Mercy the Avenger

He stood in the driving snow, ankle deep in the soft whiteness. He had come so far in time and distance from that savage and violent moment of his birth. He reflected on his life thus far, as the sun reflected off the pale canvas before him, and blinded his eyes. He was bare foot, but he wasn’t cold. The passion of fury kindled inside him, potential vengeance roared to life within him, as he approached his target. He had been tracking him through the snow for five days. His victim was a man of the city, a man of the elites, a man close to kings, a man of the cloth. It was this man who had been responsible for the crime that the hunter had come to avenge. It was this man, a priest at the time of the crime, the shepherd of a poor parish of just one hundred souls, who had been the architect and supervisor of the deeds we must now describe.

Twenty winters ago, when the bear had bunkered down for her hibernal rest; when the maypole was a distant memory, and the rose petal dropped its last; when the first snows floated down onto the hilltops, and the lake began to freeze over, then it was that the killings had begun. Of course, they had not come out of nowhere, and the accusations had moved thick but fast. It was said that twenty one of the parishioners had founded a heretical league, the purpose of which was to deny the authority of church teaching on a particular matter, that being the linguistic monopoly of Latin. The priest, now the prey, had argued that there were no barriers to pure knowledge of scripture, provided one learned Latin. The twenty one had argued that, they not having the leisure or the means to learn, should have the scriptures translated into their native tongue. They had therefore employed the most learned among them, a certain former schoolmaster, to translate as much of the scriptures as he could, focussing on the Gospels. It was not this alone which had condemned the twenty one, but rather that liberty with which they had translated Matthew 16:18. They had made it so as to clearly state that it was Peter’s faith upon which the Church would be built, and had implicitly denied and rejected the Papacy.

The priest had put his case to the Pope, and though His Holiness had written back that there was not enough evidence of a potential schism, the priest had decided upon carrying out his task of purification with fire anyway.

Now the priest was lying in the snow. Five days without water had taken their toll. He was parched, famished, and he laboured to breathe under an exhaustion so heavy it drove him deeper into the soft ground; he struggled to stay above the blanket of snow, and to get back onto his feet. The hunter approached. When he was close up to the prey, he spoke the following words.

‘I am Johannes Nero. Let it be known that I seek your blood. I seek it for the blood of my blood. I will not now tell you how I plan to kill you. Though you gave my mother that so called privilege, I do not give it to you. She beheld with terror what awaited her. I do not know if it is more terrifying to know the means of one’s imminent fate, or whether it is enough to know that one will die. If I know I am to die, but know not whether it be by painless and fast acting potion, or by long and extended torture, I may find myself in agony of uncertainty and anticipation. I gambled that you would be more inclined to terror not knowing the means of your death; for your fate is known, just not its mode of delivery.’

He squirmed, attempting to sit up, like a worm envious of arms, ‘Oh, please let it be kind and fast,’ he begged, squealing like a frozen mouse.

‘Silence. Listen. Before I was born, when I was a babe in the womb, you condemned as heretics a group among which was ranked my saintly mother. And you arranged it so that their guilt was certain, and their fate a foregone conclusion. The pyre of their death was erected in the town, and fuel was kindled around it. The victims, all bound hands and feet, were burned upon the brush and bracken. The flames rose high up their legs. As they screamed in agony you only wretchedly replied, ‘I am deaf to you.’ And when the flames reached up to my mother’s belly, it burst open, and I burst forth. I was caught by one who you had appointed a guard. Immediately you called for me to be thrown back in, as you feared the heresy would be passed down, if I were to grow and learn the fate of my mother, and to enquire of her ideas, and the ideas of her co-heretics. So it was, after some debate with the guard and yourself, that I was thrown back into the fire. But by some miracle, I know not by which blessed saint or angel of the Lord, or perhaps it was by the power of the Holy Spirit, I was spared the heat of the flames, and suffered only mild burns. Later, I was found among the white ash by a monk, and it was this holy man who raised me, teaching me of the liberal arts. I acquired Latin, Greek and Hebrew. I also acquired that quality of mercy that now will become your fate. For it is harder for me to spare you than it was for you to burn the twenty one. Let your fate be the guilt that is forever heaped upon you. Don’t worry. You will not die. I will bring you out of the snow. But you will forever remain my prisoner. I will feed you. I will give you water. But I will not talk with you, or even to you. Do not attempt to engage me in conversation. I am deaf to you.’

With these words concluded, the snow momentarily ceased to fall; and looking down at his feet, covered in white flakes that looked something like ash, the hunter breathed a sigh.