“Just as you translated them,” he confirms. “The Latin psalms set into English. They read very beautifully. They read as if the first psalmist spoke the finest English. As they should. They are an honor to God and an honor to you. They are an honor to John Fisher, God bless him. I congratulate you.”

Slowly, I spread the pages out and start to read them. It is like reading a chorus through time: the old, old voice of the original psalmist in Hebrew translated to Greek, the sonorous wise voice of the martyred bishop rendering the Greek into Latin, and then it is my voice which sounds through the English lines. I read one psalm:

Thou art our Defender, our refuge, and our God and in Thee we trust. Thou shalt deliver me from the snares of the hunters, and from the perils of my persecutors. Thou shalt make a shadow for me under Thy shoulders; and under Thy wings I shall be harmless. Thy truth shall be my shield and buckler; and no evil shall approach near unto me.

“Should it be harmless?” I ask myself.

George Day knows better than to answer. He waits.

“Without harm is clumsy,” I say. “Safe is too strong. But harmless has the merit of meaning without harm and without being able to doharm. It feels a little odd perhaps, but the oddness draws attention to the word.” I hesitate.

“My clerk can copy any changes you want into fair script for the printer,” he offers.

“Under Thy wings I shall be harmless,” I whisper to myself. “It’s like poetry. It carries a sense that is greater than the words, greater than the simple meaning of the words. I think it’s right. I don’t think I should change it. And I love how it sounds—under Thy wings—you can almost feel the feathers of the great wings, can’t you?”

George smiles. He can’t. But it doesn’t matter.

“I don’t want to change it,” I say. “Not this, not anything.”

I glance up at George Day, nodding his head at the steady rhythm of the words. “Clear as plainsong,” he says. “Clear as a bell. It is open and honest.”

Clarity means more to him than poetry, and so it should. He wants Englishmen and -women to understand the psalms that Bishop Fisher loved. I want to do something more. I want to make these verses sing as they once did in the Holy Land. I want boys in Yorkshire, girls in Cumberland to hear the music of Jerusalem.

“I shall publish these.” I shudder at my own daring. No other woman has ever published in English under her own name. I can hardly believe that I can find the courage: to stand up, to speak aloud, to publish to the world. “I really will. George—you do think that I should? You don’t advise against it?”