Ink and Steel

Kit smiled. “More a bemusement. My plays, your plays they can change the world. Hell, William. Here I am living the Orpheus I wrote, for Christ’s sake. And Morgan told me she has changed and changed again, reflecting what the poets sing. So if Christ came to preach God’s love and tolerance a thousand and a half years gone, and half the world is Christian, why is it that God himself has not become what Christ the Redeemer would have made him? The Morningstar told me…” Kit stopped, pierced by a vivid recollection of the circumstances of that conversation.

“You believe what the Devil says?”

“Thou needs must have spoken with him, in thy time in Hell. Did he ever lie to thee?” Will flinched; Kit leveled his voice. “Satan says that God loves not, nor forgives, as the New Testament would have it. God judges, Will. As fathers do.”

“You believe what the Devil says?”

“No lie could have cut me so.”

“Kit Marley.” Climbing, Will favored him with a glance. “I’ve heard you dismiss Moses as a, what was the word?”

“Juggler.”

“Juggler, aye. And Christ as a sodomite and fornicator.”

“Is fornication such a sin? Can not a man’s words be holy though a man be but earth?” Their footsteps up the stair carried them from Stygian gloom to something like pale earthly moonlight. Kit ran fingers along the rough stone of the wall and did not look back. Never look back. Never step off the path. Never trust the guardian. Oh, indeed.

“And now thou tellst me thou art shattered because the Devil says God does not love thee.” Will turned dark blue eyes on him in a glare, and blinked.

“Your face.”

“Satan,” Kit said dryly, “healed me. When he agreed to release thee.”

“What didst thou…”

“Don’t,” Kit said, shaking his head, feeling the movement of scrubbed curls against his neck, knowing no soap or simple could make him clean again.

“Don’t ever ask me. Just accept that what I did, I did in love for thee.”

“Oh, Kit.” But Will fell silent, and it was enough, and they ascended side by side for a time until Kit found his courage again.

“Tis the Church,” he said quietly.

“What do you mean?”

“The reason God can’t love us. The Church. All churches.” He paused, hearing his own radical words. True heresy, this. “They speak to power and to money, and they teach a jealous and a wrathful God. Christ’s God was not that. Christ’s God is a God who can forgive. Who can love his creations. Mayhap there are two Gods, I don’t know or three. The Catholic God, the Protestant God, and the Promethean God. Three that are one. And the Puritan God.”

“Ah. Kit? How long do you suppose it takes to climb outof Hell?”

“Three days, Kit guessed, and smiled to himself when Will’s laugh forgot to be broken-edged. Kit stole a look: Will leaned on the wall, lifting each foot with painful concentration, but he kept up. I’ll carry him on my back if I have to.

A calm voice, then, and one with a purpose in it. “Your Latin. I suppose you’ve forgotten it all. And your Greek.”

“No, I’ve kept it,” Kit answered. “And learned some of the Hebrew, some Arabic and some Russian, too.”

“Hebrew,” Will said. “That will be useful.”

“Useful to what purpose?”

“Well,” he answered, as they came around a corner in the stair and the source of the pale reflected light revealed itself a shaft in the ceiling, unguessably high, with a patch of blue at the top of it that Kit could have covered complete with his pinky nail, for perspective. “If I’m going to write a Bible, I need someone to translate it for me. And someone to push the pen. My hands are not what they were.”

“You re serious.”

Will sighed, filling his lungs with the sweeter air that fell down the shaft. He squared his shoulders and recommenced to climb. “I’ve had time to think on it. If you can suggest a simpler and preferably shorter plan for convincing people God loves them and forgives them, I would be overjoyed to hear it. I’m going back to England. Let’s do something useful with Prometheus, shall we? It’s there; it’s got to be for something better than shoring up Princes and clothing upstart Earls in glory.”

“If that’s your plan,” Kit answered, “it will have to be something on the order of a liberal translation. The world is not kindly to those who seek wisdom, Will. Look at the example of one Jesus of Nazareth.”

“You’re the one who believes our circumstances would be improved if God took a personal interest,” Will answered, and Kit was certain this time that he did not imagine the bitterness. “Personally, I think we’d be better off if we accepted some responsibility for our choices. But you’re our translator. You’ll be responsible for that.”

“An atheistical warlock and a humanist conspiring on a Bible to free good Englishmen from the suzerainty of the Church.”

“A warlock, eh?”