robert's hands were tight, and he rode with the reins short, so that his horse walked neck bent, strides taut, flashy as a courtier in a new slashed doublet.

  They made the top of the slope. The sky seemed lower than usual; Jamie sniffed the air, put a finger up.

  "Rain?"

  "Tonight, perhaps tomorrow."

  Below, the wet economy of the valley; mill wheels turned unseen, sluices drained the fields, women beat out the suds from their laundry in little wash-houses; alders and willows grew wetly, their feet in the mud, roots burrowed by water rats and flood. Here above, only the sky and the sound of the wind, and Robert's horse stamping its feet impatiently.

  "I don't suppose this manor is worth much in rents?"

  Tobias shook his head; partly at his brother's question, partly in answer to it.

  "You could improve it, if you wanted."

  Tobias nodded. He could, if he wanted to, as his brother had done at Potterne; jack up the rents, turn the grazing land over to the plough, flatten the woods. Timber got a good price, now it was scarce, the great ancient forests of his boyhood gone for ships' timbers or charcoal. He could; and he knew he would not.

  "I may not be here long enough," he said, hesitating; "I have to go back to Lambeth some time."

  "Unless you die first." That was not a comforting thought, but Robert was not a comfortable man.

  "If I'm spared... well, Lambeth waits. But I have to gather my strength again, first."

  They rode on, towards the copse that topped the hill; a copse where Jamie had told him the country people still believed that fairies danced, and if you caught one, it would have to tell you where its treasure was hidden – though no one ever had caught one, so the truth of the story was unproven. He didn't mention the tale to his brother.

  Some of the fields below were flooded; the water winked coldly in the transient sunlight. Thorny hedges stood proud of it, black against grey. They'd have to take a different route today, he thought; the green lane would be flooded, for sure.

  "There were deer here yesterday," Jamie said.

  "There were?"

  "The slots," he said, and pointed. They were blurred by rain, but Tobias could see – a month or so ago, he wouldn't have – where the sharp twin points had pierced the turf.

  "That's one thing we do have here," Tobias said. "Always venison at the table."

  "You'll get fat."

  Tobias smiled. "I doubt it. You were always the one for sweetmeats."

  "Good hunting," Jamie said, as if he'd not heard the two bickering. Or perhaps he had, and was trying to distract them.

  "Hunting?" Robert's face was grim.

  "Only way to catch deer, your grace."

  "Not really a suitable occupation for an archbishop."

  "Oh," said Tobias, "you don't think I..."

  But it was no use, Robert's face had closed. They spoke no more for the rest of the ride.

  They spent the evening in the study; Tobias had the list of required books to write out - his Aramaic word-lists, his copy of the Septuagint, his much treasured copy of Tyndale's Bible. (He could almost feel it, the torn headband, the loose pages in the middle where the thin paper had been torn through by the binding cords, the grubby dog-ears, the frayed corner where the leather covering had rubbed through and the card had delaminated, fanning open, showing the apparently solid leather binding up as no more than a piece of flimflam. Printed when the vernacular scripture was still a heresy, the book had been lucky to escape the hangman's hands, but had hardly found a better owner to judge by the state of it; but to Tobias, it was precious, a relic of the days when belief was difficult and martyrdom easy, when, he liked to believe – though he knew he was probably wrong – the Church had been in the hands of saints, not self-promoters.) He needed the Talmud he'd had brought from Amsterdam, where each page contained text nested within text, layer within layer of commentary with a nugget of scri
pture at the heart, in stark letters, bare even of vowels, the pure unaltered truth.

  "Why do you need the Tertullian?"

  "No particular reason," Tobias said.

  "You can't have everything."

  Tobias shrugged.

  "And the Origen?"

  "You should know that," he said.

  "I know his work on the Hexapla. But you need the Origen?"

  "Yes."

  "Well." Robert pursed his lips.

  Despite Tobias' insistence, Robert managed to whittle down the list of texts to what would fit in one small chest; and when Tobias protested, his brother reminded him what he'd said about not, perhaps, staying at Felstead very long, and what would be the good of forwarding all those books if they only had to be taken back to Lambeth again?

  And then Robert pushed the list away from him, and coughed, and said, with the lugubrious tone he'd always adopted for his sermons, "You should be wary of sin."

  "Sin?"

  "That lad of yours. He's too close to you. Lifting you down from your horse, helping you on the stair. The flesh is cunning."

  "I need the help. I still have days..."

  "The flesh is weak."

  "Oh yes," Tobias said; "the flesh is very weak indeed, sometimes, and then I need help to stand, when the potions and linctuses aren't working and the fever is melting my bones. And you think I don't understand sin?"

  "You were never in the world."

  "I was master of a college for twenty years. You think there's no sin in a Cambridge college? There's envy, there's avarice, there's slander and backbiting, and then there's the average fleshly sinfulness of youths with too little to do, and blood that's too hot for a clerkly life."

  "Even so," said Robert.