[still told by Cheiron]

Jack, of course, needed no further encouragement. He stood up and launched into song at once:

'My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?

Why art Thou so far from saving me?

By day and night I cry out to Thee,

But never dost Thou hear me.

Yet Thou art enthronèd, Lord,

Upon the praises of Israel;

In Thee did our fathers trust,

And never were they shamèd.

'I am a worm and not a man,

The scorn of men, and despised by all;

They say, "Let the Lord deliver him,

If He delighteth in him."

Thou drewest me from the womb,

That art my hope from my mother's teats;

Depart Thou not from me,

For there is none that helpeth.

'Fat bulls of Bashan encompass me;

They gape their mouths as roaring lions.

As water am I pourèd out,

And all of my bones be scattered.

As wax my heart doth melt;

My strength and mouth are dried up as clay;

For Thou hast brought me forth

Into the dust of death.

'For many dogs have surrounded me;

The wicked delve mine hands and feet.

They stare on me as they count my bones

And part my garments among them.

Haste Thee to deliver me,

My darling life from the power of dogs.

Save me from the lion's mouth

And the unicorns' horns that pierce me.

'To my brethren shall I tell Thy name;

I shall glorify Thee amidst the church.

O praise Him, all ye that dread the Lord,

And honour Him, seed of Jacob!

He hath not despisèd me,

Nor scorned my prayer in my suffering;

Nor hid He his face from me,

But when I cried out, He heard me!

'The poor shall eat and shall be fulfilled,

And the heathen turn them unto the Lord,

And fat men feast and shall worship Him –

For none can keep themselves living.

My seed, it shall serve the Lord;

A generation yet to come

Shall tell of His righteousness

Because the Lord hath done this!'

When Jack had finished, there was a pause, and then Malvolio hissed, 'Do you seriously think it's acceptable to sing a psalm to the tune of Greensleeves?'

'Yes, I do,' said Jack. 'Have you ever listened to the words of the original? "Alas, my love, you do me wrong/ To cast me off discourteously." Everyone feels like that sometimes: even kings.'

'I think it works rather well,' I said. 'In any case, the original was written to the tune of an ancient Hebrew folk-song called The Doe In The Morning. A lot of David's psalms were written to be sung to folk-tunes.'

'It's very happy-clappy, isn't it?' observed Andrew, adding, 'I don't know what "happy-clappy" means, but it's what everyone says about Christian songs.'

'You should hear some of my Requiem masses,' said Erik. 'Absolutely no clapping or happiness involved, believe me. Especially in the one I wrote for Christine when I thought I was probably going to kill her.'

'In any case,' said Malvolio, trying to retain his level of indignation before the conversation wandered away, 'Sir John, not content with insisting on masquerading as King David, has now been using one of the prophetic psalms as an excuse for further grandstanding. No doubt, when we reach the New Testament, he'll expect to be allowed to play Jesus as well.'

'No way!' said Jack indignantly. 'I want to be Peter! Arthur can be Jesus if he wants.'

'No, I can't,' said Arthur. 'The only character in the New Testament that I'm fit to play is Herod.'

'Give it a rest, will you?' said Jack. 'Just because you've done some things in your life that were a bit Herod-like doesn't mean that you are Herod. You could just as well say that you're exactly like Abraham.'

'Why?' asked Arthur.

'Abraham had an illegitimate son; so did you. Abraham was married to his half-sister; you've had sex with your half-sister. Abraham banished his oldest son into the desert and tried to kill his second son; you're not very good at being a dad either. God loved Abraham and called him His friend; why shouldn't God want to be friends with you as well? God isn't a snob, you know, Arthur. He's not fussy about who he's friends with.'

'Really,' said Malvolio in his silkiest tones, 'I'm not sure your majesty should allow this level of blasphemy, even from a licensed fool.'

'It isn't blasphemy,' said Arthur. 'Jack's only saying what's in the Bible.'

'Yes, and we all know the Devil can quote scripture,' retorted Malvolio.

'And you know that that's a very trite response,' I said. 'After all, Malvolio, how many months was it since people were pretending to think you were demon-possessed, as an excuse not to listen to you?'

Malvolio winced as though he had been lashed with a whip, but then managed to regain control of his emotions. 'Talking of devils,' he added through clenched teeth, 'do you really think Erik learned anything from all this pageantry? It's just given him an excuse to be a villain.'

'I've learnt one thing,' said Erik. 'O Absalom, my son, my son, my son,/ Would Heaven I had died instead of thee! David loved Absalom, didn't he? Even though he was a villain?'

'Parents usually do,' I said.

'Mine didn't. My mother used to scream if I tried to get her to give me a cuddle when she came down to the cellar to put my food-bowl down for me. And if I tried to get out of the cellar, she'd drive me back in with a chair and then not come down to me at the next meal-time, and I didn't know if she was ever coming back.'

'Well, parents should love their children, and most of them do,' I said. 'And it sounds as though you loved your mother, even if she didn't know how to love you.'

'Do you think I'd still have been evil, if I'd had parents who loved me? Even if I was still so ugly that everyone else hated me, I might have been all right inside, if I'd had parents who didn't mind what I looked like.'

'I don't know,' I said. 'But you're here now, and I love you, and God loves you so much that He wants you to be His son, like Jesus.'

'Yes,' said Erik thoughtfully. 'God loved Jesus, and that was why He killed Jesus, wasn't it? "Yet each man kills the thing he loves." I was planning to kill Christine, too, because I loved her and she loved Raoul. But then she loved me enough to feel sorry for me and kiss me once on the forehead, which is more than my mother did, so Christine's gentleness broke my heart and killed me.'

'What do you mean, "Each man kills the thing he loves"?' demanded Malvolio.

'It was in a poem I read once, by Oscar Wilde,' explained Erik. 'He wrote it when he was in prison, about one of his fellow-prisoners being hanged. I know nearly all of it by heart, but I'll quote just two verses:

'And every human heart that breaks

In prison-cell or yard,

Is as that broken box that gave

Its treasure to the Lord,

And filled the unclean leper's house

With the scent of costliest nard...

'And he of the swollen purple throat,

And the stark and staring eyes,

Waits for the holy hands that took

The Thief to Paradise.

And a broken and a contrite heart

The Lord will not despise.'

Author's note: these last two verses really are from The Ballad of Reading Gaol. Jack's song is an approximate translation, or sometimes mistranslation, of Psalm 22.