Micha had long ago abandoned all belief that life was anything but utterly, and carelessly, arbitrary, so he had little comfort to offer. There might have been a time when he would have offered touch instead, but that was no longer a simple thing, nor an innocent one. He knew incalculable ways to make a man shudder and spend, but he had forgotten how to ease loneliness or pain.
Suddenly Thomas stood. He paced across the hall, his steps ringing loud across the flags, his coat a blur of shadow. “But how can it be?” Rage and sorrow were thick in his voice. “How can it be part of a divine plan that my brother die alone and afraid and damned? Self-murder? A sin?” His hands came up, long fingers twisting through his hair. “No, no, He is not supposed to burden us with more than we can bear. But if we buckle, then we are forever cast out? If our lives are truly His, then our deaths must be too, even the ones we believe we choose for ourselves. Or does He abandon us, then? In our deepest need? Why should we trust in a God so cruel? Why should we venerate Him?”
“Thomas,” said Micha helplessly from where he still sat, frozen, on the stairs. “Thomas.”
“Even His own son despaired of Him. His own son. What kind of father—” Whatever Thomas had been about to say was lost in a rush of tears, and he sank slowly to the floor. “Oh God, forgive me. What am I saying?”
“Just words.”
Thomas raised his head. Pale face, drowned eyes. He might as well have been miles away, he was so far beyond Micha’s reach.
“It’s just words,” Micha said, again. And then, “I’m sure Edward’s fine. Sitting on a little cloud with little golden wings. Or something.”
Thomas made an odd sound that was not quite a laugh. “Oh Micha. I know you’re trying to help but—”
“What? It’s no less plausible than a great fiery pit where you burn for all eternity.”
“Hell isn’t a place. It’s simply the absence of God.”
Despite Micha’s carefully nurtured apathy, the words were chilling. Or perhaps it was the certainty in Thomas’s voice. Too much loss, tangled up like fraying yarn. “Then maybe we’re already in it.”
“Please don’t say that.” Thomas shuddered. “I can’t bear the thought of it.”
“Sorry.”
“No, I should be the one to apologise. What a dreadful scene for you to witness. I don’t know what ... what happened to me.”
“It’s fine.” Micha could hear his own harshness as it echoed in the stairwell. “Don’t worry about it. Really. I’m not one of your parishioners, and I don’t have much love for this God of yours, so you don’t have to put on a show for me.”
“No but ...” Thomas covered his face with his hands. “What must you think of me?”
“I think you’re grieving. That’s not a crime.”
Thomas was silent.
Micha tried to think of something he could say. “Th-Thomas,” he tried at last, stumbling when he realised how rarely he used the man’s name and how much he had said it during this single conversation.
“Yes?”
“What’s the white horse?”
Thomas looked briefly startled by the question. “It’s ... well ... you sort of have to see it, really.”
“Oh.” Micha swallowed. All he had to do was ask. But it was utterly beyond him, the words caught in his throat like a fragment of bone. He had what he had told himself he wanted: Thomas, as frail and flawedand lost and human as everyone else. And yet, it brought Micha no satisfaction. He could not feed his own pride on the dust of someone else’s. He wanted to say something, or do something, that would ease the pain and shame he could see etched across Thomas’s features. Yet the price was too high.
Thomas rose slowly to his feet, dashing the moisture from his eyes with the heel of a hand. “I could take you,” he offered hesitantly, “if you wish. It isn’t far. Perhaps tomorrow afternoon?”
Micha shrugged, as though it didn’t matter to him that, even in weakness, Thomas was still the stronger man. The better man. “Yes. Yes, all right.”
Chapter 13
They rode out together the next afternoon, Micha on Bucephalus, Thomas on Slug. The weather held fine for them. The sharp autumn breeze was temporarily banked, and a faint warmth touched the air instead, like the trailing fingertips of summer. It soothed Thomas’s bruised heart. Speaking of Edward had been like lancing a wound: necessary but painful. He had not thought his soul so full of poison. And, even now, he had no way of telling how deep the corruption went. Or if it was permanent. If he could be saved.
More than anything, he wished it had not been in front of Micha. The man thought little enough of him already. But, at the same time, Thomas could not have imagined saying those things to anyone other than Micha. There had been no shock, no disappointment, and no false reassurances either. And, though he was deeply embarrassed, Thomas was grateful too.
And, most surprisingly, it had led to this. It was the first time Micha had intimated that he might want to spend time with Thomas other than incidentally. Thomas did not entirely know what had changed or if Micha had just begun to feel more settled in Nettlefield, but it was a question he was content to leave unanswered. He was simply happy to ride quietly alongside Micha—who had a careful, graceful way about him on horseback—as though they were, or could be, truly friends.
In this unstirring, sun-washed afternoon, yesterday seemed a long time ago. The grief was still sharp inside him, like a bladeplunged deep, but it seemed, at last, possible to bear it, to grow around it, new skin over raw flesh. Everywhere he looked, the world was beautiful, as though it put on new colours and took up new forms in Micha’s presence. Or perhaps it was his eyes that had learned to see differently. Greener greens and bluer blues. The secrets of all the little things: calligraphy in the waving of the grass, constellations in the falling of the leaves.
