For some reason, Matthew was counting every pause the soldier took from his gun as a personal victory. He worried for the man's soul, in a way deeply real, that perhaps no one from this modern world might truly understand. He thought of James as a haunted, simple person, afflicted no doubt with the kind of spiritual horrors that often took experienced soldiers with no home of their own. Not for the first time, Matthew thought about what a disaster of a soldier he would have been, if he'd kept his sight long enough to join one of The O’Donnell's little wars on the English. He'd have been a pretty little corpse, for certain, and then... what? Perhaps a more ready heaven than the one that eluded him now.
In his short life, Matthew had indulged in a great number of sins against his fellow man. At least no one could claim he wasn't fair about it; English, Irish and Spanish, Matthew had taken no sides since the crown soldiers had caught him that first time, and strung him up from the rafters. A sad lesson in patriotism, that.
He did not think James was a patriot. A soldier without a country was a very dangerous thing. Matthew contemplated him and his words for a few seconds, breathing light but steady. The bard had come a long way from the chunk of battered meat James had scraped up out of the gutter.
His dark lenses turned again to the window. "She doth have some difference of opinion with her companion," he observed. "They speak a tongue I do not know." He didn't wait for any explanation. "Thy... thinkest thou distribute justice, afore God has his chance?" he asked, gently.